The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(19)

But still. It was just... Infuriating. “I don’t need to be serious,” she said, drumming on her steering wheel as she turned the music down and slowed her pace. She was looking now, because surely the place had to be close.

But the road just kept on going.

Griffin’s house was way the hell out there, but this was even... Even more.

Honestly, it was crazy. For the first time, she seriously questioned herself. Because the town of Gold Valley was tiny, but she must be a good twenty-five minutes outside of it now, and it just seemed... Well, it seemed somewhat inhuman.

There was transitioning to small-town life, and then there was becoming a hermit on a mountaintop. She would need a falcon for this.

She didn’t exactly know what she’d use the falcon for, but she’d seen shows where mountain people had a falcon.

Then she saw an old sign, rusted out and hard to read, that said Sunset Ridge Ranch. She knew this was it. She knew it because it was on the paperwork she had gotten from the rental company. Of course, they hadn’t mentioned just how far outside of town it was. And yeah, her instructions that she printed did seem to support this. It was just that she hadn’t been fully able to take it all on board. Because it seemed so... So unlike any situation she had ever lived in before.

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Yeah.” She supposed it was.

But that didn’t mean it didn’t feel alien and strange. That was this whole experience. In fact, the only time she’d really felt confident in what she was doing was... Well, it was when she had decided to bring Colt back to her hotel room.

It was a good indicator that she didn’t actually know what she was doing, and she should stop putting so much talking into gut feelings and just chill out.

The road narrowed and wound around several extreme S curves before spilling out in front of a rather rough-looking ranch house. That, she assumed, was the landlord’s residence. The instructions from the rental company had said that the landlord would be there to meet her on Monday, and would take her up the... She frowned. “The less travelable road that will take you to your house.”

A less travelable road.

She couldn’t even imagine such a thing.

She sighed heavily and parked her car in front of the house.

So much for feeling completely proud of herself and her research.

If the main ranch house was this rustic, she had a feeling that the place she was headed to was going to be...

New. Exciting. Something you haven’t experienced before.

She tried to latch on to the enthusiasm she’d felt the other morning. When she’d gotten up at six and put on red lipstick and had felt like she was free and full of possibilities.

She got out of the car. “Better to live in a ramshackle cabin alone than in a very nice town house with a soul vampire who eats your youth and joy.”

She was going to make that her mantra.

She steeled herself, taking a breath and putting on her most pleasant professional face. She was not going to indicate to the landlord that she was having misgivings or concerns.

It wasn’t worth it.

She didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. She was... Well, if she could learn one thing from this experience with Colt, it would be that small towns were different.

You were going to run into people, over and over. There was no such thing as seeing someone once and being guaranteed of not seeing them again.

It just didn’t happen.

She had run into the man three times after all, and that should let her know exactly how she needed to go ahead and deal with the community around her.

She wanted to be a midwife here. That meant forging connections. It meant becoming part of the community.

In San Francisco, she’d had a community. It might’ve been a city, but the outlying areas that she served were her community. They were a part of her. She knew how it was. Women recommended you to their friends. They talked about you. And the experience of birth was such a personal and sensitive one, and everything you did was important.

Required thought and care. She would have to take every action in this town that way. No sniping at people who cut in front of her in line at the grocery store. No flipping people off when they cut her off on the road.

That would be a challenge.

In that sense, she was used to the anonymity of living in a city. There was really no anonymity happening here. She walked up the front steps of the porch and knocked firmly on the door. There was no doorbell. Which... Seemed obvious.

It took a while, but then she heard heavy footsteps coming toward her, and she knew a moment of concern. She had been liaising with the rental company this entire time, and had assumed that meant this was a safe process. But she didn’t have any names. She hadn’t verified anything. She had... Well, she had mace her purse.

So there was that.

She had this sense that she’d researched all this because she’d been to town once. Because she’d looked up a map of where the house was without actually having an idea of what that meant spatially. She hadn’t...

Oh, she really didn’t have any idea what she was doing, and it was far too late to be having that realization.

The door jerked open and she couldn’t help herself. She laughed. Not just one burst of laughter either. A whole reel of laughter that made her entire body shake.

“You have got to be kidding me.”