Chapter 6
Nina popped awake with a loud gasp.
Zephyr spooked and danced to the side. Mav kept his seat easily, issued a long, deep, ‘Whoa.’ Beneath him, the horse settled.
Nina, on the other hand, had one hand over her heart. She took deep breaths as if she was on the verge of a panic attack. Her eyes darted about like ping-pong balls.
‘Apologies,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ And in lieu of telling her he had been checking up on her, added, ‘I was just rounding up the horses for the day.’
She managed to focus on him through the panic. Recognition dawned slowly. She closed her eyes, took one last audible breath, and said, ‘That’s okay.’ She turned her face away from him, clearly embarrassed. ‘I must have dozed off.’
Mav deliberately looked out over the pasture, giving her time to compose herself. ‘It’s as good a spot as any.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’
She got to her feet, which, he noted with some surprise, were bare, and padded across the deck to the porch rail. Gripping the blanket with both hands at her collar, she indicated to his horse, asked, ‘Is she yours? I saw her yesterday …’
‘Yeah.’ Mav sent Zephyr forward with the tiniest roll of his calf until the horse stood directly in front of Nina.
She raised one slender hand and stroked the mare’s face.
‘She was born in a kill pen. One of their staff, an eighteen-year-old kid who was new to the job, stole her. He and a buddy accessed the property at night, put her in his truck, brought her here.’
Nina didn’t look at him, only watched the horse as she continued to stroke her. ‘That’s a good origin story.’
Maverick smiled when he remembered the rusty truck bumping down the Hunt Ranch drive and the shock of surprise he’d felt when José, just a kid himself, had hauled the tiny, sickly foal out of the back seat of his Ford. ‘Kid quit the next day. Came to work for me. That was about six years ago now.’
‘She’s only six?’ Nina asked. ‘She’s so grey.’
‘The black and grey is her natural coat colour. We call it “blue roan”.’
Nina stepped back. ‘Watching you up there makes me wish I had learned how to ride.’ She shook her head. A soft, sardonic smile teased her mouth. ‘Though I don’t suppose I’d look as natural as you do.’
Mav thought about that for a moment. ‘There’s not much opportunity for horseback riding in LA?’
‘Some. But it’s rare for inner-city kids, and my mother …’ She seemed to rethink what she was going to say, finished with: ‘She could never have afforded it.’
There was something in her tone, something sad and resigned. Bitter, maybe. He didn’t pry. Only said, ‘It’s never too late to learn. And the basics of horse riding are simpler than most things.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. Don’t fall off, for starters.’
Nina smiled. She looked at his saddle, almost mistrustfully. ‘Something tells me it’s a little more complicated than that.’
‘Not on Zephyr,’ he insisted.
She took a step back, but she looked straight at him for the first time when she replied. ‘Maybe, I’ll sign up for a riding lesson while I’m here. See how it goes …’
‘How about now?’
‘Excuse me?’
Mav told himself that the only reason he offered was because she looked so small and forlorn, so lonely, up there on the porch, and he didn’t want to leave her.
But it was more than that. He hated suffering, tried his hardest to ease it wherever he could, be it in an abused horse or, as it were, a woman.
He had always been like that. As a man who had been raised tending animals, his prime directive had always been to guard and nurture. He didn’t know any other way.
But his own pain had amplified his need to protect others too.
When his parents had died, he’d thought nothing would ever hurt as much.
Then Shannon had decided that being a rancher’s wife wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought it would be and she had left, and that had hurt even more because it had been his fault, his shortcomings that she had thrown in his face as she’d packed her things.
As it were, she barely even checked in on Poppy.
Oh, there was the rare phone call and even rarer visit, but only when Shannon needed to relieve her own guilt a little bit.
And even then, it was Mav who felt guilty.
As if his inability to make Shannon happy had deprived Poppy of the chance for a family – a family like the one he’d grown up with.
Then Sierra and Benji’s baby girl had died and that had been the hardest. He’d arrived at the hospital filled with joy and excitement, and left with a broken heart, the flowers he’d carried with him becoming morbid in a single moment.
And then afterwards, he’d had to watch his little sister and best friend live with a degree of suffering he couldn’t even fathom, let alone do anything to ease.
Mav never wanted to feel any of that pain again, and he couldn’t help but try to reduce it as much as he could for others, too.
‘Put some jeans on,’ he said to Nina. ‘I’ll give you your first lesson and then source you a decent cup of coffee.’
Nina tightened the blanket around her shoulders. ‘I don’t want to get in the way …’
He considered being gentle, settled on directness instead.
‘Is that true?’ He leaned one forearm on the horn of his saddle.
‘If you don’t want to ride, I’ll understand.
You’re a guest, here to relax. But if you’re genuinely worried about getting in the way – don’t be.
Ms Keller, I’m not the type to offer when I don’t mean it. ’
She blinked once as if he’d shocked her.
‘You have a pair of boots?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Well then.’
Gripping the blanket with one hand, she raised the other to her mouth, nibbled on her thumbnail as if the decision was giving her genuine anxiety.
Maverick didn’t push, though he found himself surprised at how much he wanted her to say yes.
She didn’t maintain eye contact, rather turned to study Zephyr, her eyes wide with a mix of anticipation and uncertainty. ‘Five minutes,’ she said finally. She turned to go back inside, looked over her shoulder at him, but only to repeat, ‘Five minutes.’
The moment he nodded, she dropped the blanket on the porch and ran inside, but not before giving him an eyeful of barely there pink silk pyjamas and slender legs.
Mav exhaled one tight breath, looked away, out over the pasture, and reminded himself that while noticing wasn’t a crime, he could – would – be professional. And nothing more.
Nina was famous, and he wouldn’t be one of the sad millions who treated her differently because of it. She had just been hurt irreparably by a man and didn’t need to ward off another. Hell, even if she had been interested, he didn’t do casual. At the rate he was going, he didn’t do serious either.
He had dated in the five years since Shannon had left, sure.
He loved women, missed having one in his life.
But even though he had been attracted to more than one of the women he’d gone out with, he hadn’t felt anything more than that little spark and certainly not enough to introduce a single one of them to Poppy.
He didn’t consider himself overprotective. But he knew the agony of being abandoned, of being found lacking, and he wouldn’t risk Poppy’s heart by introducing her to anyone he wasn’t certain would stick around.
So, he ignored the pleasure he’d felt when Nina had agreed to the lesson, pointedly eradicated the image of her pink silk pyjamas from his mind, and reminded himself that it was his job to ensure guests enjoyed their stays. Nothing more.
He figured she’d take twenty minutes, so was genuinely surprised when she ran back out not even seven later.
She was dressed in jeans, boots, and a pretty white blouse that was just begging to get ruined.
She had covered her bruises with light makeup, hiding the worst of them, and hurriedly braided her hair so that it fell in a long tail down her back.
‘Record time.’
‘I would say that I didn’t want to keep you waiting, but the truth is that I hate to primp. It wastes so much time. And for who?’
Maverick swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted. He wanted to say that, with a face like that, she had no need to primp anyway. But didn’t.
He sized her up, guesstimated the length of her legs and adjusted the stirrups accordingly.
Nina approached Zephyr cautiously, less confident now that she realized she was going to be sitting on top of the horse. Maverick noticed her slow movements, asked, ‘Remember what we went through yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
But he summarized the lesson anyway. ‘Breathe deeply. Approach with confidence.’
‘She doesn’t seem anxious,’ Nina observed. ‘Not like Barbie was.’
‘She’s not. But you are.’
‘Oh.’ She laughed lightly, raised one hand to her heart as if she needed to feel it beating. ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Look at me.’
She raised those fathomless eyes to his.
Maverick felt the pull of them immediately and took a deep inhalation to steady his own pulse.
‘I’m not going to let anything happen to you.
’ When she only nodded uncertainly, he added, ‘This is the horse I teach my five-year-old to ride on. She’s what we call “bomb-proof”.
That’s not to say she doesn’t get scared – she’s still an animal.
But at her most terrified, she might spook a tiny bit.
It’ll feel like a little lurch beneath you, and I’ll be right at your side to steady you in the unlikely event that she gets a fright. All right?’
She exhaled her first audible breath. ‘All right.’
Maverick waved her over, and when she approached to stand beside him, he asked, ‘May I touch you?’
Nina jerked to attention.
Her head snapped back.
Those enormous eyes, full of questions and fear, searched his face.
Mav only raised one hand to the saddle. ‘You’re a little short to reach the stirrups and we don’t have a mounting block,’ he explained. ‘I’ll need to help you up.’