Page 29 of Ace of Spades
ME:Where are you?
RAFE:Hailey’s.
Seeing her name makes my stomach do a weird sort of flip, my heart racing faster at the thought of her. Did something happen? Why was he over there? And what did he mean there was something I should see? So many thoughts raced through my brain, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of my stomach.
I hit the call button, bringing the phone to my ear. It rang twice before going to voicemail.
“Dammit, Rafe,” I mutter to myself, hitting the call button once more.
It didn’t even ring twice this time, ringing once before going to voicemail. I try two more times before throwing my phone on the dash, my foot pressing down on the accelerator as I fly down the road, leaving a cloud of dirt in my wake.
Chapter 11
HAILEY
A knock at the front door startles me awake, a groan leaving my lips as I roll over and rub my eyes. Who had the audacity to wake me up this early?
I get to my feet, throw an oversized hoodie over my satin pajama shorts set, and make my way to the door, my hand lifting to shield my eyes from the early morning sun.
I find Rafe on my doorstep, a coffee in hand.
“Ava told me to not bother showing up this morning unless I brought you one of these,” he explains, handing me the cup.
Shit, I had completely forgotten that he had agreed to come shoe my horses this morning. I had been soexhausted from the five-mile walk home last night that I had forgotten to set any alarms.
“Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Rafe—just let me grab some boots real quick,” I tell him, grabbing some boots from the entryway.
“The stables are right this way,” I tell him, throwing my messy bed hair into a bun on the top of my head as I walk past him.
“Wait,” he says, placing his hand on my shoulder and spinning me to face him.
“What happened to your face?” he asks, concern etched on his face.
It takes a moment for me to register what he’s talking about. My hand reaches up, my fingers feeling the scab that had started forming on my lower lip from where I must have bit it during the impact.
Shit, I had woken up in such a rush that I hadn’t even thought to check my face before opening the door. I could feel the pain blooming across my left eye and cheekbone, as if awakened by the reminder of last night.
“Nothing, I… I…”
Shit, I was still half asleep, and my brain was lagging too much to think of a response.
“I don’t know, I drank way too much after leaving the dance last night and probably ran into something. I swear, I’m such a clutz.”
There—nailed it.
The look on his face tells me that I did not, in fact, nail it. Rafe didn’t seem to believe me one bit, but he let it slide, the two of us walking down the gravel path to the stables.
“So…” I start. “I didn’t know you were a farrier. Is that what you do at the ranch?”
“Amongst other things. I also train horses and oversee all of the day-to-day stuff when it comes to the breeding operations.”
“Oh, gotcha. So do all of you have jobs, then?”
“Yeah, all four of us have equal shares and we all have something to contribute. Chance has his business degree, so he helps with all of the accounting and finances, and sometimes the legal stuff. Weston also trains, and he’s been overlooking the guest ranch stuff, he also works with any third-party stuff we have going on. Beau is our resident mechanic and he does a lot of the sale barn work when it comes to buying new animals. His girlfriend—Chelsea—who I’m sure you’ve met, helps out with cooking and cleaning and all of that. Don’t let her fool you, though. She’s a cowgirl through and through, she was heavily involved whenever we worked the cattle up until she dislocated a disk and the doctors told her to take it easy ever since then.”
“That’s actually really cool.”
“Yeah, it’s not too bad,” he says. “Now which horse threw a shoe?”
