Ranch Rivalry Read online

  Ranch Rivalry

  By

  Gray Gardner

  ©2015 by Blushing Books® and Gray Gardner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  Gardner, Gray

  Ranch Rivalry

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-023-2

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About Gray Gardner

  Ebook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  About Blushing Books

  Chapter One

  Sun. Dust. Sweat.

  And of course, the tears.

  Why do cars always break down in the middle of nowhere?

  Case McCann stalked around the rented white Dodge Charger, kicking the front tire a few times in anger, and finally leaning over the opened hood again. And yes, the hood had a freaking racing stripe directly down the middle in midnight blue. That wasn’t as bothersome as what was happening underneath that stripe, however. She could stare and ponder all she wanted, biting her bottom lip, deep in thought. The insides of a car remained totally mysterious to her. Botany? No problem. Perennials and annuals? Sure.

  The black thingy spewing and smoking, connected to the other black tube stuff in the engine? Yeah right. Her hands were smudged with engine grease and God only knows what else, so she wiped her watery eyes with the back of her wrist.

  Now what?

  She sighed heavily and looked up the white clay road from where she’d come, a stark white ribbon in a sea of greens and yellows, then down to where she wanted to go. Live oaks sprouted with their crooked, thin trunks right up to the road’s edge. A few weeds chased each other through white chunks of clay on the roadside, while a light, cool breeze swept down the corridor. Total isolation.

  And if this road was anything like it was when she was younger, no one would just “happen” to drive by and lend assistance. Only six farms and ranches used FM-650, with metal gates directing people to more dirt roads winding through pastures and forests and dead-ending at a main house that was inevitably miles away.

  Case knew everyone in the area. The Reiner Ranch was owned by the most elderly couple she’d ever met, and that was years ago. The probability that they could have died months ago and not been discovered yet was uncomfortably high. They never drove anymore, and they’d never had children. The Reiners wouldn’t be any help.

  The Smithy Turkey Farm had employees piled into truck beds at the start and finish of every day, headed to and from their homes in town, but it was well after five pm, and the daylight was dying. No help there, either.

  The Colton’s place and the Hanover Ranch were strictly vacation getaways these days, so she wouldn’t run into any of them on a late spring Monday evening, either.

  And the Blackhills? They owned over 35,000 acres—by far the most in the area. She and her three older brothers had only a handful of run-ins with Blackhill family members. Their ranches backed up to each other and had a common property line, so while they both tried to avoid one another, encounters were naturally unavoidable. Every single meeting ended up in a physical altercation.

  Blood, profanity, for some reason the McCanns and the Blackhills hated one another. Damned if anyone remembered why.

  So, if a Blackhill drove by she’d actually be better served if she hid in the trees or faked her own death.

  Not that anyone would ever drive down the desolate unpaved road, though.

  Closing her eyes as the sun beat down on her round cheeks, she peeled off her navy cardigan, tossed it in the driver’s side window to the tan seat next to her black duffle bag, and started walking. Crickets chirped an invariable drone all around her. A buzzard circled far above her head. The loneliness was so tangible she began to feel sick to her stomach. This was not the life she liked.

  The day really couldn’t have gotten any worse. She’d flown in from her east coast school, a place that had made her so happy for the past seven years. No one was waiting to pick her up from the barn shaped terminal at the airport, and since cabs were non-compliant when it came to Farm-to-Market roads, had been forced to rent the ratty old Dodge Charger from the town’s only car dealer. And he wasn’t as honest as his sign had suggested.

  An hour later, there she was, in her white long sleeved shirt, with blackened cuffs from the crap car’s engine, her brother’s hand-me-down boot cut Levis that were slightly faded to a medium blue instead of the currently popular acid wash of the 1980s, and the 5:30 Texas sun on her back. Her shoulder length light brown hair swung in an irritated sway as she stomped her dirty white Kaepa tennis shoes down the road, which would eventually dead end at her property. The prospect of walking the squared off route around everyone’s property just to reach the gate on the McCann ranch daunted her. Stupid county planners and their road grids.

  Pausing, she glanced to her right and absent-mindedly pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail. The Blackhills owned the land on either side of FM-650, and technically, while she had to travel six miles down the road to reach her front gate, her actual property was only a few acres away on the other side of a thin strip of Blackhill land. She only knew this because her brothers had once suggested the Blackhills allow them an easement as a shortcut for the construction workers who were building the new barn. The Blackhills had laughed in their faces, and no such road was forged through the thick brush. They just weren’t meant to be on each other’s land.

  For some reason, she remembered that day very well. Someone smashed the kitchen phone into the drywall and she learned a few new words to take back to the girls in the dorms at boarding school. She came to the realization for the first time that only two Blackhills were living on the estate, and only one was truly the heir, while the other just a distant cousin. Originally, she had imagined a whole compound of freaks, judging from what her brothers had said. Obtuse, unreasonable, violent freaks, if she recalled correctly.

  But how obtuse, unreasonable, and violent? And how freaky?

  Crunching through the yellow and green patched grass, she carefully placed her hands on the barbed wire fence on the side of the road. She pulled it apart, stuck her leg through, and then her body, only snagging a small piece of her shirt, and then continued through the dense oak, mesquite, and cedar trees. She was well hidden and there was no way anyone would ever figure out she was taking a shortcut through the Blackhill’s place. And even if they did, she’d left her ID in the car so there was absolutely no way to prove she was a McCann… unless she ran into the one and only living Blackhill heir. She knew her way around, though, and had a great sense of direction. She’d be on her ranch in no time.

  Ranching had been in her family’s blood since before Texas had joined the Union.
Her dad, his dad, his dad, his two uncles, their dad, on and on… there was a detailed family tree tracing her heritage in her father’s study, and an exact replica in the Lyndon B Johnson Library in Austin. Family was everything to McCanns, and so was cattle ranching. All of her brothers had taken quickly to riding horses, herding cattle, watching fence lines, and irrigating pastures.

  Her dad had done it, his dad had done it, and so on with every generation. No oil, it was all about cattle… and an exclusivity clause her great-great grandfather had forged in contracts with several stockyards across the state.

  When her parents died in the plane collision that took the lives of many family members in their small town of Oakwood, her brothers jumped right in with both feet to run the family cattle business. Years of grooming had led up to that very moment.

  Joel, the oldest, left his own ranch to come and make sure the books were clear. He ran his wife’s family ranch in Kansas, but had bought in his own shares, so he had more experience than the other McCann children. He had to return home for most of the year, though, to be with his wife and children, so he left his two younger brothers in charge of the McCann place for the majority of the seasons.

  Townes, only a year younger than Joel, and his wife tried to care for the 10,000 square foot plantation style home, 8000 head of cattle, 50 quarter horses, and drought problems, but they were already pregnant, and both had jobs in Amarillo. Like Joel, they could only come and help out a few times a year.

  Jackson, God bless him, was left to make sure everything ran smoothly, the employees were happy, and the ranch stayed in the black. He wasn’t the smartest or most ambitious McCann, but he figured things out eventually and was able to keep the place afloat. After his seventh year of college at UT, he welcomed the opportunity to go back home and run his own ranch. He and Case were the closest.

  Case, for whatever reason, lacked any and all ranch style coordination and zeal. She’d been thrown from three different horses, had broken her arm twice, and had her shoulder dislocated after being smashed between a cow and a fence post. She’d never taken any interest in the cattle business, and didn’t care an ounce about the hunting that people would pay thousands of dollars for on the McCann property.

  She liked plants, flowers, and any Jane Austen book. She preferred her bike over a horse, and had raised feral cats secretly in one of their hay barns after her dad had told her and her brothers to shoot them. She adored all animals and human contact, so when she turned eleven, she told her parents that she was going to a boarding school in Virginia that she’d applied for and had already been accepted into. Since her grades and achievements had led the local teaching staff to make similar suggestions to her parents, they obliged. She only had to return home on holidays and summers.

  This was a big summer. She’d graduated, had an internship lined up at a national laboratory, and was heading to an advanced science program at SMU, where she’d get her BA and MA in Botany in only three years. It was an honor to have the staff even consider your application, let alone accept you into the school, she’d been told. She didn’t care. She was so ready to move on with her life and so ready to forget her old life out in the sticks of south central Texas, where the plains met the hill country.

  Her bags were packed, she’d been given the old blue Chevy pick-up truck that all of her brothers had driven before her, her apartment was leased and furnished in University Park, in Dallas, just waiting for its modern, chic tenant, and her internship would start in mid-June, setting her up with contacts at the Center for Disease Control. She’d always wanted to research there, discovering cures and remedies through horticulture. Her new life was ready and waiting.

  Then she’d gotten a call from Tizzy Smithy, her old friend from her public school days in Oakwood. Now an administrative assistant at Commerce Bank, Tizzy had noticed that the McCann bills were not only being returned, but were all past due by two months. She told her that the bank was going to have to send someone out to her ranch and take drastic actions if the bills weren’t settled. Case quickly paid everything, which added up to over $15,000, through a wire transfer from the bank account her father and brothers had set up for her, but didn’t really start to worry until after her third day of calling her ranch house and hearing nothing from Jackson.

  Jackson always answered, always half drunk at the end of the day, making her laugh as she leaned against the musty smelling wood paneled walls of her hallway with the one phone in her dormitory. He’d tell her about something dumb that one of the employees had done, the usual suspects being Zeke and Paco, and then tell her who he’d had over to the house for a “sleepover,” the usual suspects being one of the sorority girls visiting the Colton or Hanover ranches. She’d tell him about her greenhouse she’d built by the back wall of the campus and everything she’d planted until he yawned excessively. Then they’d hang up.

  And now, when she needed him to give her an explanation about the bills, and to pick her up from the airport, he was nowhere to be found.

  “He’s in Mexico on another drinking binge. Give him a week and he’ll be back, taking care of everything,” Joel had said after she’d called him in Kansas, worried. Joel had three kids screaming in the background so she decided not to bother him any further. She went out with her friends that night and tried to forget about it, but had to call Townes the next day to see what he thought.

  “Don’t worry about that ass wagon. You go to Dallas and study hard. You’ve earned it, Casey, you hear me?” Townes had said, sounding so serious as usual. She didn’t want him to know how worried she was about her favorite brother, so she just agreed and hung up. For the first time in her life, she didn’t like being so far from her family.

  She didn’t listen to them, anyway. They’d been twelve and eleven years older than her, respectively, and may as well have been total strangers. Jackson was only seven years older and they’d been buddies growing up, playing the role of the immature children while Joel and Townes took all of the responsibility. When their parents died on the chartered plane to the UT game, they started singing a different tune, though. The whole town of Oakwood had taken a major hit. The 30-passenger plane had collided with the private jet of Mr. and Mrs. Blackhill on the runway. It was the biggest tragedy in the history of the county. All of their friends at school had to either leave to go live with relatives in distant cities or states, and the rest had to deal with aunts, uncles, and annoying cousins coming to live with them.

  Fifteen couples died when the planes had crashed, and Jackson and Case were the only minors with brothers old enough to care for them. Jackson graduated from high school and went on to his seven-year stint at UT, while Case returned to her coveted boarding school and tried to be normal. She gladly returned home during holidays but secretly wished that she could be as old as her brothers, and just get on with her life. They were getting married and having kids and not living on the ranch. She hadn’t even hit puberty yet.

  Her brothers had always teased her and called her The Great Mistake. Her parents told her she was their favorite Christmas surprise. They’d found out they were pregnant over the holiday. Mistake or not, she’d loved her parents. She missed them whenever she was back in Oakwood.

  Now, in a strange twist of fate, she was the one being counted on, while her brothers’ lives had stagnated and hers was moving on. Just one quick stop in Oakwood, yell at Jackson to get his act together so they wouldn’t lose their ranch, then back to getting settled before her internship began in Dallas. With Joel and Townes so far away, and her with a summer break, she really was the only one able to check on things. And Jackson had pretty much made a name for himself as the picture of irresponsibility.

  She’d called for the thousandth time and had left a message on one of those new answering machines with a recordable cassette tape, telling him to sober up and grab her from the airport on Monday at noon in the nearby town of Gomez. The airport in Oakwood had shut down after the accident, so visitors either flew into Dalla
s and took a prop plane to Gomez, or flew into Austin and drove.

  Jackson, of course, hadn’t been there and she’d been forced to deal with Honest Bill Gomez himself, the great-grandson of the town’s founder, who owned the car dealership. He gave her a terrible deal on a Dodge Charger that had to be more than ten years old.

  And there she was, broken down on the side of the road, miles from her family’s beautiful home that had probably gone to crap in the past year, shuffling through leaves and yellow dirt in the late afternoon. She knew the land very well, having been caught a few times playing with her brothers and the other kids on the right and wrong side of the fence line. It was mostly a terrifying experience, usually resulting in a Blackhill shooting a shotgun straight up into the air to get everyone back over the fence, but Henry Hanover swore one time that Mr. Blackhill grabbed him by the hair and shoved his head into a full water tank a few times, nearly drowning him.

  Sure, it was a little ridiculous, but enough to make Case tread very carefully through the trees, checking over her shoulder every now and then. She’d been smart enough to rarely get caught if any mischief was afoot, and even when she and the other children were caught, she’d been spry enough to make a clean getaway. Sure, she felt bad for the other kids, but they also didn’t live as far out of town as she did. It was a good ten-mile jaunt to get from the city limits to her front gate, so that had turned out to be punishment enough.

  She shoved a leafy branch out of her way as she wondered what had become of all of those kids after the accident. She’d already started at her new boarding school when it happened. They’d been shipped to grandparents in New York, cousins in Seattle, a creepy uncle in Utah, a slightly famous member of a rock band in Chicago. Case could hardly imagine what they lived like. Tizzy was the only friend her age that remained in Oakwood, her turkey farm having been taken over by her Aunt Evelyn. The bank must have been great for Tizzy, even though she was a secretary, because Evelyn made her hose out the turkey hatches every day. It was the single most disgusting thing Case had ever seen or smelled.