Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Moving nervously in his seat, Ben looked from me to Maverick and said, “It’s just, you work for her.”
“He doesn’t work for me, Ben. He works for my father.”
“Wow, snob much, Ben?” Renee said under her breath.
Maverick cleared his throat. “It’s okay, I’ll just go…” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
With a smile in my direction, he walked toward where Avery and Morgan stood. Avery was my younger cousin, and I knew she wouldn’t turn down a dance from Maverick if that was where he was heading.
For some reason, I wasn’t okay with him dancing with Avery. She was a lot younger than Maverick. Eighteen to his twenty-six.
Standing, I reached for his arm to stop him.
Yep, just as I’d thought. Hard-as-rock muscle lay underneath that suit. I’d seen him in T-shirts, of course, and I could only imagine what the rest of him looked like.
“Wait. I’d love to dance with you, Maverick.”
His eyes lit up, and I couldn’t help but grin at the look of happiness on his face.
The song ended, and he extended his arm for me to take. I wrapped my hand around it, and we started toward the dance floor. When I glanced over my shoulder, Renee gave me a thumbs-up as Ben scowled and shook his head.
What is his problem?
The next song started, and it was slow, one I hadn’t ever heard before. Maverick placed his hand on my lower back and kept a respectable distance between us.
“Be honest,” I said with a grin. “Did Grams tell you to come over and ask me to dance?”
He laughed. “Truthfully?”
“Yes, please.”
“No, she didn’t. I wanted to dance with you.”
My stomach did a little flip. “Oh. Well, you’re a very good dancer, if no one has ever told you before.”
“I actually took dancing lessons when I was seven.”
“Really?” I asked, instantly intrigued. “You never talk much about your childhood. Why is that?”
He did a slow spin of our bodies and moved us across the dance floor with seamless grace. He hadn’t answered my question, and I thought for sure he wasn’t going to. But he surprised me.
“I lived in foster homes growing up. When I was seven, this younger couple took me in. They’d been trying to have a baby and couldn’t get pregnant. They decided to do foster care. I was their first kid.” He smiled as if thinking of them. “They were dancers, both of them. I lived with them for over a year. It was the longest I ever spent in a foster home.”
My chest tightened as his words settled in. “What happened?” I asked.
He tried to smile again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “They decided to adopt me. The day they told me, I was so happy. I honestly don’t ever remember being happier.”
I swallowed hard as I tried to hold back the tears that wanted to build in my eyes at his emotional tone.
“Up until them, all the places I’d stayed were pretty much hell. The people only wanted me because they got money for fostering. I never felt like one of the family until Mindy and Justin. They treated me like I was there son. Made me feel deserving of their love. It had been a new experience for me.”
“Did they adopt you?” I asked as he turned us once more.
“The day the adoption was to take place, there was a car accident. Mindy and Justin both died, and I was in the hospital for a few weeks.”
I gasped and lost the battle to hold back the tears. One slipped free. I quickly reached up and wiped it away. “How terrible! Oh, Maverick, that must have been so devastating for you.”
He gave me a weak smile. “I was almost nine by that point. After I got out of the hospital, I went to an orphanage for a bit before I was tossed back into the foster care system.”
“And you didn’t find another forever family?”
With a shake of his head, he looked past me. “This is a beautiful wedding.”
And that was the sign he was finished telling his story. I wondered if my parents knew his history. I made a mental note to ask my mother.
“What made you start working with horses?” I asked.
When he looked back down at me, his eyes were full of life again. “I ran away from the foster home I was in when I was sixteen. Got a job at a horse ranch and started out mucking the stalls. Then moved on to grooming the horses. I followed the ranch owner around as much as I could to learn everything it took to raise and train horses. He wouldn’t let me do any of the training myself, but he was still a great guy. Never asked me why I showed up on his doorstep, practically skin and bones from not eating much and with no proof of who in the hell I was. The only thing I really knew was my name, anyway. It was the only thing my birth mother ever gave me, besides my life,” he said with a nonchalant, one-shoulder shrug.