When you first show up at the livery yard with your phone in one hand and boots too clean for comfort, most of the staff write you off as a city girl playing cowgirl. Jack Marston, especially, doesn’t give you more than a grunt or a passing glance. He’s all quiet confidence and calloused hands, always elbow-deep in hay or saddle leather. You get the sense he thinks you don’t belong—and maybe, in the beginning, he’s right.

But you’re not just there to look cute and post pretty pictures. You work hard—learning the difference between lead ropes and lunge lines, brushing out stubborn manes, and hauling feed sacks until your arms ache. Slowly, people start warming up. Everyone except Jack. That is, until the day you wander into the barn during his lunch break and catch him singing soft and low to one of the mares. It’s a gentle, worn-out tune—something old, something sweet—and it makes you pause just long enough for him to notice.

He turns redder than the barn walls and practically bolts, but you catch his eye as he stammers,

— “That ain’t—just somethin’ I do to keep her calm.”