Beating Heart: A Small Town, Single Dad Romance (Magnolia Falls Series Book 4)

Cutler and his best friend, J.T., were climbing on the jungle gym in our backyard while I flipped burgers and hot dogs on the grill. They’d been at summer camp all day, and I was hoping they’d be worn out because I sure as hell was. It had been a full day doing the build-out on a new restaurant downtown. Kingston and I were both working this job, since it was a large one. Installing a commercial kitchen was no joke, and we had our work cut out for us. We were adding on a large addition and dining area, along with renovating every square inch of the place.

“Almost time to eat, Pops? We’re hungry!” Cutler shouted from where he sat on the swings.

“Yep. Go wash your hands. Let’s go.” I piled the food on a plate and set it on the outdoor table. I’d already poured the baked beans into a bowl and placed those beside the condiments.

They both sprinted past me and ran into the house. They clearly weren’t tired just yet, so it was going to be a long night. J.T. was spending the night, as his parents had an event to go to, and I was always happy to have him here. Cutler was an only child, and he spent a lot of time with my friends, so anytime he wanted his buddy to stay over, I was good with that.

They took their seats beside one another, across from me.

“Pops,” Cutler groaned. “Why do I have to have veggies every night?”

I’d put some carrots and cherry tomatoes on their plates. My boy wasn’t a fan of salad, but he’d eat the veggies this way, so I always had them clean and ready for him.

“They’re vegetables,” I said, making sure to pronounce the word vegetables slowly. “And you want to grow big and strong, right?” I asked.

“But Uncle Ro says I am big and strong already,” Cutler said.

“I don’t know if I’m going to get big because I don’t like carrots. But I do like this hot dog,” J.T. said over a mouthful of food, and I laughed.

Out of my peripheral vision, there was movement, and I turned just as the horse-sized dog from next door came sprinting toward us.

“Winnie!” Cutler shouted, and the crazy-ass dog jumped right onto the wooden bench next to him and licked his face. Her paws were giant, and she rested one on his shoulder as he giggled.

“That’s a big dog,” J.T. said. “Where’d it come from?”

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry.” Emerson came running toward us. I hadn’t seen her since the day she’d moved in, and I’d fixed her fence. I’d left shortly after the movers had finished unloading her stuff. She’d left a plate of cookies on our front porch with a thank-you note the following day, and that was that. I’d seen her out on her porch a few times, but we hadn’t done more than share a quick wave, and she’d always hurry inside like she didn’t want to do more than that.

She approached our picnic table with her hands on her hips as she glared at her dog. “What is going on with you, Winnie? This is so unlike her.”

“What? Greeting people?” I teased. “She’s not bothering anyone. She’s just saying hello.”

Unlike her owner, who appears to keep to herself.

She sighed. “I guess after living in an apartment in the city, she’s enjoying this big open space.”

“Yeah, it’s tough for a dog to be confined all day. Let her run around and have some fun.”

“Can she have a bite of my hot dog?” Cutler asked.

“Oh, that’s okay, sweetie. That’s for you. She just had dinner.” Emerson snapped her fingers, and Winnie jumped down off the bench to sit on the ground.

“Can Dr. Emerson have dinner with us, Pops?”

This fucking kid.

He was always pushing, especially if a pretty lady was involved. That tinge of guilt, knowing Cutler didn’t have a traditional upbringing, was always there. He didn’t have two parents that were in his life. He had one dad who didn’t know what he was doing most of the time. I prayed like hell that I wasn’t messing this kid up.

“Sure. There are a few hot dogs and burgers left over if you’re hungry.” I reached for my beer.

“No, I’m fine. Thank you, though. We’ll get out of your hair.”

Cutler finished eating, and he and J.T. jumped up and started running around with Winnie, who sprang to life and started chasing them.

Emerson slapped her forehead in frustration and started calling out to her dog.

“Hey, how about you just relax for a minute, huh?” I asked, wiping my hands off with my napkin. “Chill out. Look at the water. The sun’s going down.”

She gaped at me. “Really? I’m quite aware of the gigantic lake sitting in front of me. I swim in it every morning before I go to work. And I watch the sun go down every night from my back porch. I’m not oblivious.” She huffed.

Thoughts of her wearing nothing but a swimsuit flooded my mind.

Pull your head out of your ass, dickhead.

She’s Cutler’s doctor, and she’s only here for a few months.

“Are you always this uptight? Is it a big-city thing?” I asked, taking another pull from my beer.

“What? No. I’m not uptight. You’re the one who had an attitude with me the first time we met. I just don’t want to take advantage of living next door and letting my dog run in your yard. That’s not a big-city thing; it’s a considerate-human thing.”

“I did not have an attitude the first time we met,” I said, pushing to my feet and walking to the cooler to grab another beer. We were home for the night. I’d get the boys showered after they played for a while, and we’d call it a day. I held up a beer and shook it in invitation. “You want one? I mean, even considerate humans can have a beer with their neighbor.”

“Fine. One beer. Winnie does seem to be having a lot of fun with the boys.”

I popped the top off of each one and handed her the bottle, motioning for her to sit because having her stand there, all stiff and awkward, was making me uncomfortable. She sat down across from me, and my dick sprang to life when her lips wrapped around the bottle, and she tipped her head back. Damn. I’d never seen a woman drinking a beer look this sexy, but this woman oozed it in spades right now.

It had been a while since I’d been with a woman, as raising my son on my own and running a company with Kingston took most of my time. So reacting to a beautiful woman was perfectly normal, even if we seemed annoyed every time we saw one another.

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a beer drinker,” I said, chuckling when Cutler and J.T. helped Winnie climb the steps up to the slide and pushed her through. She ran around to do it again, so apparently, she liked it.

“You sure seem to have a lot of preconceived notions about me.” She shrugged as she shook her head and smiled while she watched Cutler lead Winnie back down the slide.

“You don’t seem all that hard to read.”

She glanced back at me. “Really? That’s quite the confident statement, ole wise one. So, tell me, then—since you think you can read me so easily—what do you see when you look at me?”

A hot-as-fuck woman. But I’d keep that to myself.

“All right.” I set my bottle down as my gaze locked with hers. “You came from a big city. You probably went to some fancy Ivy League college and graduated top of your class. You’re a rule follower. You’ve probably never broken a rule in your life.”

“Wow. You make me sound so fun.” She rolled her eyes and took another pull from her beer. “For the record, I did my residency in San Francisco because it has a fantastic children’s hospital. But I actually grew up in a small town not too far from here called Rosewood River. So, you have me pegged as a city girl, but I’m actually a small-town girl at heart.”

That surprised me. “Ahhhh… I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“I guess I’m not as easy to read as you think I am.”

“Okay. So, did you go to an Ivy League college? And are you going to claim you aren’t a rule follower?” I smirked.

“I went to Stanford for undergrad, so that’s not technically an Ivy League school.”

“You went to fucking Stanford.” I barked out a laugh. “Close enough. Let’s give me that one, huh?”

“Fine. But you should know that I actually went there on an athletic scholarship, not an academic scholarship, so I’m guessing you wouldn’t have thought that,” she said, and when she smiled at me, my fucking chest squeezed. The sun was setting behind her in the distance; the pink and orange sky looked more like a painted backdrop in the distance.

“What sport?”

“Volleyball. I played all four years.” She shrugged.

“And where did rule breaking fall on your list of being a Division 1 athlete and going to medical school?”

Her lips turned up in the corners again, and she took another pull from her beer. “I think you’d be surprised. I have four brothers, but it was more like six brothers because two of my cousins lived in the same cul-de-sac as we did, so the seven of us were basically raised together. I can assure you that there were plenty of rules broken in my early days.”

I chuckled. That was unexpected. She was a small-town girl with a slew of brothers and clearly a whole lot of secrets.

“You’re full of surprises, Chadwick.”

“So I’m not as easy to read as you originally suspected?” She laughed.

“I’ll admit it. You’re much cooler than I first thought.” I glanced over at the boys, who were now trying to get the giant dog to sit on a swing, and I’d be dammed if she wasn’t going right along with it.

“Well, you did fix my fence for me, so maybe you’re not all bad either, even if you were a total jerk the first time we met, Heart.”

I turned to look at her, my gaze holding hers for a few seconds before I spoke. “I was surprised Doc hadn’t told me that he was leaving. I was caught off guard that day.”

“I get why you’re attached to him. I haven’t known him all that long, but he seems like a really good man.”

“He’s the best. But I shouldn’t have been a dick to you. It had been a stressful weekend after seeing Cutler struggle to breathe after his game. I hadn’t slept much leading up to that day we met.” I held up my beer before tipping my head back again. “Not an excuse, just the situation you walked into.”

“How’s that peak flow meter going?” she asked, her eyes filled with empathy.

This woman really was full of surprises.

“Nah. We’re not doing the doctor thing right now. It’s going well, and you aren’t on the clock. We’ll see you in your office this week. Right now, we’re just two neighbors sharing a beer.”

“While your son pushes my oversized Bernedoodle on a swing.” She raised a brow and laughed.

“Something like that.”

“And you raise Cutler all on your own?” she asked, catching me by surprise with the question.

“Oh, you’re taking it there, huh? We’re doing the neighbor thing now?”

“You don’t have to answer. I just wondered if you had help.”

“All right. You get one, then I get one.”

“One what?” she asked.

“One personal question.” I raised a brow. “Personal questions aren’t my thing, but if there’s a trade involved, I can tolerate it.”

“Fine. I guess the rule-breaking childhood wasn’t enough for you?”

I smirked before glancing out at the water. “I raise Cutler on my own. His mom and I weren’t planning for a child. She wasn’t from Magnolia Falls, and we spent a summer together, inseparable for those few months. But then she left to go back to her real life, before returning nine months later to let me know she was pregnant.”

“Wow. That had to be a big surprise. Had you kept in touch before she returned to tell you she was pregnant?”

“We’d texted a few times. She’d never said a word before she showed up on my doorstep. So, I moved her into my place, and we gave it a shot. We quickly learned that we didn’t have much in common when it came to the real world. Summer flings are fueled by booze and time on the lake, and the real world isn’t quite as fun when you’re paying a mortgage and preparing for a baby.”

“Yeah, that’s a lot all at once. So what happened?”

I studied her for a long moment, unsure why I was sharing so much with her. “She wasn’t ready to be a mother. She stuck around for a few months, but she was miserable. We came to an understanding. We wanted different things. She shows up here maybe once or twice a year to see Cutler, sometimes less than that.” I turned back to face her, surprised to see how intently she was listening. “It’s all good. I got the best kid on the planet out of the deal.”

“Wow. And you were just ready for fatherhood?”

I ran a hand over the back of my neck. “I wouldn’t say that. I freaked out when she first told me. Suddenly I had a woman I didn’t know all that well living with me, and a newborn on the way. But from the second that little boy entered the world, I knew that he was my purpose. I knew I was meant to be his father. Tara didn’t have those feelings. It’s better that she left.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Not many men would be willing to step up like you did.”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve got four best friends who are godfathers to my boy, and every single one of them has stepped up for Cutler. Maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong men.”

“You have no idea,” she said, shaking her head and staring out at the water.

“Let me guess… you’re dating a Stanford grad who also claims to be a rule breaker?” I asked, my voice all tease, but I was suddenly dying to know her story.

“My ex did graduate from Stanford, and he’s definitely a rule breaker. But not the kind of rule breaker that’s charming or fun. More like the devil pretending to be someone he’s not and hiding behind a business suit.” She pushed to her feet as if she were done with the conversation.

“Sounds like a real asshole. What did he do?” I asked, my hands fisting beneath the table at the thought of someone mistreating her.

Why did I care? We barely knew one another.

“That’s a story for a different day, neighbor.” Her smile was forced, and she held up her bottle. “Thanks for the beer. Have a good night.”

“Yeah. You, too.”

She yelled out for Winnie, and I called the boys over because it was getting dark.

“Can Winnie have a sleepover sometime?” Cutler asked her as he bent down and hugged her pup goodbye.

“Well, then I’d be all alone,” she said, as she ruffled the top of his hair.

“Maybe you could sleep over sometime, too,” Cutler said, and I barked out a laugh. “Right, Pops? Cause we’re neighbors.”

Emerson’s gaze found mine.

“Sure. Our door is always open.” I winked, and she shook her head with disbelief before walking briskly back to her house with her dog beside her.

“Thank you. Good night!” she shouted, and I was still laughing.

I enjoyed getting under her skin.

I enjoyed it a lot.