Kayla's Cowboy. Callie Endicott

the lake again, just to annoy him, then hung up when he started repeating that crap about different rules. It wasn’t as if she’d expected a different answer.

      Morgan logged on to Facebook to see if her new half brother had an account. She searched for an Alex Anderson in Seattle, Washington, and scrolled through the list until she saw a face that was eerily familiar.

      Morgan gulped.

      Cripes, he looked an awful lot like her dad. She clicked on his profile and saw the stuff he’d entered about his interests. Her dad had said he was a science fiction and baseball fan, but Alex had also listed art and computers.

      For a second she kept the curser away from the friend request button. It would be a bummer if Alex didn’t want to be her friend, and she was already sick inside from not being wanted, but...no. She wasn’t going to be a stinking coward.

      Morgan lifted her chin and punched the request button. Then she went on to chat with her buddies, though the really cool ones had already left for the lake and didn’t seem to be logging on. After a while she saw a post from Alex pop up on the screen.

      Hmm. He’d confirmed her request. Now she wondered if he’d recognized her name or merely always accepted friend requests. Did Alex know who she was? Curious what he thought about being in Schuyler and finding out about his birth dad, she clicked on his page and read through his recent posts.

      Nothing. He’d written about being in Montana and meeting his great-grandparents, saying they weren’t that ancient and were really awesome. But not one word about his birth father, or a new sister.

      Then a message popped up—it was from Alex. She noticed he didn’t write in shorthand texting language, so she didn’t, either.

      Hi. Are you who I think you are? Alex wrote.

      Yeah, unless you think I’m Xena the Warrior Princess.

      Are you a Xena fan? he asked.

      Morgan hesitated for a moment before entering, Used to be.

      Do you like Star Trek?

      Yeah, except maybe the Enterprise series. Morgan had never gotten into Enterprise, though she liked Scott Bakula, who’d played the captain.

      Into Darkness is the best movie ever. Thought I’d die laughing when Spock talked about attitude, Alex wrote back.

      Yeah. Which Khan do you think is best?

      That’s like comparing apples to dogs.

      I guess.

      It was an odd conversation and not as fast as talking on the phone, but it gave her more time to think. She hadn’t told anyone at school that she was a Trek fan—the cool kids weren’t into it.

      They went back and forth awhile longer about Star Trek, then Alex said he needed to watch a Mariners baseball game with his little sister and great-grandparents.

      Since her dad always ordered the cable sports package, Morgan was able to find the Mariners game on her TV. She wasn’t sure what to think about becoming Facebook friends with Alex, but she thought it might be okay, even if he was a geek from Seattle and she was a cowgirl.

      Later that night when her dad came home, she came out of her room. “When are we going to meet Alex?” she asked.

      “I’m still not sure, Morgan. I’ll let you know.”

      * * *

      FOR HOURS AFTER she’d gone to bed, Kayla lay awake, trying to sort out her feelings.

      She’d come home from Ryan’s Roadhouse to find everyone cheering on the Mariners. But once the game was over, she had reassured her son that Jackson knew the choice to meet was Alex’s decision, not his.

      Now it was past midnight and she couldn’t sleep. Granted, she was a chronic insomniac, but usually it wasn’t this bad. Punching her pillow, Kayla rolled over, closed her eyes and tried not to picture anything, but Jackson’s face kept intruding. Once he’d been the cutest guy she’d ever met, and now he was even better looking, his archaic views notwithstanding.

      She squirmed, not wanting to find any man handsome. Some of her friends kept saying she didn’t have to make a career out of being a divorcée. That wasn’t what she was doing, or at least she hoped not. They couldn’t understand, and the blind dates they set her up on were lame, to use her kids’ language for it. Maybe she just had bad luck with men, or maybe she couldn’t stop making lousy choices about them.