Chapter 1

I awoke to the sounds of song birds chirping and bright rays of morning sunlight streaming through the loft's window from the blazing orb just peeking over the eastern horizon. The loft? But the loft was Mary's bedroom! Why had I been sleeping in my daughter's room?

Then it all came back to me; slowly at first, in isolated bits and pieces, then in a raging torrent. Rising up on one elbow, I noticed my daughter was laying beside me on the bed; naked, sprawled out facedown on her stomach, her head burrowed under a pillow to shield her eyes from the intrusive sun. On my other side, her best friend Ali, equally naked, was stretched out on her back, her head at the foot of the bed, her feet on my pillow. Her dark-red hair was fanned out beneath her on the mattress, her arms and legs flung out in a parody of a ballet pose, her sensuous lips slightly parted as she snored lightly.

From where I lay I had an unobstructed view of Ali's beautiful russet-crowned pussy, the plump, neatly trimmed nether lips were slightly parted, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of the moist, pink skin of her vulva peeking coyly out at me. The top inner sides of her trim, athletic thighs streaked with what appeared to be the dried residue of some viscous fluid.

The scent of sex lingered in the air... A tingle of excitement coursed through my loins and I felt my cock twitch to life, lengthening and hardening, followed immediately by a small twinge of guilt.

Before we continue, let me put this morning in context by explaining just how I happened to find myself in this embarrassingly awkward situation. Of course, part of the immediate reason was the amount of alcohol we'd all consumed the evening before, but the underlying reasons go back much, much farther than that.

My life had always been boringly normal until twenty years ago, when I married my ex-wife Vera. The honeymoon period had been highly erotic but very short lived. I'd thought we were both ecstatically happy with our sex life until, after only three short months, she'd discovered she was pregnant. Then everything went to hell in a hand basket. Vera, who'd been a loving and passionate partner during those first few months, suddenly decided she didn't require sex any longer and after that indulged me only on very rare occasions, and then only with unresponsiveness, deep sighs of resignation and much eye-rolling. I'd assumed this was because of her pregnancy and that she'd return to normal after the birth of our child... wrong again. Once the baby was born, all her affection was showered on our new daughter, Mary, a blond-haired cherub with beguiling china blue eyes. My only husbandly duties from that point on consisted of paying the bills and providing a father-figure for her daughter. This frustrating arrangement became a way of life until one day shortly after Mary's eighteenth birthday, the day the status of our marriage quickly accelerated beyond 'troubled' and sped directly to 'terminal'.

It all started at the breakfast table, when Vera chided our daughter about her lack of boyfriends, to which Mary hesitantly announced that she wasn't interested in boys, that she only seemed to be attracted to other girls. Her mother paled, and for the first time I could remember, was speechless! All her hopes, desires and expectations seemed to come crashing down around her. A daughter who was only attracted to other girls? Impossible! That would make her a lesbian! It was as though Vera was under the impression that lesbians were some revolting human sub-specie, born only to defective patents. Certainly no daughter of hers could be such a deviant!

I could see that Mary was crushed by her mother's reaction to her announcement and broke down in tears. I quickly stepped to her side and gathered her in my arms. "It's ok honey, it's nothing to be ashamed of. We'll always love you, no matter what," I said, kissing the top of her head as I hugged her to my chest. Vera snorted in disgust.

The long and short of it was that Vera immediately banished Mary from her home, then told me if I were to condone such aberrant behavior, I could damn well get out as well. I tried to reason with her, but she was adamant. To show me just how adamant she was, she picked up the phone, called her lawyer, and demanded that he start divorce proceedings immediately.

Because of the current state of our marriage, I was more relieved than upset by her reaction, but I did think it was somewhat irrational. However, rather than argue with her, I found a small furnished apartment for Mary and myself, then spent several fruitless weeks trying to talk Vera out of her crazy divorce idea, to no avail.

A few months later I found myself sitting glumly in divorce court. It was a nasty proceeding from start to finish; the upshot was that Vera was awarded our house, our bank accounts, our investment funds, fifty percent of my income and a restraining order prohibiting me to visit the house or contact her for any reason. For my part, I managed to retain only our summer home, about forty miles out of town, which Vera had never liked anyway. Located up in a steep, narrow canyon just west of Littleton, in the foothills of the Rockies, it was more a two bedroom log cabin than a real house. On the plus side, however, it was built on an eastern-facing canyon hillside which caught the warming rays of the early morning sun, and the lot was steeply sloped, giving it a fine view of the surrounding countryside. It was also quite comfortable after we'd modernized and winterized it, and best of all from my viewpoint, there was no lawn to mow, only a small pine-needle covered clearing in a grove of tall lodge pole pines.

Unknown to Vera, I'd also managed to conceal a rather large stock fund I'd inherited from my late father which I'd been playing with for years but had never told her about. The dividends from this fund would provide me with an adequate income, especially considering I no longer had to support Vera's expensive lifestyle. She had, of course, kept our fairly new GMC Suburban, but I didn't consider that a huge loss. Its travels seemed to consist mostly of trips back to the dealership for safety recalls and repairs, always at a magnificent eight-miles-per-gallon. My daughter, however, had a new four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee which I had given her on her eighteenth birthday and which was titled, insured, and registered in her name, thus putting it completely beyond the reach of Vera's acquisitive lawyers.

The morning after the divorce settlement was reached and the seemingly endless paperwork completed, Mary and I cleaned out our little apartment, returned the keys to the landlady, collected our security deposit, then loaded up her Cherokee with our personal possessions and headed out.

Driving down through Denver's southern suburbs, then west through Littleton and finally up into Wild Horse Canyon, we reached the cabin around noon. I pulled up into the steep driveway and unload the Jeep while Marie made a pot of coffee and prepared lunch. As we settled down at the redwood picnic table on the veranda with our coffee and sandwiches, I looked over at her and said with a wry smile, "Well, I guess it's just you and me now, kid."

With tears misting her eyes, she slid over and hugged me tightly. "I love you so much, daddy. Don't worry about it, we'll be just fine. I love it up here in the mountains. My best friend Ali lives just up the canyon and I really like her parents also. I doubt that I'll be too lonely while you're at work."

"That brings us to another thing, kitten," I said. "I've been thinking about it and decided that I'm at a dead end on that job, and besides, the thought of that two hour commute to Denver and back every day is not all that attractive. The last time I talked to him, Allison's father said he was thinking of hiring a horse wrangler and I thought, if he hasn't already hired someone, I might apply for the job. He's got a pretty good-sized horse herd now and I've always been partial to Appaloosas. I'm only thirty eight, in pretty good health, and I much prefer horse barns to offices. Sounds like a pretty good fit, don't you think?" "That would be great, dad," she replied excitedly. "Lets clear away the dishes and drive up there. You can talk to Mr. Gilmer about the job and I can tell Ali that we're going to be fulltime neighbors now!"

Ten minutes later the dishes had been rinsed, the dishwasher turned on and we were in the Cherokee again, headed further on up the canyon. After a climbing, twisting mile or so, I turned off onto a narrow gravel road arched by a large rainbow-shaped sign announcing we were entering "The High Lonesome Ranch - Home of Quality Appaloosas."

As we continued on up the gravel drive, now bordered on each side by sparkling white three-board fences, I was again impressed with John's property. This lower pasture was the largest of three such fenced fields. The thirty or so mares, scattered out over about twenty acres in groups of four or five, were peacefully grazing on the lush new grass. A few raised their heads, staring curiously at this intrusion on their solitude. Passing this field, we came to another; this one only about five acres where John's eight studs were grazing contentedly. Finally, nearly a mile beyond the turnoff, the ranch buildings came into view; a large two-story log house, a good sized pole barn and a large paddock containing their personal saddle stock.