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."
