His Texas Star (Holts of Briar Hill #3)

1. Daniela

ONE

Daniela

First day on set and I felt…

…well, not like myself.

I didn’t feel like Daniela, who had been doing commercials in Spanish not six months ago in San Antonio, who’d sat at her abuela’s table and gushed about her first big role over palomas.

Nope.

I felt like Daphne Wilder. Polished and perfect.

The name my agent had said would get me more work in Hollywood…the name my agent had been one hundred percent correct on.

My costume had looked beautiful on the rack. On my body, in ninety-degree New Mexico heat, it was a wool blend duster that smelled like someone else’s sweat and a corset that had been laced by a woman named Pat who did not believe in breathing room.

“You look incredible,” Pat had said, stepping back to admire her work.

I had smiled. That was the job.

My agent, Mark, had materialized at my elbow approximately thirty seconds after I’d cleared hair and makeup, which meant he’d been watching the trailer door.

He was wearing linen, immaculately pressed, in a color he’d once described to me as dusty rose but make it menswear, and somehow he looked cooler than anyone on set.

“Daphne,” he said with a huge grin. “You look like a star.”

“I look like I’m about to pass out.”

“Fine,” he said. “A shooting star.” he straightened my collar with two fingers. “So Ellis wants to meet you in person before blocking. Don’t be nervous.’

“I’m not nervous.”

He looked at me over the frames of his sunglasses.

“I’m a little nervous.”

“Don’t be,” he shook his head. “She asked for you specifically, remember? Saw the Esurance spot and she called me directly. That doesn’t just happen, babe.”

I knew. He'd told me four times since the offer came in.

Ellis Jones was thirty-four and had two features to her name and the kind of reputation that made studio executives nervous in a way they'd learned to call exciting.

Film Twitter had decided she mattered before her second movie opened.

She wore the same broken-in boots to every press event and had been photographed leaving Sundance with a woman on her arm and a cigarette in her mouth and somehow that photo had become her entire brand.

She was exactly the kind of director I wanted to work with for the rest of my career.

The makeup was thick in the heat. Full period look—warm browns, a little liner, a mouth that was slightly more than my own. I'd looked in the mirror in the trailer and seen someone almost familiar.

Almost.

"Twenty minutes before Ellis is ready," Mark said, checking his phone. "Craft services. Eat something."

"I ate."

"Coffee is not eating." He pointed. "Around the back. And don't let anyone corner you into a conversation about your process, I'm begging you."

"Mark."

"Go."

I went.

The craft table was set up in the shade of a production trailer. Relative shade. Still hot. I poured coffee I didn't need into a cup I was going to hold for something to do with my hands, and I was reaching for a piece of fruit when I heard boots on the dry ground behind me.

I turned around, smile already plastered on my face, ready to ingratiate myself with as many industry folks as possible?—

But this wasn't just any industry folk.

This was basically family.

Sawyer Holt was standing behind me, a grin on his face, a cowboy hat on his head like he'd legitimately stepped out of a Western. I hadn't seen him since my best friend Millie’s wedding to his cousin…but he looked good. Better than good. Gorgeous.

And more than that, he looked like someone who knew Daniela and not Daphne.

I flung my arms around his neck before I could stop myself.

“Oh my god—Sawyer? I can't believe you're here.”

He caught me, one arm around my waist, and laughed—low and warm, surprised by it.

I'd surprised myself too, honestly. Six months ago I would have called Sawyer Holt a family-adjacent acquaintance.

Right now, in the middle of a film set in New Mexico where I didn't know a single soul, he might as well have been my oldest friend.

"Small world," he said.

I pulled back and looked at him. The hat. The boots that had actual miles on them. The St. Christopher medal sitting against his collarbone in the gap of his collar.

"You're the horse master,” I said. "Of course you are.”

"Of course I am." His eyes moved over my face—quick, professional, taking stock the way he did. "You look different."

"It's the makeup."

"It's a lot of makeup."

"That's what I said." I touched my cheek self-consciously. "Pat doesn't believe in restraint."

He smiled. It did something to the lines around his eyes.

"How are Millie and Gage?" I asked, because Millie was safe. Millie was neutral ground.

"Pregnant again, last I heard."

"I know, she texted me a picture of the test at six in the morning." I shook my head. "She was so excited she forgot the time difference."

"Sounds right."

We stood there for a second, easy and warm, the way you stood with someone who knew your people. Out past the trucks the heat shimmered off the flat scrub. Somewhere close a horse blew and shifted and Sawyer's attention moved toward it automatically—just a flicker, just long enough that I noticed.

Then his eyes came back to me.

"Daniela," he said. "You doing okay out here?"

And there it was. My name in his mouth, easy as breathing, on a set where nobody had said it once this morning.

I looked around. No one close.

"It's Daphne," I said quietly. "On set."

His lips quirked. He clearly thought I was joking. "Right."

"I mean it."

"I know you do." He reached past me for the coffee, close enough that I caught the smell of him—sun and horses and something else underneath, something my memory had apparently filed carefully away without asking. "Daphne."

The way he said it told me exactly what he thought about it.

"Don't." I pointed at him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it very loudly."

He took a sip of his coffee, the picture of innocence. "I think it's a great name."

"Sawyer."

"Very Hollywood." He tilted his head. "Very...not Daniela."

"That's the point." I crossed my arms, which was difficult in the corset. "It's a stage name. Lots of actors have them. It's not a big deal."

"Okay."

"It gets me in rooms I wouldn't otherwise get into."

"I believe you."

"It's working," I said. "I'm here, aren't I?"

He looked around—at the production trailers, the equipment, the flat gold landscape baking under the June sun—and nodded slowly.

"You are definitely here," he said.

"So don't give me a hard time about it."

"I'm not giving you a hard time." The corner of his mouth pulled. "Daphne."

I pointed at him again. He raised his free hand in surrender, still smiling, and something loosened in my chest that I hadn't realized was tight.

That was the thing about Sawyer. He gave you shit but it never had any edge to it. It was the kind of teasing that meant I see you rather than I'm better than you, and I'd had enough of the second kind in this industry to know the difference.

"Fine," I said. "You can call me Daniela. When no one's around."

He looked at me for a beat too long.

"Deal," he said.

Someone called his name from off behind him, and he turned his head and waved. My eyes darted toward the distraction, then back to him—and I realized with a start that I wasn't ready to be done with this conversation.

With him.

With being Daniela again.

“I gotta go,” he said, “but I think we're working together later—chase scene.”

“Oh…yeah, that's me,” I laughed. “Damsel in distress.”

"That's you." His eyes moved over the duster, the corset, the hat that still sat slightly wrong. "You ride?"

"I grew up in San Antonio, not on a ranch."

"So no."

"I can sit on a horse."

"That's not riding."

"It's adjacent to riding."

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I'll see you out there."

He touched the brim of his hat—actually touched the brim of his hat, like a man in the movie we were currently making—and walked off toward the paddock.

I watched him go for exactly two seconds before I made myself stop.

Daniela.

You need to work. Not thirst after the horse master.

I picked up my coffee. Turned back to the craft table. Stared at a bowl of grapes without seeing them.

"There you are."

Mark materialized at my elbow, phone already raised to take a photo of me in the costume. I let him.

"Ellis is ready," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," I said.

He looked at me over his sunglasses.

"Great," I said. "I feel great."

He followed my eyeline toward the paddock, where Sawyer had crouched down to check something on a horse's foreleg.

Mark looked back at me.

"Who," he said, "is that."

"Gage's cousin. Millie's family."

"No wonder she's popping out babies."

"Mark."

"I'm just saying?—"

"Ellis," I said. "You were saying Ellis is ready."

He smiled the smile of a man filing information away for later. "Right. Ellis.”