He kissed the top of Poppy’s head. ‘Thanks, baby.’
Nina couldn’t look at him. She knew that everything she was feeling was too close to the surface just then. While the song had roused her nerves, his proximity had every one of them firing overtime. The immensity of it all was astounding.
Nina knew that roots grew when they were watered, and that family didn’t have to be connected by blood. Family could be made. Luigi and Markus had taught her that. But what she felt for Maverick was different. It was more.Everything.
Shannon stood with a group of colleagues barely out of high school, one ear tuned to their conversation, most of which she barely understood. But her eyes were glued on the tight circle the Hunts made, their chairs turned together, keeping everyone else at a little distance.
Maverick and Nina Keller might not have advertised the fact that they were together. They weren’t all over each other. But their attraction was obvious. And the kiss during the photoshoot … Shannon didn’t care how good of an actress Nina Keller was, that kiss had been one-hundred-per-cent spontaneous. And real.
Shannon, who had always used jealousy to hone what she wanted for her own life, didn’t feel that green-eyed regret when she looked at Maverick and Nina together now.
She had known Maverick had never loved her. Oh, he’d tried to convince himself he did when she’d fallen pregnant, but his willingness to step in and take responsibility had only made her feel trapped. It hadn’t mattered that he was a good man, one of the best. A woman could still feel trapped by a good man.
She’d told him she was pregnant three days before her scheduled termination because, despite what people thought about her, she was a fair woman and he’d deserved to know. And the look on his face … The complete joy … It had terrified her because it had only taken one look at Mav’s face to know that she couldn’t hurt him by going through with it.
Maverick had told her he’d support her no matter what, but she’d told Markus the truth when she’d said she’d felt pressured. Because he’d wanted that baby so goddamn much.
So, she’d chickened out. And although she’d managed to contract a few maternity shoots during her pregnancy, for the most part, she’d been alone at the ranch house from four-thirty in the morning until six in the evening. She didn’t like horses or getting dirty – and neither did her skin. And because she’d seen how hard Maverick worked for everything, she had felt like she couldn’t say anything, couldn’t complain when he’d finally come home, stressed and exhausted.
As her belly had grown, she’d felt the baby sucking the life out of her. And every time someone’s eyes had lit up and they’d said those things people say to pregnant woman, things like: ‘You must be so excited,’ ‘Boy or girl?’ ‘When are you due?’ ‘Do you have any names yet?’ all Shannon had felt was shame. Because all she wanted was to get the baby out so that she could start getting her life back on track.
And then Poppy had been born, and that impossibly huge burst of love she’d felt the moment they’d put her child in her arms had terrified her more than the depression or dread or shame. Because she’d seen the writing on the wall. That burst of love had been so bright it had illuminated her whole future. A life on the ranch she hated with a man she didn’t love, raising a child instead of pursuing the one thing she’d wanted since Harry Jensen had stopped her and her mother on the sidewalk to scout her for his modelling agency when she’d been a fourteen-year-old nobody with a middle-class future ahead of her.
So, she’d left.
But it had taken her two months to summon the strength to actually walk away from Poppy. And, although she didn’t deserve to say it, it had broken her heart. She’d had to sever herself completely because every time Maverick called and tried to get her to go visit, Shannon had felt that panic rise in her throat. She’d known, even then, that if she went back, held her daughter, smelled that infant smell, she wouldn’t be able to walk away again.
Still, leaving had cast her into a depression that sometimes still swallowed her. Though she couldn’t speak to anyone about it –boo hoo, poor woman who abandoned her baby!– she checked the Hunt Ranch Instagram every day, hoping for something –anything– of Poppy.
Shannon was an intelligent woman. She did not wallow in self-pity because she knew she had made her own choices. But it was only now, with her career dwindling despite the blood and pain she’d suffered for it, and not a single person but herself to care, that she realized that Poppy would have loved her unconditionally. Ironically, she might have been the only person who would have, too.
Instead, Shannon had stayed away and now she and Poppy didn’t know how to interact with one another. And Shannontried. But it was hard to try when the five-year-old in question would so clearly rather be anywhere else.
Seeing that Nina was walking to the bar, Shannon politely excused herself from the group and drifted to her. She wouldn’t stir trouble. She had too much riding on Markus to piss him off.
She came up beside her, wasn’t above noticing that while Nina Keller was beautiful, the actress wasn’t built to knock people flat like she was. Nina was small and delicate while Shannon was tall and slim with perfect proportions.
The tension ratcheted up a notch when Nina noticed her. The air between them seemed to solidify.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to cause a scene,’ she said by way of introduction. ‘It’s not my style.’ Which wasn’t entirely true. Drama was necessary for attention. But at the right time and place.
Nina didn’t reply right away. She smiled at the bartender and ordered two margaritas and a beer, and it was only once the man had turned to sort the drinks, that she faced Shannon. ‘What do you want?’
Shannon had to hand it to her. Nina Keller had a backbone. ‘I was hoping you could invite me to join you,’ she replied.
Nina stared at her in shock.
‘Mav doesn’t trust me—’
‘Don’t tell me that surprises you?’
‘No. Not at all.’ She refused to succumb to sadness though it would have been genuine and probably would have helped her cause. ‘I don’t want to push my way in. But I’d really like to spend a little time with Poppy before I leave tomorrow.’
‘Shannon—’ Nina shook her head ‘—you’re Poppy’s mom. You don’t have to ask me for permission.’
‘I figured if we could get along, it might put Mav at ease. Poppy … She picks up on his emotions, you know. It makes it hard to want to try.’
Nina’s eyebrows raised, but not in judgement. Her eye flickered over Shannon, considering. ‘Why don’t you visit her?’
