Page 47 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

Link smiled at him and shook his head as he moved behind the shorter couch that ran perpendicular to the front door. He plucked his hat from the rack there and said, “No one. Mitch and I are going down to the summer dance.” He put his hat on his head and adjusted it until he felt like himself in it. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

Cutter chuckled and shook his head. “No, thanks, cowboys. Those dances are for young bucks like you two.”

Link turned as Mitch came out of the bathroom. He too wore a dark-wash pair of jeans, perfectly clean and shined brown cowboy boots, a matching belt, and a plaid shirt in red, white, and blue that spoke of the Fourth of July a month too soon.

How do I look? Mitch’s hands flew as he signed, and then he spread his arms wide and turned in a circle.

Link grinned at him, and since he’d grown up with Mitch since the age of ten or eleven, he’d learned sign language too. “Great,” Link said with his hands and his voice. “I don’t think I should go with you. If I stand next to you, no one will look at me.”

Mitch laughed, the sound hearty and loud, because he couldn’t hear it and didn’t know to tone things down. He was a couple of years older than Link, but he’d just returned to Shiloh Ridge a month or so ago from his accessibility dog training academy in Virginia.

He’d talked with Link until late into the night about opening a training facility somewhere, but he hadn’t talked to his daddy or anyone else about it. He had a guide dog with him—his third since he’d been part of Link’s life and the Glover family.

They shared no blood whatsoever, though they both bore the Glover last name, as Bear had adopted Link a few years back, and Cactus had done the same for Mitch long before that.

I’m all arms and legs, Mitch said, and even Cutter laughed. And too skinny. The ladies seem to like cowboys with shoulders like yours. He approached Link as he signed, and he grabbed onto Link’s shoulders when he arrived, his smile enormous.

“Yeah, sure,” Link said, not bothering to use his hands now. Mitch could read lips. “Let’s go.” He moved away from his cousin and took his keys from the peg on the wall beside the fridge. He almost always drove when he went with Mitch. Of course the other man knew how to drive, but his lack of hearing did make some things harder—driving being one of them.

Mitch led the way out of the cowboy cabin, and he had to duck his head to get through the doorway. So even if he was a little on the skinny side, he had plenty of height and plenty of good-looks and plenty of charm. Link always felt a little overshadowed when in Mitch’s presence, but it had never mattered all that much.

He drove them down the hill and off Shiloh Ridge Ranch, and then it was just thirty minutes to the downtown park, which would be transformed into a dance floor tonight. Every Friday and Saturday in the summertime, the town covered the grass with squares of wood, set up lights and refreshment stations, and hired a local band or DJ.

“Local” could include as far away as Amarillo, and Link had started going to the dances last summer. Sort of. He’d gone to two or three—alone—before he decided he’d drunk enough horrible red punch, danced—alone—to enough mediocre music, and simply embarrassed himself enough.

He’d met a woman or two at the dances or church, and he’d gone out with girls and friends that were girls in high school, but otherwise, Link didn’t have much experience with the opposite gender.

But now that Mitch was back in town, and he wanted to go to the dance, Link could play the part of his wingman and enjoy a few hours away from the ranch, the family, the never-ending texts. All of it. He just wanted an escape, and he thought about asking his daddy if he could go on vacation.

Maybe somewhere cooler than Texas in the summer, like the Pacific Northwest or the Canadian Rocky Mountains. “That would require a passport,” he murmured to himself. And he didn’t currently have one of those.

“And what? You’ll go alone?” He shook his head, wondering when he’d started talking to himself the way his daddy did. He put the idea of a vacation out of his mind and got himself and Mitch to the downtown park.

Dusk had started to cover the land, and Link actually thought they’d still arrived too early. He turned toward Mitch when he tapped his arm, and then he said, I hope Sarah is here tonight, with a grin.

“Did you text her?” Link asked.

Mitch nodded. Yeah, but she said she might have to work.

Sarah Hedger had come up to the ranch to help after the flooding, but she’d really just followed Mitch around and flirted with him. At least until lunchtime, when Uncle Cactus had growled at her about helping pull a couple of turkeys out of a mud pit. Then she’d suddenly had something to do in town.

Link smiled just thinking about it. Sarah was a pretty woman, but she talked too much for Link. His daddy had said a lot of girls tended to talk too much, and Link just had to find one that suited him.

Preferably before you’re fifty years old, Daddy had said with a wry smile.

Link was half that age, and he wasn’t sure how he managed to keep himself alive every day. He didn’t feel qualified to do much more than what Uncle Ward told him to do, so trying to find a date certainly hadn’t been at the top of his list.

Mitch had definitely dated more than Link, and he led the way into the park, where the yellow tea lights made the mid-June dusk more golden than it would be otherwise. The towering trees stood watch over the dance floor, where a band in the center of the floor had already started to play.

Tonight, four guys with guitars stood on the stage, and a couple dozen people stood out on the floor. Only a few danced, and everyone else stood in clumps, talking.

Link hated clumps of people. How could he just walk up to them and join one? He couldn’t, which was why he loitered on the edge of the dance floor while Mitch strode right out onto it.

He couldn’t even call to his friends, but he did have an inch or two on most people, and he did have long limbs. He raised one hand, and one of the clumps broke apart and made room for him.

Cowboys and girls, and Link told himself to get out there too. He did, Mitch’s little shadow, but the group welcomed him easily too.

“Howdy, Link,” a man named Seth Mayer said. He shook the man’s hand and put his smile on full display.

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