Chapter 3
They found Maverick just as he was herding the Morgans into the barn to show them where they would meet up with the wranglers if they signed up for any riding lessons.
They waited on the peripheries, listening as his deep voice explained, ‘Once you fill out the sign-up sheet at the front desk and schedule a ride, we’ll know which horse will suit you best—’
‘Which one will I ride?’ June squeaked.
Maverick didn’t repeat his instructions. He only smiled and crouched down to the little girl’s level. ‘I’m thinking Spirit for you.’
Mr and Mrs Morgan laughed.
‘Which one is she?’ June asked seriously.
‘He’s that big one over there.’ He pointed to a stall behind where Markus and Nina were standing and saw them for the first time. ‘If you go with your mom, you can have a look at him.’ Maverick pushed back to his feet. ‘Excuse me for a minute, folks.’
Nina hated that her muscles tensed as if preparing – just in case. She despised the fact that she couldn’t fake a smile. She was an actress, goddammit! But the grimace she plastered on her face felt tight, forced. Wrong.
‘Everything okay?’ Maverick asked as he approached, but Nina noticed that he stopped a good five feet from them.
Embarrassed by her obvious anxiety, she only looked to Markus, who immediately stepped in to say, ‘I was hoping to sneak in a quick chat about booking a photoshoot here.’
As Maverick moved closer, Nina turned away.
It wasn’t that she was scared, necessarily, but she had seen the moment he’d noticed her bruises in the lobby; she’d recognized the anger that had turned his blue eyes dark and killed his kind smile.
And it had embarrassed her, that a stranger could feel so much rage on her behalf when she couldn’t summon the emotion for herself.
All she felt was sad and scared. And so tired.
So, she avoided Markus’s concern and the cowboy’s anger and let them talk business as she wandered off to peek in the stalls.
She moved slowly, making sure not to make too much noise or alarm any of the horses.
June Morgan’s mother smiled at her in that oddly intimate, exuberant way that people did with celebrities, as if they knew them well when, in fact, they only knew the characters they’d played.
‘Hi! It’s so amazing to meet you! I’m a huge fan! ’
Nina returned the smile, and although she was too aware of her bruises to stop and make conversation, she replied, ‘Thank you. It’s lovely to meet you too,’ as she continued walking past the stalls.
A few of the horses nickered. One particularly curious one, a black-and-grey horse whose name, Zephyr, was tacked above her stall, came forward and snorted at her.
Nina sighed and, reaching one hand forward tentatively, stroked the horse’s silky black nose.
She moved on after a few minutes, walking slowly, taking her time as she absorbed the smells and sounds.
There was something so visceral about the earthy, heady smell of horse and hay and manure, as if there were some biological mechanism at play that compelled her curiosity, perhaps some evolutionary awareness of how much humans had depended on them at some point.
Being among them felt natural, she supposed, as if she’d done all this before when, really, Nina rarely spent time in the country.
She came to the last stall and looked in.
Her heart stopped beating for one long moment as she took in the defeated creature inside.
She didn’t have to know anything about horses to see one that had been grossly mistreated and malnourished.
She could count the poor thing’s ribs over her oddly barrelled stomach.
And her eyes … Her eyes brought tears to Nina’s own.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, and took a step closer.
The horse jerked to attention.
Nina’s heart lurched.
She stopped moving as the horse shied away and began to pace anxiously.
Nina took a few hurried steps back – straight into a solid chest.
She jumped just like the horse had, spun around clumsily, her hands raised instinctively.
Instead of reaching out to steady her, Maverick held up both hands, his palms facing forward, and in a voice that was so low, so quiet, said, ‘Easy.’
‘I’m so sorry!’ Nina placed one hand over her pounding heart, begging it to settle. ‘I didn’t see you there,’ she explained breathlessly.
‘No harm done.’ He smiled gently, looked past her to the horse. ‘She’s a new rescue. She only came in a few days ago, so she’s a little worse for wear.’
He stepped past Nina and, raising his voice, said, ‘She’s a little spooky still.’
‘I think I scared her,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t know. I just wanted to say hi and—’
‘Miss Keller—’
‘Nina.’
Maverick ignored that. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
The horse continued to pace. ‘Don’t you think we should be quiet?’ she whispered.
‘Stop looking at her.’
‘What?’ Nina frowned at the gently issued command, but she looked away from the horse to focus on Maverick.
He smiled, softened his tone, but it seemed to be more for Nina’s benefit than the horse’s.
‘Horses are prey animals. Predators have eyes that face forward, so if you’re looking at a horse straight on, sometimes they feel threatened.
Horses that have been around good humans a lot might not have the same fearful response.
But in her current state, and trapped in the stall as she is, she can’t handle it.
’ He leaned his back against the stall, deliberately ignoring the horse.
Nina shouldn’t have noticed the span of his broad shoulders or the way his shirt contoured to muscles well used to physical labour.
She shouldn’t have noticed his gentle blue eyes, or the laugh lines around them.
But she did. And she begrudgingly acknowledged that Markus might have something for his shoot.
Maverick kept his tone even when he continued. ‘Horses can also hear human heartbeats within four feet of them. So, if your heart was racing and you approached her straight on, she wouldn’t have thought you just wanted to say hello. She would have thought “Danger!” and reacted appropriately.’
Nina took stock of her heart, still beating frantically, and then moved back several steps, putting herself well over four feet away from the horse. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. She needs to learn that she’s safe; otherwise, she won’t be rideable.
And she won’t find a home. The only way she’s going to learn is by exposure.
Or desensitization as we call it in the horse world.
’ On the other side of the barn, the Morgans moved closer, and Maverick lowered his voice just for her.
‘I’m not telling you all this to make you feel guilty.
I’m telling you so that you understand she’s having a very normal response. She only needs to work through it.’
Nina glanced at the horse, noticed that she had already stopped pacing. Now, she stood stock-still, her ears twitching, her eyes focused on Maverick’s back. ‘She seems calmer.’
‘Yeah.’ Maverick tipped his head in the horse’s direction. ‘Wanna come try again?’
Nina hesitated. She didn’t want to cause any more harm than she already had …
Maverick saw her hesitation. ‘I wouldn’t offer if I thought either of you couldn’t handle it.’
Nina didn’t move, but she did ask, ‘What do I do?’
‘Take a huge breath in, hold it in your lungs for two seconds, and then exhale it loudly.’ He demonstrated, filling his lungs with a big breath and then releasing it slowly.
Nina’s skin prickled as the Morgans’ attention fixed on her. She looked for Markus, hoping he’d intercede, but he was distracted, taking photos of a horse further down. Seeing no way out, she took a deep breath, quietly asked, ‘Is this where you make fun of the city slicker?’
‘No, ma’am.’ When he grinned, Nina felt a tiny responding nudge low in her stomach. ‘We save the line dancing for that.’
When she still hesitated, Maverick didn’t push, only waited quietly.
It was Nina who took the first breath. She inhaled deeply, held it, and then exhaled in one huge whoosh.
‘Good. Keep doing that.’
She breathed five more times before Maverick waved her forward, and when she took a tentative step, he said, ‘Don’t be so cautious. She’ll think she has something to worry about. Just do everything normally. As if you were talking to a friend or working on a film.’
Nina approached more confidently, though it was a lie. An act. She felt unsure and anxious, even a little scared.
‘Keep breathing.’
She exhaled the breath she had been holding in another loud whoosh. Inhaled again as she touched the stall door.
Maverick slid the lock out and slipped inside. ‘You ever meet Margot Robbie?’
‘No. Why? Is she good with horses?’
‘No idea.’ He shrugged. ‘I just watched Barbie with my daughter the other day, and my sister told me the actress was Margot Robbie.’
‘You didn’t know who Margot Robbie was?’
‘I do now – keep breathing.’
‘What are we doing here exactly?’ she asked, but she did as she was told.
‘Talking. Breathing.’
Nina took another pointedly exaggerated breath in and released it.
Only this time, the horse behind her did the same thing. Nina heard it – the long exhalation, almost a sigh. ‘Did you hear that?’
Maverick grinned. ‘How’s that heart of yours?’
Nina focused on her heartbeat, realized that he had completely distracted her from her anxiety. ‘Huh.’
‘Breathing,’ he said simply.
‘Now what?’
Maverick turned. He reached over the stall door and into a nearby bin, pulled out a scooper filled with pellets.
The horse perked up at the sound.
‘Come stand this side of me,’ he told Nina. ‘I don’t want you between her and the wall.’
Nina followed orders, and when the horse took one step closer and her heart started thumping excitedly, she resumed her deep breathing.
‘See, you’re a natural.’
‘I feel like an idiot.’ She laughed. ‘Breathing for a horse.’