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Chapter One
“Hello again, Miss Persimmons. After studying your dental x-rays carefully, I have concluded that the reason for your trouble biting through the sugar taffy that my son gave you is because you have no upper front teeth.” I turned from the x-ray screen on the wall to look at the pudgy red-and-white goat sitting upright with a bib around its neck in a dark blue dental exam chair. She was wearing a pearl necklace and had painted hooves. “What we can do if you wish is to get you fitted with a full upper plate, or, and this is my suggestion, stop eating the snacks and treats that a ten-year-old boy feeds you over the fence. Granted, I know taffy is delicious even though it’s loaded with sugar, or because of that fact, but that wad of sticky taffy in your rumen could cause an imbalance.”
“Blahhhhh,” Miss Persimmon blatted in my face.
“Exactly,” I replied as I patted her goaty shoulder. “So, while you’re in the chair, shall we clean those bottom teeth?”
“Blahhhhh.”
I smiled and reached for a dental scaler.
Just as I reached for the pick, a thunderous shot rang out, startling me from one of the stupidest dreams I’ve ever had. Jerking upright in bed, my head swiveled left and right until my sleepy brain caught up with reality. Right. There was no goat having its teeth cleaned in my old office back in California. I was in my far too firm bed in a small bedroom at Bastian Acres. The summer wind was making the sheers in my first-floor sleeping quarters dance merrily. The second report of a gun made me jump slightly. After three months here on the ranch, I should be used to the early morning rifle practice courtesy of my grandmother.
“Someone moved my cans again!” Granny shouted, standing about ten feet from my window. Possibly taking over the old parlor that faced the front yard had been a mistake. If I had been thinking, we could have moved Bella’s sewing room from the back to the parlor. Granny only engaged in target practice at six a.m., citing that the sun’s rays at that time were the purest. My brothers and I concluded that she simply liked to shoot things while making sure everyone on the ranch was wide awake, bright and early. How plinking tin cans with a .22 long rifle at the crack of dawn would play out once we had the line shacks ready for vacationers was yet to be determined. Linc, Ford, and I had already voted to let our eldest brother, Baker, tell her when the time came. “Did someone move my cans again?”
“No, Granny, the cans are right where you missed them yesterday!” Speaking of Baker, that was his gritty voice calling out from one of the barns. The man was up with the chickens. Maybe before. Rolling to my right, I glanced at the clock beside my bed. I’d not brought much with me after selling the house after my divorce, but I did store and then ship my Lotula conforming feel mattress that was perfection in terms of maintaining spinal alignment. Chris, my ex, hated it, so therewas no bickering over it. Just one of very few things he hadn’t fought me over, including custody of our son. I loved my son and had fought valiantly to ensure we had joint custody. Chris might be a retired pro football star and me a lowly pedodontist, but no one was stripping me from my boy. Which made it even more odd that he was now being super cagey about wanting some sort of meeting asap with me to discuss custody. I might not have his millions—or what was left of them as he was quite a spendthrift—but I was well off. Quite well off in fact, so if he thought he was going to drag me into court again, he had another think coming. I’d litigate him up one side and down the—
“Hey, you’re up. Morning! Did you move my cans?” Granny asked through the screen, her nose smushed tightly against the fiberglass screen.
“Jesus!” I gasped, pulling the sheet up to cover my bare chest. I did have soft cotton shorts on since parents learned early on never to sleep in the nude. “Granny, I might have been naked in here.”
She tittered and then ran a hand through her now bright yellow hair. Not a natural blondish yellow. An electric banana tone that made a person’s eyes bleed if the sun hit it naturally. She adored it. Bella thought it was quite fashionable. Ford, and I suspected Bella, could shave Granny’s tiny head bald and Granny would rave over it. Those two were tighter than two stinkbugs in a tulip, as Granny would say.
“I wouldn’t have seen nothing I ain’t never seen before. I used to be a showgirl in Vegas in the sixties. I seen all kinds of things back then that would make your generation, millennial XYZers blush all the way to your toes.”
“You met Bob Goulet, I recall.”
“Yep, that man could sing. And that mustache! What a tickle that would give a woman!” She giggled like a scamp. “So, did you move my cans?”
“Granny, no one moved your cans. Get your face out of his window.” Baker arrived to steer the old woman in floppy rubber boots and a magenta summer robe from the screen.
“Thank you!” I shouted as the sound of pipes creaking above me signaled the rest of the family was up and stirring around.
I moved to my side as quietly as I could, grateful the bed was as silent as moving on a cloud, and stared at Dahn slumbering away on the pullout sofa. All I could see of him was the top of his head, longish black hair sticking out in wild directions. My heart thudded with love for the boy. He seemed content to sleep on the old pullout couch we’d hefted and wiggled into the parlor from the sewing room. Once we had this ranch on its feet, we needed to find a house nearby. I enjoyed my new family, but there was zero privacy.
The bedrooms were full now, and so he had to sleep in my new boudoir. I had no issue with it at all. From when he was a toddler, I adored having him sleep with us. Chris, on the other hand, disliked a thrashing machine of a child in his bed. It interrupted his rest and made having sex difficult. So Dahn only crawled in when Chris was off playing football or on those long business trips that weren’t only trips to sign game balls and jerseys after he retired. Soon-to-be hubby number four was a model at one of the sports expos. Whatever. I truly was over it for the most part. Sometimes it dug at me like a thorn just under the skin. Being an older Dodge being tossed aside for a twinky young Lambo was bound to sting. Even now, if I dwelled on it or had to speak to my ex, the need to spit in his eye returned.
But I was a bigger man than that. Plus, Dahn had heard enough fighting. So, I did my best not to call Chris a pervy twink hound in front of our son. As the boy slept, I sat up, dressed for a dreaded trip to Sacramento, and slipped out to use the bathroom upstairs. Of course, someone was already in it, humming softly, their tune something that tickled my memoriesof my grandmother rocking me to sleep. After Cash had left my mom and me, Grandma had stepped in to babysit while Mom went to work at a lawyer’s office. Grandma passed five years ago. I’d been devastated. Chris stayed home with Dahn for the funeral in Calistoga.
Hearing the gentle hum and knowing Bella was inside, I crept back down the stairs. It would be a while before she was done putting on her face, so I stepped out back, walked behind the horse barn, and relieved myself. The air was fresh, the sun already climbing high into the sky, and the lowing of cattle blended with birdsong and the blats of goats. I shook, zipped, and used an old water barrel to rinse my hands. Then I went to find Baker and give him a hand with the morning chores. He greeted me with a grunt before handing me a hayfork.
“Goat pens are shitty,” he said and ambled off to check on the cattle. He was out of sorts this week. His man was out on the range again, this time in Wyoming, and that meant no nights curled up in a tent hidden among redbud for Studebaker. Being horny made him grumpy. Grumpier, I should say. I totally understood. My dick had forgotten how to get hard. No, that was a lie, I mulled as I switched out the fork for a shovel to clean up nanny berries. My dick had not forgotten how to grow stiff. It was just being particular about who it wanted to be hard for. Anytime I spied Ollie Ahoka, my cock perked right up. Jesus, that man was stunning. Broad, strong, dark hair and black eyes, and that uniform. My prick stirred just thinking about asking him to use those cuffs on me…
The red rooster with the black tail, Brewster, arrived with his bevy of red hens to check out the fresh bedding and pick up any bits of grain the goats had spilled when fed last night.
“Morning, Brewster. Ladies.” I stopped to tip my cowboy hat at the hens. “Thank you for helping clean up, but if you could not crow in the middle of the night, it would be appreciated.”
The rooster gave me a look and then proceeded to dig in the hay. Before I moved out here, I assumed, like most city folk, that a rooster only crowed when the sun rose. Nope. They crow all day long and into the night. Why? I had no idea. Still, even with the nighttime serenades, the sounds of the ranch far outweighed the city noise I had left behind.
“Hey,” Ford called, slouching into the goat barn to check on his babies. The boy from New York City had fallen hard and fast for the meat goats we now own. “You still here?”
“I have a few hours before I need to get to the airport,” I replied, handing him the shovel. “Thought I’d see what needed to be done. Is Bella out of the bathroom?”
He nodded sleepily, his worn jeans and thin tee looking right at home here in the barn. “Yep, but Linc is in there now.”
I rolled my eyes. Linc took longer than Bella in the bathroom. It was all that beard and mustache care.
