Page 74 of The Cowboy Who Looked Again

Link’s mother looked down too. “They’re white. I’ve got some you can have.” She started to walk away, and Misty looked up from her broken lace to Sammy’s retreating back.

“You have some?” She scrambled to follow her out of the kitchen. About halfway down the hall, Sammy slid open a door to reveal a set of shelves laden with household items.

Boxes of toothpaste. Several packages of toothbrushes. Stick after stick of deodorant, both men’s and women’s. Bottles of mouthwash. Painkillers. Cleaning supplies.

Sammy started rummaging through things, moving aside big packages of batteries—not cheap—feminine hygiene products, washcloths, laundry and dishwashing pods, a whole case of dish soap, body lotion?—

“Here you go.” She smiled as she came up with a package of white shoelaces.

Misty stared at them, managing to take them before she made it into a thing Sammy would notice. Behind them, Link’s little sisters started squabbling, and Sammy headed back in that direction without sliding the door closed.

She lowered the laces and took in the inventory in the closet. She didn’t hear Link coming down the hall until he slid his hand along the waistband of her jeans. “You okay, love?” He leaned in, the tip of his nose tracing a line down the side of her throat.

“Look at this,” she said. “Look at all this stuff.”

Link looked into the closet, but he didn’t seem surprised. “We live pretty far from town, and my momma hates being out of something important.”

Misty held up the shoelaces. “Like this?”

“Not having shoelaces on a ranch is terrible,” he said.

She turned away from the closet. “Can you please close that?”

He did, but he blocked her escape down the hall. “Talk to me about this,” he said in a low voice.

Misty kept her focus on the floor, which shone with a golden gloss. High-end. Everything about this house screamed money, and Misty hadn’t minded until this moment.

“When I was a Freshman in college,” she started. “I needed more deodorant, and my roommate was at the store, so she said she’d get me some. I said I’d pay her back.” She swallowed, so much stinging and streaming through her. “I never did.”

Link folded her into his arms. “Okay.”

“I never paid her back, because I couldn’t afford a two-dollar stick of deodorant, and your mother has probably twenty of them in there.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll pay for whatever you want,” he said. “Whatever you need, be it deodorant or hair dye or those fingertip bandages. Okay? It’s just a closet of supplies.”

“Yeah.” She wrapped her arms around him and hung on. “It feels like it means something.”

“It does,” he whispered in her ear. “It means you don’t ever have to live like you did in college again. It means I’ll take care of you, though I know you’re not that broke Freshman anymore and you don’t need me to take care of you.” He pulled back and gazed down at her. “It’s all I want to do—to take care of you. To make sure you never have to have this look on your face again.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, look away.”

“Look away?”

She flashed him a smile. “Yeah, look away.”

“All right,” he said dubiously as he turned his head. He even closed his eyes, and Misty fell for him a little bit more right there in the hallway at his parents’ house.

She gave herself a tiny physical shake and a great big mental one. She ran her hands down her face and fixed the collar on her shirt. Since she couldn’t see her own face, she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d looked like, but she fixed a normal-feeling smile to her face, and said, “Okay, look again.”

Link turned toward her, his eyes coming open. He grinned when he saw her face, and he started to chuckle.

“I have a different look on my face, don’t I?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He wrapped her up in a bear hug. “Yeah, you sure do.”

“Okay, now I’m going to look in the closet again,” she said. “And I’m not going to let it freak me out.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

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