April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) (8 page)

“I want you to know how happy I was when I found out you were one of my ranch hands.” She smiled at him and tried changing the subject. “I remember you from when I was young. You had your own ranch back then.”

“Yeah,” he said and stopped to wipe sweat off his brow, tilting his hat back on his head. “I was the youngest rancher in the county back then, probably about your age when I started.”

“You were always so sure and confident. I know my grandfather thought the world of you, and I thought you could do anything.” Raven laughed and decided to come clean with him. “To tell you the truth I always had a little bit of a schoolgirl crush on you. I guess that sounds pretty silly, huh?”

He nodded but didn’t laugh. “Raven, we have to talk,” he told her. He had just finished loading up the last of the boxes into his truck.

“Sure, Tyler.” She wondered what on earth he could have for her on her first day.

“Is that little dirt bike parked down there yours?” he asked, nodding back down the road to her trailer.

“Yes, that’s mine. It really isn’t a dirt bike. It’s a Kawasaki. I used that to get around the city, and Connor packed it in the bed of his truck for me when he brought me out here. That’s the only item I had in the city that I couldn’t have parted with.”

“Why don’t we take a walk down there and you show it to me. I’d like to see it, and we can have a talk.”

“Okay.”

He put his hand on the small of her back and escorted her down the long gravel driveway, heading back toward her trailer.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing out here, Raven?” he asked.

“What do you mean, Tyler?” She looked up at him and had to fight to keep the hurt out of her eyes.

“Just what I said.” His voice was firm and hard. “What is a young and beautiful girl like you, and from the city no less, doing out here on this dirty, old ranch?”

“My grandfather left me the Lazy L in his will.” Raven swallowed and felt she had just been struck by him.

“Raven, this ranch is dying,” he told her, and she looked up into his face to see his honest but hard eyes staring back at her. “Hell, the Lazy L has been dead for years. Now that George Spencer is dead she’s not going to last the rest of the summer.”

“Connor showed me the main house yesterday. I know it’s in bad need of repair, but…”

“That isn’t what I’m talking about,” he interrupted her, his voice hard and sure. “The entire ranch is in up to its eyeballs in debt to the bank. We’re going to be foreclosed on unless we can send a record herd to market in the fall and get top dollar for each and every head.”

“Connor told me there were a few problems, but he didn’t tell me…”

“Of course he didn’t!” His voice was loud, even angry. “Connor just wants to fuck you. I talked to him this morning out on the range.”

“He told you that?”

“He didn’t have to tell me. Any fool can see how he feels about you.” He pulled away from her. They walked the next several steps in silence, his boots and her sneakers noisily churning up gravel as they walked.

“I didn’t know the ranch had that kind of financial problems,” Raven admitted at last.

“It isn’t your fault, Raven,” he seemed to try and make his voice and manner easier, less hard. “You just got here. You couldn’t have known. Fact of the matter is, it wasn’t any fault of your grandfather’s, either. The private ranching business is just dying out. This is the age of the big corporation. We all need to go and work for them and give up the dream of having our own place.”

“It would be really hard if I lost the ranch. This place has been in my family for over a hundred years. I don’t want to be the weak link in the family chain that loses the place.”

“But, honey, the financial trouble of the ranch is just one problem you’re facing out here. You’ve got other ones, potentially bigger problems.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be easy when I moved out here…” Raven tried to explain, but he wasn’t listening to her.

“You don’t know anything about ranching, not even the simple day-to-day chores of living out here and getting everything to function.”

“No, you’re right I don’t, but…”

“Honey, you’re relying on me and the other ranch bums to run the place for you, and let me tell you, that’s not a good idea.”

“I know that.” Raven knew her voice was starting to become desperate as she spoke with him. “Connor told me that…”

Again he would not let her finish. “I told you, honey, forget about what Connor told you. He’s a good man, but he’s blind when it comes to you. He has some fantasy about the two of you and the other guys making the ranch work together and saving the place.”

“Jesus, Tyler I know that!” Raven wanted to shout at him. “It’s going to be hell trying to get this place back up and working again.”

“You can’t do it by yourself, Raven,” he told her frankly. “You can’t rely on your ranch hands either. So you see, you don’t have anyone to help you.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she countered. “The others seem like good guys. I think they’ll help me. Connor told me they all know everything there is to know about running a ranch. So I think between them and Connor, and you, I’m pretty well covered.”

“You won’t have them much longer, Raven.” He came to a stop. She looked up into his eyes, scared because she knew he was telling her the truth. “Those cowboys will be gone from here in a couple of days. George Spencer was why they stayed on here.”

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t want to stay on and work for me.” She could feel herself growing defensive the more she spoke with him. “I know I’m not my grandfather, but I’ve been trying to get along with them, and I think…”

“Raven you’re a woman,” Tyler told her. “They don’t know how to get along with you. These wild guys don’t know anything about women except they’re for sleeping with after a hard day’s work. You’ve already been a distraction to them.”

“If you’re talking about the incident in the shower this morning, I didn’t mean that to happen. It was just an accident. I’ll know better next time. I’ll stay out of their way,” she found herself starting to plead with him.

“These guys all want you, Raven. They’ve wanted you even before you came to live here, ever since the first time your grandfather showed them your picture.” He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “They can’t have you. When they realize that, they’re going to get frustrated and they’re going to leave.”

“I don’t believe that, Tyler,” she shook her head. “Look, isn’t being a ranch hand a job like any other? I mean the ranch pays those guys to work for me. They’re not working out here because they want to sleep with me. They’re working because that’s what they get paid to do.”

“No Raven,” Tyler told her firmly. “They haven’t been paid a penny in the last six months.”

“What?” Raven felt like someone had just punched her in the gut. “My God, why?”

“There’s no money in the Lazy L bank account, simple as that,” he told her. “Those guys are working for love and nothing more. They loved your grandfather. He kept us all together as a family, and we all loved being a part of that family. They love ranching, and they love this beautiful, wide-open land.”

Raven walked up to her Kawasaki. They had made their way down the driveway to her bike now, but suddenly the reasons for coming down here to look at it were lost in her confused mind. She sat down on the seat of the bike wearily, feeling as if she didn’t sit down she was going to fall down.

“Now George Spencer is dead, and our family is breaking up,” Tyler looked down bitterly. “Hell, I know all about losing a family, and it’s damn painful. It’s the most painful thing in the world.”

“The guys don’t want to work for me then?” Raven asked, but she already knew the answer, and at that moment she had never felt so sad or defeated in her life.

“They got some crazy idea about you in their heads when they heard you were going to come out here and live. I tried to knock some sense into their thick heads but wasn’t very successful. Then when they found out you and Connor were sleeping together they got more crazy ideas.”

“I’m sorry, Tyler,” Raven said and felt like crying, although bravely kept back the tears. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you guys.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Raven. I’m not blaming you. You couldn’t have known how these guys think.” Again she thought he was trying to make his voice more gentle and perhaps could see how far he had pushed her. “But there’s already been trouble. After the little incident in the shower this morning, Roy, Bran, and Chip almost had a fistfight with each other on the west range. I had to break them up. Later I caught Roy and Bran arguing and almost coming to blows over some stupid little comment one of them had made. They’re on edge now, their morale is as low as it can go, and they haven’t gotten paid in months. They’re good guys, but they can’t take much more. Like I said, they’ll be gone in a day or two.”

Raven touched the handlebar of her bike and tried to steady her growing fear. Suddenly she couldn’t even look Tyler in the face. She hated everything he was telling her, but knew he was telling her this for her own good. She wondered why Connor hadn’t filled her in earlier.

Tyler leaned against the bike with her. “You have to sell the Lazy L, Raven,” he told her, and now his voice was quiet and soothing. “Wholesale Foods has made a good offer on the ranch. Take it and get out. Go back to the city.”

“What am I supposed to do back in the city?” she looked up and asked him, and a tear was now running down her face.

“With the money you get on the deal you’ll be able to get yourself a better place to live up there. You won’t have to worry about working for a year or two and can use the time to try and find yourself a nice job somewhere. You can get started on making a future for yourself. Believe me, there is no future for you out here.”

“I’m all alone back there, Tyler,” she told him. “I don’t have anybody.”

“You have a life waiting for you back there, Raven. You don’t have anything out here.”

More tears were rolling down her cheeks. She felt herself shaking inside and wondered if it was visible on the outside. Everything he had told her was true. That was why it was so terrible.

“You’re right,” she said, wiping the tears off her face. “I’m going to sell the Lazy L to Wholesale Foods. I’ll have to go back. I guess I was a fool to ever think I could escape my old life and start a new, happy one so easily.”

Raven’s dream of starting her life over out here on this beautiful land had just been crushed.

Chapter Seven

The First National Bank of Masterson, the small town nearest to the Lazy L, was a one-story building on Main Street located just across from the town square and in the heart of the business district. The bank was always a busy place in an otherwise sleepy town, frequented by business people of all stripes, as well as the many private account holders since it was the only bank in a fifty-mile radius.

Raven was dressed in a dark pantsuit and looked and felt professional. She had worn this same suit to all of her job interviews back in the city. Her shoes had been shined. Her perfume had been conservatively applied but was expensive. She also had a professional hint of makeup on her face, and her long hair was tied back behind her in a bun, hairspray keeping its unruly nature in check.

She entered the bank about half an hour after it opened that morning, her stomach doing flip-flops because so much was riding on the outcome of this visit. She felt scared because her life had changed so drastically a week ago, and now it was threatening to change back to the old just as fast, and there was little she could do about it. This trip to the bank was her last chance.

“I’m here to see Linda Harding,” Raven told an old lady who was working as a receptionist in the bank lobby. “She’s the vice president of small business loans. I have an appointment with her this morning.”