Unbridled (3 page)

“Ready to go, then, love?”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and embraced him, drawing in his scent, his life force. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“You know you always have a place to stay.” Kent took her hands and kissed the backs of her fingers. “You’re wonderful, sexy and fucking amazing.”

“Best we’ve ever had.” Don, usually the quiet one, spoke up from the other side of the bed.

Alex reached out to take Don’s hand too. Her throat closed up as she leaned forward and kissed Kent, then Don.

“You take care of yourself, doll.” Kent squeezed her hand. “If you need us, call and we’ll come to you. They do have airports, right?”

Grateful his teasing broke the tension, Alex managed to smile. “Yep, they finally closed the pony express office and stopped the stagecoach runs.” She rose from the bed and picked up her bag. “Thank you for everything. I feel as if I can say good-bye now.”

They both knew she wasn’t talking about saying good-bye to them. Alex backed out of the room, the two gorgeous men in the bed watching her as she closed the door. She took a moment to stop shaking before heading out of the house.

It was time for Alex to return to her past and begin her future.

A
s she turned onto Interstate 15, Alex had a moment where she could have turned back. Perhaps even would have if there hadn’t been a long line of cars behind her turning right up the exit ramp. She was one car among hundreds headed somewhere.

The sun bathed the concrete in a golden pink glow while the warmth of the morning breeze caressed her face through the open window. It was a beautiful day, again, and she was like a butterfly emerging from a ten-year chrysalis, spreading her wings and flying off alone.

In reality, she should have left David’s protection long ago, but hadn’t. His death put her in an awkward situation with no place to live, no income other than the accounting work she did for him, and no friends other than his own. She had hidden from the world, licking her wounds and burying her head in the sand.

It was past time she began a life of her own, rather than live as David’s shadow. She’d become too comfortable with it, lulled into complacency by his need to protect her, by her need to be protected.

There was nothing for her in California, and too much in Wyoming. The thousand-mile journey would be bittersweet, a review of all of the choices she’d made in the ten years since she left. Then, she had been a scared kid full of grief and righteous fury.

Now she was a scared adult, full of grief and regrets. Neither one of them was a palatable choice, but sometimes in life, there simply was no choice. Alex knew she was textbook screwed up. Her father had abandoned her and her mother; then her mother had died.

She finally allowed the door to her memories to open, and they washed over her like a musty blanket. Life had been perfect as she grew up on a beautiful ranch at the base of the Big Horn Mountains. Her parents had loved each other and managed to keep a ranch afloat when many others were folding under the pressure. At one point, when money was tight, her father had suggested renting out rooms for people as guests. Her mother had refused, finding a second job teaching riding to girls. Katie Finley had more pride than to turn her husband’s legacy into a dude ranch.

Alex remembered the day her parents had told her about the cancer. About how it was stage four and there was nothing they could do but comfort her mother. At first, Alex was so angry, she ran off, got drunk and lost her virginity to some cowboy in a bar. It was a stupid thing to do, and she had regretted the impulse as soon as he’d taken her innocence.

She finally came to terms with her mother’s impending death, and then her father began to pull away. It was subtle at first; he would stay away all day, supposedly taking care of ranch business. Then it bled into the evening hours too. Days would go by when Alex didn’t see him, and she began to understand he could not handle his wife dying, so he hid from her.

Alex had been angry with him, but tried to talk to him. Unfortunately her temper got the better of her and she said some things that were way over the line. With the emotional pressure of her mother’s sickness, Alex’s mouth pushed him too far. It was the first and only time her father had struck her. She swore she could still feel the sting of the slap. He’d never apologized, and basically stopped providing any care for his wife as she lay dying in their bed.

Thank God for hospice nurses and the help of friends, or sixteen-year-old Alex might have lost it. She struggled daily with the knowledge that the woman who had given her life would soon die. Yet Alex got through it, knowing her father would eventually have to face his wife’s death.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Alex had been asleep in her bed when she woke to the murmur of voices in the hallway. She recognized her father’s voice and the night nurse, so she’d gone back to sleep.

The next morning she discovered her father had left, simply packed a suitcase and abandoned them. The pain from that particular moment in time still sliced through her ten years later, enough to make her gasp.

The worst, however, was yet to come. When her father returned a month later, after her mother’s death, he brought a woman with him. One to replace his dead wife before her body was even in the ground. He walked around the ranch he’d left behind as if nothing had changed, king of the castle, and he had the balls to tell her to calm down.

His betrayal was complete and brutal. When she’d left Wyoming, she told him in no uncertain terms she would never return, that he was dead to her. And she would not grieve for him.

Yet here she was, ten years later, finally willing to face him, to come to terms with the horrendous mess she’d run from. Alex didn’t want to, but she needed to. She knew there was no way to move forward with her life until she put the past where it belonged.

If she drove straight through to her family’s ranch, it would take her eighteen hours or so. Since she had only the car, and a thousand dollars for gas and food, she opted out of stopping at a hotel. The truck stops were not happening either—she’d tried it once on her westward journey. After being scared nearly to death by a big trucker with more tattoos on his skin than hair, she’d vowed never to sleep at one again.

She’d stopped at the all-night store and stocked up on Diet Coke, chips and other staples to get her through the next day. The cold can in her hand felt comforting as she kept her eyes on the road. It was a long and boring journey in some areas, while there was breathtaking beauty in others.

The déjà vu was almost frightening. She didn’t want to remember the girl she had been ten years earlier. Not yet anyway. Once she arrived at the ranch, there would be time enough to confront her father and exorcise all the ghosts in her closet.

Wyoming offered her the opportunity to start again, or at least she hoped it did. She had no idea what awaited her, but since she really had no place else to go, she had to return home.

The desert of Southern California gave way to the forests of Utah. The Camaro performed like a dream, climbing the hills with its teeth bared and engine revving. She remembered the drive out to L.A. and how she’d wondered if her mother’s Buick Regal would make it that far. It was a beater, with a great deal of dents and scratches, not to mention bald tires, but it had heart. It got her to her destination and even served as her home for a year.

The uncomfortable memory of those miserable twelve months made her shudder. There was nothing glamorous about being homeless, about selling her mother’s things in order to eat. Without David’s assistance, Alex was certain she would have died years ago. At least she could say she hadn’t gotten to the point where she needed to sell her body; thank God for that.

If there was one thing she had an excess of, it was pride. Pride was what drove her to L.A., and kept her safe at the tender age of sixteen from the big bad wolves of the world. It was also pride that kept her from returning to Wyoming, to confronting her father and coming to terms with his abandonment.

Of course, she’d turned around and abandoned him and the only home she’d ever known. Alex was almost tempted to liken her own flight to his, but not quite. She’d stayed until her mother had died, had seen it through to the end, cried buckets of tears, and survived. He’d run like a coward, leaving his daughter to take care of his cancer-stricken wife. There was no excuse for that.

Alex had never forgiven him.

She was an adult now, and if she was honest with herself, she should have gone back to Wyoming long before now. David had always encouraged her to, even offered to buy her a plane ticket to fly into Billings, the closest big city to the ranch.

Yet she’d refused and eventually come to realize it was a matter of her pride getting in the way again. Now that she finally had the courage to face him, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to think everything would be resolved and she’d be welcomed into the house with open arms. The thought of standing on the stoop made her feel as if she’d break out in hives.

Her father had always been her hero, a larger-than-life man with a booming voice who had a gift for riding horses and raising cattle. When he left them, Alex’s entire world crumbled, and she survived by focusing on taking care of her mother, on managing one day, one hour, one moment at a time.

The drive back to Wyoming gave her the opportunity to replay the agonizing month over in her head. The entire trip through Utah was spent with a box of tissues and a headache as she wept alone. Alex always wept alone.

By the time she’d crossed the Wyoming border, her ass had grown bedsores and her leg was permanently crooked from holding the gas pedal down. As she pulled into a gas station and exited the car, the fresh air hit her and she sucked in a lungful. She’d forgotten how crisp and clean everything was in Wyoming, or rather, how dirty and rank it was in L.A.

As she worked out the kinks in her short frame, she pumped gas into the Camaro. A dozen pickups were parked in various spots around the station, some pumping gas, others putting air in tires or chatting with a neighbor. It was as if she’d stepped into another time, another planet, where neighbors knew one another’s names and helped out whenever they could.

Alex remembered how all their neighbors had relied on one another, using CB radio to communicate over the miles between ranches. It was the days before there were cell phones in everyone’s pockets, before instant communication replaced good old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation.

She grabbed her purse, locked the car and walked into the gas station to pay. The tiny little store barely fit three people, and that was only if they didn’t mind getting cozy. She stayed outside until the two rather large cowboys left, each of them tipping his hat to her and saying, “Ma’am,” as he passed.

Alex couldn’t help the bemused smile on her face. It was possible coming back to Wyoming would remind her of the good in people. She doubted it, since she was going to see her father, but possible and probable didn’t always meet in the middle.

As she paid for the gas, the cigarette display was directly in front of her, rows and rows of Marlboros, Winstons and Camels. No fancy shit here, and no Virginia Slims or clove cigarettes for these country folk. She licked her lips and reminded herself it had been two years since she’d quit smoking. It wouldn’t do her any good to start again—she’d worked her ass off to kick the habit the first time.

But her nerves got the better of her, and when Alex left the little gas station, she had a pack of Marlboro Lights in her hand, and a guilty conscience.

A man with a nicely shaped ass in a pair of Wranglers was staring at her car, hands on his lean hips, and a big black ten-gallon hat on his head. He turned to smile at her as she walked up.

“Evening, ma’am. This your car?”

“Yep, and it’s not for sale.” She unlocked the door and was about to slide in the seat when he put his hand on her arm.

Alex’s instincts kicked into high gear and she leveled an unblinking stare at him. “And neither am I, so hands off.”

“Whoa there, little filly, just wondering if you were looking for some company tonight.” He smiled, a blindingly white example of teeth. He tried to move in closer, crowding her against the car. She told herself to keep calm.

“That would be a no. Listen, Donny Osmond, you heard what I said. If you don’t back off in the next half a second, I’m going to break something off.” She’d learned to protect herself; David had insisted on it. Given her small stature—barely more than five feet—and her large breasts, men assumed she would be an easy target. Her martial arts training gave her an advantage they couldn’t see, especially when they were staring at her tits. This guy went further than that though—he was leaning toward her more with each second.

“Oh, now, why do you have to be so mean to me? I just—” He reached for her, pressing her into the side of the car.

Alex twisted his thumb, then his arm, up and behind him until the bastard was on his knees on the oil-stained blacktop. “If a woman says no, it means no, bucko. Now, get the hell out of here before I break off an appendage you want to keep.”

The furious gleam in the fool’s eyes should have made her nervous, but she held her ground and kept her face as hard as granite. He finally nodded and she let him up. As he meandered away with a sullen expression, she hopped in the Camaro, locked the doors and got her ass out of there. She still had four hours to go, and the sun was going down quickly.

Never mind that she pulled out a cigarette and took a deep drag to calm her nerves, then coughed so hard she nearly peed herself. Alex threw the smokes out the window, put the cowboy out of her mind and focused on the spectacular scenery that passed her. The brilliant, vibrant colors of the sunset—purples, pinks, oranges and yellows—came together in a symphony of beauty, as if brushed on there by God’s own paintbrush. She’d never seen anything more beautiful in L.A.; hadn’t really since she’d left Wyoming.