April, Dani - Raven's Ranch (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme) by Dani April Read Free Book Online

shower first.
    She unpacked a couple of towels from her luggage, threw one around her neck, and then went outside to find someone to tell her where the shower facilities were.
    The yard outside was deserted. The ranch hands must have already left to start their day. The sun was bright and warm overhead, and the sky was blue and cloudless. A wind blew off the prairie with an eerie whistle that made Raven feel like she was the last person on the face of the earth.
    Raven decided to be brave. She was standing on her own land after all, and so she took off walking down the yard. As she did so, a big pile of tumbleweed blew past her naked legs. She was barefoot, and the gravel from the yard bit into the soles of her feet. The wind blew her hair wildly, and she had to scoop it out of her eyes and squint as dust blew into her face.
    She didn’t find anything that looked like a shower. There were no buildings around, just the trailers. She noted that all the hands had left their trailer doors open, and none of them had curtains in the windows. They obviously cared little about privacy. That wasn’t going to be her, however. She liked to walk around in her underwear too much. She would need curtains on her windows, and it would also be nice if her door locked. The night before when she was looking through her trailer, she hadn’t even thought about the lack of curtains or blinds in the windows, and she guessed that she had probably slept all night with her door unlocked. She wondered if there was even a way to lock her door.
    When she got to the end of the yard she came to a long fence. Stopping by the fence, she stared out at the vast prairie land ranging before her. It was a staggering sight. The land was clear as far as the eye could see, and then the foothills peered up above the horizon, but she knew they must have been ten miles away. Then above the foothills, even further away, the mountains loomed, watching majestically over her land, their tops still covered with snow even though it was now the middle of summer.
    Raven stood there and got lost in the sight of all that land for a while. This was the first time she had realized—really come to grips with—what a huge thing the Lazy L really was and how big a responsibility was now on her shoulders. All of that empty land, all hers. She doubted that even her grandfather had ever walked over every mile of it, even though he had spent his entire life there.
    She also got some inkling as to how people living out here in the country could become more spiritual than those in the city. Raven herself had never been a spiritual person and had kicked and screamed, playing the role of the tomboy, when her mother had tried taking her to church as a girl. Those outings to church were the only times when her mother would force her to wear a dress. But now, standing here up against the rickety, old wooden fence, the cool mountain wind sailing past her face, she started to understand what it was to be spiritual, not religious, that was a different ball game, but just spiritual with knowledge of how tiny each person really was in the world. It was impossible not to have a healthy respect for nature, even a fear of it when standing here from this vantage point, alone and looking at the miles of emptiness.
    Raven turned about and walked back through the yard. She passed her trailer and then headed off in the opposite direction, still on a mission to find someone or find a building that had a shower inside.
    She saw a friendly sight parked to the south end of the trailer yard. Her motorbike. Connor must have unloaded it for her that morning. When she came up to it, she found he had even shined it for her. It was proudly standing on its kickstand and waiting for her to come and ride it. God, what a wonderful land this would be to ride her bike through, she thought as she touched the handles. She determined that as soon as she took a shower, ate breakfast, and perhaps had a chance to talk with