"On her professional portfolio, yeah. The ranch shots are already getting inquiries. Tucker, this is exactly what I hired her to do."
"I told her not to point that camera at me."
"That was a week ago. You two have been inseparable for days. She obviously thought you were past that."
The barn goes quiet except for Duke shifting his weight. Hank looks up from his spot by the door. Even the dog can tell something's wrong.
"Tucker? You still there?"
"I gotta go."
"Don't be mad at her. This is good. This is what the ranch needs."
Hanging up, I open my phone's browser. Takes me three tries to find her account because I've never looked at it before. Never needed to.
Lena Cordero, Visual Storyteller. The bio says Based in Sacramento. Available worldwide. Then a grid of images from different jobs. Restaurants in wine country. A boutique hotel in Tahoe. A mechanic shop in Oakland.
The latest posts are all Brant Ranch.
My ranch. My cattle. My land. My father's fence line.
My face.
The photo Josie mentioned is a close up of me looking directly at the camera. Not posed. Caught. The hazel eyes, the beard, the crow's feet, the sun on my jaw. She shot it during the feed run when we were talking about water sources. When I was looking at her while she asked about grazing rotations.
When I was falling for her.
The caption reads: The real brand of Brant Ranch. Four generations of quiet, deliberate care for the land. Coming soon.
Three thousand likes. Comments from strangers. Beautiful. That rancher can GET IT. Omg where is this place. Is he single??
My stomach turns.
Scrolling through the other posts, I find the calf, the barn at dawn, Dolly on the porch. Every image is stunning. Professional. Designed to make people want something from my ranch. From my life. She turned my mornings into content. Turned my dad's fence into a visual story. Turned me into a product.
This is what she came here to do. She told me that from the start. Build the brand. Create the story. Package Tucker Brant for public consumption.
And I let her. Let her into my truck, my kitchen, my bed. Let her wear my flannel while she documented every corner of my privacy for the internet.
Dolly follows me across the yard to the guest cabin. The door is unlocked. Lena's inside at the kitchen table, laptop open, coffee in one hand, wearing my blue flannel over a tank top. No bra. Hair clipped up loose. Those silver rings catching the morning light.
She looks up with that wide smile. "Morning. Coffee's fresh. I was going to bring you some but you were already in the barn."
"You posted photos of me."
The smile fades. "What?"
"On your Instagram. My face. My ranch. My calf. You posted them without asking me."
She sets down the coffee. Closes the laptop slowly. "Tucker, those are portfolio pieces. They're previews of the brand work. Josie approved them before I uploaded anything."
"Josie doesn't own the ranch."
"Josie hired me."
"For a website. For a logo. For whatever you two cooked up in Reno." Stepping into the cabin, I keep my voice level becauselosing control won't help anything. "My face on the internet wasn't part of that."
"It's one photo."
