“Shiloh,” Dawson said as he breathed in, trying to distract himself. “What were you doin’ here?” He cut a look at JJ, who’d just dished himself some food too.
“I’d just finished up work,” she said nonchalantly. “Clara Jean asked me to bring JJ the food for the kids.” She took a bite of dinner too, which told Dawson something—like she’d planned to come here and eat dinner with JJ and the kids maybe.
“Did you call your momma?”
Her face paled and she coughed. “Shoot, no.” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket, and shewaswearing her work polo for Wilde & Organic. Clara JeanwasJJ’s sister. Shiloh and Clara Jeanweregood friends.
Her story sounded plausible, but JJ was still four years older than her.
“No.” Shiloh moaned. “She’s already called twice.”
“Then go call her,” Dawson said, and Shiloh retreated from the house to do that. The moment the front door snicked closed, he turned to JJ. “So, you’re what? Twenty-one?”
“Will be this summer, yep,” he said.
“You know she’s sixteen, right?” Dawson asked, his meaning ultra clear. So clear, JJ’s hand froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. He stared at Dawson, pure shock pouring from him.
“All right,” Shiloh said, bustling back into the house. “She knows I’m not dead.”
Dawson looked at her and said, “All right. Great. Do you two need us here still?” He reached for Caroline. “If not, I’d like to finish my date.” He nodded to JJ. “Do I need to call Ollie and let him know what’s gone on here?”
“No,” JJ said, becoming mobile again. “I’ll tell them.”
Caroline ran her hand along JJ’s broad shoulders. “And son, she’ll need some painkiller for her teeth.”
“Oh, shoot. Sure.” JJ practically toppled the table he got up so fast, and he moved over to a cabinet that held various bottles of medicines. “Let’s see….”
“Go help him, darlin’,” Dawson said. “I want to say something to Shiloh.”
“Be nice,” she whispered before she went to help JJ find the children’s painkiller.
“Shiloh,” Dawson said, because he didn’t have much time. “You tell me straight. You seein’ this boy who’s going to be twenty-one soon? Do I need to worry about this or not?”
Shiloh blinked, her daddy’s dark eyelashes fluttering a mile a second. “What? No, Uncle Dawson, I swear.” But her face took on the color of a pink sunset. “Clara Jean said he was babysitting tonight, and he’d ordered food for the kids. But something got messed up with the flower delivery for tomorrow, so she couldn’t leave thestore when she was supposed to. So she asked me to bring it by on my way home.”
He nodded to the bowl of macaroni and cheese she’d eaten from. “And you thought you’d stay and hang out with him.”
She looked at the bowl too, clearly horrified. “No,” she said flatly. “No, I didn’t—” She cut off and pressed her lips together. “I wasn’t going to stay at all. I swear, Uncle Dawson.”
“So I don’t need to tell your momma and daddy anything,” he said as Caroline went, “Oh, whoops!” and a clattering of pill containers hit the counter.
“No,” Shiloh muttered. “Nothing going on here. Momma’s already watching April like a hawk because she flirts with Rusty like he’s the only boy alive.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t like JJ.”
“All right,” Dawson said as the young man came over to the table with the right medicine for his niece.
“We gotta have this, sweetie,” he said, giving Lara the medicine. She took it just fine too, and JJ’s gaze caught on Dawson’s. “Thank you for coming, sir.”
“I’m barely older than you,” Dawson said. “You don’t need to call me sir.”
“You went to college, right?” he asked.
Dawson nodded. “Yeah. I got a degree in ranch management, but you know, lots of ranchers and farmers don’t do that. They just stay and work their family land. There’s no shame in that.” He studied JJ as his headdipped. “Or you can go to the trade programs or one of those vocational things. They do things with finance or machine repair all the time. It’s useful to have those skills, and they don’t take long. You can work the ranch while you do them.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I know.”
“Have you talked to your daddy about taking over the ranch for him?” Dawson didn’t want to pry, but JJ had asked. He seemed open to talking to Dawson about this. “He’s gotta be what? Close to sixty, because Duke’s in his early fifties.”
“Sixty-one now, sir,” JJ said.
