John called for his wife, who walked through the grove with a basket picking lemons. It seemed as if the trees had been producing bushels of lemons overnight. Isabel hadn't taken the ribbons off. She claimed she'd keep them on those trees forever as a symbol of their love.
"Hmm?" Isabel said as she set her basket down and came toward him. - John had selected the niblick club and a Perfect Flight golf ball--the very one that had dropped out of the sky at the well spot.
"Darlin', I'm going to line you up, and I want you to hit this ball as hard as you can."
She shaded her eyes with her hand. "How come?"
"Because wherever this ball lands is where I'm going to find oil"
"No petroleum on this property," Duster declared with a slow rock and a sip of lemonade.
"Well see," John called to him. Then he handed the club to Isabel and set the ball on a tiny mound of dirt he'd made. "All right, darlin', you give it your best shot."
"But I don't know how to hit it."
"I'll show you." He cuddled her in front of him and made her lean back into his hips. "There you go. Sway a little. Loosen up."
She did so, pressing her shapely behind into him. He had to fight off the urge to forget about hitting the ball, tell Duster to go repark himself at the Republic, and take Isabel into the house and lie over her on the bed.
"Well, if that isn't the backward way to do things," Duster hollered, breaking John out of his thoughts. "Just you watch," John replied without looking up.
"Really, John, I think we'd have better luck if you hit the ball."
"Darlin', you are my luck. Now you're going to do fine."
He put his hands over hers to fit around the club's handle. Then he helped her shift her weight and get into the right position. "Just swing your hips, Isabel, and lay into it."
"All right."
He straightened and backed away from her, giving her room to move. She didn't. She got out of position and turned to face him. "You know who gave you these clubs and balls, don't you?"
They'd been through this before. He'd never come out and admitted that he thought Bellamy Nicklaus had left him the golf gear and put the ribbons on her trees. Deep down, he knew the crafty buzzard had done it. How, he didn't know.
Because on Christmas day, that house on Ninth and Mill had been deserted as if nobody had ever lived there at all. The only thing remaining was the tree in the yard, all decked out with holly berries.
"Yes, I reckon I do, Isabel," he finally said.
"I just thought we ought to clear that up before I go hitting the ball. If we don't believe, this won't work." The silk poppies on her hat waved with the bob of her head as she turned around once more. "So, are you going to admit Bellamy Nicklaus is a legend?"
He drew up behind her and corrected her stance. Whispering into her ear, he said, "I believe that somewhere in time, the name Nicklaus will be a legend linked with golf. How's that?"
After a moment's silence, she nodded. "It's a start."
"Good." Backing away again, he gave Duster an encouraging nod.
Duster merely snorted.
"Go ahead, darlin', whack the hell out of it."
On that, Isabel sliced the club through the air and the ball sailed high in the sky. She came to stand beside John and he pulled her close with his arm.
Together, they watched the golf ball sail toward the ground, each knowing that whatever the outcome, they were already rich.
If Only in My Dreams by Mariah Stewart
Chapter One
With her Land Rover happily eating up the miles in the afternoon sun, Quinn Hollister headed north on Route 191 about sixty miles outside of Billings, Montana, determined to be home before dinner. Praying that no unannounced storm would ambush her to slow down her progress, she depressed the accelerator and prepared to make tracks. Fumbling in her big blue nylon zippered bag, she rejected first one, then another tape of Christmas music until she found just the right songs to sing along with as she drove toward the small town of Larkspur, and, just beyond the town limits, the High Meadow Ranch, where her family would gather to celebrate the holidays.
Quinn had left Missoula literally at the crack of dawn, her car already packed and ready to go. She would have two weeks at home before returning to Montana State, where she had spent the first semester filling in for a professor who had been injured in an automobile accident and was unable to teach his scheduled creative writing course. In four more weeks the class would end and the regular professor would return for the second semester, but Quinn hadn't quite made up her mind whether to stay in Missoula or to come back to the ranch. As a writer and illustrator of children's books, she could work just about anywhere. Presently between contracts, she hadn't quite settled on which of her possible projects to pursue next. For the next two weeks, however, she planned to put work aside and simply enjoy being with her family.
No matter where their lives had taken them, all of Catherine and Hap Hollister's offspring came home to spend Christmas with the family. Not that any of them had ever wanted to be anyplace else for the holiday. The High Meadow Ranch was home, and home was always filled with chatter and memories and wonderful things to eat. The old log and stucco house would smell like Christmas, like fresh-cut pine, like cinnamon and vanilla and ginger, and would look like a magazine photo, with greens draping every window and doorway. Claret red poinsettias, for which a special trip to Billings would have been made, would stand massed under the big dining room windows overlooking the valley. Catherine's Christmas village would grow from the flat plain of the piano in the great room, and the lights from the tiny porcelain houses would twinkle like tiny stars. On Christmas Eve, they would all gather in front of the fireplace, and whoever's turn it was that year would read "The Night Before Christmas" to the rest of the family. The beloved faces would glow in the firelight, and for a while, even the sibling bickering and baiting inevitable in a large family would cease. Just thinking about it kinked the corners of Quinn's mouth into a smile, and she unconsciously pressed a little more firmly on the gas pedal.