Page 105 of Roping Her In

She shook her head, though a smile filled her soul. “I’m sure that’s not true,” she said. “Coral was in my program, and she’s good.”

“Yeah, I’m probably going to hire her,” Jake said, and Hailey knew he and Libby had opted to hire two more vet techs instead of an additional veterinarian.

“What did you decide about your exam?” he asked, making it very clear that he didn’t want to talk about the ranch.

Hailey had canceled her VTNE, because she felt too overwhelmed with graduation, moving, and starting a new job. “I’m going to take it next month,” she said, deciding on the spot.

He edged his horse closer to hers and skimmed his fingertips up her leg. “I’m sure you’ll pass.”

She suddenly wanted to be out of the morning sun and in Jake’s cabin with him, where she could cuddle in close to his chest and tell him everything that worried her.

“What’s going on in your head?” he asked.

Hailey looked over to him and realized how far from the arena they’d gotten. She must have been quiet for a lot longer than she thought. “There’s too many things,” she said.

“Start with just one.”

Hailey sighed, really pushing all of the air out of her lungs and making a loud sound so Jake would know his request frustrated her. He only smiled, and a blip of irritation moved through her.

“I guess I’m just wondering if we’re still on the same page.” Her throat closed and filled with nerves, and she worked to swallow them back. “I feel like we’re stalled a little, don’t you?”

“Maybe a little,” he admitted, his voice now the grumpy, gruff tone she’d heard him use before.

“You’re still upset I took the job with the Walkers.”

“I’m not upset, Hailey,” he said, but he sounded upset. Fine, maybe not. Maybe frustrated. “And I don’t understand it.”

Hailey had explained it to him before, and she didn’t know how to do so differently. She let the slow, plodding clop of the horse’s hooves calm her senses, and she very distinctly heard a voice say in her mind: Use different words.

Which ones? she asked, desperation sliding down her throat.

She didn’t know, but she’d often heard others testify that when they needed to have the right thing to say and didn’t know what it was, they simply opened their mouth, and God gave them the words. Hailey had never tried it, and she figured now was as good a time as any.

“I think what it is…is a sanctuary,” she said. “After I was accused of theft and arrested, I only had one safe place to go, and that was home.”

She watched the tree limbs in the distance wave in the slight breeze, and everything inside her settled as well. “But I’m too old to be living at home, and it took me several months to land on the veterinary technician idea.”

“Mm,” Jake said.

“Then I poured everything I had into that, and it was a lot of work.”

“It’s very, very busy,” Jake agreed.

“And then the internship, and the hard winter, and we started dating, and I don’t know. My life has felt very chaotic in the past few years, and the farm is the antithesis of that.”

That sounded right—it felt right.

“It’s exactly what I need right now,” she said. “And it’s become a sanctuary of my own.” She looked over to him, praying she’d somehow used the right words.

“I know you feel like that too,” she said quietly, her voice barely louder than the air around them and the snuffling of horses. “That’s why you’re hiring more vet techs, because you’re drowning out here, and you won’t admit it.”

Jake cut her an angry look out of the corner of his eyes. “Me hiring more vet techs is me admitting it.”

“You’re on-call all the time,” she said. “In certain seasons, you work sixteen or eighteen hours everyday and sleep on the couch in your office.”

Hailey worried now that her tongue would run away with her, but more and more words crowded into her mouth. “Don’t you want something a little…less? A little…lazier?” She borrowed the word Conrad had used a couple of months ago. “Let’s say you and I get married, which I’ve also been thinking about, by the way.”

She’d asked him to think about it too, as well as what their life together would look like. Where would they live? In what house? How would they manage the different jobs they had?