by April, Dani
He was already awake, perhaps had never been to sleep, and as she roused herself against him he quietly stroked her shoulders and back. She smiled at him, feeling absolute security lying there in his arms under the sky.
“Good morning.” His deep voice greeted her.
“Am I dead?” she asked, still able to joke.
He kissed her forehead. “Very much alive,” he reassured.
“Guess we have to be getting back soon, huh?”
“Probably should.”
“Just give me five more minutes in your arms.”
He pulled her in closer, and she wrapped her arms around him, his body so warm to snuggle up to against the cool of the early morning air.
“You think you’re going to be ready to let all of us enjoy you together?” he asked her after a few minutes of quiet.
“No,” she told him. “I just don’t know how I would handle all five of you at the same time. Until a little while ago I never thought it was possible to have five lovers. I’m still getting used to that idea. Thinking about having you all at the same time is a little much for me still.”
She roused herself into a sitting position. “We have to get back, darling,” she told him.
“You’re right. This is Tyler’s day with you.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, thinking of Tyler’s handsome face. “That’s wonderful. I can hardly wait for my next date. There are certain advantages to having five boyfriends. I think every girl should try it.”
“Tyler’s the nicest guy in the west. I’m sure you’ll have a good time with him today,” he said, massaging her shoulders in his big palm, easing all of the tension out of her.
She thought how strange her situation was. Here she was lying in a sleeping bag with one man, talking about a date and possible seduction of another man. Her life had taken a weird twist somewhere along the way.
“I feel so sorry for Tyler. I can’t imagine losing someone you love like he did.”
“That’s the thing about him. He’s still hung up on his wife. She’s been dead for over three years now, but he can’t get her out of his system.”
“I want to try and help him.”
“Perhaps, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t end up in bed with him tonight.”
“After the sex I’ve had for the past few days I think I will feel disappointed.” She laughed at her own wantonness and kissed his thick chest under the sleeping bag.
“You’ve seen him. You know how cold and distant he is. He’s still a nice guy, but he’s just changed. He’s even distant to you, even as sexy as your cute little butt is.” He reached down below and gave her a loving pat on her naked rear end. “I think it may take more than that to turn him around.”
“I’m just going to take it easy on him tonight,” she said. “If he just wants to be my friend and not my lover, then I will try and be the best friend to him I can be.”
“And, hell, you’ve got four other lovers.”
She laughed and playfully swatted his chest. “You’re right about that, darling.”
Chapter Thirteen
The sun was just rising in the east as Raven grabbed a quick shower with Bran. Then, in front of her trailer he gave her a passionate good-bye kiss and he was gone, getting back in his truck to tackle the duties of a new day.
Inside her trailer she made herself a cup of strong, black coffee, surprising herself that she would forgo her usual cream and sugar, but the memory of the strong coffee she’d shared with Bran the morning before was still fresh in her mind. The strong coffee flavor was actually starting to grow on her, and woke her up to the point where she could concentrate on the day ahead.
She dressed in a pair of her nicest jeans, her boots, of course, and a blouse that fit low on her shoulders.
She called Tyler on her cell. He didn’t pick up until the fourth ring.
“It’s your day off,” she greeted him.
He didn’t sound too happy to hear her voice. “Oh, hello, Raven.”
“Do you want to hang out with me today?”
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“At least let me come over and see you?”
“If you want. I’ll be in my trailer all day.”
“I’m already dressed. How about I come over in a few minutes? I’d like to talk.”
“All right.” He hung up.
Raven frowned. He was really a sad case. She put her hat on and headed out the door. Tyler’s trailer was not far from hers. When she got there, the door was closed and locked. She knocked. Tyler answered, but not right away. He looked like he’d had a rough night.
“Can I come in?”
He opened the door for her. She was surprised that his trailer was actually bigger than hers and had all the comforts of home.
“I’m sorry. I might not be a very good host,” he told her once she was inside.
“Can I sit down?”
“Help yourself.” He motioned her to a comfortable chair by the window.
She sat in silence for a moment and really didn’t know what to say to him. She really wanted to help him, but now that she was sitting here in front of him, she didn’t think she was capable.
“That’s a nice hat,” he commented, taking the seat across from hers. “A wicked pair of boots, too.”
“Thanks,” she looked down at her boots and felt the leather. “I got these when I went into Masterson to shop with Chip. And the hat…Bran gave it to me yesterday as a present.”
“You look like quite the cowgirl now.” He smiled, but without warmth.
“I’m trying,” she said, “but I still have a ways to go before I know my way around this ranch.”
“How do you feel?”
She was caught off guard by his question. “I feel fine,” she answered after a pause.
“Do you feel like a whore?” he asked, almost casually.
“Excuse me, Tyler?” Raven didn’t know if she had heard right.
“Feel like a slut, a tramp, or just used?”
She felt like he had slapped her, and started to get up. He stuck out his hand and motioned her back down. Reluctantly, she complied.
“I don’t mean to disrespect you, but don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Tyler?” She was starting to see Tyler in a new light, and she didn’t like him very well.
“Honestly, can you say you haven’t had those same thoughts about yourself ever since you came up with this harebrained proposition for the guys?”
Raven got up and turned her back on him. She crossed to the other side of the trailer to look out the window at the weeds of the trailer yard.
“Is it really worth the loss of your dignity just to save this old ranch? Even in good times it doesn’t have that high of revenue, you know?”
“I haven’t lost my dignity.” There was anger in her voice, but tears welled in her eyes. “What I’m doing has nothing to do with money.”
“My God, Raven, you’re having sex with four men at once.” He got up and paced into the kitchen.
“Three, actually. I haven’t slept with Roy yet.”
“These men are tough, uneducated ranch hands. I know all about ranch hands. I’m one of them.”
“So do you think I’m a prostitute?” She silently asked herself if there was any truth to his words.
He didn’t answer.
“When we sell this herd, I’m going to give all of you your back pay. I even doubled your pay. Would a prostitute do that?” Her tone was laced with anger. She wanted to turn all that rage outward at Tyler, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to hate him. That left only herself as a target for her own negative feelings.
“I think you just promised to give us more pay to make yourself feel less guilty,” he said, not letting up on her.
She wiped a tear away that was rolling down her cheek and turned to face him. “I didn’t have a family until I moved out here. Back
in the city I had no one. Nobody cared if I lived or died. I didn’t have anyone to go to eat breakfast with at four in the morning, or to go shopping with, or go swimming with. I didn’t have anyone to laugh with or share the joy of living with.”
He cleared his throat and began washing dishes in the sink, his back to her.
“When Connor came into my life I was confused. I thought I might love him someday, but I hadn’t ever really loved anyone like that before. It was all new to me. Then when I came out here and met the rest of you, I really got confused.”
“Are you really happy now, Raven?” he asked, still tidying up his kitchen area.
She thought about this for a minute. “I think I am, but I’m also very scared. In fact I’ve never been so scared in my life. I never had anything to lose before, and now I’ve got everything to lose. Odds are we’re still going to lose this place in a couple of months, and after that none of us will probably ever see each other again.”
He leaned against the kitchen counter and turned around to face her. “You know all those guys out there are like my brothers. They are gritty old ranch hands, but I love them all. I don’t want to see them get used.”
“I’m not using them, Tyler!” she protested. “I care about them, too! That’s why the thought of losing them makes me want to die.”
“I know what it’s like to lose a family,” he told her, emotion flooding his voice now.
“I know you do, Tyler.” She felt sorry for him once again as she saw the hurt written on his face. “And since you know more about losing your family than anyone, you should understand why I’m fighting so hard for my family now. If I’d had more time, things would have been different. I would have taken time to get to know each of the guys…and then since none of them are jealous of each other, we probably would have ended up in the same situation anyway. It would have just taken us longer to get there. But the bank didn’t give me that time. I had to let the guys know how I felt. They couldn’t read my mind.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel bad, Raven,” he said, finally relenting. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Well you’ve got a hell of a way of showing it.” She opened the screen door of the trailer, preparing to leave.
“I’m sorry, Raven. I already lost my family. I don’t have anything more left to give.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she told him as she was leaving. “Suddenly I don’t feel very much like going on a date today.”
Connor was lifting a baby calf onto a big scale to weigh it before giving it back to its mother. Raven drove into the corral on her motorbike. She had just come from Tyler’s and was still feeling down.
Connor was happy to see her. She came up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. He could immediately tell something was wrong.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did Roy or one of the others do something inappropriate?”
Raven smiled as she petted the baby calf and tried to force herself to feel better. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “It was Tyler. I saw him this morning. I was supposed to have a date with him today. That shows how crazy I am. No woman could ever be with that guy.”
Connor wrote down the weight of the calf and then lifted it back off the scale. Its legs were wobbly as he set it back on the ground. “Tyler’s a broken man. I don’t think anyone can get through to him, not even you.”
“He thinks I’m a prostitute because I’m having sex with all of you guys.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Connor gave the calf a pat on the rear end and then stood up. He seemed angry at what she had just told him. “Goddamn him for saying that to you. I should go back to his trailer and rearrange his face for him.” He was pounding his fist into his palm.
Raven put her hand on his shoulder to calm him down. “It’s all right,” she told him. “He only said about me what I’ve thought about myself a million times since I made that proposal to the guys.”
“Don’t you dare think anything like that,” he told her, wrapping his arms around her.
She gladly accepted his embrace. “Come on, I can see where he’s coming from. I mean after all, I have spread my legs so many times the last few days I feel almost like I’m a…”
“Hey, don’t say that,” he said, holding her tightly. “Or else I’m going to have to rearrange your face. It isn’t true, and you know it.”
“But I’m using my body to try and save the ranch,” she protested, but even as she fumed in anger, she felt the calming influence of being held tightly in his arms.
“You’re trying to save the ranch so we’ll all have a place to be together. Since we are rather unconventional, if we lost the ranch we’d most likely lose each other. We’re a family. You’re trying to save us. Tyler hates the very idea of family because of what happened to his own.”
“Why do you always know what to say to make me feel better?” she asked him, burying her face in the open front of his shirt.
“Because of the way I feel about you,” he told her simply.
She reached up and kissed him. “Yeah, I have a few feelings for you too, cowboy,” she told him.
“So you’re not going out with Tyler today?”
“Not today or tomorrow, or ever,” she said firmly, but still felt like she was going to cry.
“You caught me at a good time. My work here is finished and I was about to take off an hour for lunch,” he explained. Putting his arm around her he walked her back to her bike, his truck parked at its side.
Raven smiled and wiped the tears out of her eyes. These cowboys made her so happy. “You want to come back to my trailer?” she asked him. “I’ll make us some lunch.”
He took her face in his hand and brought her up for a passionate kiss on the lips. “Let’s go back to your trailer,” he told her. “But I’ve only got an hour. We might not have time for lunch.”
She laughed and returned his kiss with equal strength. “Let’s go, cowboy.”
They lay under the covers in Raven’s bunk bed, cuddled against one another. They had just finished making love. Her orgasm had been warm and delicious, and now she felt like falling asleep in his strong arms.
Connor brushed some of her flyaway hair off her face. “Promise me you’re not going to spend all day worrying about what Tyler said to you.”
“I’m not worried about what he said.” Her voice was groggy in the afterglow. “But I am worried about him. I feel so sorry for him. He has so much pain and anger in him. He’s letting his life waste away, and it’s a shame no one can help him.”
“You’re such a good person, Raven. But you can’t help everyone.”
“I was going to ask him if he had any ideas about our problems with the cattle. Unfortunately, the conversation never got around to it.”
“That’s too bad. Tyler knows more than the rest of us put together when he’s got his head on straight.”
Raven propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Bran said there was some new technology to help the cattle when they get lost. My grandfather apparently looked into it, but you know how stubborn he was. He never gave it a chance to work. I was going to try looking it up online today but got sidetracked.”
“I wish I could help,” he told her. “I’m not much better with tech stuff than your grandfather was. All I know is it seemed like a hopeless situation back when your grandfather was playing with all that new high-tech equipment.”
“It probably only seemed hopeless because none of you guys understood how it works. I don’t understand the ranching business and that seems hopeless to me every day. But I do understand computers and technology. If I can put the two together, I think I can save the ranch.”
Connor laughed. “I think I see your problem. It’s like you hold one piece of the puzzle and the guys on this ranch hold the other piece. You have to find a way to make them come together somehow.”
“You’re right. So far I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to research on that computer of yours this afternoon,” he told her, sliding his body away from hers and sitting up in bed. “I have to get back to work, and something tells me you won’t see Tyler for the rest of the day.”
She sat up next to him on the bed. “It’s going to feel different being alone all day.”
“I could always come back tonight.”
She smiled and thought how much she would like that. “I’m tempted,” she told him, giving him a kiss. “But I can’t. I think I should spend some alone time with my computer and try and find some answers that will get us out of this bad situation. I only hope I can find them before it’s too late.”
That night, Raven worked on her computer. She learned more about ranching from numerous web sites devoted to the cattle industry. She also tried to start figuring out the cattle futures market where her herd would ultimately be sold on. She searched for ranches plus technology together and got quite a few hits, but she couldn’t put it all together because she still didn’t understand enough about the fine details of the ranch, and it was hard plucking those details from the information available online.
A thunderstorm was rolling over the plains outside. The electrical storm interfered with the speed of her wireless connection, and it took minutes instead of seconds for her pages to load.
“Shit!” She cursed the computer and felt like hitting the screen. Just when she had been going good and had a whole night to herself to work, and now it was mostly wasted because of the storm.
She looked out the window at the storm. Lightning illuminated the trailer yard. She saw four of her guys gathered outside under an awning from the rain, shooting the breeze and relaxing from a hard day on the range with the cool weather the storm was bringing.
When they were all together like that would be the perfect time for her to go to them and start quizzing them for all that they knew about the inner workings of the ranch. Why did the cattle on their ranch get lost? Why didn’t the fences they had up provide adequate protection? What methods did they currently use to try and stop this problem?