Black Light: Branded

by Parker, Kay Elle

  “Are you trying to incite my wrath before my brain is awake enough to stop me from hitting you with that frying pan? Sir,” she tacked on hastily as his eyebrow rose in what she thought of as the perfect Dom's arch.

  “I'm impressed,” Finn rumbled, easing back and checking on their breakfast, “that such a wrath is a viable threat, darlin'. Makes me wonder what else I can incite.”

  She bit her lip, wondering if she'd taken a step out of line that would cost her yet again, but her stomach untwisted when he looked over his shoulder and grinned, doing something with the bacon which obviously didn't require his visual attention. “I don't think you need to wonder, Master Finnegan. You already know.”

  His laughter was rich and deep. “Sassy this morning, huh? Maybe I should recant my offer to let you go back to bed.”

  Lips pursed, she evaluated herself. Tired, sore, a little on edge, but she discovered she was raring to go. The prospect of starting the day with him and seeing it through to the end...it was kind of exciting. She'd seen and experienced some of what he went through every day and it had been good, mostly. Until she'd had her heart yanked out of her chest and stomped on when they'd lost a cow and calf in a bad calving.

  It still hurt to think of it, of the two lives she couldn't do anything to save.

  Finn dealt with it every damn day, and she couldn't say he didn't feel the impact of his animals dying. Not financially, at least, though Ava didn't doubt dead cows made no money, not at this stage of the process. No, Finn had an attachment to every single animal he bred and raised, and he grieved for them. She'd seen it flash in his eyes, so she knew. There might be more cattle in the vicinity than the population of a small town, but he worked with them, talked to them, made sure they were treated well.

  If he could do it, so could she. She could grow strong, physically and mentally. Emotionally. She could learn how to be an asset to Finn's operation instead of a hindrance. She could belong here, carve herself into the heart of the place and know she belonged because she'd earned the right to be here with Finn.

  “No need,” she told him, sitting up straight and taking a deep breath. “I'm coming with you. Fresh start, right? If you start your day at four a.m., so do I. So, what's on the agenda for today's grueling schedule?”

  “Could be we'll make a rancher outta you yet,” Finn drawled. He turned, folding his arms over his chest as his expression grew thoughtful. “Breakfast, then we need to go check in with the boys in the barns. They'll clock off at six and the next shift will take over, but we'll make sure they've had a smooth night with the calving heifers. I've got some phone calls to make and a pile of paperwork to wade through at some point today. There's a few hundred miles of fence to ride, repairs to make, and we need to call in at the other stations for a weekly report. Calves to tag, castrate, and dose. Feeding, bedding up, and stock to look over, cull out, and gather for the feedlots.”

  Ava's mouth dropped open. “That's all for today? Like, in twenty-four hours?”

  He nodded. “Sure is.”

  “That's not humanly possible,” she argued.

  “It is. Especially when there's enough people on the payroll to help get it all done. After breakfast, we'll tick the barns off the list. I've got two crews on horseback, another two on four-wheelers, and the chopper heading out to handle the fences and check the stock. You and I will take the truck to the east station, get their report, head back and dive straight into sorting calves. I'll deal with the paperwork and my calls while you take a nap in my office.”

  Nap? Hell, she'd be in a coma by the time they got all that done. “This is a normal day?”

  “Fairly. We rarely have quieter days, but they do happen. Always something to fix, something to build. Cattle and horses take time and effort if you want to produce to a high standard.”

  Well, apparently Montana was either going to kill her before she hit thirty or hone her into the female version of The Rock. Which one, Ava didn't want to bet on. It could swing one way or the other. “Can you explain the station thing to me? I thought this place was all you had.”

  Finn shook his head and gave his attention back to breakfast. He switched the heat off and began plating up food as he talked. “This is the main hub, I guess you'd call it. Home base. No way I'm running eighty-thousand acres and twenty-K head of cattle just on this spread, darlin'. I learned early on in my career I couldn't do it all. The more land you cover, the more there is to do with it. Not just maintaining the stock; the land needs tending to as well, with a little helping hand here and there.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “This ranch controls everything, but the land is essentially split into four sections. Twenty-thousand acres in each section, all taken care of by a separate station manned by people I pay a lot of fucking money to take care of them. We're the breeding operation. We run the bulls, the cows, handle the calving and rearing until the calves reach six months old.” He set a plate piled with meat and eggs in front of her. “Once the calves are weaned, they're split into two groups. One group will go to the east station to spend the next twelve months or so eating as much as they like until they're ready to go to slaughter. The other group will head to the west station until they're mature enough to breed.”

  A bit unsettled, Ava sat still. “And the last station?”

  “The south station. That's different to the other three in terms of we don't run cattle there. Stock-free,” he said easily, picking up his own plate and joining her at the island. “Running the amount of cattle we do, buying in fodder is a massive expense. We rarely buy in feed from outside sources. I've got a team running the south station, researching and producing the necessary feed required to fill a lot of bellies through winter.”

  She relaxed. For one horrible moment, she thought he was going to say he owned his own slaughterhouse. It unnerved her, but on the same hand, if he owned one, he had control over what happened there. Social media was full of the barbaric and inhumane practices many animals were subjected to at the end of the line, and she hated the idea of cattle raised here suffering that end. “So, nothing dies here?” she asked tentatively, then realized how stupid that sounded.

  Of course, things die here, her father mocked. Your name will be added to list of things that bite the bullet.

  Finn chewed slowly, considering his answer if his expression was anything to go by. “No, we don't slaughter our own cattle at any of the stations, darlin'. That's not to say I haven't thought about it—there'd be a lot of advantages to doing so, including minimizing the stress of traveling the animals. The idea does have appeal,” he continued, and Ava almost smiled at the ideas rolling over his face like a miniature slideshow of possibilities. “But as with anything related to that side of the industry, it comes with a massive headache. Red tape, employing the right people. Health and safety.”

  Faced with a plate of food so early wasn't doing anything for her appetite, Ava discovered. She toyed with it, her belly adamant it wasn't hungry. Hoping he wouldn't notice, she gestured with her fork. “Do the benefits outweigh the headache? The meat industry is huge, right? I know the vegans and vegetarians are opposed to it, and I can see where they're coming from, but if you have the means to make a change to the welfare of animals when they're killed, shouldn't you take it?”

  “The number of cattle we send to slaughter is phenomenal for one operation, darlin', but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount culled nationally any given week. Running a small-scale slaughterhouse might mean we could keep better control over culling standards and a close eye on employees, but chances are we'd back up the system at the other stations, which might lead to a decline in animal care. That's not something I'm willing to risk.”

  She frowned, spinning the fork in her fingers as she mulled that over. This wasn't her field of expertise, she knew nothing about what happened in those places other than what she'd seen in brief clips on the internet. Cattle herded in, meat carted out. But if she put herself in the hooves of a
cow going to her death, she knew she'd want it over fast. “How much money do you actually have, Finn?”

  He ran his tongue around his teeth. “Is my answer going to influence your decision when I ask you to marry me?”

  The fork clattered on the edge of the plate, skittered across the island top, then fell to the floor. Mouth agape, Ava blinked at him, her mind blank. Holy shit, had he really just said the M word in a sentence with her? Her ears swore on every Bible within a six-state radius that yes, yes, he had. She made a low, surprised squeaking sound in the back of her throat.

  “Just asking for future reference, little dove.” He gave her a wink, then pushed away from the counter to get her a fresh fork from the drawer. She was still making embarrassing guppy noises when he walked to her, wrapping her numb fingers around the utensil, then bent and kissed the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “Don't think I haven't noticed you aren't eating, Ava. Now, in answer to your question...” he retrieved the dropped fork and named a figure that separated her brain from her body.

  Sweet baby Jesus in his crib, the man was beyond rich. Maybe she should have expected a ginormous bank balance, given the private jet and the size of the house, the ranch in general, but holy fuck, she was genuinely floored by him. The man was insanely rich and yet he was so down to earth. How did that even happen? “I-I...I wouldn't marry you for money, Finn.”

  “I know you wouldn't, darlin'. But just so you know, if and when I do propose, it'll be a hell of a lot better than that.” Another kiss to the neck that sparked shivers down her spine, then he returned to his side of the island and dug into his breakfast again. “If you're concerned I'd put personal wealth above the welfare of my animals, I can reassure you, I'd sell the whole lot before I allowed that to happen. I take a great deal of pride in the cattle we produce, and I'd rather end things on a high note with both pride and reputation intact than see a single animal suffer in my care.”

  The man made her head spin in more ways than one. Baffled as to how they'd leaped from a conversation based on cows into marriage and back again, Ava took a second to gather her thoughts into working order, secretly wallowing in the excitement of knowing Finn intended for her to be his permanently. “If you could build one low-key slaughterhouse and run it effectively, killing a set number of cattle per day,” she asked hesitantly, beginning to remember her train of thought, “why couldn't you run two or three using that daily quota? Maybe it's not about operating one huge slaughterhouse and lowering standards but spreading the burden over a number of smaller ones and maintaining them humanely.”

  Finn's head cocked. Dark eyes pinned her in place, brightening with approval. “Now there's an interesting possibility. Clever girl. So, hypothetically, which station would you propose for a project like this?”

  “Me? I don't know enough, Finn. I'm a city girl, I don't—”

  “You're smart, Ava. You may not be from the country, but you're damn well going to leave your mark. I value your input, darlin', even if you don't think your opinion is worth shit. You've already thrown out some good points, let me hear the rest.”

  Her shoulders slumped. She hated feeling stupid. “If this is the north station, you're the central point between where the calves go at weaning. I wouldn't change that. The west station where the breeding babies go to grow up should stay as it is. Less travel time to return the grown-up cows back here when they need to. The south station shouldn't change either if it's working correctly. So, the east station would be your best hypothetical place. The cattle wouldn't need transporting by road, right? It would just be a case of rounding them up, deciding which ones are ready, and herding them direct from the pasture into holding pens and from there straight to...”

  “It would reduce stress to the animals considerably,” Finn agreed. “You wanted a job, little dove. I think you just got one.”

  “I...what?”

  “I think you'd make a damn good welfare manager,” he told her and brought tears to her eyes. She blinked frantically to hold them back, but she hadn't expected this. “You're seeing the operation through fresh eyes. Not just that, you have compassion, you see through the eyes of the stock. That's a quality I don't often find, darlin'. Think you can handle being the voice of the cows?”

  Ava snorted. “You're humoring me.”

  He polished off the last of his meal, set his knife and fork neatly on the plate, then shoved it to one side. “It's about time your self-confidence got a boost instead of a kick in the teeth, Ava, but that's not what this is about. I'm talking about you making improvements to the way the ranch operates, having the chance to give the stock the best quality of life we can give them. I'm asking if you think you can step up to the plate and hit me a fucking home run.”

  “I don't know how anything works around here, Finn. I only know which end of a cow is which because there's a head here,” she said in exasperation, lifting her left hand, “and a tail at this end.” She raised her right hand. “That's the extent of my cow knowledge.”

  He shrugged. “Then you'll learn. There're enough brains in that pretty head to make Einstein blush,” he said, jabbing a gentle finger at her. “You have ideas, you can ride a horse—although you won't be able to sit in your saddle today if you don't start eating—and you've got the ear of the ranch owner ready to listen to your suggestions.”

  Sighing, her ass twitching nervously, she speared a piece of bacon and dutifully nibbled. “What happens if I mess things up?” It was a real possibility. “I mean, one idea that might work for you doesn't guarantee you'll agree with anything else I think of, Finn. I don't want to look like an idiot in front of everyone. and I really don't want to make a fool of you in the eyes of your employees. Maybe I should just stick to shoveling poop.”

  “Does it seem like I give a fuck if I look like a fool, darlin'? My priority is making you happy, keeping you busy and on your toes. This accomplishes all three and has the added bonus of me knowing you'll enjoy it. Give it a shot. We'll go for a ride, you can take a look around and tell me what you think needs changing. If I agree, we'll implement the modifications. Nothing has to be as complicated as you imagine, little dove.”

  She closed her eyes, swinging between elation and resignation. “No isn't on your list of acceptable words today, is it?”

  “Not when yes has a much nicer ring to it, darlin'.”

  “Fine. I'll try,” she relented, then opened her eyes again and scowled at him, “but you don't get to laugh at me or shout if I get something wrong.”

  “Scout's honor,” he assured her with a triumphant grin. He damn near swaggered away to clear his plate, and her attention focused on how his ass and thighs looked in those damn jeans. She jolted when a glass of OJ appeared under her nose. “I'll warn you I'm as strict a boss as I am a Dom, Ava. As your boss, I feel it's appropriate to tell you to eat up and get your ass into gear.”

  She shoved the remnants of the bacon into her mouth as he circled behind her.

  “Speaking as your Dom, you should know your ass is already forfeit to a spanking.” His hands rested on her shoulders, squeezing lightly as she squirmed on her seat, then he kissed the top of her head. “There're a couple of presents waiting for you by the back door. Make sure you wear them when you come out, darlin'. I've just got a call to make, I'll meet you on the porch in ten.”

  Melting into a puddle as he walked away looking sexy as hell, Ava lifted her eyes to the ceiling and offered sincere thanks to anyone who might be listening. Somewhere down the line, she must have done something really good to earn this chapter of her life, and she wasn't going to waste it.

  Maybe she'd consider getting out of bed this early every morning.

  * * *

  Finn

  His life was becoming a constant question of: was he doing the right thing for Ava?

  Finn juggled the pros and cons of giving her a job of such magnitude and couldn't foresee any issue with it. As he tugged on his socks and boots, he spun it around in his head. There was a chance of
failure—there always was, with anything in life—but it was minimal. Ava had the spark, the creativity, the compassion to really make a difference on the property, and he saw no reason why she shouldn't take the role and make it her own. He would have her back every step of the way, and he'd rather die in a stampede than let her fail.

  She would have to learn to use her voice more, sure. Her tendency to hide behind her lack of confidence and keep her head tucked low was no longer viable. Her voice had to speak for her charges, and it was her responsibility to make damn sure she was heard. Though it would probably scare the spit out of her, she was going to have to interact with his other employees, build a working relationship with Ash and the ground crews, to reach her targets.

  He grinned to himself as he straightened and tightened his belt buckle. The next few days were going to be entertaining, watching her find her feet and make her stand in a predominantly male world.

  Though Finn was an equal opportunity employer and had several women on his payroll, not every woman who applied for a job was given a position. Men outnumbered women here, but his little dove could boss them all if she put her mind to it.

  She'd opened a can of worms with the idea about small-scale slaughterhouses, Finn thought, shaking his head in amazement. Somehow, he hadn't expected her to be as straight to the point and so damned matter of fact about the end destination of the animals he bred. Too many women of his acquaintance, especially those not born and raised with ranching in their blood, were only interested in cooing over the cute calves frolicking at their mamas' heels in the pastures. They sure didn't squeal and fawn over the twelve-hundred-pound steers or wave hello at a pen full of grown heifers ready for the bull.