Page 34 of Roping Her In

That meant he had to do some talking himself. He cleared his throat and pushed the rest of his enchiladas away. He wouldn’t be able to eat them until this conversation ended anyway.

“I worked on a ranch down in Hondo before I came here,” he said. “I dated a woman there named Chantelle. For quite a long time, actually.”

Hailey watched him with that familiar energy blitzing through her expression, but she gave him room to breathe and think, without her voice between them.

“I fell in love with her,” he said simply. The usual embarrassment over such a thing ran rampant through him, and he simply let himself feel it.

“I thought she loved me too,” he said. “I bought her a diamond ring, and I asked her to marry me.”

Hailey’s expression darkened. “She said no?”

“Right to my face,” Jake said. “In front of her momma and her sister. Just nope, I can’t.”

A horrified look crossed Hailey’s face. “Did she say why?” Her voice came out as more of a gasp than anything else.

“She said she doesn’t believe in marriage. She’d be happy to stay together with me, and we could even live together, and build our life as if we were married. But she didn’t want to actually get married.”

“Ever?” Hailey asked.

“Seemed that way,” Jake said.

A scoff fell out of Hailey’s mouth. “Wow.” She looked left and right for some reason, and then met Jake’s gaze again. “Did you think about staying? I mean, you were in love with her, right?”

“Yeah, of course I thought about it,” he said. “But in the end, I do believe in marriage.” He shrugged one shoulder as he said it. “I want a wife to build my life with, not a girlfriend who wants to keep everything separate except where we sleep. It wasn’t enough for me, and it was more than she wanted for her.”

He shuffled some papers around on his desk just to have something for his hands to do.

“Cal and Squire were both ready to retire, and it sure seemed like God had arranged all the pieces to fall exactly into place for me to come back here, have a job, and try to figure out what to do next.”

“You always know what to do next,” Hailey said.

A small smile touched Jake’s mouth. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, to me—” she said. “You always know exactly what to do next—with the animals, with the people around you, with the schedule, with just…everything.”

“I appreciate that, Hailey,” he said, and he straightened his shoulders. “Now, your first evaluation is coming up, and I want us to get another meeting on my calendar for that.”

“Oh, sure.” She pulled out her phone. “Let’s see…this says it’s due by January thirty-first. So as long as we can get it done before then—I mean, you could probably email it?”

“Believe it or not, Three Rivers has a fax machine.”

Hailey looked up, pure shock in her eyes. “They do not.”

“I swear we do,” Jake said with a chuckle.

He tapped to wake his computer, and he got his calendar open too. “The thirty-first is a Thursday,” he said. “How about we meet on the thirtieth, while you’re here for your regular shift?”

“I can do that,” Hailey said.

With that, Jake simply smiled at her. “So you’ll be back tomorrow for on-call duty, ten o’clock.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Feeling a touch reckless, but determined not to make the same mistake again, Jake got to his feet and started around his desk. Hailey stood too, and instead of lunging at her and kissing her as he had done before, he simply slipped his fingers between hers and squeezed.

“If you wanted to come an hour early, I’ll make breakfast for you at my place.”

Hailey gazed up at him, something soft and wonderful in her eyes. “All right,” she said. “It’s a date.”