They were sitting side by side on the steps, looking out at the ranch by the time he got there. While Nina’s pin-straight hair fell almost to her hips, Poppy’s was a wild tangle that had Mav wincing.
Luckily for him, the first thing he heard was: ‘Nina, do you know how to do a French braid?’
‘I sure do,’ Nina replied.
‘Can you do one in my hair?’ Poppy asked and raised one tiny hand to her tangled hair. ‘Daddy only knows how to do the American one.’
Nina turned to him, dark eyes glinting. ‘The American one?’
He shrugged. ‘It seemed fitting.’
She turned back to Poppy. ‘Come sit here.’ She tapped the stair below her and waited for Poppy to sit between her knees before starting on the bird’s nest of hair.
‘Mind if I watch?’ Mav asked. ‘I’ve been promising to get to a YouTube tutorial for about six months now.’
Nina only patted the space beside her in reply.
Mav sat down, his coffee in one hand. He sat close enough to watch but kept enough distance between them to make Nina comfortable.
And as she painstakingly brushed and thenperfectlybraided Poppy’s hair, explaining each step to Mav as she worked, he decided that kissing Nina had been a terrible mistake. Because even though he knew they were from opposite worlds with little chance of anything serious developing between them, he was desperate to kiss her again. As soon as possible. She could choose the time and the place and how far it would go. But the only thing he knew with certainty was that if he didn’t, he would regret it for the rest of his life.
Chapter 11
‘I leave you alone for five days and this is what I come back to?’
Markus heaved his suitcase onto the bed in the Hunts’ second guest room, which Sierra had cleaned out for him. Although he was only staying through Sunday morning, his brown leather suitcase was as big as Nina’s.
‘What’s in there?’ she asked, eyeing the straining zipper. ‘You’re here fortwo nights.’
‘Only the essentials. And don’t change the subject. Five days, Neens. I leave you alone for five days and you move in with the cowboy and his family?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Nina insisted. Because it wasn’t. Technically.
… Yet.
‘I know it’s not like that,’ Markus stated. ‘I’m your best friend. I know you. And you barely date. You don’t do relationships – especially after five days. Which means that either something is wrong, or something bad has already happened and you never told me.’
‘I knew you would stress. I knew you would drop everything to be here, and …’ Nina sighed. She wasn’t sure how to tell him he was worrying needlessly and smothering her in the process. ‘I don’t need you to worry. I’m doing fine, Markus.’ She thought about the time she’d spent with the horses and with Maverick and Benji and José, and added, ‘I’m good.’
Markus knew her better than anyone, so he knew that she was telling the truth. But he still asked, ‘So, why are you staying here? If you were warming the sheets with Maverick, I would be all for it. But seeing as though you’re not …’
Nina couldn’t quite contain her blush. The whole truth was that when Nina had told Mav that she was afraid, she had been talking about her inexperience.
She wasn’t exactly the siren her films made her out to be.
Markus saw her blush as it spread fire across her pale cheeks. ‘Oh. My. God.Areyou banging the cowboy?’
‘Shhh!’
Markus gasped dramatically. ‘You are!’
‘No.’ Nina cast a panicked glance at the door. ‘And keep your voice down. There’s a five-year-old in the house.’
Markus lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. ‘Are you banging the cowboy?’
‘No,’ she hissed back.
‘Oh.’ Markus’s face fell. ‘Boo.’
