Chapter 20
Twenty
Brayden managed to avoid running into Maggie until noon on Monday, when they were scheduled to meet about the therapeutic riding program and the unique needs of each child.
He’d spent a sleepless night staring up at the ceiling, tortured from wanting more of her and trying to decide if he could trust her with something he’d told no one since leaving juvenile detention.
He entered the house through the kitchen and stopped to talk to Mitch, who was stirring a pot on the stove. “Something smells good.”
“Pasta sauce for spaghetti night. The kids’ favorite after tacos and pizza.”
“They’ll be excited for dinner.”
“That’s the goal. How was your trip?”
“Good time with the boys. Key West is always fantastic.”
“Looks like you got some sun, too.”
“Yep. Is Maggie around?”
“In her office, I believe.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Brayden tried to brace himself to see her, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the gut punch that happened every time she turned those startling blue eyes on him.
And when she smiled… God, she was gorgeous.
While she looked as great as she always did, with her long dark hair pulled into a ponytail, he could see the hint of reserve coming from her that hadn’t been there before their encounter yesterday.
He hated having given her reason to pull back from him, but he certainly understood why she felt it was necessary.
“Hey, are we still on to meet about the kids?”
“Sure. Come in.”
He sat in the seat across from her desk, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and settled a notepad on his lap while trying not to think about her gorgeous breasts. As if he would ever forget that or what it had been like to kiss her sweet lips and mold her sexy body to his.
Feeling a stirring in his groin, he crossed his legs and tamped down those thoughts to focus on business.
Over the next hour, they discussed each child, what had brought their family to the shelter, what particular issues and needs their mothers had identified at intake and what Maggie had observed during their stay.
“Last but not least is Travis, who you’ve met. He and his mother came to us after a domestic situation in their home. Travis intervened when his mother’s boyfriend was assaulting her and ended up being assaulted himself.”
Brayden took notes while seething on the inside at the thought of a grown man raising his fists to a four-year-old child.
“When we first met him, his face, arms and torso were covered in bruises. His mother suffered a shattered eardrum and a concussion in the altercation.”
“Tell me the guy is in jail.”
“He is—for now, but only because of outstanding warrants. Otherwise, he would’ve been released on bail by now.”
Brayden shook his head with disgust.
“Believe me, I know,” Maggie said. “I’m in an online support group with other shelter directors, and the lack of justice in our criminal justice system is a frequent topic of discussion. It’s not just an issue here. It’s everywhere.”
“I agree. What else can you tell me about Travis?”
“I believe you’ll find him to be the most excited to work with the horses.
It’s all he talks about since he arrived and realized he could see the horses every day.
His mother is a little hesitant about the program because she’s afraid he’ll get addicted and she won’t be able to afford riding lessons after they leave us. ”
“I’d do it for free afterward if that puts her mind at ease.”
Maggie stared at him for a long moment before blinking. She looked down at her notes before glancing back at him. “That’s very nice of you.”
“I’m not going to abandon these kids just because they don’t live here anymore. I’ll see them on my own time afterward.”
“It doesn’t have to be on your own time. Kate and Reid believe in making an indefinite commitment to provide support to our families for as long as they need us.”
“My program could do that as well.”
“I’d hoped so, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about that.”
“Well, now you know. I’m in it for the long haul with these kids, for as long as they want to be part of it.”
“I really appreciate that.”
He shrugged. “I know what horses and riding meant to me as a kid. I’d never take that away from any kid who was loving it.” Clicking the pen closed, he returned it to his shirt pocket. “Where are we with hiring additional support staff?”
She handed him two pieces of paper. “I hired two local high school kids last week, and they’ll be here by three. Both come highly recommended by local stables. They’re interested in studying therapeutic riding and family counseling in college.”
“Excellent. I guess I’ll see you out there when the kids get home.”
After hesitating for a second, as if she had something else she wanted to say, she only nodded. “See you then.”
Brayden walked out, feeling like he was leaving something important behind as he went to the stables to prepare for the first lesson with the kids.
All he wanted to do was go back in there, find Maggie and tell her everything she wanted to know if that would mean she’d give him a chance to be something more to her than a friendly colleague she kept at arm’s length.
He already knew he wouldn’t be able to stand having her so close but eternally out of reach, especially after having held and kissed her. She wanted him to tell her something that even his closest friends didn’t know.
On the advice of his attorney at the time, he’d told no one in his adult life about the things that’d happened before his eighteenth birthday.
“If no one knows,” the attorney had said, “the information can never be used against you. If you tell even one person, you’re risking everything we’ve worked so hard to protect. ”
Brayden had religiously followed the attorney’s advice for twelve years.
His sealed juvenile record as well as the GED he’d received in lockup had come up at other job interviews, but he’d always declined to discuss it.
His boilerplate response was, “Juvenile records are sealed for a reason.” Fortunately, his professional skills had been in enough demand that the information hadn’t kept him from enjoying a fulfilling career.
It’d never been an issue with the women he dated because they didn’t know.
When they asked him where he went to high school, he’d say a private school in Nashville.
No one had ever asked him to elaborate on that, and he’d told himself that it didn’t count as a lie if he was following his attorney’s advice to be vague about his childhood and the fact that he’d received a GED while in juvenile lockup.
His conscience had never been bothered by the lie because none of the other women he’d dated had really mattered to him.
Those relationships—if you could call them that—had been about fun and sex and lighthearted entertainment.
He’d never come close to having anything serious, and he’d liked it that way.
Until he met Maggie and knew almost right away that she could be different.
She could change everything.
He was seriously torn by this dilemma, and more than at any time since he’d lost his mom, he yearned to talk to her about it.
She’d been the only person from his childhood he’d stayed in contact with and thus had been the only one who’d known his full story.
She’d have known what he should do about Maggie.
Brayden went through the motions preparing for the day’s lesson on the basics of the stables, how to care for the horses, the parts and pieces of the tack.
Tomorrow, they would learn how to saddle a horse and how to lead a horse around the paddock.
He’d asked Derek to leave two stalls for the children to work on cleaning, and he would use Sunday to teach them how to groom and care for a horse after riding.
Usually, he felt pumped to introduce a new group of kids to the joy of interacting with and caring for horses, but today, he couldn’t seem to find anything approaching joy due to the ongoing torment over Maggie.
After what she’d been through with that douchebag Ethan, he didn’t blame her for drawing her line in the sand with him.
She had every right to feel the way she did, even if her line in the sand had him tied up in knots of uncertainty.
He wanted so badly to trust her the way she’d trusted him, but the attorney had put the fear of God into him.
The thought of spilling his guts to anyone, even Maggie, made him feel sick.
Brayden knew he’d gotten lucky to have a skill that made him highly employable despite the black mark he carried on his record.
He’d spent his entire adult life working hard to overcome his past, to create an unimpeachable reputation for professionalism and results for the kids he worked with.
There’d been so many success stories, far more successes than failures.
But none of that mattered to Maggie when it came to pursuing a relationship with him.
His mind spun in circles that went from understanding where she was coming from to anger that she’d put him in this untenable position and back to understanding without finding a solution he could live with that would satisfy her need to know his secrets.
He was no closer to finding a solution to his dilemma when the kids got home and came out to the stables, full of pent-up energy and excitement to get started on their riding lessons, which was how the program had been billed to them.
There were ten kids in all, ranging in age from four to eleven. They came from a variety of backgrounds, and all had experienced some form of trauma.
Brayden had them sit in a circle with him on clean straw inside a stall he’d prepared for their opening session. He sat in the circle with them, his back to the open gate to the stall, aware of Maggie behind him. He kept his focus on the children where it belonged.