Read April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) Online
Authors: Dani April
April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) (2 page)
“Tell me what?”
“I was asking about you earlier,” he continued. “The joint was so busy, and I wasn’t for sure what you looked like. The other waitress told me you waited on these tables over here.”
“Oh, that was Susan,” Raven said, realizing this was the weirdo she had been warned about. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Miss White,” Connor said, shyly looking down at her. “Your grandpa Spencer died earlier today in Montana.”
Raven was stunned. She did have a grandfather Spencer. He had helped to raise her for part of her childhood. She had been very close to him at one time. He had been the one most responsible for turning her into a tomboy, a characteristic which she still carried into her adult life.
“Who are you?” she asked, feeling wobbly on her feet. “How do you know this?”
He grabbed a chair for her, and she broke the cardinal rule of the waitress and sat down. He sat down with her and started to explain.
“I’m sorry, Miss White,” he began. “I’m Connor Wade. I’m the foreman on The Lazy L.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know you.” Raven was still confused by what she was hearing.
“I’m new at the ranch,” he explained. “Your grandfather’s attorney said he would call you or text you about it, but that just didn’t seem right to me, you finding out that way. So I wanted to come over here and let you know about it in person. I’m pretty sure it’s what your grandfather would have wanted me to do.”
“How did he die?” Raven asked, feeling numb.
“He had a heart attack. He was on the south fifty with a herd.” Connor lowered his gaze. “The doctor had told him last year he had a bad heart and to take it easy, but you know your grandfather, he wouldn’t let no one tell him what to do, not even a doctor.”
“If you are the foreman at the Lazy L, why are you all the way up here in the city?”
“I was up here at the stock market selling some cattle futures for the Lazy L. I come up here about three or four times a year. Mostly I come up here because your grandfather hated the city so much he wouldn’t ever come up here, and so he always had someone like me to do it for him.”
Leroy’s voice came out from the back of the club “Raven, haul ass back here now, girl!”
That brought Raven back to the moment. She quickly jumped out of the chair. “I’m sorry…” She fumbled for his name.
“Connor,” he told her.
“Connor,” she repeated. “I’ve got to get back to work. I hope we can talk more about my grandfather.”
“I’ll wait for you here.”
“The club will be closing in a few minutes.”
“I’ll meet you outside then when you finish up.”
Raven had to think about that one for a second. After all, she didn’t even know this guy. Did she really want him waiting around outside in the dark for her?
“Well I may be late,” she told him. “I have cleanup tonight.”
“That’s all right. I’ll wait.”
“Hurry up, girl!” Leroy yelled at her again.
“Okay, whatever,” she told Connor and ran back to the counter.
Susan was at the counter when Raven got there. She realized Susan had probably seen the whole interaction with Connor and was obviously dying from curiosity.
“You met the guy I was telling you about,” Susan said.
“Yeah, he knew me.” Raven almost spilled two more beers as she hurried to make up for lost time.
“I figured he knew you. He seems like a strange one. How’d he know you?”
“He works for my grandfather in Montana. He told me my grandfather’s just died.”
“Well, that sucks,” Susan said, helping Raven to wipe down the counter where the beer had spilled.
“Yeah, it does,” Raven admitted. “I used to be really close to my grandfather when I was a kid. Now I feel like I should cry or something for him, but I’m just too tired right now. I’ve got too many problems of my own, and his dying just seems like one more. One I didn’t need. But I know that’s a bitchy way to feel about your own grandfather.”
When Raven had a free minute, she opened her phone and looked through her messages. Sure enough, there it was a message from a Gerald Whitaker, her grandfather Spencer’s attorney. The message expressed regret that she was being informed by text message, and apologized for not being able to reach her at her number all day. It also told her to contact him as soon as possible because he had some urgent business to discuss with her.
Okay, Raven thought to herself, Connor was telling her the truth about her grandfather, so she could at least believe his cover story.
When Leroy announced they were officially closed, and the last customers had gone, the help was allowed to get themselves a drink or a bite of food from the kitchen. Raven poured herself a shot to steady her frayed nerves.
The other serving staff left to go to Tony’s party, and Raven pitched in to sweep the floors and wipe down the counters and the tables along with a couple of young busboys of such a low rank at the club that they always got cleanup detail.
As she worked, she wondered if Connor was outside waiting for her. Somehow she hoped that he was. She really wanted to see him again, mostly to talk about her grandfather, but she couldn’t deny also because of that soft, unspoiled beauty he had about him.
Chapter Two
Raven wore a black leather jacket out into the parking lot of the club. The : a.m. air was rather chilly. She also carried a motorcycle helmet. She owned a small Kawasaki. It wasn’t much, but for Raven it was her pride and joy and the way she got from point
a
to point
b
in the busy city.
She approached her bike and looked around the almost-empty lot, wondering where Connor was. Maybe she should have given him her phone number, she thought, but hell, it was too late for that now, and he was probably long gone anyway.
She climbed on top of her bike and kicked off the stand. She was about to pull the helmet over her head when a beat-up old pickup truck drove up in front of her in the parking lot.
“That’s a cool bike,” Connor called to her from the open window of the truck.
“Oh hey!” she yelled back at him, realizing she was actually happy to see him. “You did wait for me.”
“One thing I’m always good for is keeping my word,” he assured her.
“Sorry I made you wait,” she told him, feeling awkward. “You know, it’s kind of late. Maybe we should talk about this some other time.”
“If you don’t mind a whole lot, Miss White, I think we should talk about the Lazy L as soon as possible.”
Raven wanted to hit herself. Here she was happy to see him one second and the next, suggesting they do this some other time. This man was making her crazy and she still didn’t even know him.
“There’s an all-night diner two blocks north of here,” she told him.
He gave a half smile and motioned to his truck. “Hop in,” he told her.
They were each having scrambled eggs and bacon with coffee. Raven took hers with lots and lots of cream and preferably a pinch or two of sugar, but Connor took his strong and black. The all-night diner was only half-full at this hour, and it was a nice place to sit and talk and watch the lights of traffic pass outside on the Chicago streets.
“You see, Miss White,” Connor was explaining in between mouthfuls of scrambled eggs which he devoured with a ravenous appetite. “You and the Lazy L were about the only good things your grandfather had left in his life.”
“I’m just Raven,” Raven told him, though she halfway enjoyed the way he deferred to her and called her by her surname.
“Miss White…Raven…That’s going to be hard for me to remember,” Connor told her, a shy smile playing across his face. “I never called your grandfather anything except Mr. Spencer in all the time I worked for him, even though he was much more than just a boss to me.”
“Well I’m not my grandfather,” Raven reminded him, and delicately chewed her food.
“But you’re the boss now,” Connor said, and Raven came up to meet him with a startled gaze.
“What do you mean
I’m the boss now
?” she asked.
“Just that, you are the boss of the Lazy L now. Your grandfather left you everything he had, including the Lazy L. That means I’m working for you now.”
Raven sat in the booth and digested her food and Connor’s words. She was the boss of the Lazy L, one of the biggest private ranches in the state of Montana? That sounded crazy. Yet she also realized it must be true. Her grandfather had no family, and neither did she. They were each other’s family. Now that he was gone, she had no family left.
“Oh, my God,” she exclaimed. “I don’t even know what to do on a ranch. I haven’t been back there in almost ten years. Anyway I’ve got my life here in the city.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you’ll do just fine, Raven.”
“No I won’t,” she protested. “I got my degree in computers, not animal husbandry. I don’t know the first thing about running a ranch.”
“You got a degree,” Connor told her. “So that tells me you know how to learn.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I don’t think I’m that good in computers. After all, I don’t even have a job.”
“I’m not a man who likes to brag most of the time, but the Lazy L has the finest hands in ranching you’ll find any place. Mr. Spencer knew how to pick men, and they’ll all be willing to help you out any way they can.”
Raven looked out at the traffic on the main thoroughfare outside the windows. The city looked cold and damp and dreary. The fresh air and the beauty of Montana did appeal to her. It had been so long since she had seen it, she felt she would barely remember what it was like.
“That must be what grandfather’s attorney texted me about,” Raven told him. “He said it was so important it couldn’t wait. It must be about the ranch.”
“I expect so.” Connor drained his coffee in one huge swallow with a satisfied sigh. “Coffee sure tastes good at this time of night, even here in the city.”
“Look, Connor,” Raven said. “I’m going to think seriously about coming out to Montana to live and letting you and the other guys help me with the ranch. But I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t scared.”
“Of course,” Connor offered. “You don’t have to stay on and run the ranch.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s this big wholesale food corporation up here in the city that has been hounding Mr. Spencer to sell the ranch to them. I think they’re offering a real pretty penny. Way more than what she’s worth, even.”
“Interesting.” Raven suddenly had visions of becoming rich dancing through her head. She realized at once these were pretty terrible thoughts to harbor only two hours after finding out her grandfather had died, but as far down as her life had fallen in the past few months, any news of a change, no matter what kind, was enough to give her cause for dreaming.
“The other thing you should know if you decide to do this is that although Mr. Spencer truly did have the best ranch in Montana, he wasn’t much of a businessman. When you get there, you’re likely to find the financial affairs of the Lazy L pretty much up in the air.”
“I guess they don’t use computers on the ranch?” Raven joked.
“No, Miss White…I mean Raven,” Connor favored her with his beautiful but innocent smile once more. “Mr. Spencer was a good man, but he wasn’t very modern. Computers and the Internet and that sort of thing just sort of passed him by.”