“I wasn't—” She stopped, then started over. “My phone camera's not that good.”
“That doesn't matter. Good light and good composition beat equipment almost every time.” I took the shot. Let her hear the shutter. “I'm Bella.”
She paused, just long enough to be deliberate. “Rory Walker.”
“Walker?” I should have known the only man I’d found attractive in the past couple of years would be a family man. “Your dad’s the one who runs this operation, isn’t he?”
Her shoulders did something complicated, tightening and dropping at the same time. “He works here.”
“He does more than work.” I kept my eyes on the viewfinder. “Seems like he's the one keeping it running.”
Rory didn’t reply, but she turned her phone back over and held it up, tentative, aiming toward the gate. Her elbows braced against her knees, and she held the phone steadier than most adults I'd taught in the field workshops I'd run for Western Dust's outreach program.
“Breathe out before you fire,” I said.
She glanced at me sideways.
“Your body's stiller at the bottom of the exhale. You get less shake.”
She looked back at her screen. Breathed out. Fired the shot.
I watched her look at it.
“It's okay,” she said.
“Let me see.”
She didn't move.
“You don't have to.”
Three seconds of silence passed. Then she extended the phone toward me at arm's length.
I took it carefully and looked at the image. The framing was off-center in a way that shouldn't have worked but did. She'd caught the handler's hands on the lead rope as the focal tension point, and the mountain had gone soft and vast in the background.
“This is good, Rory.”
“It's fine.”
“It's better than fine. You framed it around what mattered.”
She took the phone back, her jaw set like she was bracing for the part where I explained what she'd done wrong.
“You've got an eye for this,” I said. “You’re a natural.”
“I just take pictures.” She pulled her phone against her chest. “It's not a big deal.”
“Who told you that?”
Her mouth closed. A flicker of something moved across her face, real and unguarded, and then she locked it back down.
“Rory.” Jace Walker's voice came from directly behind me. Even and level, but with an undertow of tension that said he'd been watching long enough to want to intervene.
I turned. He was ten feet out, his hat pushed back slightly, dark eyes shifting back and forth between me and his daughter like he was trying to figure out how the two of us had ended up in the same spot.
“I didn't know she was yours,” I said. Which was both true and entirely beside the point.
“She's supposed to be helping with registration.” He looked at Rory with an expression that was trying for stern and landing somewhere closer to tired.
