Page 26 of The Cowboy Who Looked Again

Link immediately shook his head. “No,” he said, a harsh barking laugh coming out. “No, you can’t say stuff like that if you don’t mean it.” He paced away from her, expecting her girlish laugh, the teasing quality in her tone that told him she was kidding.

It didn’t come, and he turned toward her again, his head down, barely looking at her from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “You broke my heart, and I can’t do it again. So you can’t say that stuff if you don’t mean it.” He watched her fight with herself, and that didn’t exactly comfort him. “Do you mean it?”

“I mean it.” Misty sounded hoarse. “I have reasons for everything, and that’s what I need to tell you. Tonight. If I don’t, I’ll chicken out, and then we won’t be able to try again.”

“Is that what we’re doing?”

“I’d like to,” she said, that chin coming up in defiance again. “Tell me you don’t want a second chance, and I’ll march right back to the cabin.” She pointed back the way they’d come. “Right now.”

“I can’t say that,” he said.

“Good.” She eased closer to him. “So you tell me about your dad on the way to this looking spot, and then I’ll somehow be brave enough to tell you why we couldn’t be together last year.”

Link would do anything to be with her again, as her boyfriend, so he drew on the strongest part of himself, said a silent prayer in his heart, and then said aloud, “My parents were killed in a car accident when I was only three years old.”

“Lincoln Glover,” Misty said, her voice full of air and shock. “No.”

He nodded and tugged her along, as she’d stopped walking again. “Yes, Misty. I was born Lincoln Josephs. My aunt Sammy adopted me, because she became my legal guardian according to my parents’ wills.” He glanced over to her. “I don’t really belong to the Glover family.”

Their feet crunched down the road. “That’s not what I heard at the barn today,” Misty finally said. “It was your mom who said, ‘Once a Glover, always a Glover.’”

Link smiled, because that sounded like something his momma would say. “Bear Glover was sweet on my mom. I was eight when they started dating, and they got married pretty quick. We came to live up here then, and we actually lived in the big homestead at the top of the hill.”

“I see,” Misty said.

“Bear adopted me, and they changed my last name when I was a teenager, because I wanted the same last name as them. I wanted to graduate from high school with the Glover name on my diploma. But I’m not a Glover.”

“Link, yes, you are.”

She wasn’t hearing him. Or rather, she heard him, but she wasn’t listening. “I feel like I’m not, though,” he said quietly. “I feel like a fraud sometimes. Daddy talks to me about taking over this place, or building me a house of my own here, and to him, of course I belong here.” Link sighed out his breath, because he wasn’t sure what he was trying to say.

“Anyway.” He shook his head as they approached Etta’s house. “This is my aunt Etta and uncle August’s house. Hailey, that woman I danced with at the wedding? She’s their daughter. They have a few other kids too.” He told himself to stop talking, but he still said, “She’s a twin, and she’s got twins. Her twin sister, Aunt Ida, she’s got twins too.”

“There’s a lot of people in your family,” she said.

“Don’t I know it,” Link muttered.

“I have one brother,” she said. “It’s a little overwhelming being here, actually.”

Link tightened his hold on her hand. “I’m sure it is.” He cleared his throat and cut a look over to her. “Anyway, that’s me. It’s not this sordid tale or anything, but I’m not a Glover, at least by blood. I was a Josephs, and then a Benton, and then a Glover.”

“Names are just names,” she said.

“Names mean a lot in this family.” Link looked up into the sky, noting that it had started to bruise a little bit. “The sunset is going to be amazing tonight.”

They went past Etta’s house and continued down the road toward the Ranch House. “This is where Uncle Judge and Aunt June live,” Link said. “We call it the Ranch House. Judge is my daddy’s brother. Etta is his cousin. It’s all confusing, and most of the time, I barely know how they’re related to me.” He gave a light chuckle. “And that’s more words than I think I’ve ever spoken on a date, so I’m going to stop now.”

Misty didn’t even challenge him on the labeling of this walk as a date, and that was when Link realized how serious she’d become. They really hadn’t ever had a date like this before. Everything had been laughter and jokes, playfulness and teasing, kissing and flirting.

He led her across the side yard of the house to the benches that sat right on the edge of the grass, before the wildness of the ranch took over. The majority of the ranch sat up on a plateau, and Link smiled as he remembered the earthquake and landslide that had stranded them all up here one Christmas.

Link led Misty around the bench and let her sit down before he eased himself in next to her. “I’m exhausted,” he said as he groaned. “Whenever I’m trying to find my way, I come here.” He gazed down the hills to the town. “It’s Three Rivers from a bird’s eye view, and I love it. It allows me to see things the way I imagine God does—from a higher perspective.”

“I love that.” Misty linked her arm through Link’s and leaned her head against his bicep. “Lincoln, I am so sorry for hurting you.”

“You’ve apologized enough.”

“You said I broke your heart.”

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