Page 85 of Roping Her In

He smiled over his shoulder as he led the way outside. “Glory Rose wants the kids to learn how to take care of animals, and she wants some dairy cows too.”

“She knows you can’t just drink milk right out of the udders of a dairy cow, right?” Hailey asked.

Conrad burst out laughing. “If you knew how many times I’d told her that….” He shook his head. “She says she knows what she’s doing, and I suppose she does, as she grew up on a farm, same as me.”

Hailey knew Glory Rose had grown up on a lot more than a farm, but she didn’t correct Conrad.

“I need someone who can manage all the animals,” he said. “Check on them, make sure they’re all right. Do their vaccinations. Maybe even breed the goats.”

“Are you talking daily feeding and watering too?” she asked.

“Yes.” Conrad kind of mumbled it, though it was a single word.

“So this is just a farm hand position,” Hailey said. “Not a farm management position.”

“It’s all of it,” Conrad said. “I’ll, of course, be taking care of the animals too, but I do a lot of financial consulting on the side. And I want the farm to be….” He trailed off and took several long moments before he finished with, “Lazier than it is.”

“I don’t understand,” Hailey said.

“This here’s a garden area,” Conrad said, forging on. “We have a huge garden on my place already, so Glory Rose said whoever lives in this house can have this garden space if they want it.”

Hailey nodded and continued walking with him. “Past here are all the pastures and farmland,” he said. “You can see some of the stakes that we’ve put in marking the new spaces, and a lot of this will be reconfigured in the next month.”

Hailey came up to the fence behind him and drank in the beauty of the land beyond. Several moments passed in silence, and her thoughts chewed through what he’d said.

“Let me rephrase everything you’ve said,” she said.

Conrad kicked a smile in her direction. “Rephrase all you want.”

“You’ve got sixty-four acres now.”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you say? Fifty miniature donkeys.”

“Forty-eight,” he said. “But fifty is close enough.”

Yes, it sure was. “Two dozen chickens,” Hailey continued. “Some turkeys and ducks.”

“Check, check, check,” Conrad said.

“And you’re adding dairy cows, milk goats, and horses.”

“Well, I’ve already got two horses,” he said.

“Six more would make eight,” Hailey said.

“Jake warned me that you had a little bit of a salty tongue.”

“He did not.” Hailey grinned at him. “He told me exactly what he said. He even showed me the texts.”

Conrad laughed and shook his head. “Keep rephrasing,” he said, because they both knew she hadn’t gotten to the true meat of what Conrad wanted his farm manager to do.

“You want to come out of your house whenever you and the kids wake up, and you want to toddle down the road with your little boy, who is what, almost two now?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Conrad said.

“And hold his hand as he feeds a few chickens and pats a donkey. But you want someone else to actually do all the farm work.”