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 it if 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