Page 1 of Baker (Bastian Brothers #1)

Chapter One

B ack in high school, I was somehow drafted into participating in a musical.

The same musical that was performed at least yearly in probably every damn school throughout the state of Oklahoma.

My role was not that of the handsome leading man Curly or the leading lady Laurey.

Hell, I wasn’t even Aunt Eller. I was one of about fifteen guys who had been roped into being extras for the train station scene by girls with dreams of Hollywood glamor.

Somehow, I managed to stumble through the dancing as Rip Leary, captain of the Bastian Grange Bisons football team, sang about Kansas City.

He was not a great singer, but he did look the part.

Back then I found the whole thing cheesy as hell and only went along with it because Kimmy, my girlfriend at the time, said if I helped out the drama club she would let me touch her boobs.

Yeah, I was that kind of petty at seventeen. Turned out her boobs were mostly tissue paper so that was a big letdown. My participation did not get me better grades as Kimmy had claimed, nor did my fumbling about on stage aid me in becoming a better dancer at the prom, also as Kimmy had promised.

Nothing about that play had been the least bit true other than the fact that nothing in this vast country could compare to a sunrise touching down on thousands of acres of fields thawing up for spring planting.

That Sooner wind was sweet and warm today, but it could turn on a dime, though.

Snow wasn’t uncommon in late March. Sitting atop Prissy, one of only a dozen horses left on the ranch, her hooves rested in a blanket of light snow that had fallen just yesterday.

Funny that the news of my father’s death had blown in a week ago with a snowstorm.

Prissy shifted slightly under me as memories of Cashman Brighton flickered through my mind.

I’d not known Cash for long. He’d been about done with my mother, the ranch, and son number one when I was four.

He’d gone out to buy a bull one day and never came back.

The subtle pain of that abandonment still stung when I let it.

So I tried not to let it. Days like today, though, when we were about to bury the philandering bastard, stirred them up.

Like sticking a branch into a slurry pond.

Which was a good descriptor for Cashman Brighton.

Prissy tossed her head, the sun warming her dark brown hair.

I ran a hand down her neck, sensing she was eager to get moving.

She’d not had her breakfast yet. I’d snuck out before Granny was awake.

I’d needed some me time to fortify myself for the influx of three men who I disliked simply for being created.

Unfair? Yeah, it was. I knew it. Still didn’t change how I felt about them.

Granny kept reminding me that those three boys—men now, but to her anyone under fifty was a boy—had no choice in who their father was.

Just like me. She also liked to point out that Cash, her only son, had not only lied to my mother but to the other three women he had left in the lurch.

True, but his deception hadn’t pushed those women into an early grave.

So I won the worst off kid sired by Cash Brighton award by virtue of that horrid fact.

Pity the only prize one got for winning was to be raised by your grandma while trying to keep your home from being gobbled up in farm loans as well as the greedy hands of agriculture corporation.

I drew in a long breath of spring air as my sight touched on the land that I had once owned but now was the property of Hillman Banks Agriscience.

My great-great-grandfather was probably rolling over in his grave.

Thank God the family cemetery was still on land that I owned.

Which was why Cash was being hauled in from the funeral home in Bastian Grange to be buried here instead of out of town in the larger cemetery.

I’d fought that request hard, but Granny, as always, talked me into doing the Christian thing.

Not that I was big on religion. I figured God was not the kindest entity, so why should I bend a knee to him?

Granny had other ideas. Given how she had raised me from nine years old up, I owed her more than I could repay.

So if tossing Cash into the plot in the far corner by Great-Grandma Ethel made Granny and her God happy, then I’d do it. I’d bitch about it, but I’d do it.

My horse blew out a breath. A floppy, loose exhalation that a teenager would be envious of.

“Okay, I know. You’re bored and hungry.” I gave one last look at the lands I had sold off a few years ago to pay back taxes.

Turning the horse with some gentle pressure, I rode down a rolling hill into grasslands that were muddy underfoot.

In a few weeks, this would be alive with birds returning from down south.

In a couple of months, this land would be covered in tall grasses that tickled a horse’s belly and the low of cattle grazing.

Sadly, my cattle had all been sold off last month to give me some cash in hand to buy out my half-brothers.

Call it a hunch, but I suspected that after we buried Cash and returned to the main house to meet the lawyer, the reading of the will would have the ranch split between the four Bastian boys.

That was something that was not going to happen.

All three were from big cities. Dodge was a children’s dentist in Sacramento.

Another, Linc, lived on a houseboat in Chicago and ran a bar.

And the youngest, Ford, was from New York City.

New. Fucking. York. City. I was pretty sure none of them had any interest in working on a ranch.

So, I would buy them out, send them back to their lives, and start hitting livestock shows to rebuild the herd I had sold off.

No one said it was a pretty way to survive, but it was the only plan I had, so I was running with it.

Maybe I was putting the cart in front of the horse, but I didn’t think so.

I had a sense about impending doom. Like when my mother had ended her life, and when my first horse Tank had died, and when my ex-wife had found me passed out on a park bench with a rodeo cowboy.

She’d not been impressed. Nor had the local sheriff as we had been naked as jaybirds and snoozing in the gazebo on the Bastian Grange town square.

That had been the end of my five-year marriage.

Never saw that bull rider again either. I did get a nice fine and a firm nudge from the sheriff to get into a program for my drinking.

Ollie Ahoka was a good guy and a really good lawman.

Pity he was not my type. He preferred his men sober.

Couldn’t fault him there. Most people did.

Ollie might be the only one in town who still wasn’t mad at me about the Fourth of July parade incident of six years ago…

So I did just that right after Tanya left me the following week. Four years later, at the grand old age of forty-two, I was sober. Still losing the family ranch in dribs and drabs, but I was losing it while clear-headed. Go me.

Prissy was not to be slowed, so I gave her some head, letting her gallop along the fencing that held no cattle, only pronghorns, some bison, and the ever-present prairie dogs. I slowed when the first crack of a gunshot rolled over the swells of mud and ice.

Granny was up and practicing. I couldn’t help but smile as we trotted along, my horse feeling her oats as she pranced merrily, the shouts of my grandmother startling a small covey of bobwhite quail as we climbed a small knoll that overlooked Bastian Acres Ranch.

The homestead still riled up a plethora of emotions when I viewed it from afar.

When the first stakes had been driven to mark off Bastian Acres back in the late 1800s, there had been roughly twelve thousand acres deeded to our kin.

Six generations later, we were down to nine hundred forty.

Still, even with such a small amount of land left to our name, the sprawling sight below always hit me hard.

The farmhouse was old, built in the early 1930s, four years before the great depression hit.

The white paint was peeling and a few of the blue shutters on the second floor were hanging cockeyed.

The back porch needed to be made into a new one. So many jobs, so little money.

We’d had some dire straits for many years but managed to hold on Granny liked to remind me when I got too down on myself.

Three bedrooms and two full baths, a wraparound porch, a huge kitchen, and a massive dining room.

Families were big back then. Now it was me and a little old lady rattling around the place.

No kids. I’d never been sober enough to make one with my ex-wife.

Hard to make a baby when you were too soused to get it up.

No wonder the woman left me. I’d have left me too, if that were possible.

Better off not having had a kid. Raising a child in a dysfunctional home was not good. That is spoken from experience.

A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney as the sun touched on the new steel roofing.

We’d replaced the worn shingles five years ago when an F5 blew through, taking our hay storage barn and a silo.

The house had lost its roof but had weathered that storm.

She was just as tough as the people who lived in her Granny had crowed when we’d emerged from the storm cellar.