Free The Boy Next Door by Staci Parker Page A

he was not alone and he knew that the woman would benefit from the life he was able to give her.
    He knew how his friends felt about what he was doing and he knew how his family felt as well. None of that mattered to him. All that mattered was not being alone any longer. He tried to explain to them what it felt like to come home to a big empty house each day, what it was like to eat all of his meals alone and to only have himself to talk to. None of them seemed to understand. The ones that were married thought that Mitch had the perfect life, the ones that were single told him all the things that they would do if they were him.
    Mitch felt as if he was completely alone in the world and there was no one out there that could understand. That was why he decided that he was going to order a bride and when he had seen Nairobi’s picture he knew that she was the one.
    He knew that she was much younger than him. She had just turned eighteen and he was close to fifty but that did not matter to him. She had not been ruined by other men. When Mitch had been dating he found that most of the women had in fact been ruined by other men. They hated all men for the way that they had been treated in the past and they were determined to make someone pay. Mitch knew that Nairobi was not going to be that way. She was still young and innocent, all she would know of men was what he would show her.
    He had decided early on that he was going to pamper her and spoil her if for no other reason than to thank her for her company. She was, after all, giving up everything she had ever known so that she could come to live with him and be his wife. For that he was grateful.
    Mitch had planned to take a few weeks off of work so that he could get to know Nairobi. He didn’t need to be at work most of the time. He let all of his employees run the business and he only went into his office to have something to do. He had built the business from the bottom up. His father had been a successful businessman as well and had taught Mitch everything he knew.
    When Mitch graduated college his father bought him his first hotel and that was the beginning of the rest of his life. Many people thought that Mitch was wealthy because he came from money, but what they did not know was that besides the first hotel he had earned everything he had ever had. When his father passed, he left all of his money to charities.
    He had raised Mitch to understand how important it was for him to make his own way in life as a part of his self-made cowboy mentality. He had taught Mitch that although it was great to help people get started that they should not be carried and they had to learn how to live with their own mistakes. Mitch had made plenty of mistakes along the way when he was building up his businesses, but his father had refused to bail him out of them.
    At the time Mitch did not understand why his father would not help him. He wondered what he had done wrong to make his father turn his back on him, but in the long run he understood that his father was teaching him a lesson. It was important for Mitch to learn how to be responsible for his own decisions and his father knew that. Mitch’s father did not want his son to grow up as an entitled brat that had no responsibilities in life.
    Mitch only wished that he had the chance to teach his own child the same lessons his father had taught him, but he knew that he was not likely to ever have children. The years for having kids had come and gone while Mitch was trying to make his wife happy.
    His ex never wanted children and had made it very clear to him. She did not want to wreck her body and spend all of her time raising his children as she put it. As Mitch drove to the airport, he hoped that he was not setting himself up for more heartache.
    He had decided before he ever paid his fee for Nairobi that he was not going to fall in love with her. He was going to make her an offer, as long as she was kind to him, listened to him talk and