Darn Good Cowboy Christmas by Carolyn Brown Page B

year redoing our wagons. I love to watch him paint. His hands are so steady and his combination of colors is breathtaking.” Her voice had a faraway sound as if she were homesick.
    â€œYou miss it, don’t you?” Raylen whispered.
    â€œMiss what?”
    â€œBeing a carnie.”
    â€œOf course I miss it. Would you miss ranchin’ if suddenly you lived in the middle of Dallas?”
    His expression changed to dead serious. “I couldn’t survive without ranchin’ and horses and tractors. Missin’ it wouldn’t even cover the feelings. I’d probably wither up and die in the big city. Is that what you’re going to do here, Liz? Wither up and die?”
    Liz turned around and met his eyes in a determined stare. “No, I am not. I’ve wanted this forever and I’m going to grow roots. But I’ll always miss a portion of carnie life. It’s what my family is, not just what they do. Uncle Haskell was the only one who ever quit the business and even then when he came home for the holidays at Christmas, he helped Grandpa paint.”
    Raylen heard the freedom in her voice. It was an elusive thing that he couldn’t put into words, but it was there. There wasn’t enough good rich Red River dirt to grow roots on Liz’s heart. Like she said, the carnival and constant movement is what her family was, not just what they did. And Hanson blood flowed in her veins. It was what she was and that involved wings that flew from one place to the other.
    He removed the tarp from the first wooden cutout and revealed a dark-haired woman in a bright orange harem-looking outfit sitting in the fork of a Saguaro cactus. She was barefoot and had a Santa stocking on her head. The cactus had Christmas garland wrapped around it and holes drilled in it for lights.
    â€œGuess this year’s decoration is in celebration of you taking over the house. I hadn’t seen it before but that is you, Liz. You look like a dark-haired I Dream of Jeannie . Evidently, I was wrong about the dancing costumes. Is that the one you are going to wear to the party?”
    His heart did a nose-dive into his boots. Every cowboy in the whole damn county would be panting after her like a bull in the springtime. He wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a date with her and he’d taunted her into wearing that skimpy thing.
    â€œYes, it is, Raylen. It’s my orange belly dancing outfit, and I think I will wear it to the Halloween party. Orange goes with Halloween, doesn’t it?”
    Liz folded her arms across her chest and studied the piece of art. It was definitely a rendition of her in her orange belly dancing outfit. Uncle Haskell had always liked it better than the pink or the turquoise. But why did he place her on a cactus and not on a wagon pulled by reindeer, or sitting beside Santa?
    â€œThere’s holes in the cactus for Christmas lights.” Raylen couldn’t take his eyes off the costume.
    â€œWell, that does make it a little more Christmas-like. Let’s look at the rest.” She’d think about the significance of the cactus later. A prickly old cactus had nothing to do with Christmas.
    â€œPresent to past or past to present?”
    â€œYou mean they’re organized?”
    Raylen pointed to the bits of paper thumbtacked on the wall above the tarps around the room. Each one had five years penciled on it beginning with 1975–1979.
    â€œPast to present,” she said.
    Raylen moved past her and dropped a dusty tarp from a group of flat wooden cutouts. The first one was Santa Claus in a cowboy hat and boots, and Mrs. Claus in an apron holding up her dress tail to reveal bright red cowboy boots.
    Liz moved closer and held the other end as she peered behind it. “Look, there’s a date on the back that says 1975, and what’s this?”
    She peeled off a thick envelope that had been stapled to the backside of the cutout.