smiling down at her stomach. “Three and a half more months.”
“Boy or girl?” Dot smiled at her, but Zona’s smile slipped away completely.
“It’s a girl,” she said, and she looked like she might cry.
“Do you live up at Shiloh Ridge?” Dot asked, because she was really good at making small talk with strangers. She’d literally built her business doing such things, and she could ask someone questions forever.
“No,” Zona said. “But I grew up there. I married Duke Rhinehart, and we live on his ranch.”
“I know the ranch,” Dot said. “I did some tree removal up there a few years ago.”
“Mm.” Zona nodded, and she put another smile on her face. “Excuse me. I need to go talk to my mother. So nice meeting you.”
“You too,” Dot said, and thankfully, Ward returned a moment later. “Ready?” she asked.
“Yep.” He hooked his thumb toward Zona. “You met my sister and my cousin?”
“Yes,” Dot said. “You have a lot of family.”
“Yes, I do.” Ward indicated the sterile hall in front of them. “Do you have a restaurant in mind?”
“What about Small Plates?” she asked. “Or are you the type of man that doesn’t share his food?”
“I can share food,” he said. “Small Plates is getting great ratings on Two Cents.”
“You use that app?”
“Ranger invented it,” Ward said. “I work with him on the back end of it, pushing out notifications and polls. I update the infrastructure of it. That kind of thing.” He gave her a devastating grin that made Dot’s pulse skip and hop through her ribs. “I get to see the results before anyone else.”
“Wow, Ward, that’s great.” Sexy and smart. It so wasn’t fair to bring so much to the battle, and Ward Glover seemed to have it all.
He led her to his truck, opened her door, and waited while she climbed in. He didn’t touch her again, a fact Dot was keenly aware of as the man rounded the front of his truck and got behind the wheel.
“Listen,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say you were difficult.”
“What did you mean to say?” He buckled his seatbelt without looking at her, and Dot didn’t like that. She also had no idea how to answer his question.
“I was just teasing,” she finally said. “It wasn’t very funny, obviously.”
“You do think I’m difficult though,” he said. “It’s fine,” he added quickly. “I know I can be a little intense about certain things. I guess I just didn’t realize I’d done that with you.” He shot her a look out of the corner of his eye as he left the hospital parking lot.
“I thought we’d been gettin’ along real nice, Dot. Slow, but nice. And I’m fine with slow.” He kneaded the steering wheel with those big hands, and Dot swallowed when she thought about holding one of them again.
Tonight, she thought. Hold his hand tonight.
“I am,” he said. “I…like taking my time to get to know a woman, and I’ve been real busy at Shiloh Ridge.” He finally relaxed as he finished talking, and Dot reached up to tuck her hair.
A smile formed on her face. “We do get along real nice,” she said. “For a while there, before we really knew one another, yes, I thought you were demanding. I thought you were really arrogant. So good-looking, and you knew it. Boy, did you know it.”
He turned and looked at her fully, blinking quickly. “What?”
“Come on,” she said with a light laugh. “You know you’re gorgeous.”
“Am I?”
Dot coughed, because she suddenly felt like she’d say the wrong thing and Ward would pull over and demand she get out of his truck. Find her own way home. “Anyway,” she said, clearing her throat. “It was nice getting to know you better. Intense is a better way of describing you, and I don’t mind intense.”
“You’re not exactly the Queen of Relaxation,” he said.
Dot burst out laughing, thrilled when Ward joined in. They quieted, and Ward drove steadily toward the restaurant. She’d been able to find something to eat every time they went out, and she’d already given herself a shot of insulin tonight.
“Ward, I…I thought maybe we…Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I said we shouldn’t mix business and pleasure, because I don’t really know how to have a relationship with a man that lasts.”
“Oh.”
“And I’m diabetic, and I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Dot.” He looked at her again, swiveling his head from the road to her and back. “Why is that a deal-breaker?”
“I don’t like talking about it,” she said