the seat next to him. No one took the one on Dot’s right, and it sure seemed like everyone knew Ward fit there.
He slid into the chair and glanced at Dot. “How did your deliveries go this morning?” He poked his fork into his cake and took a bite.
“You’re eating dessert first,” she said.
“Mm hm.” He’d been absolutely right about the nature of this cake, and he let his eyes drift closed. A moan came from his chest, and he wasn’t even aware of it until Dot started to laugh.
“Now I know what to get you for your birthday,” she said, the light radiating from Dot’s face made Ward feel like a million bucks. She sobered the moment by meeting his eye. “When is your birthday?”
“February,” he said, his throat a bit narrow due to the gorgeous woman gazing at him like she’d very much like to kiss him again.
Ward whistled as he strode toward the new barn Bishop and Montana had finished a week or two ago. They’d been working non-stop around the ranch for a while now, and Ward had a feeling it was all going to come to a screeching halt once Montana had their baby. She wasn’t due until March, and that still gave everyone three months to see what they could do.
They’d moved on to building Arizona and Duke a new house on the Rhinehart Ranch, and all the initial designs for Preacher’s new house down the hill at the Kinder Ranch had been finalized.
Ward had sat in the meeting where Bishop had detailed the permits he and Montana had filed with the town and he’d been on-site with Preacher and everyone else as the well had been removed and the first sewer lines brought in.
He’d spent the morning sending out reminder emails that he needed any receipts from the Cowboys Provide Christmas related to the gifts, food, and shipping they’d provided. He was acting as the treasurer this year, and while he didn’t do a whole lot leading up to Christmas, he had to make an accounting of what the program had spent for farmers and ranchers across Texas by February fifteenth.
The previous treasurer had said that it took several emails and sometimes some phone calls to get everyone to turn in their accounting forms and receipts. Ward didn’t understand that, as he always sent his receipts the moment he finished shopping and shipping. He saw no reason to hold onto them, and then he didn’t get hounded to do it.
He kept everything in a folder in the filing cabinet in the office at Bull House, and Ward told himself as he pushed into the barn that it was time to go through his files and clean out things he didn’t need anymore.
His phone chimed, and he tugged it free from his pocket. His brother had texted to say the new update for Two Cents was ready to go out, and he’d just pushed it to Ward’s app. Check it, would you?
On it, Ward texted back, though he had a full day’s work to do on the ranch and only a few hours of daylight left. Spending an hour with Dot during her lunchtime—even with her friends and co-workers there—had been worth feeling harried now.
He opened Two Cents and gave it a few seconds to download the update. It restarted while he went down the aisle in the barn and checked the clipboards from his crew. They moved the animals for the rotational ranching, and he found that all five groups had been rotated today, as required.
Ward loved the rotational ranching concept. He liked utilizing the land the Good Lord had given his family in the best way possible. It felt responsible and honorable to him, and if Ward couldn’t feel like that about his job, he’d have quit at the ranch a long time ago.
After all, it wasn’t a job that got a lot of accolades. No one even really knew what he did up here, out in the barns, or why he’d needed meat birds and chickens. He knew though, and he’d wanted to continue to increase the value of their ranch, the value of their cattle, and the value of his role in all of it.
He looked down at his phone, which told him the new features inside the Two Cents app. Users could now submit businesses to lists instead of having to vote on existing ones. With the growth in Three Rivers, it had become impossible for Ranger, Ward, Ace,