Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

Pettigrew—Jasper—Meier.

Clark—Pickford—Pickford.

Gretchen pressed a hand against her rolling belly.

The land now known as 1100 South Main, land that had widely been known to be owned and leased out to various businesses by the Meiers for as far back as anyone could remember, began the bad blood that echoed through the Pickford and Meier descendants to the present day. Had Andrew Clark, Esq., been a proper lawyer, he might have challenged the ruling, appealed for an impartial court away from the property, subpoenaed the same witness who wrote out his statement on an all-but-forgotten, sketchy slip of paper, the very last paper in the file—admissible or not?—to testify that Andrew Clark had, in fact, filed a proper claim prior to Pettigrew.

As it stood, this paperwork was the single greatest plan B Gretchen could have imagined. If the zoning vote went her way, the feud’s origins could remain a buried footnote to Close Call’s history, good and legal for more than 160 years. No need to add fuel to the already incendiary relationship between the Meiers and Pickfords and introduce divisiveness into her town; that move would be sure to hurt good people and cost both sides a substantial amount of money. But if the council voted to rezone…well, the slippery slope of debauchery, with bars popping up on every corner of her town and drunks navigating the highways, could be easily avoided by unearthing ancient history, facts certain to tie the two families into a legal tangle that would far outdistance the building of a distillery at 1100 South Main.

An inspired plan B. So why did it feel like she just swallowed a handful of nails?

She repacked the files neatly, carried the box to the kitchen table, and reached into the cabinet above the refrigerator for the strongest elixir she had in the house: a bubblegum pink liquid that tasted like a chalky puree of questionable ethics.

Ebba Howard had ahold of Close Call’s purse strings as if they were a Sunday plate offering in a room full of con artists. In her former life, before jacking her hair to Jesus and calling on the masses to pray for the Almighty to grant Marin Missionary Baptist enough funding to open a family center the size of Waco, Ebba had been an accountant, classically trained in being fiscally tight enough to raise a blister.

For this talent, Gretchen was eternally grateful.

However, on the morning after she learned that the bedrock upon which the town had been built was shakier than quicksand over a fracking hole, Ebba’s bad news was the last thing Gretchen wanted to hear.

“Those enticements that our irresponsibly-departed organizer, Penny, promised for the sesquicentennial aren’t possible with what was allocated. Part of the funding was supposed to come from the entry fees to the historic home tour, but she up and ran off to Waxahatchie with her…” Ebba’s voice grew conspiratorial. “Lover. Livin’ in sin, she was, instead of following through on her commitments.”

Gretchen was afraid to ask. “How much more money do we need to pull this event off?”

“Well unless you know someone who knows Jerry Jones, we’ll be looking at a longest beard contest and a church service, instead of a hot air balloon lift-off at dusk and an appearance by George Strait’s second cousin’s uncle. I have heard he is quite something on the accordion.”

Tempted to politely scoot her chair back from her desk and bang her forehead on its hand-carved glory, Gretchen sucked her cheeks between her molars and asked again, this time with a scary-tense control over her tone. “How much, Ebba?”

“All said and done?”

“Yes.”

“Civil services for public safety and clean up included?”

“Yes.”

“One hundred thousand.”

Gretchen nearly slipped out of her chair. “Please tell me you’re speaking in half-dollars.”

“Invitations sent out to every dignitary within a two-hundred mile-radius, alone, was close to a thousand dollars, engraving and postage.”

“Dignitaries” meant police chiefs and school superintendents and the occasional elected produce queen.

“Who approved that?”

“You know the first success of any party is the anticipation,” Ebba said. “Besides, I was under the impression Penny’s zeros on the purchase order were happy faces.”

“Ebba!”

“Weeelll…I thought we were friends until she ran off with that hooligan.”

Gretchen reached into the side drawer of her desk and pulled out the invitation: tri-fold, of the finest quality; outside, a shimmery foil emblem of Close Call’s pride and joy—the Gulverson and the Company of Giants sculpture; inside, a whimsical font that screamed family fun and sesquicentennial; and a thin border that transitioned white to red to blue in a grand show of Texas and American patriotism. It was the most divine invitation Gretchen could have hoped for to attract people to her fine town, but it didn’t really speak to longest beard contests and tent revivals.

Ebba lowered herself into the chair opposite Gretchen’s desk. Her voice came like gossip on a breeze—half-whispered, half-appalled. “There’s only one business knocking on the doors to this town that can invest the money to throw a celebration worthy of that invitation.”

“That’s no reason to invite an alcohol distributor into our town, Ebba.”

“Who says they have to stay permanently? A little marketing can’t hurt them, and it sure would get us out of this pickle.”