The Delivery of Decor (Shiloh Ridge Ranch in Three Rivers #7) - Liz Isaacson Page 0,18

seen.

The men and women up here took good care of their land, their animals, and each other. Dot could feel the love and attention to detail rising straight from the very dirt she drove over and she wasn’t even there yet.

The road seemed to go on and on, until finally, her headlights caught on the metal poles holding up the wooden sign that signaled her arrival at the ranch. She hadn’t told Ward she was coming, and nerves rolled across her shoulders as if she needed to stretch out the muscles there.

“Please don’t let him be too busy,” she prayed, glancing over at George again. The hound looked at her, his eyes doleful and his tongue lulling out of his mouth. She grinned at him and reached over to scrub his head. “He’s going to be happy to see us. He is.”

She gripped the steering wheel and silently prayed that what she’d just said would be true. To give herself an even greater edge, she’d brought double cheeseburgers from The Burger Barn. Ward had mentioned a couple of times that he loved the doubles there, because they came with toasted buns and no pickles. Apparently, in the world where Ward Glover lived, pickles could ruin any good sandwich.

Dot smiled to herself—or maybe to her hound dog. Either way, she was smiling as she trundled onto the ranch and dang near got blown off the road by a strong gust of wind. The weather this Christmas Eve was supposed to be nasty, and Dot had purposely come in the early afternoon so she wouldn’t have to drive home in the dark.

She had the distinct thought that she better get the gravel she’d brought with her unloaded quickly and get back on the road if her desire to be home before the sun sank could become reality.

She made the wide right turn on the graveled road to go in front of the homestead, seeing plenty of trucks there. They’d been parked side-by-side, and she counted seven before she’d passed them all.

Perhaps all the Glovers had already gathered for lunch. Dot eased off the accelerator, though she knew Ward lived in the house a hundred yards past this one. He’d mentioned it would be easy to find, and Dot hadn’t had a problem any of the times she’d come to Shiloh Ridge.

Now, though, she couldn’t even see Ward’s house, and it couldn’t be more than a hundred and fifty feet from her. Her nerves sang out again, this time for an entirely different reason. Her mind flashed through the supplies she kept in Brutus—a sleeping bag, a blanket, an emergency first aid kit. She had a box of MRE’s, but she had never eaten the ready-to-eat meals and she didn’t want Christmas Day to be when she started.

Dot and Brutus took up the whole road, and she eased the dump truck forward and off to the side in front of a garage. She put the beast in park and turned to the living, slobbering beast on the seat. “I’m just going to run in and see if he’s here. Maybe Bear or Ranger can radio him if he’s not.”

Ward would be thrilled to see the gravel. Dot wasn’t worried about that. She did harbor some trepidation about how Ward would react to seeing her, and she glanced down at her jacket. It covered a blue tank top that had a rainbow on it. She wore her usual jeans and steel-toed work boots, and she’d whipped her hair into a ponytail that morning before her first delivery to Payne’s Pest-Free.

Marcy Walker had met her there, her baby strapped to her chest. The woman was a powerhouse if Dot had ever seen one, and she liked Marcy a whole lot. Number one, she owned a pest-control business as a woman, dusting all the fields at the dozen or so ranches surrounding Three Rivers. She dealt with a lot of men and she did so just fine.

Dot admired that, because she’d had to learn to do the same. The cowboys in New Mexico were a bit different than the headstrong ones here, as if the men in Texas believed themselves to be the only true cowboys on Earth.

Dot didn’t think so, but whenever Ward came to mind, he was definitely the cowboy god among other men who wore cowboy hats.

She jumped from the dump truck and got flung right back into the metal door. Pain shot through her hand, but Dot didn’t take the time to