“Texture sells,” Ivy says, and for the first time since she tumbled into my sleigh yesterday, I hear the edge under the sparkle—the part of her that’s keeping ten balls in the air and trying not to drop a single one. It sits me up a little straighter.
She looks over, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes ridiculous. “Can I grab a few shots of you unhitching? Just hands and bells. Promise.”
“Make it quick,” I say, and she does. She gets the loop of leather sliding through my palm, the little nod Comet gives when the weight comes off, the way Donner leans into the curry when Jared gets the brush out. She gets the steam rising out of their nostrils and the frost that gathers on whiskers.
“Perfect,” she whispers to herself. “We can build around this.”
“Build what?” I ask gruffly, because I can feel Jared smirking from across the barn.
“A minute that makes people breathe,” she says, then blinks like she didn’t mean to say it out loud. “And donate. And show up.”
She tucks the phone away, and for a second we’re just standing there with horses between us and something that feels larger than either of us is ready for.
“So,” I say, because standing there is not a sport I like. “You got what you needed?”
“For the seniors’ ride? Yes.” She hesitates. “Could I—this is probably pushing it—but could I get a few atmosphere shots up at your place? Exterior, woodpile, your stove, that kind of thing. Texture and context. I won’t show your face. I won’t move anything. Promise.”
My cabin is not for public consumption. It is four walls and a roof where December can’t get at me much. It is quiet I carved out of a rough few years and a road that knows my tires. Letting anyone point a camera at it makes my back teeth feel weird.
But I also hear the way her voice shadows on “pushing it,” and I see the little checklist running behind her eyes, and I remember Mrs. Hadley saying the bells still carry.
“Fine,” I say. “Rules: no faces, nothing personal, no staging. If you need a mug in frame, it’s the mug that lives by the stove. If you need a fire, we use the one that’s already there.”
Her smile is immediate and ridiculous. “Sure thing, Captain Grinch.”
“Don’t,” I say automatically.
“Sorry. Captain…Cabin.”
“Worse.”
She bounces a little, which the sensible boots do not deserve. “Do you want me to meet you there? I can follow.”
“No,” I hear myself say, a shade sharper than planned. Her eyebrows pop up and I add, “Roads glaze in the shade. Your rental’s got summer tires pretending to be all-season. You ride with me. I’ll bring you back after.”
She opens her mouth like she might argue and then, mercifully, nods. “Okay. Thank you.”
Jared makes the international symbol for “ooooooh,” which is to say he makes no symbol at all and just lets his face do it.
“Thirty minutes,” I tell Ivy. “I need to bed the horses and check the fence line.”
“I’ll grab my bag and Keely’s candy canes,” she says, already backing away and nearly tripping over a hay bale. She catches herself, straightens, salutes with two mittened fingers. “See you soon.”
I watch her go long enough to be irritated with myself for watching her go. Jared drifts into my periphery like fog.
“You gonna clean the cabin?” he asks.
“It’s clean,” I say.
He raises a brow. “It’s…Rhett-clean.”
“Meaning…?”
“Spartan,” he says diplomatically. “Maybe put out the quilt your grandma made so the video doesn’t look like a minimalist survivalist brochure.”
“Do your chores,” I say, but I’m already thinking about the quilt folded in the trunk at the foot of my bed and how it wouldn’t kill me to pull it onto the back of the couch like I didn’t plan it there on purpose.
I get the horses settled. Check the latch twice. Check the sky once. The wind is nosing down from the ridge, not mean yet but curious. I set a second log in the stove in the tack room so the chill stays off the leather. The routine unknots whatever my face is doing.
