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. Andso 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.
