Page 3 of Baker (Bastian Brothers #1)

Chapter Two

N ope. God was not smiling down on me.

Maybe he was tired of drunks and was focusing on kids and dogs. Probably a much better group to bestow answered prayers to than some washed-up, divorced cowpoke with no cows but held a pocketful of sobriety chips.

Breakfast was a chore. The food was good, as always.

Granny knew how to feed hungry men, and Bella…

well, he was something else. I suspected he was possibly a highly femme man who enjoyed flashy clothes and makeup, which was fine with me.

My bisexuality opened me up to appreciating both his masculine and feminine qualities.

So Bella and Granny were pleasant, but the rest were not.

No one was hostile. There was just so much fucking luggage sitting in that sunny kitchen with the avocado green appliances that it could pass for the baggage claim area at Tulsa International.

My half -brothers and Mike ate in silence.

I was pretty sure Mike had not planned to be fed when he set out for the ranch this morning, but here he was, chatting with Granny and Bella about bluebird migration patterns while Ford, Linc, Dodge, and I were sullenly chewing toast. What did I possibly have to say to them?

“So,” Bella interjected with a flashy smile that didn’t quite reach his lined green eyes. “Where is the little girls’ room?”

“Up the stairs to the left,” I said and rose when he did. The others followed suit aside from Ford, who looked incredibly entertained. Linc hurried to dab at his bushy beard to free it from toast crumbs as Bella placed his napkin on the table.

“Thank you. Some of us are true gentlemen,” Bella announced as he playfully cuffed Ford upside the head and sashayed out of the kitchen.

Linc glanced at Ford. “What’s his story?” he whispered. “He a drag queen?”

“No. Bella just loves to embrace the feminine side of her personality. They use she or her or fae as pronouns,” Ford hurried to explain.

Linc’s brown eyes flared at that news. He continued to stare at Bella’s backside until she turned to climb the back stairs.

“Just so you all know,” Ford glanced around the table, getting nods from my two other half -brothers before his sight landed on me, “she embraces a feminine mystique. Not sure Bella needs a title. Guess you can use transfemme. Transfemme means—”

“I’m fully aware of what it means,” I snapped back, instantly irritated by his big city assumption that I was some ill-bred hick. JFC. We have the internet out here. Granted, the Wi-Fi was iffy at times but fuck him and the attitude he rode in on.

“Oh,” Mike said, blinking like a drunk duck, trying to suss all of that out.

Femme, pronouns, and people who were obviously male but wore bright pink lipstick were not common out here.

Oklahoma was quite conservative overall.

Oklahoma City was known to be liberal, as was Tulsa, but there was a lot of land betwixt those two big cities that was as red as a cherry.

I’d lived forty years here and never once encountered anyone who dared to venture out of the norms, but I did know what femme meant.

“Right, well, if anyone has any issues with Bella, they can discuss them with me,” Ford added, then shoved to his feet. Wow, someone was overprotective. Everyone did the same. Granny pattered off to get her lone black dress on as we filed outside to wait for Granny and Bella.

We all stood around with our thumbs up our asses, watching the horses out in their paddock or following the V of a group of Canada geese making the trek back to their summer homes.

“We sit in the Central Flyway,” I said when the silence was crippling. The three out-of-staters gawked at me. “It’s a major bird migration route for millions of migratory birds.”

“Oh cool.” Dodge seemed moderately interested.

The other two were more engrossed with the horses.

Probably didn’t see too many horses without cops on their backs where they’re from.

“We have the Pacific Flyway in California. My ex-husband and I used to drive up to Point Reyes to birdwatch in the spring and fall.”

“You’re gay?” I asked the ginger and got a short, crisp nod. The man was ready for trouble, I could see that. “Okay, good to know. I’m bisexual.” I shot Ford a meaningful look that he had the good grace to awkwardly look away from.

The tension leeched from Dodge’s face. A weary sort of smile tugged at his lips. “Gay and divorced and looking for a new life,” Dodge announced.

“I’m queer too,” Linc offered. My attention turned to the big man in the dark gray suit.

“Noted,” I said and turned to Ford. “You the sole straight man Cash managed to create?”

“Nope, I’m pretty gay.”

“You and Bella a thing?” Linc asked while chewing on a toothpick.

“Oh hell no. She’s too high-maintenance for me. We’re just good friends.” Ford glanced around at us as a smirk broke free. “Looks like Cash, the ultimate homophobe, sired four queer as shit men.”

“Uhm, I’m straight,” Mike slipped in, cheeks as red as a tomato. We’d probably filled his ears with more LGBTQ talk than he had ever heard in one sitting before. “Married to a woman.”

“I know. We won’t hold that against you,” I said to Mike just as Granny and Bella arrived outside. My brothers chortled. Half -brothers. I might not be crazy about them, but at least there would be no outrage over sexuality while we worked things out.

Granny was holding onto Bella’s arm. Her cane was nowhere to be seen. With a huff, I went back inside to find it. She had a tendency to accidentally-on-purpose leave her cane behind. I found it tucked behind the sofa. She was not happy when I emerged from the house with it in hand.

“Oops,” she said as I handed it off to her. “Oh there’s Milton.”

The lawyer pulled up and parked beside the hearse.

Milt was as old as the hills, retired now for fifteen years, but Cash had left his will in Milt’s safe the day before he had hightailed it out of Oklahoma to head to the Sunshine State.

Since I had three younger brothers Cash had obviously revamped or added to his will a few times while spreading his seed around the country just like Johnny Appleseed, only Cash left kids in his wake instead of apple seedlings.

We could not get him planted soon enough.

Milt seemed taken aback at first but recovered quickly enough to shake every hand offered to him. He seemed quite confused by Bella. He ended up patting her hand and smiling kindly. See, it wasn’t so hard to be decent. If this backwoods lawyer could be accepting, why the hell couldn’t other people?

“We should get moving,” Mike called out as a fat robin landed nearby. Some days being a bird whose biggest worry was finding a fat worm would be grand.

We climbed into my truck to follow the hearse to the old family cemetery out in the wild apple orchard pasture. The ride was quiet, each of us in our own headspace as we rumbled over rough roads that sorely needed work after a rough winter. Just another job to add to the list.

The drive out to the century-old family cemetery took about ten minutes when the ground was dry, fifteen to twenty when everything was muck.

The hearse had some trouble on one of the lanes—a pretty name for a tractor path—and had to be pulled from the muddy gulley with my truck.

Veering off the overgrown paths was easy to do.

I’d torn up the lane pretty badly bringing my tractor out the other day with Granny following with my truck to dig the hole for Cash’s casket to be placed in, so following the ruts would lead a less skilled cattle trail driver off with ease.

Thankfully, nothing stops a tractor with new tires.

After we got the long black Caddy freed, we took a group vote and Cash was removed from the hearse and placed in the back of my ’87 Ford F-250 four-wheel-drive pickup.

She was so rusty I’d reached the point where I worried parts might fall off when I drove her to town, but I’d not give up on her.

She ran like a champ but did tend to burn a little oil.

Farm trucks weren’t supposed to be pretty.

It was hard to keep a fancy truck fancy when you worked it hard.

Ten years ago, I was tossing split firewood into the bed when I miscalculated the throw.

Busted the shit out of the back window. So now it had the backrest from an old lawn bench that Granny had owned as a firewood deflector to shield the plastic taped over the busted window.

I liked to say the rusted floral garden bench back and the shuddering clear plastic gave her personality.

Like the ranch or Prissy, some things you held onto for as long as you could.

Bella and Granny rode in front with me. The others and Cash in his casket were in the bed.

Poor old Milt had taken quite the jouncing.

Thankfully, there was loose clean hay in there as I’d just hauled hay bales to the stables last night, so their fancy clothes would be moderately clean.

“So, honey, what do you do for a living?” Granny asked as we bounced and trundled over the roughest path I was sure any of my passengers had ever traveled. I kept checking my rearview and counting heads in case someone flew out. “Are you one of those drag queens?”

I almost swallowed my tongue.

Bella smiled a charming little smile before patting my grandmother’s liver-spotted hand.

“Granny,” I whispered in a soft, chastising way.