The Cheyenne payout meant he could afford the time off, but Brock was terrible at resting. Within two days, he’d reorganized the entire tack room, and Wren was threatening to hide his truck keys.
The hardest part wasn’t his injury, though. It was the space between us.
We hadn’t talked about how to act around his family, so we defaulted to careful. He passed plates across the dinner table like a polite host. I kept my distance. But the second we were alone in a hallway or the kitchen cleared out, everything changed.
On our second night back, he caught me outside the upstairs bathroom. He backed me into the wall with his good arm and kissed me like he’d been waiting all day. His calloused hand had just slipped under the hem of my shirt when heavy boots hit the bottom of the stairs.
We sprang apart so fast I knocked a picture frame crooked. By the time Colt reached the top of the stairs, I was staring at it like it was the most fascinating landscape in Wyoming, and Brock had already slipped into the bathroom.
“You two are weird,” Colt muttered as he walked past.
We were. And the worst part was, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted more of this—the stolen seconds, his mouth at my ear, the way my heart raced every time we almost got caught. It was exactly the kind of thinking that was going to get us in trouble.
It was getting far too easy to forget I was here to do a job. Fortunately, my agency was happy to remind me.
The next morning, I was sitting on the porch steps with my coffee when my phone buzzed against the wood. Avery’s name lit up the screen. I stared at it for a long second, seriously considering throwing it into the bushes before I finally answered.
“Sienna! There she is.”
Her voice was warm, which immediately put me on edge. Avery being cheerful was like that eerie, dead quiet right before a thunderstorm.
“Hi, Avery,” I said carefully. “What’s going on?”
“Sit down. You’re going to love this.”
I stood up.
"That alley video hit twenty-three million views yesterday. The guys over at Outlaw are practically foaming at the mouth, and they just handed me their new idea."
"Okay. What is it?"
"They want to make you his official publicist! So congrats, you've just been promoted." Before I could even process the wordpromoted, she kept talking. "Everyone is obsessed with the cowboy and the woman he saved. So they’re asking for all the new videos to feature the two of you together."
The coffee went sour in my mouth. "Define 'feature together'."
"You know, couple stuff. The internet's decided you're a thing. Have him put you on a horse, you wear some cute boots, feed a cow a carrot or something."
I sat down on the step after all. "That’s outside my job description. I can’t just go on camera like that."
“Which is why they’re paying you for it. Ten thousand at the end of the contract.”
The air left my lungs. Enough to cover half a year of Mara’s tuition. Enough that the wordnostuck in my throat.
"Is it really a good idea for me to play his girlfriend on the internet?" I asked instead.
"Nobody said girlfriend. God, you're so literal. Just look cozy next to him and let the comments do the work. People want to believe it? Let them believe it. A little mystery is better for engagement anyway."
“So, I’m the product now. My whole job is staying behind the camera, and now you want my face all over his campaign. Who’s going to hire me after that?”
She sighed like I was being intentionally dense. "Sienna, trust me, in six months no one remembers your name, so relax."
Over the speaker, the screech of the L train rattled past her office window. Sitting on a quiet porch in Wyoming, it sounded like it was coming from another planet.
“It’s the easiest ten grand you’ll ever make,” she said. “You smile, you let him do the cowboy thing, put his hands on your waist, whatever sells the fantasy, and you post it. It's not like I'm asking you to sleep with the guy." A short laugh. "Just don'tactuallyscrew him. But you know that."
I dragged a hand down my face. “Before you send anything, I’ll have to run it by Brock. He’s not going to want to do scripted couple content. He barely tolerates cameras as it is.”
“He already agreed.”
