A Next Door Neighbor For The Cowboy Billionaire (Brookside Ranch Brothers Book 6)

by Hanna Hart

  Jett was the one who arranged the renovation of the stables. They had a gabled structure and a slender roof skylight that provided the horses with natural light year-round.

  “Are you going to ride with Sutton?” Madelyn asked as she watched his son instinctively run to the grooming section of the stables.

  “Yes, I am,” he said confidently, not giving it a second thought.

  Madelyn brought her fingers up to her lips and asked, “Is he okay to ride?”

  “He rides with me all the time. Trust me, he’ll be fine. Now you…” he said, curiously eyeing her posture around her horse. “You, I don’t know about.”

  Madelyn laughed. “Shut up. I’ll get the hang of it!”

  “I’m just teasing,” he said, then gestured to his son and said, “Usually, we groom a horse before we ride them. So, we’ll start with this furry comb, and what do we do with this, Sutton?”

  “Circles!” the boy shouted.

  “That’s right; we move it in circles,” he said.

  Jaxon gave the brush to Madelyn and moved his hand on top of hers, guiding the brush in quick circles around the horses back. “Now, we use the hard brush to knock away all of the hair and dirt that we loosened with the circular brushes,” he said, changing brushes.

  “Wow, look at her. She loves it!” Madelyn giggled.

  “That’s why we call her Princess. She loves to be pampered and spoiled. If they made nail polish for horses, I’m sure she’d be into that, too.”

  He continued to brush and shine up Princess’s coat, reflecting on how second-nature the ranch life was to him. He had been around horses since he was a child. His father didn’t waste any time teaching him how to care for the animals properly. He could still distinctly remember his father teaching him how to clean the horseshoes.

  “Stay away from that triangle part, unless you want a great big kick in the head. It’s too sensitive,” his father had told him as he used a small pick to dislodge the dirt under the horse’s hoof, just as Jaxon was doing now.

  “That looks tricky,” Madelyn mused as she watched.

  “Ah, well, the tricky part is not letting the horse run away while you’re doing this. Since she’s about a million times stronger than me, she could do some damage.”

  “Tack up!” Sutton called out.

  Jaxon smiled and brushed his hand through the boy’s hair.

  “That’s right. Now we’re gonna tack up!” he said, then looked to Madelyn and said, “That’s just a fancy way of saying we’re going to put the saddle on the horse.”

  With that, Jaxon set Princess’s saddle on top of the soft, blanketed pad and gestured for Madelyn come over. He held her hand and instructed her to slip her left foot into the stirrup.

  She bit her bottom lip nervously as she took her first step toward mounting the horse. “I don’t know about this,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Trust me; you’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she continued quickly.

  “Hey, if a toddler can do it, you can do it,” he chuckled, then helped her up onto her horse.

  “He’s had a lifetime to practice,” she said.

  “Everybody starts somewhere.”

  Jaxon grabbed Sutton and brought him up onto Pascal, a Yakutian horse. He was furrier than the other horses on the ranch because he was bred to withstand the rough Siberian winters. Pascal was also smaller than the rest of the horses at the ranch, again designed with the idea that smaller horses would retain more heat during cold winters than the average horse.

  But Jaxon loved him anyway. He preferred Pascal over all of the other horses at the ranch. He was sweeter and had more personality—you didn’t ride Pascal, you were taken for a ride by Pascal. He often had his own ideas about where he wanted to go or how long he wanted to ride for.

  The three of them stayed in the training area for some time until Madelyn felt more comfortable riding.

  “How do I steer this thing?” she laughed.

  “Just use the reins!” he called out. “Pull left to go left, right to go right. She’ll catch on.”

  The more comfortable they got, the easier it was to convince Madelyn to go out into the ranch and start to wander the forested paths.

  After riding, the three of them went into the heated pool and spent the rest of the day splashing and talking. Jaxon encouraged Madelyn to go and take advantage of the ranch spa and was touched when she turned it down, saying she preferred to stay with him and Sutton.

  For dinner, they went to the bonfire for a truly classic Texan summer meal. There were baked beans, fresh salads, roasted zucchini, corn, chicken, ribs, and cornbread. Jaxon had a little bit of everything, unable to hold back from the delicious southern food.

  As the sun began to set, the ranch workers lit the immense bonfire. The flames sprawled up into the sky in rich, warm embers.

  He lay out on a thick blanket with Madelyn. Sutton was running around with the other kids from the ranch. As his son ran by, he could hear him sniffing.

  “Leave it to my boy to get a summer cold,” he said with a laugh.

  “Is he okay?” Madelyn asked.

  “Yeah, just a little infection,” he shrugged, but Madelyn sat up straighter on their blanket.

  “Anything serious?”

  “No, no. I took him to the doctor,” he said. “He’s on some antibiotics, poor guy. I remember when I was younger, getting sick during the summer was the worst thing that could happen.”

  “Definitely ruined summer break,” she agreed.

  “Right?” he laughed. “One July, I was sick for about three weeks with this awful summer flu. Fever, sweats, the whole mess. Then by the time I was able to get out with my friends again, summer was basically over.”

  As Sutton ran by, Madelyn stopped him and felt his forehead. “Yeah, that always sucks,” she said absent-mindedly.

  “He’s alright,” Jaxon said with amusement as he watched Madelyn pull Sutton into a sweet hug. “Trust me. We have only the best doctors looking after my son.”

  Eventually, Sutton was too tuckered out to continue playing. He came and sat on the thick blanket where Madelyn and Jaxon were lying and snuggled in between them before drifting off to sleep.

  He reached over and grabbed Madelyn’s hand as they looked up at the stars.

  “So,” he said with a small smile, “I told you about my war wounds. What about you? Ever been sick or break a bone or anything?”

  “Truth?” she asked, turning her face to see him.

  “Always.”

  “I was really sick for a couple of years,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, no way?”

  “Yeah, I had um...” she stammered uncomfortably, looking away from him. “It’s called SCD; sickle cell disease.”

  Jaxon swallowed audibly, studying the beautiful girl next to him. “I never would have guessed. You seem so healthy.”

  “I’m a lot better now. I have a better handle on it,” she said positively, then looked down at Sutton and brushed her hand along his arm. “But there was a point where my doctor told me that he thought I only had a couple of weeks to live.”

  “I can’t imagine how that must have felt,” he breathed. “So, what happens when you have SCD?”

  “A lot,” she chuckled softly. “Um, basically I had splenic sequestration, where there are these blockages in your blood vessels. Then your blood gets restricted, and your body gets deprived of oxygen, which is, you know...not good. I ended up anemic. I had all of these disgusting ulcers.”

  Stars continued to light up the sky, the darker the day got. Jaxon cast his eyes across the thousands of bright lights and shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine being told he only had days to live. The strength it must have taken Madelyn to get through that was unbelievable.

  “Wow,” was all he could say.

  “Yeah. It was not fun.”

  “Do you still have it?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but it hasn’t fla
red up in years. Now I just make sure I’m always hydrated. That really helps. I also have pain sometimes, so I use heating pads, which is good because that can also encourage blood flow, so…” she trailed off, then smiled. “I’m okay.”

  “I can’t believe you went through all that. I’m sorry, but also really impressed. You’re a strong girl.”

  “That’s why my ex left,” she said.

  “What?” he frowned. “Because you were sick?”

  “Yup. He said he didn’t want to stick around and watch me die,” she said, then offered a playful roll of her eyes.

  “But you didn’t die,” he said, more of a question than a statement.

  Madelyn shrugged, then laughed. “No, but he thought I was going to.”

  “And he couldn’t even stick it out until you passed? What a selfish idiot.”

  “I am not disagreeing with you,” she laughed.

  Jaxon gave himself a moment to process all she had said. If anything, her story just made him like her more. She was so strong, so self-sufficient. If his ex had left him for such a horrible, selfish, disgusting reason, he wouldn’t know how to go on—how to accept that.

  “I know this sounds terrible,” he began unsurely, “because I’m sure you really could have used somebody back then...but I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, looking over at him.

  He held her gray, clear eyes and continued, “If you had stayed together, then I never would have met you, and I wouldn’t have been okay with that.”

  She smiled. “No. I wouldn’t be either.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he said and cleared his throat nervously. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

  “You’ve never asked anyone that before?” she repeated.

  He raised a hand and then let it fall on his chest as he said, “I swear. Circumstances just seemed to happen where I ended up in relationships without ever making them official.”

  “And you want things to be official with me?”

  He nodded. “Very much.”

  Madelyn visibly brightened. Her lips curved into the hint of a smirk, and she nodded, saying, “Then consider this your first official yes.”

  12

  Madelyn

  The early summer heat crept in through the open window of Sarah’s old Chevy.

  Madelyn sat in the passenger seat of the car, watching Daniel Monroe playing on his phone in front of a bench by his office building.

  The inside of the car was muggy and hot. They’d been following Daniel around for hours.

  Thankfully, the sun was finally starting to go down, meaning the humidity would ease up.

  “This stupid guy isn’t doing anything,” Sarah said boredly as she pulled her feet up onto the dashboard.

  “He’s doing something,” Madelyn said. She was sure of it.

  “He hasn’t done anything sketchy all week,” Sarah said with a shrug. “He goes to work, he gets lunch at the deli, he goes back to work, he sits on the bench and plays doodle-dad on his phone.”

  “Doodle-dad?” Madelyn repeated with a laugh.

  Sarah shrugged, a smile creeping across her stern face

  “He hasn’t gone home, and it’s almost sundown,” Madelyn reasoned. “He’s waiting for something. We just have to be patient enough to figure out what it is.”

  “Right,” Sarah said with a sigh. “So, how’s your man?”

  “Good.”

  But good was an understatement.

  Things between them were great.

  Originally, Madelyn had planned to either befriend her son’s adoptive mother or to cozy up to the father. She had vowed to do anything to get close to Sutton.

  But she didn’t need to. Getting close to Jaxon was as natural as breathing. He was compelling, sexy, and the most thoughtful and caring dad.

  A part of her felt at ease when she watched Jaxon with Sutton. It was through these interactions that she came to understand just how well Sutton had been taken care of while she was away.

  Jaxon was a good dad, and he was a good boyfriend, too.

  She hadn’t expected to fall for him at all, let alone so fast, but it was happening, whether she liked it or not. She was just as excited to see him each day as she was to see her son.

  “You ever think about hiring the company to find out if he’s messing around?” Sarah teased.

  Madelyn let out an amused breath and shook her head, pushing Sarah’s arm. “He’s not messing around. We’re too new for him to be bored already. Besides, he has a kid.”

  “Ah, then he should be lucky you want anything to do with him,” Sarah said.

  Madelyn frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, nobody wants to date a guy with a kid. If he found someone like you—good job, independent, pretty—he should be kissing the ground you walk on,” Sarah snorted.

  “He’s an amazing kid,” she said. “Sutton, I mean. We get along great.”

  “That’s super,” her friend said in a funny voice.

  “I feel like we have a real bond. The way he looks at me sometimes is just—”

  Sarah didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence before she interrupted. “If things work out, it’s like you have a built-in family. Oh, man, I once dated this guy who had kids. Twins. A boy and a girl. They were an absolute nightmare.”

  “Misbehaved?”

  “To put it lightly,” her friend enunciated with humor. “They were eight years old—little terrors. One of them cut my hair off in my sleep, the other one lit my purse on fire.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Madelyn giggled. “That’s awful!”

  “Yeah, and he didn’t do much to rein them in, either. He was one of those ‘whatever you want!’ dads. No rules, no routine. It was a mess.”

  “Did he have them full time?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No, thank goodness. Just weekends. Still, it kind of killed the vibe of our relationship.”

  “How come?”

  Her friend turned to her slowly and raised her brows. Then she explained, “Well, I don’t like my things being set on fire, Madelyn. Do you?”

  Madelyn grinned. “No. I can’t say that I do.”

  “We couldn’t get past the kids,” Sarah simplified. “They hated me, and honestly, I wasn’t crazy about them. Then me and Nicolas would fight and fight and—hey! Look!” Sarah exclaimed, shooting up in her seat and gesturing toward Daniel Monroe.

  Madelyn looked up and saw a bleached-blonde woman walk up to Daniel. She was skinny, trashy, and looked like she was still in high school.

  The blonde looped her arm through Daniel’s. He set his hand on her lower back and they walked down the street together.

  Madelyn and Sarah got out of the car and followed discreetly behind him. He and the young blonde stopped briefly to grab a drink at a martini bar.

  Afterward, the couple wandered down the street and stopped at a row of brownstones. The girl guided him up the staircase, and he pushed her against the thick white door. The two embraced in a fiery, passionate kiss.

  Daniel’s hands roamed around the girl’s body like he owned her, and Madelyn caught every touch with her camera.

  “We got it. Let’s go,” Sarah said, nervous about how long they had been standing still.

  Madelyn nodded, but it was already too late. She watched the blonde point in her direction, and Daniel’s gaze snapped around.

  She and Sarah immediately started running back in the direction of their car, but it was about five or six city blocks away at this point.

  He chased them down the street, eliciting giggles from Madelyn. It wasn’t a funny situation, but the adrenaline was causing her to laugh.

  He swore at them and shouted for someone to grab their phones, likely to smash them or delete the photos off of them, but he couldn’t keep up, and after some time, they outran him.

  Madelyn thought about the encounter all the way home.

  It wasn’t great, bei
ng caught by your suspect. But they got their shots. They could prove him a liar, and that was the most important point.

  Her only solace after the long, hard day was knowing she would get to spend her whole weekend with Jaxon and Sutton.

  The first time she held Sutton, it was all she could do to contain her excitement. She wanted to scream, to cry, to smell him, but she had to keep her composure in front of Jaxon.

  Since then, she and Sutton had developed a close bond.

  So had she and Jaxon, for that matter.

  He still had yet to tell her that Sutton was adopted, and she tried new and interesting ways to broach the subject without seeming suspicious.

  “How old was your ex when she got pregnant?” she asked curiously.

  But no matter what she asked, she couldn’t seem to get the truth from him.

  “Oh, uh. I don’t know,” he fumbled. “He’s two and a half, and she was twenty-five when we became a family so, there’s the math.”

  But she wouldn’t give up. She always had another question ready, hoping she could try and get the truth from him.

  “Did you guys plan for Sutton?” she asked curiously.

  “Definitely,” he said with a nod.

  “But no ring?”

  “Nah,” he shook his head. “We weren’t very traditional. People are always raving about how marriage equals security and you should raise a child with two parents, but at the time, I thought, what difference does it make? We want to be together for the long haul. What could go wrong?”

  “Famous last words,” she flirted.

  Jaxon tilted his head to the side and smirked. “Exactly.”

  “I think it’s amazing that you raise him on your own, and you’re doing an incredible job,” she said with commendation. “I just can’t believe your ex would leave without her own flesh and blood.”

  Jaxon took a steady breath. He leaned in and kissed Madelyn softly on the lips, then smiled, “You are asking some complicated questions.”

  She grinned. “I strive to keep things interesting.”

  “Well, you’re doing a good job. The truth is,” he began.

  Madelyn leaned in, hoping this was finally it—that he was finally going to tell her that Sutton wasn’t his, but he didn’t.