Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

“This have anything to do with why you came in this morning in a snit?”

“I was not in a snit.” Gretchen’s objection was too forceful, gave away too much. Obscure facts weren’t the only things Darcy was adept at uncovering. Darcy once deduced Gretchen had acquired a concealed handgun license based purely on the proximity of safety glasses to a pack of Bazooka gum—notoriously given away at the local firing range—in Gretchen’s purse. Also, Gretchen had been unusually tense during reruns of Law & Order that night.

She fiddled with her engraved letter opener to give her hands purpose. “My lawyer curiosity is piqued.”

“Uh huh. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Chase Meier cornering you at the bakery this morning.”

She swallowed, tried to keep her voice mayoral. “How did you know about that?”

Darcy shook her head. “Honestly, I sometimes wonder which one of us is from a small town. That gossip is already as stale as the coffee down in the break room.”

“Chase Meier thinks he can use his fame and his bad-boy five o’clock shadow and his shoulders that could fill a barn and…” She was running out of invented demarcations, and the emerging grin on Darcy’s face wasn’t helping her train of thought. “And his bullish ego to sway the city council.”

“But you won’t let that happen.”

“Not on my watch.”

“You’re impervious to the pitfalls of the political machine.”

“Precisely.”

“You’re holding your letter opener like you’re a serial killer.”

“I know.”

Gretchen dropped the office-supply-as-weapon onto her leather desk pad as if it had spouted a forked tongue and a tail that rattled. Ages ago, she realized she carried stress in her hands—clenched fists, cracking knuckles, fidgeting with rings. Luckily, Darcy knew her better than anyone.

“You need something healthy to occupy those hands,” Darcy said.

Her meaning was clear: no Twinkies, no rag mags from the grocery store checkout line, no all-night binges on articles about what other mayors around the nation were doing, no shopping online shoe sales.

Gretchen reached for the current fiscal year’s budget projections.

Darcy shook her head.

Gretchen screwed up her face, totally not in the mood for a guessing game.

Her assistant tapped the pencil back into her messy bun, closed her journal, and made for the door. She delivered her parting comment with her typical deadpan flare. “Try something broad enough to fill a barn.”

3

On the first Tuesday evening of every month, the gears of civil government turned in the manner in which they were designed. Citizens witnessed and participated in constructive discourse, the fruits of their democratic labors. Elected officials took their rightful place at the helm, ready to act in the best interest of their constituents. And in Close Call, Dale Euclid took up the second seat from the aisle during the city council meeting, leveled the mayor with a caustic stare, and recorded her every movement, massive and microscopic, for the Citizen’s Beat column in the subsequent edition of the Close Caller-Times.

Gretchen had mentally coached herself over and over that she should be grateful for Dale’s consistent and excessively sweaty presence. His sour grapes from losing the election ensured she would always act and speak with utmost regard for the position entrusted to her. But for the grace of God and all that.

But today she had asked for a tiny bit of divine intervention that Dale would come down with an intestinal discomfort that kept him away. Nothing like the sushi rolls that the Waffle Shack decided to serve to celebrate the Chinese New Year, of course. More like a few extra jalapeños in his chili dog kind of discomfort. Enough to keep him home and parked on his commode.

All the way back from the day’s regional mayoral convention in Tyler, she had run town business: hands-free devices, math mentally sketched out on the inside windshield as the east Texas pines slipped past, pulling off into Dairy King parking lots that dotted the landscape to access important papers in her bag and, once, a triple-chocolate shake. She pulled into the back lot of the courthouse, mindful of negotiating her Prius at a law-abiding clip, with forty-five seconds to spare.

Gretchen glanced at her satin-flowered business heels on the passenger seat and wiggled her toes inside the two little clouds of artfully and athletically engineered sneakers hugging her aching feet. And the time-crunch solution came to her like a gift-wrapped inspiration: multitask. Walking. Changing shoes. She had this. In spades.

She made it as far as the first floor’s great hall and one peep-toe slingback before her idea backfired. At the drinking fountain corner, Gretchen collided with Chase Meier.

Bowling ball-to-pins, vertical tango, ooof-from-his-pillowy-lips kind of collided.

The stack of papers she had cradled against her chest exploded above their heads like a Xerox sparkler on July Fourth. When the fireworks descended, papers snowed the polished marble floor and skated everywhere—the water puddle beneath the fountain, the wooden bench outside the council room, the one-inch clearance beneath the nearest office doors.

The nearest locked office doors.