The Mechanics of Mistletoe - Liz Isaacson Page 0,41

VIN. He repeated the process with the other truck, and he decided he could leave that one behind too. The air conditioning didn’t work in it, and he had a thirty-five minute drive to the dealership in near-summer temperatures.

Ranger finally decided to just go. He was forty years old, and he could talk to a pretty brunette for a few minutes. He’d done it before—to this exact pretty brunette, in fact.

He left the vehicle shed, resolved to see this through. Shiloh Ridge needed two new trucks, plain and simple.

He talked to himself all the way down to town, vocalizing things halfway through sentences to coach himself about what to say and how to act. “You’ve dated other women,” he said. “Not for a while, but it’s fine. You know how this goes.”

He’d walk in, all cool and sophisticated, looking rough and rugged with a bit of grease smeared on the hem of his shirt. His cowboy hat was fairly new, and Oakley seemed to comment on it every time she saw him.

He’d grin at her and ask her how she was. Explain the situation at the ranch and shake his head like it was a goldarn shame he couldn’t get those trucks to start. Then she’d show him the nicest, biggest work trucks she had on the lot, and he’d buy a pair of them.

Easy.

In and out.

Nothing at a car dealership was ever in and out, Ranger knew that. But if he could spend the hours with Oakley, he didn’t care. If he read the situation right and he employed his voice, he could leave with two trucks and a dinner date.

His lungs shook a little when he breathed, but he gripped the wheel and kept going. He pulled into the lot at Mack’s, and they seemed pretty busy for a Wednesday afternoon.

He parked and got out of his truck, noticing way more balloons that should be around. Where would they even get balloons right now?

The clean-up around town and in the surrounding areas of Three Rivers had been plugging along day by day. Ranger and the other cowboys had just finished at Seven Sons, where they’d worked for five straight days.

Number one, that ranch was massive, with a lot of buildings. Number two, Liam Walker’s house had suffered much more damage than Aunt Lois’s, and the majority of the men and women who’d been going around to help one another had worked at his homestead.

Then, back at Shiloh Ridge, Bear was pushing them to get the ground ready for planting, despite the three tornadoes that had torn through town only eighteen days ago.

Ranger was glad Bear had taken on that role, because he’d rather his taller, wider cousin got whispered about behind his back. Ranger would just nod and agree, and then he’d listen to his brothers and cousins when they sat down to eat lunches together, and when they drove down to church together on the Sabbath.

He and Bear met every other day for at least fifteen minutes to exchange information and make major decisions for the ranch. Bear attended the ranch ownership meetings in town, and Ranger was more of the silent, hidden glue that kept everyone and everything together at Shiloh Ridge.

A blast of music came through the speakers, and Ranger startled and turned toward the huge glass building that housed the showroom. The song had a rock beat, but it was clearly a love ballad, and Ranger took a couple of steps toward the building, trying to see what was happening.

It sure seemed like a party was going down, and he found that odd too. He glanced around and saw no sign of the tornadoes, so perhaps they’d been hit and already cleaned up. Life did have to go on at some point, Ranger knew that.

Sometimes, after a major event, he felt absolutely stuck in time, his feet cemented in the same day over and over. He’d lived a year’s worth of days that held the feelings and thoughts of a man who’d just lost his father. He distinctly remembered the day he “woke up” and realized that so much time had gone by, and it was time to start living again.

He took a breath and walked toward the big, glass building. The other times he’d come to Mack’s, he hadn’t made it five steps before a salesman approached him. Today, there was no one.

They were all inside, gathered mostly in a circle, where a tall man stood, a wide smile on his face as