Aquartet of estranged brothers, different as night and day, come together to save the Bastian Acres Ranch legacy.

  Four men, four loves, four tales of romance, family, and acceptance.

  For Dodge, the vibrant plains of Oklahoma hold the promise of a new way of life as well as the possibility of a second chance at love.

  Starting over is never easy. Dodge Bastian can attest to that fact a few times over. Not only has the professional from California traded in his dental scrubs for cowboy boots, but he’s also now the sole parent of his ten-year-old son. While trying to restore the rundown ranch his father left to him and his siblings, Dodge was thrilled to be given sole custody of his child. His dreams of raising his boy in the bliss that is rural America are slowly coming true. However, the upheavals that have taken place are not sitting as well on his son’s thin shoulders as they are on his.

  While he’s working to rebuild a family legacy for his son, the lad has found a new group of friends who aren’t exactly the best influences. After being caught defacing a historical landmark in downtown Bastian Grange, Dodge gets a call about his son from the local sheriff. Tall, handsome, and infinitely patient, Ollie Ahoka has already grabbed Dodge’s eye. Seeing how the lawman interacts with his son fans the small flame of attraction into a blaze that will soon engulf both men. But will the inferno of a new romance continue to burn once the reality of parenthood settles in?

  Dodge (Bastian Brothers #2) is a single father, slow burn M/M contemporary western gay romance with a new cowboy who is feeling out of his depth, a longtime local lawman, a confused young man, lots of found family love, plenty of filled to the rafters farmhouse chaos, and warm as the summer sun happy ending.

  AV.L. Locey MM Romance

  Dodge (Bastian Brothers #2)

  Copyright © 2025 V.L. Locey

  Edited by Kathy Krick

  Cover by Meredith Russell

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  PUBLISHER: Perky Rooster Press

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Not AI written. No parts of this novel may be used in any way for any AI generated works.

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

  If you happen to find any errors such as typos, missing punctuation, or, horror of horrors, factual blunders, please report them to my assistant, nolakimpa@gmail.com. She’ll let me know about them. Please do not report them using the reporting feature on your e-reader. This can have consequences for authors if we don’t see them and reply quickly enough!

  Acknowledgments

  To my family who accepts me and all my foibles and quirks. Even the plastic banana in my holster.

  To my alphas, betas, editors, and proofers who work incredibly hard to help me make my books the shiniest we can make them.

  If you want to keep up with all the latest news about my upcoming M/M releases, sign up for my newsletter by visiting my website:

  https://vllocey.com/

  Contents

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  Coming next in the Bastian Brothers Quadrilogy…

  A note from the author…

  About the Author

  Other Books by V.L. Locey

  1

  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 there was 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 p
rivacy.

  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 memories of 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.

  “Maybe I can just take a bath in the water trough,” I groused as a trio of goat kids pranced around my legs, one headbutting my kneecap. Ford laughed at their antics, calling them by name. There were so many kids I had no clue who belonged to what doe. Ford did though. They all looked the same to me, and the colored collars were confusing. As long as Ford and Aiden, the local large animal vet, could keep track, I wouldn’t worry over it. My bookkeeping skills were not livestock records. I was the Bastian in charge of the books. Lucky me.

  “If the horses don’t mind, I don’t,” he tossed at me as I went to lug in fresh bedding for the goats from the hay mound. Thirty minutes passed in hard work and silence aside from the sounds of livestock and bees warming up as the June sun climbed higher. The call to breakfast arrived just as I was breaking up a clover hay bale into the manger for the milking does.

  Ford and I met up with Baker at the back door. “The cattle are going to be turned out soon. Final rides today to check fencing south and west. The bull has covered most of the heifers already so he can go to pasture with them. We’ll turn them loose in a few days. Dodge, you want to ride out with us to show them where the water is, where to graze, and just let them know that we’re in charge?”

  “Yeah, please. I think Dahn would enjoy it. It’s pretty low key, right?” We clomped into the back room, the mudroom as it was called, to toe off our shitty boots and wash up in an old double sink that Granny said was older than she was.

  “For the most part. The bull can be a questionable thing, but he’s pretty docile for the most part. Just let me ride near him in case he decides to get a wild hair.”

  “We need to name him and the cows. They’re cows now, right? They’ve been bred?” Ford asked as the smell of coffee and bacon wafted in on a warm breeze.

  “They’re bred heifers. When they get closer to calving, they can be called a springing heifer, but I just call them heifers until they give birth and then they’re cows,” Baker patiently explained and left us at the sink as Granny and Bella chatted away in the kitchen.

  “You got that?” I teased, knocking elbows with the youngest Bastian brother. He blushed slightly as he nodded his head. “Good. I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

  Dahn was at the table, groggy but awake, with a plate of fried eggs and bacon and a large glass of milk in hand. I bent down to kiss his knotted hair. He made that sleepy, grumpy kid noise but didn’t push me away. That day was probably coming soon, but I’d keep kissing him until he said not to. It would break my heart, but all kids go through that stage.

  “Morning,” Granny crowed, moving around the airy kitchen in her summer robe, slippers, and leopard leggings. “Coffee is nearly ready. Bella, can you check the toast? That old toaster likes to stick sometimes.”

  “On it,” Bella announced, her platinum hair combed back off her slim face and held in place with a pretty pink band that matched her summery rose dress. Her makeup was subtle, and her earrings were tiny pearls. She moved with grace even this early in the morning. “Here we go. No stuck toast today. Dodge, would you like something to take with you to the airport? We’re going to bake some bread before I go to the boutique. We can make sandwiches.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll grab something once I land in Sacramento.” I forked some eggs onto my plate and plucked some toast from the platter that Bella placed on the table. “Are you sure you don’t want to come? You haven’t seen your other dad since the end of school?”

  “No, I’m good. Ford and me are going to help Doc Aiden with tattooing and castrating the boy goats.”

  I threw a look at Ford as he lowered the strip of bacon about to go into his mouth. “It’s nothing bloody. Just bands.”

  “If you want your boy to grow up on a ranch, he needs to learn everything,” Baker chimed in to the discussion after taking a slurp of coffee. “It’s not always clean and sparkly on a farm. Sometimes there’s blood and death and real painful things. He needs to learn it all, or he might just as well be back in the city being shot at by gang members.”

  “I’m sure the boy will learn what he needs to learn in good time,” Granny interjected as she settled into her seat with the sun on her shoulders. Helped her arthritis, she claimed. “Castrating a bull or buck is part of the working of a ranch. Easy procedure. An elastic band around the dangles and there you go!”