He heard the long silence after Poppy’s declaration that she didn’t like her mom, followed by Nina’s sweet reply.
Her words humbled him. He wasn’t the best dad, not by far. He tried his best, and maybe that counted for something. And he would have taken a bullet for his kid, but most of the time he felt like a fish out of water. There was so much he didn’t know, so many things he did terribly, and as much as Sierra was playing when she declared herself Best Aunty in the World, Mav wasn’t entirely sure how he would have survived without her and Benji in those first few years. And Marisol, José’s mother, who had come and helped him at nights. And Jenna, Poppy’s nanny of almost four years … It truly took a village.
Despite the beautiful life he had been given, Maverick had seen plenty of hardship. But nothing came close to the difficulty of being a single parent. The highs were incredible. The lows … the lows could drag a person into the deepest despair.
Still, he plastered a smile onto his face and walked into the kitchen. He stopped just inside, as surprised by their tight circle as he was by the warmth that spread through him as he took them in.
Nina stood at the stove in a Hunt Ranch shirt, stirring the pasta sauce. Sierra sat in a chair nearby with Poppy on her lap. The three made a pretty picture, he thought. They might have been related.
Until a person looked closely.
Sierra and Poppy were darker, like him, compliments of his and Sierra’s Chumash great-grandmother. Nina Keller, with her pale skin and pin-straight ebony hair, was all Black Irish.
‘I could eat a horse,’ he said, knowing it would get a reaction out of Poppy.
‘No, Daddy!’ She giggled. She climbed off Sierra’s lap to run to him. ‘We made pasta,’ she said again.
‘We still need to cook the pasta,’ Sierra interrupted. ‘Mav, why don’t you show Nina to her room, and then get cleaned up.’ She turned to Nina. ‘No offence, but you both smell like the barn.’
Nina only laughed and held out her arms as she looked down on her dirty clothes. ‘I don’t even smell it on me anymore.’
‘Come on.’ Mav shucked his head in the direction of the stairs.
‘Poppy, you stay here,’ Sierra said as Poppy started to follow Nina. ‘I need your help, little chef.’
‘’Kay,’ Poppy said. But she turned to Nina and very seriously added, ‘I’m making dinner, but I’ll be here once you’ve had a shower.’
‘Okay,’ Nina replied, matching Poppy’s tone.
Maverick was intensely aware of Nina behind him.
At her last birthday, Mav had shown Poppy static by rubbing a balloon against her hair until it had stood up on end and they’d both laughed hysterically. That’s what it felt like to have Nina so close. As if there was a constant hum of energy between them, pulling the hair at the nape of his neck to attention.
‘I’m sorry about that. Kids don’t really filter the way we do.’
‘Don’t apologize,’ Nina said from behind him. ‘I should be the one apologizing. I almost made her cry.’
‘She’s five. If you’re here for three weeks, I guarantee you’ll see tears eventually.’
Maverick opened the door to the spare room. It was a large, airy bedroom with big windows that looked out over the tree-lined driveway and an en-suite bathroom. Though they rarely had guests, their cleaning staff deep-cleaned the ranch house once a month, including the guest room. ‘It should be stocked with everything you need but just shout if something’s missing.’
‘Thank you, this is great. I would be more embarrassed if I didn’t feel so much better already.’
Maverick liked that she felt safer, so all he said was, ‘It’s our pleasure.’
He started to go but stopped on the threshold when she said, ‘Poppy’s incredible. You should be proud, Maverick.’
Mav turned to face her again.
‘I don’t need to have had kids to know you’re doing a great job.’
He leaned against the doorframe, hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. He took her in, the tiny woman sitting on the large bed, her hands twisted anxiously together in her lap, her black hair falling down to her hips. He had a need to go to her, to wrap her in his arms again, but he fought it, knowing that nothing good could come of it.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing, so that means a lot.’
‘Trust me when I say this, you’re off the charts on the parenting scale.’ She looked away from him, shook her head. ‘I never really thought about how much I still resented my mother. But Poppy … She saw straight through me.’
‘Kids have a way of doing that,’ Mav said. ‘They’re intuitive, even if they can’t always understand the information they’re processing.’
