‘I don’t want to know.’
‘He made me wait until I was nineteen.’ She smiled though her eyes remainedsosad. ‘Probably would have made me wait longer if I hadn’t told him I was going to sleep with Kyle Channing.’
‘Kyle Channing?’
‘I made him up,’ Sierra said. ‘Got all dressed up for this imaginary date, and then made sure I left my car keys down at the stables so that Benji would see me leaving.’
‘Smart.’
She accepted that with a small tip of her head. ‘Manipulative, too.’ She sighed. ‘I would have done anything to have him, and it’s so strange now, to look back and wish I’d never set eyes on him.’
‘Yeah. I felt the same way about Shannon when she first left. But then, after I had some time to heal, I realized that if we hadn’t met, I wouldn’t have Poppy …’
‘I don’t have that luxury.’
‘No.’ Mav swallowed his own pain and guilt and regret and said those words he should have said a long time ago. ‘I’m so sorry, Si.’
She frowned. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I asked you to come back.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose when his own tears stung. ‘I committed to the resort because I wanted you to come back. After Mom and Dad … I don’t know. I guess I wanted us to stick together. I wanted you to have something here to come back to and I—’
‘Mav,’ she cut him off, ‘I came back because it was time. The resort gave me the job I wanted,’ she acknowledged. ‘But even without it, I would have come home. Maybe gotten a job at one of the hotels in Santa Barbara or Santa Ynez.’ Reaching across her desk, she took his hand, gave it a quick squeeze. ‘You built something for me to come back to, but I chose to come home because I was ready.’
‘If you hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t have suffered so much.’
‘Maybe not. But I would have ended up with Benji anyway. I know myself well enough to be honest about that, so, please, stop accepting responsibility for my decisions.’
‘I wish I could take some of that pain from you,’ he said. ‘You’re my baby sister. I’m supposed to look after you. Mom and Dad—’
‘You have looked after me. Mav, youdo. But at some point, you’re going to have to accept the fact that you’re not personally responsible for everybody in your life. I’m a grown woman, perfectly able to look after myself.
‘And so is Nina,’ she added, abruptly changing the subject. ‘Have you told her how you feel yet?’
Maverick leaned forward, placing his forearms on his knees and linking his hands. ‘Not in so many words. But she knows.’
‘Say the damn words, Mav.’
‘She knows,’ he repeated. ‘And has to be able to make up her own mind.’
‘You’re so scared of history repeating itself,’ she said quietly. ‘Nina’s not Shannon.’
The first flicker of irritation slashed through him. ‘Sierra,’ he said calmly, ‘I’m going to let you have that punch given the day you’re having. But if you think, for even a second, that I don’t know that, I’m not above calling you an idiot.’
‘So, tell her!’
‘I won’t use my love to blackmail her into staying.’
‘Mav—’
‘I’ve told her she’ll always have a place here,’ he said, cutting her off. ‘Nina knows her own mind.’
‘Telling her she’ll always have a place here, changing the lyrics to a song, isn’t the same as having the conversation,’ Sierra pushed. ‘It’s not the same as looking them in the eye and saying “I love you!”’
‘You’regoing to talk tomeabout having a conversation with my partner?’ he demanded.
‘Yes. Yes, I am. Because I let my person go, Mav. And it’s like willingly opting into a half-lived life. I don’t want you to ever feel this pain.’ She stared at him, her face flushed with anger and pain and panic. ‘You can’t say that Nina knows her own mind and then not trust her to know what to do with the words you give her, not trust her to know that you’re not pressuring her, only loving her.’
Because that settled a blanket of dread and guilt over him, he didn’t argue.
