Stevie swallowed so fast that she almost choked. “And you think you’re not a help here? You are building up a pretty decent practice among folks over a three-county spread as a doctor who will make house calls. And besides, Jesse needs you on the ranch, not to mention how tough it would be to tell everyone goodbye if you took that job.”

Are you talking to Cody or to yourself? she asked herself.

Cody slathered butter on a thick slice of bread. “Ranch help can be hired, and if I wasn’t here, folks would go back to sitting in an office waiting room in town like they did before I got here. I’ll probably get over the desire to travel when I’ve had time to put down some real roots. I just don’t think I can do it in this bunkhouse, so I’m going to talk to Dad about moving into the vacant house over on the property he bought from Addy’s folks.”

“Then your mind is absolutely made up?” Stevie asked.

“Yes, it is. Family is everything.” Cody said.

Stevie was hoping that he might say she was why he was staying in Honey Grove. But when she thought about it for half a second, she was glad that he hadn’t. If she was the only thing keeping him here, he could easily resent her later for being the reason he had not followed his dream.

“Now, your turn,” Cody said.

“I don’t want to talk about it until I’ve gotten off the fence and made a decision,” she said.

“How long is that going to take?” Cody looked worried.

“It’s like this,” Stevie said. “Since my house has to be torn down and I don’t have any family left, I don’t have any of those roots that you talked about. I do have a good foundation for my vet business, and we have a date, and other things keep getting in the way.”

Cody started to say something, but then did what she’d done earlier—he took a long drink of tea before he spoke. “Sounds like you’re trying to make up your mind whether to stay in Honey Grove or not.”

“Exactly,” she acknowledged with a nod and then told him about her offer to either relocate to Oklahoma City to her old clinic or go to Australia for two years. “I know I’ve been cranky. If these offers had come before the house flooded, I would have said no, but now I’m wondering if that was an omen.”