Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
TUCKER
Josie's call comes at six in the morning while I'm saddling up for the south pasture check. The phone buzzes on the tack room shelf. Her name on the screen. Something in my gut tightens before I even pick up.
"Have you seen what she posted?"
No hello. No good morning. Just Josie running hot about something, which is her default setting.
"Posted where?"
"Instagram. Her professional account. Tucker, it's incredible. The engagement is insane. The ranch photos are getting shared everywhere. Someone from Western Living magazine already reached out to me about a feature."
Pulling the cinch tight on Duke's saddle, I hold the phone between my shoulder and ear. "What photos?"
"The ones from this week. You feeding the herd at sunrise. The calf with 247. The fence line your dad built." A pause. "Tucker, there's one of you. Close up. Looking at the camera with this expression on your face. It's gorgeous. People are losing their minds over it."
My hand stops on the saddle horn. "She posted photos of me?"
"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 because losing control won't help anything. "My face on the internet wasn't part of that."
"It's one photo."
"It's my photo. My life. You turned it into marketing."
She stands. The flannel slips off one shoulder. Brown eyes steady, chin up. "That's my job, Tucker. That's literally why I'm here. To tell the ranch's story. And you are the story. The man who runs it, who cares for it, who gave his life to it. That's the brand."
"The brand." The word tastes bitter. "Is that what last night was? Building the brand?"
Her face changes. Something flickers across it, hurt followed by anger. "Don't do that."
"You've been here ten days. In ten days you've photographed every inch of my property, posted it for strangers, gotten magazine people sniffing around. And somewhere in between all of that, you ended up in my bed."
"Tucker."
"Makes a great story, right? The rancher who didn't want to be seen, opened up by the photographer who saw him. Real visual storytelling."
The silence that follows is awful. Her hands are shaking. Not with rage. With something worse. She's hurt.
Good. Because so am I.
"Is that what you think?" Her voice is quiet. "That I slept with you for the brand?"
No. The honest answer is no. The honest answer is that last night she whispered I'm falling for you against my mouth while I was inside her, and it was the truest thing anyone's said to me in nine years.
The honest answer is that I'm standing in this cabin picking a fight because in four days she leaves.
Goes back to Sacramento, back to her clients, back to her real life.
Takes the flannel and the sweet tea and the camera bag.
Leaves me with eight hundred head of cattle and a website I never wanted.
"I think you're good at your job."
She flinches. Actually flinches, like I swung at her.
"Take them down."
"What?"
"The photos. Take them down. All of them. I didn't consent to having my face on the internet."
"The ranch photos were approved by Josie."
"My face wasn't. Take. Them. Down."
For a long moment she just looks at me. Those brown eyes that three hours ago were half closed in my bed while my name was on her lips. Now they're filling with tears she's refusing to let fall.
"Fine." She opens the laptop. Fingers moving over the keyboard. "Done. They're down. All of them. Not just your face. Every photo of Brant Ranch. The website mockups. The logo concepts. Everything."
"Lena."
"No." She holds up a hand. "You want the brand project killed? It's killed. You want me gone? Say it."
The word sits in my throat. Say it. Tell her to go.
Four days early, four days late, what difference does it make?
She was always going to leave. Sacramento is three hours away but it might as well be the moon.
She has a career, a family, a life that doesn't include six a.m. calving or a man who communicates in grunts.
"Your contract runs through Sunday."
Another flinch. Contract. Like she's a hired hand. Like the past week didn't happen.
"I'll finish out the contract." Her voice is flat now. Professional. The warmth is gone. "But I'll stay out of your way. You won't have to worry about the camera."
"That's not what I."
"Please leave my cabin."
My cabin. The guest cabin on my property that she's calling hers because she's been living in it for ten days, putting her coffee mug in the same spot every morning, hanging her sundresses in the closet, leaving her vanilla lotion on the bathroom counter.
Dolly's waiting for me on the porch. She follows me back to the main house without looking at the guest cabin. Even the dog knows when to cut her losses.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. No music from the guest cabin drifting through the windows. No camera shutter clicking in the yard. No laugh carrying across the property.
My phone buzzes.
Tucker what did you do
Lena just texted me saying the project is cancelled
She's crying Tucker
CALL ME RIGHT NOW
Turning the phone face down on the counter, I stare at the kitchen. The pitcher of sweet tea is still in the fridge. Her handwriting is on the label. Tucker's tea. Two sugars. Don't argue.
Sitting down at the table, I put my head in my hands. Hank pushes his nose into my knee. Dolly sits by the door, watching the guest cabin through the screen.
She didn't do anything wrong. The photos were her job.
The brand was her job. Josie approved everything.
Lena did exactly what she was hired to do, and she did it brilliantly, and the only reason I'm angry is because I saw my own face on a stranger's phone screen, looking at a woman I'm falling in love with, and I panicked.
Because she leaves Sunday. Because Sacramento. Because she has a career that doesn't include Nevada mountain ranches. Because my dad died on this land and my mom died before him and everyone I've ever cared about has either left or been taken.
Hank whines.
"I know, buddy."
Josie I messed up
Three dots appear immediately.
I KNOW YOU DID
Fix it Tucker
She is the best thing that has ever happened to you and that ranch
Don't you dare let her leave like this
Putting the phone down, I look through the kitchen window.
The guest cabin door is closed. Curtains drawn.
No lights on despite it being full morning.
She's in there in my flannel with her laptop closed, crying, because I called her a brand strategist when she'd just given me the most honest night of my life.
Eight hundred head of cattle. Six hundred acres. Four generations.
None of it means a damn thing if she drives away Sunday thinking I used those words because I meant them.
But I can't move. Can't cross the yard. Can't knock on her door because I don't know what to say.
Don't know how to explain that I'm not angry at the photos.
I'm terrified of Sunday. Terrified of Monday morning when the coffee pot makes one cup instead of two.
Terrified of the silence she filled without trying.
Dolly looks at me. Then at the cabin. Then back at me.
"Not yet," I tell her. "Give her space."
The dog doesn't believe me. Neither do I.