head, but he wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, and he couldn’t hide anything from her. “Yeah, yep.” He nodded quite aggressively and shifted some papers around. “That’s my second confession. I, uh, we all have, um, I’m a billionaire.”
He leaned away from the desk and steepled his fingers. “All of us are. We invest a lot of money to make more money, and we have healthy calf sales every year. We sell our extra hay. We reinvest any profits. My daddy and my uncle started that decades ago, and we’re quite well-off at Shiloh Ridge.”
Dot thought she’d been hit with a load of bricks with the songwriting. That alone was something she needed time to wrap her mind around.
But this?
She exhaled all of the air out of her lungs and slid all the way back on the couch. “Okay.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said okay. It’s not like she could make it not okay. He wasn’t going to give away all of his money if she didn’t approve of him being rich.
Really rich, she thought.
“That’s all?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to say. You hit me with really big things.”
“You told me my name is a trigger for you,” he shot back, his gaze turning dark.
Dot opened her mouth to argue but found she couldn’t. Anxiety streamed through her, and fear had frozen her vocal cords.
“I’m a little sensitive about my name,” he said, looking toward the windows and softening. “My grandmother gave all of the other boys these perfect nicknames. I just got my middle name.”
Dot rubbed her hands down her thighs. “Maybe you did get a perfect name for you. You take care of everything and everyone. I can feel how heavy it is for you sometimes. You’re like the ward of the family.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Surprise coursed through her. “With your experience with lyrics, I’d think you’d know all the meanings of the word ward,” she said gently. “It’s a noun and a verb. One of the meanings of the verb is to like, you know, protect. Guard over something or someone. Like, you’re the ward of the ranch. You guard it. You protect it.”
His gaze came slowly back to hers. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“Seems like Bear’s forte, not mine.”
“And yet, you’re the foreman, and you literally know every inch of this ranch, every human who comes here, all of it.” Dot gestured behind her, toward the wall but really at what lay behind it. “You’re making those books for your siblings, because they need the memories. You’re protecting them. You’re guarding them.”
Ward seemed puzzled, and then the emotion melted right off his face. He swiped and tapped on his phone, and then he said, “It’s an archaic meaning of the word.”
“Old fashioned,” she said.
Ward met her eyes again. “To guard or protect. This says, ‘it was his duty to ward the king.’”
Dot gave him a small smile. “That’s what you do, Ward. And you do it really well.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do,” she said. “You’ve told me other things on other dates. You help your brothers and cousins. You protect Ida and Etta. You provide a great place to live for animals and people alike up here. Who does more on this ranch than you?”
“Preacher used to,” Ward said. “Before his car accident. We all work hard here, Dot.”
“I’m not saying they don’t. I’m just saying maybe your grandmother did give you the perfect name for you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m going to ask Mother and Aunt Lois about it.”
“Good idea.” Dot continued to smile at him, and he finally got up and joined her on the couch.
He lifted his arm around her and said, “I’m going to put in a turkey breast for lunch. I can make baked veggies to go with it. Does that sound diabetic-friendly?”
“I can eat whatever,” she said, because she didn’t want to think about her diabetes so much. She had insulin, and she’d be fine. The wind storm couldn’t last much longer, and after Ward had disappeared to the office for a few minutes, she’d checked the weather. The advisory had not been extended again.
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I’ll pull out a cherry pie too.”
“From where?” she asked. “Do not tell me you bake.”
He grinned and leaned down to brush his lips along the side of her face. He said something, but she had no idea what. White noise buzzed in her ears with his touch, the scent of his skin, the warmth from his