Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
TUCKER
Three days in, Lena Cordero has rearranged the salt and pepper shakers on my kitchen table, taught both my dogs to sit for treats she keeps in her jacket pocket, and taken approximately four thousand photographs of my ranch without permission.
She's also stolen my flannel. The blue one.
Wears it every morning when she comes out of the guest cabin at five thirty on the dot, coffee in one hand, camera in the other, sleeves rolled up past her elbows because it's three sizes too big on her.
She hasn't offered to give it back. Hasn't mentioned it at all, actually.
Just puts it on over whatever she's wearing underneath and walks around my property looking like she belongs here.
That's the part that's messing with me.
This morning she's perched on the top rail of the east fence, boots hooked on the second rung, shooting the sunrise over the herd.
The light catches her hair, her rings, the curve of her neck where the flannel collar gapes open.
She's talking to herself, or maybe to the camera.
Framing shots, adjusting angles. Completely absorbed.
Manny pulls up beside me on the ATV, follows my line of sight.
"She's good."
"She's sitting on my fence."
"You gonna tell her to get down?"
No. Because the last time she climbed up there, she got a shot of 247's calf nursing at dawn that even I had to admit was something. Josie texted me the preview at eleven o'clock at night with fourteen exclamation points.
"Feed truck's loaded," Manny says. Waits a beat. "You want me to take north pasture so you can stay here?"
"Why would I stay here?"
He just drives off. Doesn't even bother answering.
By eight, Lena's in the barn watching me work. She asked once if she could follow me through morning chores. Once. Three days ago. Now she just shows up with that camera, stays out of the way, captures things I've been doing my whole life from angles that make them look new.
"Your hands," she says from behind the lens. "When you check the hooves. The way your fingers move. That's gonna be the hero shot for the whole brand."
"I'm checking for stones."
"Exactly. You're taking care of something.
It's real. It's you." She lowers the camera.
Those brown eyes are bright, excited, full of something she wants me to understand.
"Tucker, people pay a fortune for authentic.
You are authentic. You don't have to manufacture anything.
We just have to show what's already here. "
Something loosens in my chest. A knot I've been carrying since Josie first pitched this whole idea at Thanksgiving.
Because Lena's not trying to change my ranch.
She's not asking me to pose with a lasso or lean against a truck looking rugged.
She's photographing me doing work that matters, then telling me the work itself is enough.
Nobody's said that to me in a long time.
"One more," she says, lifting the camera again.
"You said that twenty minutes ago."
"Photography is an art of patience, rancher."
"So is ranching. Which I'm trying to do."
She grins. Snaps the shot. "Got it. That face. That's the one."
"What face?"
"The one where you're annoyed but almost smiling. Your whole brand in a single frame."
My mouth twitches. Her grin gets wider.
Lunch happens in the same pattern it has since she arrived.
She shows up at the main house with food she bought in town.
Today it's sandwiches from the deli, thick bread, piled high.
She lays everything out on the kitchen table, pours two glasses of sweet tea from a pitcher she made yesterday that's somehow still in my fridge, and sits down across from me.
"Tell me about your dad," she says.
The sandwich stops halfway to my mouth. "Why?"
"Because the ranch is his legacy. Yours too, but he built the version you're running now. If we're telling the Brant Ranch story, he's part of it."
Setting the sandwich down, I look at her for a long moment. She's not performing interest. No notebook, no camera, no recording. Just Lena at my kitchen table with sweet tea, waiting.
"Robert Brant. Everybody called him Bobby.
" The name still catches in my throat, even nine years later.
"He expanded the herd from three hundred to eight hundred.
Taught me to ride before kindergarten. Built the fence line on the south pasture by hand because he didn't trust the crew to do it right. "
"Sounds stubborn."
"Runs in the family."
She smiles at that. Soft. "How'd he die?"
"Heart attack. Walking fence line after supper. Just dropped. Hank found him." Pushing back from the table, I stare at the window over the sink. The same view my mother used to stare at while she cooked. "He was fifty two. Doctor said it was massive, probably gone before he hit the ground."
"Tucker." Her voice is quiet. "I'm sorry."
"Nine years ago. Doesn't feel like it."
She nods. Doesn't push, doesn't fill the silence with words she thinks I need to hear. Just lets it sit between us, comfortably.
"Tell me something about your family," I say. Because I want to know. Because she asked about mine, and I want something back. Not for the brand. For me.
Her face lights up. "Big. Loud. Five kids, I'm the middle.
My mom calls every Sunday at exactly seven thirty, won't hang up until she knows what I've eaten that week.
My dad coaches Little League in Sacramento.
Four siblings who all have opinions about my life choices.
Family dinners are basically organized chaos. "
"Sounds exhausting."
"It's the best thing about my life." She says it simply. No performance. "All that noise. Growing up in the middle of it, you learn to be loud or get lost. I chose loud."
"Noticed."
She throws a napkin at me. It bounces off my chest. "You think you're funny."
"I'm serious."
"You're smiling."
Am I? The muscles in my face confirm it before my brain catches up. Full smile. Actual teeth. Lena Cordero got a real smile out of me and she's looking at it like the perfect shot. Memorizing it.
We do the afternoon feed run together. She rides in my truck because her rental can't handle the back roads, camera in her lap, window down, hair whipping everywhere.
She asks about water sources, grazing rotations, why we move the herd when we do.
Questions that show she's been paying attention.
Questions nobody outside the cattlemen's board has ever bothered to ask me.
At the creek crossing, she gets out to shoot the water, the willows, the light coming through the trees. Walking up behind her, I point to the ridge where my great grandfather cleared the first acre.
"Up there. 1924. A mule, an axe, and a back that never straightened again."
"Four generations." She says it quietly, looking up at the ridge. "You carry all of that."
"Somebody has to."
She turns. We're standing close. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the freckles across the bridge of her nose that the sun's been pulling out over the past three days. Close enough that her camera hangs between us, almost touching my chest.
"What if carrying it alone is what's making it so heavy?" she asks.
The question lands somewhere deep. Somewhere I don't let people reach. My hand comes up on its own, pushing a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Her breath catches. My fingers trail down the side of her jaw, rough calluses against smooth skin.
"Lena."
"Yeah?" A whisper now.
"You're making this complicated."
"Good."
My thumb traces her lower lip. She holds completely still, those brown eyes locked on mine, mouth soft under my touch. Then I close the distance.
The kiss is slow. Deliberate. My hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, pulling her in.
She tastes like sweet tea. One of her hands grips the front of my shirt, the other still holding that camera, and she rises on her toes to press closer.
My arm wraps around her waist, pulling her flush against me, feeling every curve under my flannel on her.
My flannel. On her body. Against mine.
She makes a sound. Low, quiet, something close to a whimper. My hand tightens on her waist. She opens her mouth and the kiss deepens, her tongue sliding against mine, her fingers twisting in my shirt. She tastes sweet. Warm. Real.
A cow lows from twenty yards away. Then another.
Pulling back takes more willpower than anything I've done in recent memory. Her lips are swollen, eyes half closed, chest rising fast. My forehead drops to hers.
"We can't do this," I say.
"We literally just did."
"You work for my sister."
"I work for the ranch. There's a contract, not a convent." Her fingers are still twisted in my shirt. "Tucker. Look at me."
Looking at her is the problem. Because looking at her standing in my creek bed wearing my flannel with her mouth swollen from my kiss, I don't see a consultant or a photographer or a city woman passing through.
I see someone I want to keep.
"One more day," I say. "Give me one more day to think."
"About what?"
About the fact that in three days you've made my dogs love you, my ranch foreman approve of you, and my kitchen smell like sweet tea. About the fact that I can't remember the last time I smiled before lunch. About the fact that my flannel looks better on you than it ever looked on me.
"Things," I say.
She laughs. Low, warm. "One day, rancher. Then I'm kissing you again whether you've thought about it or not."
She picks up her camera, turns toward the truck, and walks away from me in my own flannel while both dogs follow her instead of staying with me.
Eight hundred and one head of cattle, six hundred acres, and a sunrise that used to be enough.
Used to be.