by April, Dani
Raven got up, too, and felt ill. She would have to force herself to sell the ranch and go back to her old life no matter how badly she hated to. All of her options had now run out.
Chapter Eight
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me we were in such bad shape?” Raven tore into Connor the moment she entered his trailer.
“I’m sorry,” was all he had to say, and he hung his head, not meeting her eyes.
“You had the entire trip out from Chicago!” she accused him. “You didn’t think to tell me I owed the guys six months back pay? I guess I owe you six months back pay, too. You could have at least mentioned that.”
“I just wanted it to work so bad because of the way I feel about you, Raven.”
Raven paced across the floor of his trailer and noticed it was messy. He was living like a slob and hadn’t picked the place up in weeks. She wondered if that was how all the guys lived.
“How do you feel about me, Connor?” she asked him.
“I care about you.” His voice was quiet.
“How did you ever think it could work, knowing what a mountain of debt we face out here?”
“I just hoped you could make it work with the guys.”
“I care about you, Connor,” she told him. “And I care about all of the guys, but there’s only so much I can do. When the bank turned me down for the loan today, that was the last straw.”
“The guys all care about you just like I do, you know,” he told her, still not able to meet her stare.
“I like all of them, too,” she assured him, not actually certain of what he meant. “They’re the best. I’d do anything for you and the guys. That’s why I went into town today and humiliated myself in front of that old witch at the bank.”
“Please don’t give up,” he told her, trying to go to her, and she thought maybe he wanted to put his arm around her, but she shrugged away from him, feeling too angry to let him touch her.
“The guys are going to leave the ranch,” she told him and realized her head was hung low and she was staring at the dusty floor. “I’m going to sell the ranch and leave, too.”
“Then none of us will ever see you again?”
“Yeah, that’s right, probably not.” There was a catch in her voice.
“Those guys stayed for your grandfather because they loved him, and they’ll stay for you, too.”
“Well I don’t know, maybe they don’t love me, because it doesn’t seem to be working out.”
“They’re in lust with you, and that’s the problem.”
“No, Connor.” She corrected him. “The problem is I don’t have any money to pay them.”
“Raven, you still don’t understand certain things about life out here on the ranch.”
“I understand now,” she told him. “I spoke with Tyler yesterday and he made me understand everything.”
“Tyler’s a good man,” Connor acknowledged, “but he’s also been left a bitter and broken man after what happened to his family. Don’t listen to what he said or you’re going to lose your family just like he did.”
“I don’t have a family.”
“We’re your family, Raven.” He made a lunge to grab her into his arms, but she moved away from him again, shoving past him in the narrow confines of the trailer.
Raven felt like she wanted a cigarette, though she didn’t smoke. She felt like she needed a drink, though this would be the worst time to have one because she needed to keep her head clear and her wits sharp.
“The guys will stay on and work the ranch for you if you ask them to,” Connor told her, though she didn’t really detect any certainty in his voice.
“No, the guys will stay and work if I pay them,” she explained to him, trying to calm her voice. “I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t stay at a job and work if I wasn’t getting paid. Would you?” And then she caught herself because she knew that was exactly what he had done.
“Yes,” he shot back at her. “I have been.”
“Why have you?”
“Because I don’t feel like an employee here. I feel like this is my home, and I loved your grandfather. I haven’t known you very long yet, but I care about you.”
“Those guys out there aren’t going to…” Raven started but was interrupted by a commotion outside in the yard.
Night had fallen across the plains and there was little outside light in front of the window of Connor’s trailer to see by. Raven looked out the window and saw Roy, Bran, and Chip out in the yard. They were packing their trucks. Raven wondered if they were trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. But that couldn’t be it. They hadn’t done anything wrong. She had wronged them by not paying them.
“What’s going on out there?” Connor asked as he came to look out the window with her.
“The beginning of the end,” she told him.
Raven left Connor’s trailer and ran across the yard to the guys and their trucks. Connor stayed behind. Obviously he was not going to give her any help, and she was on her own this time.
When she got closer to the guys it was clear what they were doing. They were loading up duffle bags and carrying cases of all sorts, Chip was placing his guitar in the back of his truck, and Bran had some gym equipment he kept in his trailer that he was lifting over the side of his pickup bed.
As she approached them across the weed-infested yard, she could see that none of them wanted to make eye contact with her. They were sheepish about their actions, though she couldn’t really work up any anger toward them, knowing the circumstances that had brought them to this.
“What’s going on, guys?” she asked them, as if nothing was out of place.
At first none of them looked at her and just looked at each other, as if hoping they wouldn’t have to be the one to speak to her first. For whatever it was worth, she could see this wasn’t easy for them either.
“Sorry, Raven.” Roy was the first to approach her. “We should have told you. I guess we’re all just gutless cowards when it comes to you.”
“I don’t understand, Roy. What is happening here?”
The giant form of Bran cast a huge shadow in the headlights of his truck as he walked to stand at her side. “We’re leaving the ranch, Raven,” he told her, his baritone voice making it sound like he was heralding the judgment day and not just the defection of a few ranch hands that had not been paid.
Raven realized she couldn’t play stupid any longer. She knew they were leaving and she knew the reason why.
“I can’t make it without you guys,” she told them, her voice pleading.
“We’re really sorry, Raven,” Roy told her, and she could see none of the former bravado in his voice or manner. At the moment he looked as dejected as she felt. “We can’t stay on with you any longer.”
“It really is better this way,” Bran put in. Chip came up and stood at Bran’s side, too shy to open his mouth.
“I don’t want you guys to go,” she told them, making her voice firm and strong, and inside feeling weak and lost.
“I apologize. I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted and behaved around you. I said a whole bunch of things to you I shouldn’t have,” Roy told her. “I guess I’m just a no-good bastard. Always have been, and probably always will be. But I didn’t mean any disrespect. You’re a good person, and I wish you all the best.”
“Me as well, Raven,” Bran put in, and he reached out a giant palm to shake her hand and let her know there were no hard feelings. “I guess all of us guys have been living out here by ourselves so long we forgot what it was like to be around a woman, especially one as nice as you are. But I want you to know I think the world of you.”
Roy loaded his last bag in over the side of his truck bed. Bran got down to his knees and began to work a screw out of a folding gym table so he could get it packed with his other equipment. Chip left his truck and came to stand before her. She could see he didn’t know what to say, or if he did, he didn’t know how to piece the right words together.
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br /> “I’ll miss you, Chip,” she told him. She wanted to cry then but was able to hold a stoic attitude. “Thanks for all you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget it.”
Raven felt dizzy. Her world was spinning before her eyes. She had always been a fighter. She was going to fight this, too. She didn’t really know yet what she would do, but a vague notion was forming in the back of her mind.
She kicked some weeds out of her way, got buzzed by some angry mosquitoes, and got the guys’ attention, standing in the middle of their little group.
“Do any of you have jobs yet?” she asked them, because if they did she would not try stopping them.
They all shook their heads. They did not have jobs.
“Where are you going to live?” she asked.
“For tonight, a rooming house in Masterson,” Roy answered.
“Tomorrow we’re all going our own way,” Bran said.
“Do any of you guys have families?” she asked. “Do any of you guys have girlfriends?” She looked across at Chip first, and she knew the answer in his case. He had no family and was too shy for a girlfriend.
Roy and Bran shook their heads. “No,” Roy answered. “I don’t have anyone.”
“Guys like us live too rough of lives to have girlfriends,” Bran said. “We’re loners and have been all our lives.”
“I’m a loner, too,” Raven told them, her voice sounding small in the night air of the open range. “What are you guys going to do with your lives once you leave here?”
“Not a clue.” This was Roy.
“You don’t even have any money.” Raven pleaded with them.
“We don’t have much,” Bran admitted. “But we’re not asking for any back pay. We’re willing to just call it even when we leave here tonight.”
“That’s funny,” Raven said, her courage rising in her the more she spoke. “I don’t have any money either, and if I leave here I won’t have any place to go or any kind of a future. Guys, we’re all very much alike.”
“We respect you too much to stay on here, Raven.” Chip spoke for the first time.
“What he means is,” Roy finished for him, “we didn’t know how to work for a woman. We let you down. For that we’re sorry.”
“Even if we had stayed,” Bran told her, “it wouldn’t have made a difference. We weren’t really able to do our best work with the new way of things around here. It was time to call it quits.”
“Like I said, Raven, we’re all very sorry we couldn’t have helped you more,” Roy said, and she knew he was sincere. In fact, she knew they were all sincere.
She knew this was the best group of guys she had ever met. These three before her were the most handsome men she had ever met in her life. Suddenly she realized they were her family now, and she wouldn’t let them go. This had nothing to do with the ranch, or with money, this had to do with love and family, and they were the most precious things in the entire world.
Now that quiet thought that had been running around the back of her mind came to the fore, and she knew what she had to do. It was something she wanted to do. She had no idea what the final outcome would be, and knew she was treading in unknown territory, and yet nothing could have stopped her from going ahead with her idea. Her mind was irrevocably made up.
“You guys are my family now.” She let them in on her thoughts. “ I don’t want you to go.”
“Raven, it’s better if…”
“I want to be with you,” she told them. She was speaking to all of them.
They all stopped and stared at her. Raven wondered if they had heard her. She definitely had their attention now, and she had enough courage to move forward toward them.
“Your home and your family are here on this ranch,” she told them, looking them all in the eyes. “Don’t leave that all behind.”
There was absolute silence among them all. Raven stopped to collect her thoughts and found her breathing had become heavy. A night bird screeched out on the prairie followed by an owl hooting. A fly buzzed near Raven’s face and she had to twitch her nose to get rid of it.
“What are you saying?” Roy asked her, his mouth hanging open, actually all three men had their mouths hanging open.
Chip leaned back against the side of his truck. Actually, fell back would have been a better description. Raven knew he understood what the proposition was before the other two did, and she thought he was about to have a heart attack.
Bran came up to her. He gently took her hand in his, and she felt like a midget standing next to the giant. “Raven, honey, we’re all crazy about you, too. I think you know how we feel about you, but you don’t know what you’re saying. There are five men on this ranch,” he told her, as if he was trying to talk her out of it.
“What in the hell are you saying?” Roy was still confused, and she could see he still didn’t get it. Raven was surprised to see that he was almost as scared as Chip was.
“I think it’s pretty obvious what she’s saying, dummy.” Bran went over and thumped him on the shoulder. “Use your imagination.”
“I want you all,” Raven told them shamelessly.
The wind blew through her long hair, and she was surprised that she didn’t feel any fear now. From the looks of things, all the fear in that yard had now been transferred to the guys standing in front of her. She felt in control of her life again, and for the first time since coming to the Lazy L, truly felt like the ranch boss. She was making the tough decisions and taking responsibility for all of them.
Raven reasoned that her offer to have sex with the ranch hands was the only way to keep them working for her. This offer of her body was the only possible way she now had to save the ranch. A doubt flashed through her mind as she wondered if her body was really good enough with all its imperfections for these handsome cowboys to consider. She doubted that Raven White as a person was really good enough to have partners like these men. Not to mention that although she cared about all these guys as individuals, the idea of letting them all have sex with her at the same time terrified her.
“If you stay, I’ll have sex with all of you,” she told them, her heart beating rapidly with fear even as she said the words.
Chapter Nine
Raven watched her guys as all five of them gathered around a table in the middle of the trailer yard. This table always set there, and sometimes the guys would have dinner around it after a hard day on the range. Tonight she was holding a meeting with them. All eyes were on her, no one missed a word of what she had to say to them.
Connor sat close to the front. At the very end was Tyler, and the other three were in between. Raven was standing at their head and addressing them.
“We can do this thing, guys,” Raven told them, and was feeling the confidence of her own words. “We’re going to have enough to take a big herd to market at the end of the summer. If we work hard and play it right, we could make a record profit, rebuild the ranch, and keep it in our family for the rest of our lives.”
She looked over at Connor for support. He nodded that what she said was correct.
“I have asked you all to stay with me because we are like family, and families stick together even when things get rough.”
The guys nodded in agreement with her. No one could dispute that.
“I am the owner of this ranch, and it is my responsibility to think about business matters and money. I owe you six months back pay,” she told them. Several of them started to put up their hands to object. They didn’t want money from her. She knew what they wanted instead, but she waved them down and continued anyway.
“I can’t pay you what I owe you right now, but I promise you that you will receive every cent when we sell the herd in the fall.”
Again there were some protests. They really didn’t care about the money. She silenced them down; she was their boss.
“Furthermore, from this point on all of your pay is doubled. Again, I can’t pay you what you’ll be earning this summer until we sell that herd, but wh
en we do, you will receive not only your back pay, but your pay for this summer at your new rate of pay.”
“Raven, that’s a lot of money you’re talking about giving us,” Connor told her.
“You guys save the ranch for us and you’ll have earned it.” She didn’t just speak to Connor, she spoke to them all. “What I am asking you to do won’t be easy. We are all going to have to work like hell for the next several months. If any of us lets up even a little we are going to fail.”
“If you pay us that kind of money,” Roy said, getting up from the table and fetching a beer out of a cooler to the side, “we’re going to be making almost as much as some of those rich folks up in the city.”
“You’ll be making more than most of them, and you deserve to.”
Raven noticed that Roy’s old devil-may-care attitude had returned in full force. He opened his beer, walked up to her, and stared her in the eye. She could see the hunger in him.
“Why are you promising that to us?” he asked her, inches away from her face.
“Because you’re going to need it.” She came right back at him. “You’re going to have a girlfriend to take care of now, cowboy.” She gave him a big smile, flirting with him. “In case you didn’t know, girlfriends like you to buy them lots of presents. That’s how you’re going to be spending that extra cash, cowboy.”
She pushed him back. He fell backwards and ended up on his butt, spilling his beer over his shirt. The other guys laughed riotously. This was the first light moment of the whole night and served to lift the high tension in the air.
Roy picked himself up off the ground and took his seat back at the table. He had a smile on his face and was sharing in the laugh with the rest of them.
“How are we going to work this?” Bran asked, his deep voice bringing a quiet over the group.
“I just told you how it will work,” Raven told him.
“That’s not what I meant.” Bran cleared his throat. “I mean how are we going to work the personal arrangements?”
“That’s a good question,” Roy agreed. “What should we all do, just get naked and have at it right out here in the middle of the night? Or should we pick someone’s trailer and go inside and get down to business?” He was starting to unbutton his shirt, a devilish grin spreading across his face.
