Tales of Western Romance Read Online Free PDF

the lodges of the People.
    The stallion did not belong to the Lakota. Or
the Apache. Or the Cheyenne. Or any other tribe. He was Relámpago and he belonged to no one. The Apache called him a
ghost horse because of his pale color. The Cheyenne called him a
spirit horse because he could travel the shadow road between the
past and the present, but he preferred to make his home in the
past.
    A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the
trees, carrying with it a voice from the present. A voice only the
stallion could hear.
    With a toss of his head, the stallion began
to run, mane and tail flying in the wind as he raced swiftly over
the rolling hills. It was not an Apache warrior who needed saving
this time. Or a young woman contemplating suicide.
    But a woman looking for love in all the wrong
places.

Chapter 1
     
    “ And they lived happily ever
after.”
    Bonnie Daniels sighed as she closed the book,
then pressed it to her heart. Movies, books, and popular songs all
had happy-ever-after endings. Why couldn’t she? What was wrong with
her?
    Laying the book aside, she went into the
bedroom and studied her reflection in the mirror over her dresser.
Long brown hair, brown eyes, pointy nose. So, she was a pound or
two overweight. Okay, ten pounds. So, she wasn’t as beautiful as
Angelina Jolie and she couldn’t sing like Taylor Swift or dance
like Jennifer Gray. It was said that everyone had a talent; she
just hadn’t found hers yet.
    Maybe the problem was there were just too
many beautiful, talented women running around these days. She
should have been born in the Old West, where the men outnumbered
the women. Even ugly women had been prized back then. And she
wasn’t ugly, just not movie-star gorgeous.
    In the eighteen hundreds, she could have been
a mail-order bride. Or, more likely, an old maid school teacher.
She grinned at her fanciful thoughts.
    “ You’ve been watching too many old
westerns,” she muttered. But hey, could she help it if she liked
the romance of the Old West? After all, who could resist a tall,
lanky cowboy wearing a black Stetson? Even homely cowboys looked
sexy in a hat.
    Life had been slower back then. There had
been time to appreciate the things that were important, like
friends and family. People had actually talked to each other
instead of sending text messages or email. Families had stayed
together and prayed together. It wasn’t like today, when everything
was hurry, hurry, hurry, and nobody took the time to appreciate the
simple things in life.
    “ Geez, Bonnie, how maudlin can you
get?”
    But who could blame her? Since her father
retired, she hardly ever saw her parents any more. They were always
on a cruise ship to some exotic location. Her brother had recently
been promoted to CEO of his company and moved to New York. Her
younger sister had been accepted at Harvard Law.
    “ And what have you done with your life,
Bonnie Daniels? Nothing. Not one darn thing.”
    She was a receptionist in a pediatrician’s
office. She’d had three failed relationships in the last four
years. None of them had been serious. Her love life was currently
in the toilet, and she knew it was all her fault. There had been
nothing wrong with Wade or Will or Luke. Except that they weren’t
cowboys… Of course, real cowboys were hard to find these days.
    Unless you spent a lot of time at rodeos. Or
stayed at a dude ranch.
    Bonnie smacked her forehead. Of course! Why
hadn’t she thought of it sooner? Her vacation was only a few weeks
away. She would go to a dude ranch and indulge her fantasies.
    Filled with a sudden excitement, she sat down
at her computer and did a Google search for dude ranches. She
hadn’t expected there to be so many. She checked those in Colorado,
California, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and decided
on the one in South Dakota because the scenery was spectacular.
According to the online brochure, the ranch had been in the Collins
family for over two hundred years, and had once been