"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.”
TWO
Sawyer
I’d had twenty minutes with Bishop before they called the first break, and twenty minutes was enough to know he was going to be fine.
What I wasreallyconcerned about was Daniela.
Not her nerve—if anything, that was the problem. I knew even from a few brief encounters at Gage’s wedding, on set before that, and the occasional family gathering, that Daniela wasn’t afraid of anything. She took on challenges like she was checking them off her to-do list. Millie had even told me once that Daniela got hurt doing a fall stunt a few years back because she’d refused to use a double.
Which meant she was going to walk right up to this horse and tell me she was fine, and I was going to have to convince her that fine isn’t good enough.
Bishop stood quiet while I ran my hand down his near foreleg. He was a twelve-year-old bay gelding, three other productions under his belt. He knew this job better than half the crew, and whatever happened in the next twenty minutes, he wasn’t going to be the problem.
