Unbridled by Beth Williamson Read Free Book Online

enough no matter what car I had. She left me back in ’seventy-four and I ain’t found a good car since.”
    With that strange remark he shuffled toward the diner. Alex wanted to ask him what that meant, but decided she didn’t need any more bizarre conversations that morning.
    She hopped into the car and started it. The roar of the engine made the old man stop and cock his head to listen. Alex gunned it and she swore he smiled. She felt good about making at least one person happy that day. God knew she wasn’t going to experience that emotion for quite some time.
    With more than a small amount of trepidation, she pulled out of the parking lot and headed north. Toward the confrontation with her father. Toward the final obstacle in her quest for happiness. Toward home.
     
     
    The road was so familiar, she felt the ache in her throat grow tighter the closer she got. When she saw a huge black mailbox that read FINLEY’S RANCH, her stomach flipped upside down, throwing some bitter coffee back up. The bile burned her throat but she swallowed it back down and turned down the long driveway.
    It was more than a mile until she got to the house, so she had time to try to regain control of her runaway emotions. She had known it would be difficult when she finally got there, but this was excruciatingly hard. Ten years ago, she’d been a scared, angry kid when she’d left. Now she was a woman and had to remember to act like an adult and do what she needed to.
    Easier said than done, of course.
    When she saw a sign that read REGISTRATION, at first she thought it had been a mistake. Then she saw a second one that read GUEST PARKING.
    What the hell?
    By the time she crested the long, sloping hill, the sight that greeted her knocked the breath from her lungs. No longer comprised of a simple ranch house and a barn, there were at least fifteen cabins now situated behind the house and a second, much larger barn.
    A paved parking lot was on the left with nicely divided spaces. Like a robot, she pulled into one and cut the engine. Her heart pounded so hard, her ears hurt from the sound of the blood rushing past them.
    Her family’s home had been turned into a dude ranch, a goddamn dude ranch. Holy ever-loving shit. There were at least a couple dozen dude ranches in Wyoming, some as old as a hundred years. She never expected her father to do the same. Their property was only about five thousand acres total, but it was apparently large enough to build a bunch of cabins and suck some city folk into riding horses and fishing.
    Her mother had worked so hard to keep from renting rooms, and her father had done something else completely unthinkable. Another betrayal to Katie Finley’s memory and her wish to maintain the ranch as a home, not a hotel.
    Jesus Christ.
    She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel until she felt more in control of her reaction. It shouldn’t really matter if her childhood home was a dude ranch, or guest ranch , the more PC term. She had come to talk to her father and address the issues that had been weighing her down, preventing her from living life fully. Until she did that, she wasn’t going to be happy.
    She told herself she wouldn’t even ask her father about the damn guest ranch. It wasn’t her business anymore and it didn’t even matter. What mattered was just talking to him.
    It took every smidge of courage she could drag from the depths of her soul to get out of the car and walk down to the sign that read MAIN OFFICE. Or, as she remembered it, the front door to the house.
    A few people smiled and said hello as she walked past them. Her heart thundered with each step she took and her mouth dried out until she forgot what spit tasted like. Her hand shook as she pulled the huge mahogany door open and walked in.
     
     
    Connor tried to focus on the reservations on the computer screen, but his mind kept wandering to the woman from the bar. She’d had such sadness in her eyes,