Page 7 of Roping Her In

“I figure we better just start hacking,” Jake said though he looked upstream to see if there was anything big holding back the torrent of water. “Honestly, if we start at the beginning, we might get washed away.”

Beau came to his side and frowned as he too took in the situation in front of them. “You’re right. Let’s just start pulling out what we can and see if we can get some of this water to move along.”

Jake looked downstream. “Another fifty yards, and it’s not over the banks.”

Beau looked that way too. “Nope. So let’s see what we can do.”

Jake opened his handsaw while Beau started prodding with the long poker pole he’d brought. While this wasn’t Jake’s idea of a fun afternoon in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, the work was hard and required his constant attention. If he let his mind wander, he might move something that would cause a rush of water to gush out, knocking him or Beau off their feet.

He focused on the work, making quick decisions and calculations, and that meant he didn’t have time to stew over his blunder with the beautiful blonde bombshell who would soon be working this ranch alongside him.

4

Hailey scraped her bangs off her forehead, a thin sheen of sweat there, though the temperatures outside had plummeted in the past two days.

“Where do you want this, baby doll?”

Hailey turned toward her daddy’s voice, tears threatening to press into her eyes just as they had been all morning. He carried her filing cabinet, where Hailey had kept her notes, evaluations, and anything else relevant to her education over the past two years. She’d been living at Shiloh Ridge that long too, but she couldn’t make the drive from there to Three Rivers Ranch every day. It was two hours one-way, with snarling traffic jams through downtown Three Rivers, or an extra fifteen minutes to take the roads on the outskirts of town.

Her momma entered with a file box. “That’s the last of it.”

“That all goes in the second bedroom,” Hailey said, stepping quickly out of the way. When someone needed manpower and the Glovers got involved, things happened in mere minutes. Hailey had had everything packed and ready to go, and it had taken her siblings and a mass of cousins only fifteen minutes to get everything out of her house and packed into the back of vehicles.

To be honest, the longest part of this move had been the drive from Three Rivers Ranch to this northern condo complex, which sat on the last street before the highway stretched toward the ranch where she’d start her internship in only two days.

She’d been working at Feline Friends with Lila Mae Walker for the past two years, and she’d saved enough for first and last months’ rent and a deposit, as well as the next four months of rent. That gave her through July first before she’d need some sort of income to continue living on her own. As Hailey had just turned thirty-six, she really didn’t want to return to Shiloh Ridge and the upstairs bedroom where she’d been living.

Her parents went down the hall and deposited the last of her office items before returning to the main area of the apartment. “This is really nice.” Momma hooked her arm around Hailey’s shoulders.

A knot formed in her throat, because while Etta Glover was not her biological mother, she had raised Hailey since the age of eight. She’d adopted her, as Hailey’s biological mother had died in a ranch accident almost three decades ago. Hailey had three siblings who never acted like she was only half of them, and dozens and dozens of cousins she’d grown up with who would drop anything for her should she need it.

Smiles Glover had taken her out to other ranches to get a little bit of experience, and she’d done one of her practicums right at Shiloh Ridge with him acting as her lead veterinarian. He told her he’d hire her the moment she earned her certificate, and he’d offered her an internship at Shiloh Ridge as well. But for some reason, Hailey wanted a different experience. She wanted to make it on her own, not because of her association with the great Glover last name.

“I can’t believe you’re living here,” Daddy said with a grin in his voice.

She looked at him. “I’ve lived away from home before.”

“Of course; I know,” he said. “I’m not worried about it. It’s just….” He trailed off, and it only took Hailey a moment to piece together what he really meant.

“It’s not a farm,” she said.

Daddy drew her into his chest and hugged her tightly. “It’s not a farm,” he repeated.

Hailey had always been a farm girl, though she did love dressing up, pink sparkly things, makeup, and other girly endeavors just as much as she enjoyed being outside, working with animals, saddling a horse, and putting in a garden. She’d never shied away from hard work, something she’d inherited from both of her parents.

Though she’d been a child, she’d watched her father endure incredibly difficult things, make big life decisions for both of them, and come out the victor. She could only hope for the same for herself someday.

Pure embarrassment squirreled through her as she recalled her actions the last time she’d been at Three Rivers Ranch. Kissing Jake—what in the world had she been thinking?

She hadn’t seen or spoken to him since that day, though she’d had required paperwork due from the ranch, stating that they’d met and she was ready for her internship. She’d received her start date and time from Adam Reynolds, the intern coordinator at Amarillo State, and not Jake Ahlstrom himself, which meant the paperwork had been filed properly.

Her heartbeat twittered and fluttered through her body at what she might encounter at eight-thirty a.m. on Monday morning, when she was due to report to the ranch and the head veterinarian himself. She pulled away from her father, lest he’d somehow feel her pulse and interpret the meaning of it. She gathered her hair into a ponytail and held it tightly, then released it over her shoulders.

“Thanks so much for helping me move,” she said.

“What are you doing for lunch?” Momma asked, as she hadn’t become the favorite aunt by chance. The woman knew how to cook and bake, and Hailey had close relationships with her cousins, because Momma invited anyone and everyone to stay over at her house whenever they needed to.

She’d been closest with her uncle Cactus’s kids. Mitch loved Momma with his whole heart, as she’d been one of the first Glovers to learn sign language so she could communicate with him. Momma had then taught it to all of her kids, including Hailey, so Mitch would never go without an interpreter or someone he could talk to.