Page 3

Rebecca watched her for a long moment. Delaney knew that look. It was the look Rebecca got right before she solved a problem. Then Rebecca reached into her leather tote and pulled out her personal phone. Not the work phone with the studio contacts. The black one she kept separate.

“Give me a few minutes,” Rebecca said. “I have an idea.”

She walked to the glass doors and slid one open, stepping out onto the concrete patio. The door closed behind her. Delaney watched her through the glass. The sleek auburn bob, the blue blazer, one hand gesturing as she talked. Rebecca paced to the edge of the infinity pool and stopped there, the water throwing a shifting blue light up onto her face. She was smiling. No sound came through the glass, but the smile did, and Delaney didn’t like it.

Rebecca didn’t smile on work calls. She worked her jaw and talked over people. This was different. She stretched out on one of the loungers now, ankles crossed, her free hand resting on her stomach like she had all the time in the world. The last of the afternoon sun caught the red in her hair.

Delaney looked down at her own hands. The knuckles were pink from clutching the cushion.

A real ranch. A horse. Weeks away from Los Angeles, from the phone, from the house that felt like a terrarium. She thought about the draft downstairs, the cramped handwriting in the margins, the scenes she’d written at three in the morning when she couldn’t sleep. Delaney had never dreamed of being a screenwriter. She’d just started writing the kind of role she wanted to play, and over two years it had turned into a real script.

The glass door opened and Rebecca stepped back inside with a wave of dry heat that smelled like eucalyptus and chlorine. She slipped the black phone into her bag and met Delaney’s eyes straight on.

“I may have found you a ranch.”

Delaney sat very still on the sectional, her knees drawn up. The call had lasted five minutes and Rebecca had come back with a ranch in Montana. She waited for the catch. There was always a catch. With Rebecca, with the studios, with anything in this town that sounded too good in the first sentence.

“What?”

“A place in Montana,” Rebecca said. “The owner knows what she’s doing with the horses. She used to do stunts in the industry. I managed her a long time ago.”

“You just happen to know a ranch owner in Montana,” Delaney said.

Rebecca’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. The professional mask settled back into place, smooth and practiced. “I called in a favor. A very big one. But the place fits. Exactly. If you’re serious about making this film.”

“I am.”

She said it too fast. Before her body caught up, before the old reflex to hedge and soften and leave herself an exit could kick in.

Rebecca pulled her blazer straight. Two sharp motions, one sleeve then the other, the tailored wool settling back into place over her hips. She waited. Usually this was the moment Delaney shrank back or offered another excuse or stared at the floor and let the silence answer for her. This time she didn’t.

“Good,” Rebecca said. She shifted the leather tote over her shoulder. “Can I take the script with me?”

Delaney went still. The stack was sitting on her desk right now. Curled corners, cramped margins, lines she’d typed at three in the morning when she couldn’t sleep. Lines she’d written for herself and never planned to show anyone. If Rebecca read those pages, she’d see every raw, unvarnished thing makeup artists usually covered. She’d realize Delaney wasn’t a writer at all, just a tired actress playing at one.

“Yeah, of course,” Delaney said.

She stood up. Her legs were stiff from sitting curled on the cushions for so long, a cramp in her left calf that made her step awkwardly.

The stairs were narrow, the steps cool under her feet. The downstairs hallway smelled faintly of the sandalwood candle the designer had chosen and Delaney had never replaced. Her office was the smallest room, tucked between the primary suite and the guest room that was now a gym. She pushed the door open with her palm.

The printed draft sat on her desk, right where she’d left it, under five untouched scripts. She’d meant to work on the third act last week. The top page had a coffee ring on it from a mug she’d forgotten to put on a coaster. She picked up the stack.

Rebecca had followed her downstairs. She stood in the office doorway, her silhouette sharp against the pale hallway light, and waited. Delaney turned around and held out the script.

Rebecca took the pages. She didn’t skim the first page or flip through to read a random line. She just held the weight of the draft in her manicured hands and looked at Delaney’s face.

“There you are,” Rebecca said quietly. “I was starting to think you were entirely gone.”

Delaney took a deep breath. “I haven’t cared about a scene in two years, Becca,” she said. She looked up from the floor and met her manager’s brown eyes, still sharp, still measuring. “But I care about every page in that stack.”

2

Claire drove the pitchfork into the soiled bedding at the back of the stall and lifted. The tines scraped concrete before the weight gave. She carried the load down the center aisle of the red timber barn, boots ringing softly on the rubber mats, and dumped it into the wheelbarrow parked just inside the south doors. Dust rose in the warm air that drifted through the opening. The late sun still painted the western mountains in long bands of amber.

Her shoulders carried the ache of another full day. Twenty-three horses lived here now—six working and personal horses, seventeen rescues. Claire ran the place with the help of Eli Whitaker, who lived in the cabin down the lane.

She rolled the wheelbarrow outside, emptied it onto the manure pile, and returned. Twelve stalls lined the barn. Six held horses tonight. Maple stood nearest the tack room—a sixteen-year-old chestnut Quarter Horse mare with a white blaze. She ate her grain, one ear turned toward Claire. Copper dozed in the next stall, weight on one hind leg. Ranger, her bay gelding, waited three stalls down, ears forward, coat dusty from the afternoon trail check. The rescues filled the north end. Wren, the new mustang mare, had the round pen to herself so she could settle away from the herd.