Chapter 2
By seven o’clock the next morning Maverick had fed the horses and updated both the trail riding and lesson sign-up sheet for the day. He had helped muck out the stalls and then made it back in time to watch the sunrise, a cup of coffee in his hand, his dog at his feet.
Over at the resort, guests would be starting to stir, wandering down to the dining room for coffee and breakfast, or ordering it up to their rooms. The folks staying in the lodges might be putting a pod in their coffee machines or ordering a fresh one, maybe a French press or pour over, from the main lodge.
The well-trained staff on both the resort and the ranch would already be well into their own routines.
Everyone had their schedules, and for the most part, things ran like clockwork.
But the horses and the sunrise were Mav’s.
One little moment in time he took for himself every day.
Because in the early hours of the morning, when all the guests were still asleep and the animals were just beginning to stir, Mav remembered why he had kept Hunt Ranch when his parents had died.
He could have sold. He knew the value of the title deeds, knew that if he had sold, he and Sierra, their children, and their grandchildren would never have had to work again. And he’d considered it seriously. Both he and Sierra had.
But then he’d asked himself what he’d do if he had all that money and the time to do anything he wanted, and the answer had been simple: he’d buy a goddamn ranch.
Maybe he wouldn’t have so many cows or horses.
Maybe he wouldn’t have the resort and the guests.
Maybe he wouldn’t work so hard. But he had 124 years of family history proving otherwise.
So, the choice had been easy for him.
Less so for Sierra, but even then, Mav knew she only struggled with all her memories. His sister had seen a lot of heartache at Hunt Ranch.
The sound of the front door opening had him turning in his chair as Poppy came out, dressed in her PJs, a matching shirt and pair of shorts in pink that Sierra had undoubtedly picked out.
Her tiny feet were bare. Her hair, the same dark brown as his, was a wild tangle that Mav took one look at and sighed.
Her eyes, brown like Shannon’s where his were blue, were still half shut.
On the floor, Shadow’s tail thumped loudly.
‘Good morning,’ he said quietly.
‘Hi, Daddy.’ Poppy smiled and walked to him, pausing on the way to pat Shadow.
She crawled onto Mav’s lap, rested her head against him, and yawned.
Maverick inhaled her familiar scent, vaguely resonant of Johnson & Johnson shampoo, and his heart settled. His mind quietened. And when Poppy looked out at the ranch, saw the horses grazing, and whispered, ‘Pretty,’ Mav reminded himself that he was exactly where he was meant to be.
He kissed her head, asked, ‘Did you sleep okay?’ though he knew the answer already. Poppy had two modes: awake and dead to the world.
‘Yeah. I slept good.’ She reached for his coffee mug and gripping it with both hands, raised it to her mouth when he released it.
Poppy took a single sip, scrunched her face up as she swallowed, and then passed the mug back to him without a word.
‘Still don’t like it, huh?’
She made a gagging sound. When he laughed, she did it again.
Mav ran his hand over her hair, covertly trying to see what he was in store for. ‘Want me to make you breakfast before daycare?’
It might have been mid-June, the first full month of summer for most kids, but Poppy was still too young to be left alone on the ranch for full days, and her nanny couldn’t spare the extra time from her part-time job.
So, daycare it was. At least until she was old enough to hang around the ranch without slowing him down or getting hurt.
‘Eggs and toast,’ came the succinct reply.
‘Okay.’ Mav helped her down, groaned as he pushed to his feet. ‘Why don’t you go and get changed, and I’ll start breakfast.’ As she ran inside, letting the door slap closed behind her, he called out, ‘You have to hurry! Jenna is picking you up soon!’
‘’Kay!’
He almost shouted back No rain boots! but thought better of it, knowing how proud Poppy was that she could dress herself now.
Last week she had insisted on wearing her rain boots with every outfit, despite there being no clouds in sight.
And she was starting to get picky with her hair, insisting on something called a French braid when Mav only knew how to do a ponytail and a regular braid.
An American braid? He didn’t even know. The only reason he knew how to braid at all was because his father had taught him how to do it in horse manes and tails to prevent breakage.
But such was the life of a girl dad.
With one last swig from his coffee, he let himself inside. Poppy’s footsteps sounded above his head.
Inside the kitchen, Mav took out his supplies and placed them on the countertop. He bent down to take a frying pan out of the cupboard.
Upstairs, something crashed.
He paused what he was doing and listened, but when no call for help sounded and the footsteps resumed, he walked to the base of the stairs, the frying pan in hand, and shouted up, ‘What was that?’
After a moment, Poppy replied, ‘The lamp.’
He could hear the quiver in her voice, decided on nonchalance before the situation escalated. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get another one. Don’t touch it! And put shoes on before you do anything else, please!’ Mav didn’t get flustered or mad, knowing it wouldn’t solve anything.
‘’Kay!’
Mav fought his need to go check that Poppy did what she was told. She might have been five, but she was a five-year-old on a working ranch. Following orders was the first thing she’d have to learn, and things like broken lamps were the safest way he knew how to teach her.
He sighed, forced his feet back in the direction of the kitchen, and mentally added cleaning up a broken lamp and ordering a new one to his list as he went back to the stove.
By the time he got to the resort at eleven, the lamp had been long cleaned up and Poppy’s entire room vacuumed in case of any glass he couldn’t see. The task had taken him thirty minutes he hadn’t had to spare, so he was running behind on everything else.
Check-in time, occurring between eleven and two, was sacred.
Each guest who arrived was given a refreshment as their bags were covertly taken to their rooms by staff dressed in western gear – jeans, boots, and a Hunt Ranch work shirt.
They were presented with ‘The Welcome Speech’ and the associated liability forms, which outlined the rules of the ranch and prevented any run-ins with one of their thousand-plus-pound animals.
And then those guests who wanted to settle in, could, while he and some of the wranglers alternated taking the rest of the new arrivals on a walking tour of the resort property before showing them to their rooms.
Now, at a few minutes past eleven, the resort lobby was brimming with people already. The family of six seemed to have arrived first. The parents held one kid in each hand like seasoned pros, forgoing refreshments in order to keep their children close and out of the surrounding chaos.
Mav greeted them. ‘Morning, folks.’ A round of cheery replies followed. ‘My name’s Maverick.’
‘Mine’s June Morgan!’ This exuberant declaration came from the youngest, a little girl with blonde curls who couldn’t have been more than three.
‘Well, howdy, June Morgan!’ Mav greeted her enthusiastically. ‘I like your cowgirl boots,’ he said, tapping her brand-new, bright pink boots with the toe of his scarred leather ones. ‘Did you bring your hat too?’
Her smile faded. She shook her head and turned to look accusingly at her mom. ‘Mommy, you didn’t get a hat?’
Mav bit back his smile and replied before Mrs Morgan could.
‘Hmm, we’ll have to fix that,’ he said. ‘Can’t be a cowgirl without a cowgirl hat.
’ He turned back to the check-in desk, plucked a hat from the pile, craftily labelled with the Hunt Ranch brand, off the counter.
He plopped one on June’s head himself before passing the rest out. ‘There you go.’
‘I’m a cowgirl now!’ June chirped.
‘I’m a cowboy!’ her brother, who was maybe closer to Poppy’s age, stated seriously and craned his head back so that he could see out from under the hat’s brim.
‘You sure are,’ Maverick affirmed. ‘How about we go wrangle some horses, pardner?’ he drawled.
He ushered them towards the door, past a couple, sitting in the lounge, side by side on one of the huge leather sofas, waiting to check in.
The woman was as slender as a willow sapling, with long black hair that fell in a curtain, concealing the side of her face.
She was wearing baggy forest-green linen overalls with a white top underneath.
Mav couldn’t figure out why she didn’t look ridiculous in the strange outfit.
She certainly should have. Instead, she somehow managed to look bohemian.
The man was a statuesque, athletic Black man wearing all-white cowboy attire, including a Stetson.
Mav took stock of all the white fabric just waiting to get dirty, figured they were city folk here to play for the week. Maybe the honeymooners?
As he moved past, the man accidentally dropped his phone on the floor by the woman’s feet.
Maverick smiled and bent to retrieve it. ‘Here you go.’ He looked up, the phone in his hand.
And then simply stared.
The woman looking back at him had big, dark eyes that were completely oversized in her pale face. They were so intense, so sad, that for a full three seconds, he didn’t see the bruises beneath the expertly applied makeup.
When he did, the sight of them, the unexpected whip of anger that slashed through him, kick-started his brain. Not the honeymooners, he realized. The actress.
He had been told she’d be arriving later in the day, and taken off-guard, at a loss for what to say, he only smiled and quietly tipped his head in greeting. ‘Ma’am.’