Page 12 of October’s Cowboy Beau

Frost still covered the shaded side of the pasture fence, and Hank’s breath came out in a puff of white when he nosed at the hitching rail. I hung his harness over the rail and watched her park next to the barn.

She got out with a paper coffee cup in one hand and her phone in the other. No tablet. No photographer either.

I’d been half joking when I told her to leave the tablet. But I wanted to see if she could show up somewhere without that thing under her arm. Looked like she could, though it was probably in the car.

She came around the front of the SUV and lifted her coffee. “Before you say anything, this is not a tablet.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Maybe.”

Her hair was pulled back again, though not as neatly as yesterday. She had on jeans that clung to her thick hips and a fitted cream sweater under a wool jacket. I wondered if she owned anything she couldn’t wear to a meeting.

I picked up the harness. “Do you have everything you need?”

“My phone will handle the video. Thirty minutes, just like I promised.”

“Good.”

She followed me toward the horses and stopped clear of them, same as yesterday. Gus turned an ear toward her. Hank kept working his lower lip against the rail.

I brought Hank forward and started fitting his collar. Caroline lifted her phone, and my shoulders tightened. I waited for her to ply me with directions. Move this way. Do that again.

She didn’t say a word as she circled, wide enough to stay out of Hank’s path, filming while I settled the collar into place. When I had to reach across for the buckle, she lowered the phone and backed off.

This might not be as bad as I thought. “How much of this do you want?” I asked.

“I want to capture the actual work. I don’t want it to look staged.”

“Then let me do my thing and don’t try to tell me what to do.”

She lowered the phone. “That might be a bit of a challenge for me.”

“I figured.”

I adjusted the hames, then ran my hand under the collar to make sure nothing pinched. Hank had been doing this long enough to know the order as well as I did, but I still checked everything. Big horses made people careless because they looked steady. They forgot how much horse was at the end of the lines.

Caroline moved closer once I stepped clear. “Do you check every strap every time?”

“Yep.”

“Even when it’s the same harness on the same horse?”

“Especially then.”

“Why?”

“Leather stretches. Horses change. You have to pay attention.”

She lowered the phone for a second. “Seems so obvious when you say it like that.”

I lifted a shoulder in a shrug, happy to let her come to her own conclusions.

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she went back to filming.

I moved on to the traces. The leather was cold and stiff against my palms, and I worked it through the buckle while Caroline moved around for a better angle.