Wait…there it was.
Love.
SEVENTEEN
Daniela
Apparently I'd been awfully smug during the shoot today.
And Sawyer…Sawyer needed to remind me that safety was paramount.
The set belonged to us at night. That was just the reality of how a location shoot worked—the crew went back to the hotel in town, Ellis went wherever Ellis went, the AD's and the grips and the camera department all cleared out by seven. But the horse master stayed with the horses. Always. That was non-negotiable on any shoot, and on this one it meant Sawyer's trailer was parked at the edge of the temporary paddock and I had a perfectly good room at the production hotel that I had not slept in once.
Nobody said anything about it.
A few people had figured out we were together—it wasn't like we were obvious on set, we were both professionals, but there were only so many times the lead actress could bring the horse master a coffee before someone did the math. Mark had given me a look about it on day three that was mostly just appreciative. The second AD had asked me at lunch on Friday if the horse master had a brother, which I'd taken as confirmation that the situation was understood.
Sawyer was unfailingly professional during the day.
What he did at night was a separate matter entirely.
Tonight, though.
Tonight was his.
I'd known it the second I came back around on Bishop after the stunt—the one where I'd dropped my outside hand because I'd done the math in half a second and knew the grab would look better, knew it was a marginal risk at most, knew I could handle it. And I had handled it. Ellis had called it perfect. The DP had actually clapped.
Sawyer had looked at me with a completely neutral expression and saidgood work todayand turned to check Bishop's foreleg.
Which meant I was in trouble.
He hadn't said a word about it on the walk back to the trailer. Hadn't said anything while I changed out of the costume. Had made dinner—actual dinner, because he cooked now that we had a two-burner stove and somewhere to be—and talked about the next week's schedule and asked about my call time tomorrow.
I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined the look.
Then he'd told me to sit on the bed and wait for him.
So I was sitting on the bed. Waiting.
The trailer was warm. Outside I could hear the horses moving in the portable paddock, the soft sounds of them settling for the night. The set was dark and still in every direction, the Hill Country spread out around us, no one for miles.
Ours.
Sawyer came out of the small bathroom. He'd changed—dark henley, jeans, barefoot, the medal against his chest. He was holding his lasso.
I looked at the lasso.
Looked at his face.
"Sawyer," I said.
"You dropped your outside hand," he said.
"The grab looked better."
"The grab looked better," he repeated. Flat.
"It did. Ellis said?—"
