I leaned against the opposite stall. “You've had my coffee once.”
“Twice.” He tested the latch, then turned to look at me, and whatever charged thing had been sitting in the air between us a moment ago didn't dissipate—it just rearranged itself into something he wore better than I did. “Morning routine's not for photography.”
“I wasn't—” I stopped. He was waiting. “I had my camera upstairs.”
“You had your eyes down here.”
“Your barn is below my window. That's a you problem, Walker.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile exactly, but it could have passed for a smirk.
“Stay on the paddock side during chores,” he said. “I'll tell you when it's fair game.”
“And if I disagree with where the line is?”
“You won't.” He picked up the empty cart handles and started for the feed room. “Because you're smarter than you're currently pretending to be.”
I stood there for a moment after he'd gone, coffee going cold in my hands, aware that I'd just been complimented and corrected in the same sentence and had somehow come out of it less irritated than I'd walked in.
The art director, Edward, called at eight-thirty. I was out at the paddock rail with my long lens, working the morning light on the horses, when my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I knew from the ringtone it was him.
“Tell me you've got the father-daughter material,” he said.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Bella.” He cleared his throat. “The first piece pulled eight thousand shares in forty-eight hours. The editor wants a follow-up that goes deeper. Readers want the human angle—the rancher raising his kid alone, the rodeo community, the quiet life behind the gates. You're sitting right on top of a goldmine.”
I watched Cutter pace the far edge of the paddock. “I've got the rodeo prep material. The grounds work, the community logistics?—”
“That's not what I'm asking for, and you know it.”
I did know. And I knew what he meant by going deeper. He wanted me to expose the moments that felt private. Like the silence between Jace and Rory at the fence rail that I hadn't photographed the first night. The way Rory's face changed when she thought nobody was watching her. The heaviness in Jace’s shoulders when Rory walked away from him.
“I'm working on the access,” I said.
“You're living above his barn. What's the access issue?”
“I'll have something for you by the end of the week.”
He paused long enough to make his opinion clear. “Don't get too comfortable out there, Robbins.”
He disconnected. I lowered the phone and looked at the paddock for a long moment. If I wanted to, I could give him what he was asking for. I could pull the candid shot I’d taken of Rory's profile in the shadows. Then I could wait for Jace to look at his daughter the way he did when he thought nobody was paying attention. If I captured it, and sent it to Edward, it would probably get at least eight thousand more shares.
I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't entirely sure when I'd made that decision, but standing there with Edward’s voice still in my ear, I knew it was settled. I’d send him amazing photos of the horses, the mountains, and fields of Montana wildflowers. He’d have to be satisfied with that. In the short time I’d been around Jace and Rory, I’d started to feel something I’d never experienced before. The only way to describe it was protective. Jace would probably never talk about it with me, but I got the sense the two of them had been through enough, and I wasn’t about to exploit them for a few more shares on social media.
Rory found me right before lunch. She came around the side of the barn with her phone held out in front of her and something in her expression told me she'd put real thought into whether to come.
“I sorted the ones from yesterday,” she said. “If you want to look.”
I sat on the fence rail, and she stood beside me and we went through them together. She'd taken more than I'd expected: the barn textures I'd walked her through, some of the equipment details, and a wide shot of the paddock that had better composition than most people's first week attempts.
“This one.” I stopped on a frame. Hades stood at the tree line, his attention focused on something outside the frame. The light was low and the focus wasn't quite right, but the choice of the shot was instinctive. “You made a decision here. Most people would've waited for him to look at them.”
Rory looked at the screen. “He wasn't going to look at me.”
“Exactly.”
Her chin came up a fraction. She swiped forward and I let her control the pace. Most of the barn interior shots were solid. She had an eye for light and negative space that I hadn't taught her. Then she stopped on one near the back of the sequence. A close shot of the storage shelving, taken at low angle, where the morning light had caught the edge of something on the lower shelf.
