Page 69 of The Cowboy Who Looked Again

“Okay,” he said. “Great. I don’t know when yet. I’ll talk to my momma.”

Misty put her feet up on the bench and leaned her back into his chest while they finished their treats.

“One more dance?” he asked after she’d eaten her last bite of brownie. “Then I’m feeling a little beat, and I have to check on the horses in one of the stables tonight still.” Work on a ranch never stopped, after all. Even in perfect summer weather, with a glow of fireflies, and the most beautiful woman in the world.

“One more dance.” Misty stood and extended her hand to him. Link grabbed onto her and pulled her down onto his lap instead of joining her on his feet.

“Maybe one more kiss first,” he whispered. And then he kissed the woman he was most certainly in love with—just one more time.

Link set down a perfectly white plate on his side of the table, which he normally only shared with Smiles. But this made the third place setting on the ten-foot table, which his father had asked Uncle Bishop to custom make just for their family, for the space they had in their dining room.

“Smiles, there’s still no ice in these cups,” Momma said.

Smiles had collapsed onto the couch with his phone, and he looked up to their mother.

“Link, silverware is on the counter.”

“Got it,” he told his mother.

“Heather, are you done with the napkins?” Momma worked in the kitchen, stirring something vigorously in a pot.

“I hope when I bring a boy home, things aren’t this tense,” Heather said from where she sat at the counter, folding cloth napkins into animals.

Link glanced over to her, a smile lifting a corner of his mouth. “If you bring a boy home before you turn twenty, Daddy will flip his lid.”

Heather grinned at him. “Trust me, I know.”

“Look at these butter sculptures I did.” Sunnie put a plate of butter shaped like a rose on the table near where Link set down the last plate.

He took in the petals, shaped and molded out of butter. “Wow, Sunnie,” he said. “That’s amazing. Thank you so much.”

“You said Misty likes to cook,” his youngest sister said. “Momma said not to talk too much, but do you think I could ask her about her favorite recipe?”

“Of course you can,” Link said. “There’s no rules for dinner tonight, Sunnie. It’s just a normal dinner.”

“Momma’s lectured all of us relentlessly,” Smiles said as he dropped a few ice cubes into Daddy’s cup at the head of the table. “So it’s not normal, Link.”

Link looked over to his mother in the kitchen. “She has?”

“You know how she is,” Heather said. “If she’s breathing, she’s thinking of a lecture.”

“That’s not fair,” Link said, though his mother did like to lecture.

“What’s not fair?” Daddy appeared at the end of the table with him and Smiles, and Heather went on her way, putting an elephant on her place, and then a swan on Sunnie’s.

“Nothing,” Smiles said. “Unless you count all of us out here working on setting the table while Rock naps.”

“Rock has a cold,” Link said at the same time as his father. “Smiles, it’s fine.”

Daddy looked at both of them. “I just woke him up. He’s showering and coming down. I’m sure Momma has a job for him.”

“I’m sure,” Smiles said with his sunny smile, which somehow made it seem like he wasn’t being sassy. Link—or Rock himself—likely would’ve gotten his mouth washed out with soap had he said the exact same thing Smiles just had.

Daddy frowned and met Link’s gaze. “What’s going on?”

“Momma’s lectured everyone about tonight?” Link murmured, though the silverware waited for him. “Sunnie wants to know what she can and can’t talk about. Like…this is just supposed to be a normal dinner where y’all can get to know her a little better.”

“I know,” Daddy said. “That’s what this is.”

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