‘Letushelp,’ Mav finished.
Nina slumped against him and sighed. ‘It’s going to be rough, Mav. Imagine never being able to leave the ranch because the media are literally camped outside the gates. Or, having to tell Poppy to hide every time Jenna drives her to daycare so that her face doesn’t end up plastered in tabloids.’
He didn’t lie to her. He rubbed small, slow circles on her back, soothing in the only way he knew how. ‘I know.’
He looked across the room to his sister, asking her for permission because the resort was half hers, too.
Sierra nodded. ‘We look after our own.’
‘We’ll close to the public for a few weeks during the worst of it. Starting now, through the initial media frenzy. Take it day by day after that.’
‘And Poppy?’
If Maverick had had any doubts before that moment, they vanished completely when Nina asked about Poppy. The simple question reminded him that he had finally found a woman who thought about his kid first. A woman who wanted his five-year-old along on a date with them, did fancy braids in her hair, and baked cookies for no other reason than to keep her entertained.
‘It’s summer. She’s only in daycare because of the ranch. We pull her out for a few weeks.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d prefer for her to be close anyway.’
‘If you’re okay with it, Nina, I would like to debrief the staff at the meeting tonight. The more eyes watching for media, the better.’
Nina nodded.
Sierra looked at her watch. ‘We have a few hours yet.’
‘I think I should tell you the full story.’ On his lap, Nina angled her face to look at him.
Mav’s heart broke at the devastation in her eyes. ‘If you need to, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘But we don’t have to know the details to believe you. We’re here for you regardless.’
‘I want to – to explain.’
He heard the guilt in her tone and wondered at it even as he nodded. ‘Here.’ He dislodged her from his lap and moved off the chair, offering her the seat again before he grabbed her a glass of water.
As much as he wanted to keep holding her, he knew his body wouldn’t be able to hide his rage as he listened to her story, and he didn’t want to scare her. Nina needed strength just then. Not the anger and violence he felt coursing through him.
‘I dated him – Alex.’
In the chair next to Sierra’s, Markus’s brows shot up.
‘I knew, even though I said yes to going out with him, that it wouldn’t go anywhere.’ She smiled grimly. ‘I liked him as a person. He was funny. He had this weird way of being pushy and making it seem charming. But I only said yes because I felt …’ she shook her head, searching for the word ‘… obligated, I guess. He had given me this huge role. The role that very well might have made me – at least that’s what I thought at the time. So, I never told anyone. My plan was to go out with him and then try to work it into the conversation that I wanted to be friends.
‘Except every time I tried to bring it up, he’d kinda talk over me, you know. It sounds so silly now … I could have avoided so much just by being firm that first time he’d asked me out.
‘I don’t really have a ton of experience in that department … I didn’t know that I was leading him on.’
‘You weren’t.’ This came from Benji. ‘Agreeing to go on a date with a man is not agreeing to anything else, including sex. And the fucker knew that. I’m not saying it’s a crime to try. I think that’s pretty normal. But it is to assume. And it certainly is to pressure.’
Nina shook her head. ‘It didn’t feel like pressure the first date. He was aggressive, but mostly just in talking over me. That kind of thing. But I started to get a little offput when he didn’t even give me a chance to refuse the second date. He just showed up at my house, told me he’d made reservations.
‘I was in my pyjamas already, so he knew I had no plans. I felt like I couldn’t say no. But I was committed to telling him I wasn’t looking for anything serious. So, I went.
‘And because he picked me up in his car, he dropped me home afterwards—’ Mav was looking at her, so he saw her eyes glaze over as she thought back ‘—at my front door, he kinda spun me around and pressed in. You know, very romance novel hero.’
‘Yeah. Except you didn’t want him to,’ Sierra observed.
Nina nodded. ‘He kissed me. And I don’t remember feeling anything except trapped. I was trying to move away when his hand dropped to the front of my pants …’
Mav could imagine her, so small, trapped against her own door by a man a foot taller than her, and it crushed him to even think about it.
‘I panicked. I shoved him off me.’ She chuckled mirthlessly. ‘He looked so surprised,’ she recalled. ‘As if he’d never been rejected before.
