“Honestly, I feel like it’s the other way around. They’re good with me.”
Audrey skips out of the house with Dillon sauntering behind her. “Daddy! Malia!” she calls when she’s still a few feet away. “Can we go on a ride?”
Jax looks to me to get my opinion. “I’d love that,” I say.
“We can get the other horses put away,” Landon says, pulling a saddle off Copper. “You guys take Maggie, Pepper, and Teddy.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Jax says and turns to Dillon. “Thanks for bringing Audrey home.”
Dillon gives a curt nod, and I can instantly tell that something isn’t right between the two of them.
When I look to Dillon for confirmation, he drops his gaze from me. Oh yeah, definitely something there. I’ll have to ask Jax about it later.
Jax, Audrey, and I mount our horses and head out on one of the trails on Wyle Away. Audrey chatters about her day as we ride out. About twenty minutes down the trail, we come upon a huge old tree.
“Remember that tree?” Jax asks, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
It was where I first told Jax that I loved him. I remember pulling back from our kissing long enough to ask, “Do you love me? Because I think I love you.”
He’d tilted his head with a sexy smirk on his lips.“You think?”
I matched his smirk and said, “Okay, I know.” He had pressed his lips to mine and kissed me with even more passion than before. Then I pulled back. “You never answered the question.”
He cupped my face in his hand and said, “Malia, I am irrevocably, completely, wholly in love with you.”
I’d closed my lips over his and took the kiss deeper. The tree became our place after that. It’s where we often talked about what our life would be like, followed with a make-out session, of course. We made plans to go to California together. He would be a college football star while getting a business degree to help him run the ranch one day, and I would become a famous actress. Then we’d get married and have children, and our first daughter would be named Audrey. We planned to live here on the ranch and grow old together.
I smile. “It’s a pretty memorable spot.”
“Why?” Audrey asks. “What’s so special about the tree?”
I look at her and her big eyes and figure telling her it’s our old make-out spot isn’t the best answer. “It’s a wishing tree,” I blurt.
Her eyes get wide, and she does a double take at the tree.
I decide I might as well go with it. I always was pretty good in my improv classes. “It’ll listen to your deepest wishes,” I say wistfully. “And if it’s possible, they’ll come true.”
She smiles. “Daddy, did you know we had a wishing tree here?”
He shrugs and lowers his voice like he’s conspiring. “I did, but it’s a secret. And it’s reserved for only the most important wishes.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Or everyone would be here making all kinds of wishes.”
I steer my horse away from munching on a bush. “Exactly,” I say. “So keep it hush-hush.”
She nods again, and her brow creases in concentration. “You can count on me.”
“I knew I could,” I say.
Jax smiles at me. The sun is starting to make its decent in the evening sky, turning it shades of orange and pink. We make our way back
to the ranch. Jaxon, Kitty and Preston are still in the barn, bringing hay and oats to the horses. Our horses pick up the pace when they realize it’s dinner time.
“How was the ride?” Landon asks.
Audrey wiggles on her saddle. “It was great!”
Landon helps her off her horse, Maggie, who is now the focus of Audrey’s chatter.