Alpha Rancher Bear: BWWM Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 3) by Zoe Chant Page A

takes us awhile to get back."
    "I would have liked that. But I understand about life getting in the way. It's like that on the ranch, too."
    "Yeah, I bet."
    One of her small hands left the steering wheel and settled on his thigh, at least until she needed both hands for steering again.
    "Charmian ..." he said, after they'd driven in silence for a little while more. "There's something I want to ... explain, I guess."
    Her posture indicated attentiveness.
    "About the other day. About you leaving the ranch." Alec had to resist the temptation to chew his lower lip, a bad habit from childhood that his father had tried hard to break him of. He could still feel the sting of a backhand blow from his father's fist whenever he started to do it. His father had hated it because it made him look indecisive. Weak. Not alpha-like.
    But that had been his father's idea of what being an alpha was supposed to be. As Alec was slowly coming to realize as an adult, being an alpha wasn't about overt displays of strength. You had to be strong, and you had to be willing to take charge. But it wasn't about beating respect into people. You got respect by showing yourself to be a person worthy of it.
    And sometimes that meant being willing to show weakness, when you could trust someone else not to take advantage of it.
    "It's really more about me than you," he said quietly, staring straight ahead out the windshield, where snow was collecting almost faster than the wipers could sweep it away.
    "I'm listening," she said, when he paused.
    "It's a dangerous road. It's ..." Could he say this? He'd never admitted it to anyone, even to the rest of his clan. Especially to the rest of his clan. " I'm afraid to drive that road," he said, forcing the words out past his pride, past a lifetime's habits. "It scares the hell out of me."
    Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Charmian giving him a soft look. "I can't imagine you being afraid of anything."
    He almost laughed. Do you want me to make a list? Commitment. Apologizing. Opening up to people. "I hate driving in the winter. If you want the truth, I think you're better at it than I am. I think I trust you more behind the wheel than I trust myself."
    "But you're certainly not bad at it," she protested. "I've seen how hard your road is to drive. Heck, if you drive that thing every day, or at least whenever you come to town, you must kick ass at it by now."
    "I drive it as rarely as I can get away with," he admitted. "And the reason ... Charmian, my parents died, driving that road."
    To her credit, her hands remained steady on the wheel. The car didn't change speed. But he felt the change in her position, and when she was able to take her eyes off the road to look at him, they were filled with sympathy.
    "On that big curve?"
    He nodded. "They must have lost control. My dad was never afraid of anything, and he was always reckless, driving that road. I think he must have figured he could win any fight, against anything. But you can't win against gravity. We, uh ... they didn't come home one night, and we found the car down in the canyon."
    "How old were you?" she asked softly.
    "Nineteen. As the eldest, I took over as alpha then. And the ranch was mine to run, as well."
    "Oh, Alec," she whispered. "You were so young."
    "Old enough to be a man."
    "But still a kid, really, in all the ways that count." She reached out again, resting a hand on his leg to give him a reassuring squeeze. "So that's why you were so freaked out about me driving that road in the dark. It wasn't that you were trying to be controlling. It's because you really did believe I was putting myself in terrible danger. I didn't know, Alec."
    "You're half right, though," he admitted. "I was being controlling. I'm an alpha. I don't know any other way to be."
    Charmian gave a quiet laugh. "Yeah, I don't know anything about that ."
    They were off the main road now, onto a smaller side road. She put on the brakes and pulled to a stop in the middle of the