Bear Glover stood in the equipment warehouse, his mood growing darker by the moment. Bishop and Ranger both lay on the ground, and Bear could only just see the tips of Bishop’s boots. Ranger wasn’t underneath the tractor nearly as far, but if it suddenly started, he’d lose plenty of skin.
Bear felt himself transforming into the grizzly some of his friends and family members often told him he could become. He worked against the instinct, but he honestly didn’t have time for a downed tractor. They had field prep to do, and if it didn’t get done on time, crops didn’t get put in on time, and then the ranch was behind for an entire year.
He really didn’t want to wear the grizzly skin for a year, though he’d done it in the past. He finally entered the warehouse, trying to tamp down the temper he’d been graced with. As the oldest of the Glover family, he’d been running the ranch since his daddy had fallen ill, almost fourteen years ago.
Truth be told, he’d probably been too young to take over, but sometimes a man had to do what needed to be done, and Daddy couldn’t be out in the fields, with the cattle, or on the horses anymore.
Several dogs entered the warehouse with Bear, most of them never getting too far from him. Bishop liked to tease him about that too, claiming Bear even let one canine sleep in the house with him every night. That he’d made a rotating schedule for their cattle dogs.
None of it was true. The last thing Bear wanted was another heat source in the bed with him. He blew a fan all night as it was, even in the winter.
“Ranger,” he said, and his cousin pulled himself out from underneath the tractor. “Where we at?” Bear tried to act like he didn’t care. No one in the family would buy it, but Bear had managed to keep several cowboys employed for years now by acting like he didn’t care. His falsely calm demeanor in the face of trouble had also kept Samantha Benton coming to fix his equipment when it broke down.
Except she couldn’t come for another couple of days, which was why Ranger and Bishop had grease all over their hands.
Bear’s pulse kicked out an extra beat at the simple thought of Sammy. He’d wanted her to move onto the ranch and work for him full-time, but she wouldn’t. She had good reasons, he supposed, but that didn’t make Bear any less of a well, bear about having to wait for her services.
Truth be told, he’d harbored a crush on the woman for three solid years now, and he should just ask her out. She seemed settled with her new responsibilities as a single mom, and her shop hummed along without her there twenty-four-seven.
“You’re not even listening to me,” Ranger said, and Bear blinked out of his own mind. He could sometimes get caught in there, especially once he started thinking about Sammy and all that dark hair she had, with a reddish-purple tint.
“I am,” Bear said. “You said you can’t get it to start.”
“I said,” Ranger said with a growl in his voice. “It won’t start, and Bishop thinks it needs a new fuel pump. So we went to town and got it. He’s puttin’ that in now, and then we’ll see.” Ranger wiped his hands on a dirty towel and turned back to the tractor. “Sammy can’t come till when?”
“Monday,” Bear said, another dose of darkness filling his soul. He should just replace all the equipment when it broke down. He had plenty of money. But that wasn’t the Glover way, and Bear had been raised to repair rather than replace.
“Start ‘er up,” Bishop said, sliding out from under the tractor.
“Moment of truth,” Ranger said. He came from Bear’s uncle Bull, but he had the same brown hair as all the Glovers did. Before Bear’s grandmother had passed away, she’d called it “earthy.” The color of good, rich soil that had just been overturned. Bear just used the word “brown.”
Ranger climbed up into the cockpit of the tractor and yelled, “Clear.”
Bear and Bishop backed up a couple more feet, because who knew what could come spewing out of an engine once it started. The tractor grumbled, then growled, finally roaring to life and chugging along in an irregular pattern.
“That’s not right,” Bishop said over the noise. He waved both hands over his head to get Ranger to shut the tractor off. “I know we need this fixed,” he said to Bear. “Don’t worry, Boss. I’ll get it.” He grinned at Bear and dove under the tractor again.
Oh, to be in his thirties again. Bear wished he had half the energy his brother did, but as the oldest, and comparing himself to the youngest, he didn’t.
He also didn’t want to stand there, growing ever more impatient while Ranger and Bishop fiddled with settings and trims and this belt or that one. Everyone on the ranch knew the fields had to be ready by next weekend, and they’d get it done. He himself had worked through the night more than once to make sure the crops got put in on time.
He left the equipment shed in favor of the corral, where his manager over the horses had let all the equines out today as he worked to get the stables cleaned. Bear’s family was a traditional ranching family, doing everything from horseback, with dogs and men. None of the fancy ATVs and helicopters some ranches used. He was never as comfortable as he was in the saddle, with a few dogs streaking along beside him as they moved cattle.
Therefore, the horse care at Shiloh Ridge Ranch was crucial, and Bear kept his finger on the pulse of all of it. He stroked the nose of one horse, stealing some of the calm energy, and saying, “You don’t think I’m a grizzly, do ya?”
The horse didn’t answer, and Bear wasn’t sure he’d have wanted to hear the animal disagree anyway. His phone rang, and Bear didn’t even want to look at it. Tuesdays weren’t usually this rough.
Evelyn Walker’s name sat on the screen, and Bear’s mood changed instantly. He connected the call with his rough rancher’s fingers, nearly knocking the phone out of his own hand. “Hey,” he said easily, actually smiling while he did it.
“Bear,” Evelyn said. “Sammy is at Micah’s, fixing Simone’s kiln.”
His heart started dancing in his chest. “How long will she be there?”
“She just arrived,” Evelyn said. “It’s impossible to know, but Simone said the kiln has been acting up for a few weeks now. Could be a while.”
“Thanks, Evelyn.” Bear normally didn’t waste words, especially when he didn’t have much time. A sliver of humiliation went with him as he turned from the horses in the corral and strode toward his truck.
He could get to Seven Sons Ranch, where Micah lived and his wife did her antiques restoration, in fifteen minutes. Fine, the drive was usually twenty, but Bear was unusually motivated today.
He hadn’t been able to figure out how to ask Sammy out on a date. He’d been the nicest to her out of anyone who set foot on Shiloh Ridge property, that was for sure. And he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
His brothers—and he had plenty of them—had been teasing him for months and months about his crush on the woman, but he didn’t see any of them dating anyone.
He drove down the dirt road as fast as he dared. He didn’t need anyone asking questions later, and if he didn’t kick up too much dust, no one would even know he’d left the ranch.
Several months ago, he’d had the thought that he just needed the right situation to present itself for him to ask Sammy to dinner. Nothing ever had. No amount of prayer had produced a different result than Bear giving her tasks around the ranch, Sammy completing them, and him paying her for a job well done.
He needed a matchmaker. And that was when he remembered a small-town scandal from several years ago, when Evelyn had married Rhett Walker to prove her worth as a matchmaker.
It had taken Bear four more months to get up the nerve to call her, and he never would’ve done that had Micah not encouraged him. He said Rhett and Evelyn were real happy in their marriage, even if it had started out fake.
Micah was a good man, and his wife was Evelyn’s sister. So Bear had made the call.
Evelyn had said it would take some serious planning to get Sammy in a situation where Bear would just happen to show up. She’d said they’d have to be patient and wait. She’d never called before.
Bear’s mind blanked as he turned onto the asphalt and started down out of the foothills. Sammy was working on a kiln. He was just stopping by to see Micah’s…something.
Bear frowned at himself. This was going to fail spectacularly.
And yet, he kept driving.
He turned onto the main highway and really got his truck going now, arriving at Seven Sons only a few minutes later. Sure enough, Sammy’s rickety, old red and brown truck sat in Micah’s driveway.
Bear parked right behind it, his heart thumping out a strange rhythm in his chest. He sat in the cab of his truck—much nicer and newer than Sammy’s—for a few minutes, trying to convince himself to get out.
He didn’t want to be made the fool. At forty-five years old, he didn’t need to feel like such a spectacular failure.
Micah came out onto the front porch, and Bear couldn’t just leave now. So he got out of his truck too, trying to remember the scenarios Evelyn had created for him.
“Bear,” Micah said with a big grin. And why shouldn’t he be smiling? He had a beautiful wife now too. A baby boy born last month. In fact, Simone came outside too, that little infant in her arms with a shock of dark hair.
“He wants you,” she said, passing the baby to Micah. She gazed at her son for a moment, and Bear thought he was made of all head. Though he supposed all newborns were. “Afternoon, Bear.”
“Ma’am.” He touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Micah, I was wondering if you’d show me that wall of bookcases.” He met Simone’s eye, and she grinned widely at him. Micah simply looked confused.
“In Simone’s she-shed?”
“Yeah,” Bear said. “I want to get some pictures of them for my brother. He’s going to be doing some remodeling, and he’s got it in his head that his house needs a library.”
“All right,” Micah said. Of course the man wouldn’t suspect anything about Bear’s story was off. He did have a brother that definitely leaned toward the eccentric side. Simone certainly knew though, and Micah had been the one to suggest Evelyn’s services in the first place. Maybe he’d just forgotten, because it had been months since Bear had talked to Evelyn, and longer since Micah had mentioned the possibility of having Evelyn create a situation for Bear and Sammy that would get them out of the friend zone.
But Bear followed Micah through his house silently, grateful he’d hired the man to design and build his new homestead too. Yes, it had been outdated. No one could argue with that. No one in the family had protested when Bear had torn down the old homestead and put up another one. He lived there with one of his brothers and one of his cousins, and his place was as amazing as this one.
Micah went out the back door and down the steps to an expansive patio. “It’s just over here,” he said, as if Bear couldn’t see the huge shed to the left. The baby in Micah’s arms fussed, and Micah bounced the little boy, shushing him.
“What did you name him again?” Bear asked.
“Travis,” Micah said. “We call him Trap, though.”
“You’d fit right in my family,” Bear said with a chuckle. His real name wasn’t Bear, of course, but Bartholomew, after his father. Bear had never been called anything but Bear, at least in his memory. Once or twice, his mother had called him Teddy, but that went with Bear.
Just like Grizzly does, he thought as Micah stepped to the door. Bear’s heart throbbed against the back of his throat, filling his mouth and rendering him mute.
Trap continued to fuss, breaking into a wail that said he wasn’t more than a few weeks old, as Micah went into the she-shed. “I don’t know why she said he wanted me,” Micah said. “He’s clearly hungry.”
Bear just followed Micah inside, automatically looking around for Sammy. He didn’t see her immediately, and then she poked her head up from where she knelt next to the kiln in the far corner.
His heart thrashed now, part of it telling him to do something. Ask her something. The other half warned him against doing anything, saying anything, just in case his heart got broken again.
“I have to take him inside,” Micah said over his baby’s wails. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He looked at Sammy and back to Bear, and Bear saw all the dots connect in Micah’s mind. A slow smile crossed the man’s face, and Bear almost growled at him to get him to leave.
But he didn’t want Sammy to see him act like that, especially toward a friend. And if there was someone outside of Bear’s family he considered a friend, it was Micah Walker. All the Walkers really, as he knew Jeremiah quite well from their ranch owners meetings too.
“Take your time,” Bear said, and Micah’s grin only grew. He thankfully ducked out of the she-shed a moment later, leaving Bear alone with Sammy.
Finally.
Alone with Sammy, away from his own ranch. Outside of anything that had to do with their professional, working relationship.
In Bear’s fantasies, he wanted a completely different kind of relationship with the woman, and he managed to smile at her as she stood up. She wore a dark blue tank top and jeans, both of which had plenty of dirt and grime on them.
Bear absolutely loved that about her. She was strong and sexy and not afraid to get dirty. She shook her hair over her shoulders and smiled back. “Hey, Bear,” she said easily, like she didn’t think about him in her quiet moments.
Panic reared inside Bear, and he couldn’t say anything back.
She looked down at her tools, which she’d spread over a nearby counter, flicking her gaze back to his a moment later. “What are you doing here?”
Ah, it was a great question. And Bear had no idea how to answer it.
