Page 50 of The Cowboy's Christmas
Chapter Ten
“That one,” Sophiesaid, making a beeline from where Quinn had helped her dismount from behind his saddle to the first tree with pink flagging tied to it.
Jessa followed close behind her sister, and when they got to the tree, she grabbed a limb and accidentally shook snow down onto them.
They both let out squeals, then laughed and did it again, causing crystals to rain from the upper branches.
“That’s enough,” Savannah said. “You don’t want to freeze before we pick a tree.”
“I like this one,” Jessa said, patting the trunk.
“Do you want to look at them all before you choose?” Quinn asked.
Sophie looked at her sister, then said, “Okay. But this one is big.”
“They’re all big,” Savannah assured her niece as she caught up with the group after tying the horses to the windfall.
“A lot bigger than the dirty white tree,” Jessa added, taking Savannah’s hand. They fell in step behind Sophie and Quinn, and Savannah had to agree that her niece had a point. She’d fully intended on cleaning the dusty flocked tree, but truthfully, it would never have been as good as an evergreen, and, more than that, she was beginning to feel she could handle having the house smell like Christmas again.
She fixed her gaze on Quinn’s back as he followed the trails that they’d made the previous day with the idea of making it easy for the girls to walk without dumping snow into the top of their boots. Sophie’s little hand clung to his as they walked, and Savannah smiled as her niece pointed out every tree they passed with a “why not this one?” as they made their way to the flagged Doug fir fifty yards away. Quinn answered the question every single time.
Too short. Too skinny. Funny top. Not enough branches.
They hadn’t talked about their second kiss, and after her initial mental retreat while gathering her wits, Savannah hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, either—although she strongly suspected she’d dreamed about it. She couldn’t remember. Regardless, yesterday had been freeing in one important way—she’d made the decision to move forward, to take some chances, one of them being Quinn.
She had no clue what that involved. It may well be a case of her waving goodbye to him when he left in a week having never kissed him again.
Or it may not.
For the first time in two years, she felt capable of taking a wait and see attitude, and she could thank the man tromping through the snow with a small, pink-mittened hand in his, for that.
Jessa pulled her hand free from Savannah’s as Quinn and Sophie stopped beside the next Christmas candidates which were only a few yards apart.
“No more snow showers, okay?” Quinn said. “We don’t want you guys to be Popsicles before we get home.”
The girls laughed at the idea of becoming Popsicles, and Savannah gave Quinn a smiling look over their heads before turning her attention back to the girls.
“Which one do you think would be prettiest in the living room?” Savannah asked.
The girls put their heads together, whispering back and forth, looking very much like they were planning a raid rather than choosing a tree.
“That one,” they said, pointing to the tree they’d yet to inspect.
Savannah thought that was the best tree, too, so she gave an approving nod.
Quinn pulled the handsaw out of the sheath and headed for the tree while Savannah kept the girls at a safe distance.
“You don’t want to be a Christmas casualty,” she murmured as they drifted closer to watch Quinn when he knelt in the snow and started to saw through the trunk.
The girls gave a collectiveooohwhen the tree toppled, then Quinn took hold of a lower branch and started dragging it toward them.
“We’ll truss it up and pull it back to the ranch,” he said.
Pete, being an old roping horse, had no issues dragging a tree, but they still returned to the ranch with one girl in front of Savannah’s saddle and one behind.
Deke came out of the house as they rode into the driveway and met them at the gate.
“Well, isn’t that a fine specimen,” he said, pointing at the tree. “Did you pick it out?” he asked Sophie and Jessa after Quinn had helped them to the ground.
