Chapter 5
The first thing Nina did when she got back to her cabin was check the locks on her door and windows, something she hadn’t wanted to do in front of Markus.
The door also included an interior security chain. Though neither was failproof, she knew somebody would have to be exceptionally committed, enraged, and powerful to actually kick the door in.
But the windows … The cabin windows, four at the front of the house and two in the bedroom, were big casement windows that opened outwards.
They were beautiful, made from the same dark wood as the rest of the cabin, and they opened to views of the horse pasture.
But Nina’s heart sank when she saw the flimsy brass sliding locks, made more for aesthetic purposes than anything else.
They looked lovely but she had no need for pretty window treatments.
She needed to feel secure.
She slid the lock into place and walked outside, following the porch until she came to the same window.
Raising both her hands, she pushed where the wooden frames met in the middle.
The lock slipped out of place immediately, the window popped open, giving her a full view of her small lounge area and, further towards the back, her bedroom.
Worse, the sill was only waist-high, so that all she had to do was sling one leg over to hop inside.
She momentarily considered asking if they could move her inside the resort building where every room undoubtedly had standard keycard security, but then immediately decided against it because she didn’t want to be so close to all the other guests at Hunt Ranch.
It wasn’t that Nina didn’t typically like people or enjoy the attention that came with her fame.
But at the moment, she was tired. Too tired to fake a smile and pretend she was having a grand time talking to a bunch of strangers about acting.
Too tired to lie about the bruises on her face.
Only the mere thought of all that speculation, rumours, and questions was enough to exhaust her.
Instead, she went back inside, walked through the bedroom to the bathroom.
The only window in the bathroom was the floor-to-ceiling one by the tub.
It was a single pane of glass, fixed in place.
It didn’t open. Still, Nina skirted the sleek egg tub and stood in front of the glass.
She pressed around the edges, testing the strength of it, and only once she was satisfied that it was sturdy did she turn to assess the lock on the bathroom door.
It was a single-sided deadbolt. Strong enough.
She turned around, taking in the bathroom.
It was big. The floors were wood, the tile on the walls and in the shower a soft green.
The white monogrammed towels, neatly folded over the rail, were big and thick.
It certainly wasn’t the bedroom with its luxurious California king bed, but it would have to do.
Nina walked back through the cabin. She rechecked that the door and the windows were locked, opened a bottle of wine and grabbed a wine glass and a bag of chips from the fully stocked bar in the kitchen.
She headed back to the bathroom, set everything up on the ledge of the tub before walking back through to her bedroom.
She stripped the bed and carried the comforter through with a single pillow before going back for pyjamas and her laptop.
She locked herself in the bathroom.
Showered.
Changed.
She turned off the lights and crawled into the bathtub, which she’d turned into a makeshift bed, picked up her wine, and opened her laptop to find a movie.
Her absurd attempt at security wasn’t lost on her.
Nina was fully aware that she was suffering for no reason.
She could have asked to be moved to the resort.
She could have asked for sturdier locks to be installed on the windows and knew, given the price she was paying, it would be done.
But she also understood that any hypervigilance on her part would only raise additional questions – questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.
So, instead of all the things she could have done, she opened Netflix, chose How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days because in the past week even the anxiety of a new movie plot had become too much.
And nothing comforted her more than rewatching a low-stakes romcom, one where she could just follow along without stress or fear or uncertainty.
Nina hit play and settled back against her pillow. She took a sip of her wine as the opening credits rolled, tried to ignore the setting sun outside the window, and promised herself, ‘Only for tonight,’ even though it was just another lie.
She started fighting sleep during the first season of Bridgerton close to one o’clock in the morning.
Outside, the darkness was thick around the cabin, so that Nina couldn’t see anything but the glare of her laptop reflected back at her.
As the violins played on screen, she stared at the glass window, narrowing her eyes on a slight movement outside, only a hint of movement in the darkness.
Someone was outside.
Her heart began to thrash, each heavy da-dum ricocheting in her ears so that all she heard was her fear. Through the mayhem, her brain screamed at her to get up and run, even as her legs locked with panic, refusing to budge. Sweat surfaced on her skin.
She hit the space bar, pausing the show.
She stared at the glass for a long, taut moment.
Waiting.
Watching.
Praying.
And when the shadows didn’t flicker again, she tentatively sat up in the bathtub. She slowly, so slowly, leaned forward, almost pressing her face against the glass in an attempt to see into the blackness.
She jerked back, a rabbit in a trap, as he slammed himself against the glass outside, hands and face plastered as if could simply pass through.
His eyes, bloodshot and crazed, stared at her.
His mouth curved in a knowing, mocking grin.
Nina dropped the laptop. She scrambled back and out of the bathtub as an otherworldly scream was ripped from her throat.
She tripped and landed on her ass, didn’t have time to stand, only faced the window as she scurried backwards like some lesser life form. A crab. A mouse. Something small and easily consumed.
Her back hit the bathroom door with a solid thwack. She stopped, curled into the corner. Her mind flicked through her options. Run – but he would be faster. Fight – but he would be stronger. Call for help – but he would have her by the time help arrived.
Knowing the advantage he had, he laughed, and it was not a monster’s cackle but a deep, smooth chuckle that fogged the glass in front of his mouth.
Bile rushed her throat as he began to write in the condensation, the sound of his excited breathing reaching for her through the glass. Though she knew it was impossible, his cologne stung her sensory memory. There were only three letters that Nina read backwards. RUN.
She woke up in a full panic.
She gasped deeply, trying to inhale through the suffocating tightness in her chest. Each breath sawed out of her, sounding painful even to her own ears. Her sweat turned cold on her skin, making her shiver. Tears of frustration streamed down her face.
She lay stock-still and focused on breathing as she took in her surroundings. You’re safe, she reminded herself. No one knows you’re at Hunt Ranch.
Outside, early morning light was just starting to creep into the darkness, easing some of her claustrophobia. Nina closed her eyes and took deep, deliberate breaths as she tried to calm herself.
Slowly, her heart stopped racing, her tears dried. But as the adrenaline began to drain from her system, all she felt was deeply, unmeasurably empty.
On the computer screen in front of her, Netflix wanted to know if she was still watching, and because she desperately wanted to click ‘Continue’ and then curl up and stay right where she was, Nina, on principle, shut the laptop and sat up.
She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her forehead against her raised knees for a moment as she composed herself.
She wasn’t entirely sure how it had come down to this, wasn’t quite certain how a life could be so drastically altered in only one night.
The despair and hopelessness threatened to take her back under, but this time Nina did not allow it. She needed to find her way back to the woman she had been only a week ago. She needed to take control of her life again, needed to stop being so afraid. Of everything.
Only seven days ago she had been a successful, famous, wealthy woman who had started from nothing – less than nothing. She had been the most unlikely of statistics. The American dream.
But as she had discovered, the problem with dreaming is that at some point you had to wake up.
‘Get up. Move on,’ she told herself, and when the suffocating despair didn’t dissipate, she repeated it like a mantra. ‘Get up. Move on. Get up. Move on.’
She pushed up out of the bathtub, wincing slightly as her ribs protested the movement, and cautiously let herself out of the bathroom.
Her eyes scanned each room before she entered, checking that nobody was there, but she tried not to internalize it too much.
After being assaulted in her own home, Nina wasn’t sure any room would ever feel safe again, and she could allow herself that so long as she could still force her feet to enter them.
She decided, ‘Coffee,’ and after only one look at the sun just starting to peek over the mountains, added, ‘outside.’ She might live in the Hollywood Hills, but not even she had a view like this.
She didn’t bother changing, only picked up the red and tan striped blanket off the back of the sofa in the lounge, threw it over her shoulders, and padded barefoot to the kitchen.
Four minutes later, she unlocked the front door and stepped onto the little cabin’s porch, a cup of coffee in one hand, her cell phone and the Birdie from Markus in the other.
She ignored the way her heart started that incessant anxious tick at simply walking outside and forced her feet to move forward.
She padded to the porch swing and curled up on it, tucking her feet beneath her as she took that first sip.
The view was incredible. As dawn crept over the mountains, painting the sky in blues and golds, Nina looked out at green pastures. Horses of different colours grazed, their heads down, tails flicking.
Unable to resist, she put her coffee on the seat beside her and picked up her phone.
She numbly dismissed the seven missed calls from Alexander Cane, the Shadowlands producer, and snapped a picture of the sunrise.
Though she knew he would be fast asleep for hours yet, she sent it to Markus, captioned it with: Are you sure you couldn’t live here?
And then she simply sat there alone, curled up on the porch swing, comforted enough by the unfurling day and stretching sunlight to fall back into an exhausted slumber, her coffee forgotten beside her.
Maverick saw her immediately. Or, rather, saw her head of glossy black hair immediately. The rest of her was cocooned in one of the fancy resort blankets.
He was surprised, too. If he’d had to guess which guests might be up before sunrise, Nina Keller wouldn’t have been one. But only because he figured a woman with a face like that got beauty sleep in epic proportions.
Still, he raised a hand and waved.
She didn’t respond.
At all.
With any other guest, it wouldn’t have bothered him. But given that Sierra had told them all to have their eyes and ears to the ground during Nina Keller’s stay, his compulsion to check on her won out over his rational mind, which told him she had probably just dozed off.
Maverick cued Zephyr into a brisk walk in her direction with a subtle shift of his lower body. He crossed the large pasture quickly, only slowing his horse when he was close enough to notice that she was, in fact, fast asleep.
He stopped Zephyr about thirty yards from the cabin’s porch, and though he knew he should have turned and walked away, he didn’t.
Couldn’t. He looked at Nina, her skin clear of any makeup, and saw the patchwork bruises spreading over the entire right side of her face, from her hairline to chin.
They were starting to fade. A week old, he reminded himself.
But that meant that the reds, purples, and blacks were fading to that sickly yellow, which somehow looked so much worse.
He took in her size, so small and delicate, maybe five-four and a buck ten, and couldn’t quite fathom the type of person, the type of man, who would raise his fists to someone so much smaller than himself.
Fights happened. Mav understood that, accepted it. But any man who raised his fists to a woman, to someone who had no chance of an equal fight was the worst type of coward.
So many thoughts crossed Mav’s mind. He wondered if it had been a break-in, and if anything valuable had been taken. If it had been a random attack, the man had certainly possessed an unholy amount of rage. To hit a woman was bad enough, but to hit one you didn’t know, repeatedly …
He wondered if, instead, her attacker had stalked her, and if Nina had crossed paths with him at one time, maybe rejected his advances? That would explain, though not justify, the rage – and it would give Maverick more to be concerned about.
The little he did know about stalkers indicated that they weren’t rational.
They were obsessive and disillusioned, which typically equated to dangerous.
A random attack wouldn’t have concerned him so much, but a stalker …
If she had a stalker, there was no telling when he would try to find Nina Keller again.
But it didn’t take a genius to figure that, statistically, he would.
Still, knowing that he had no right to ask, and that he was intruding, Mav leaned his weight back in the saddle and extended his legs slightly, silently telling Zephyr to back up.
The horse got five steps before snorting – loudly.