Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

Again with the flush. This time, incendiary.

He’d say he hadn’t meant to go there, but he had. If there was anything he’d learned about the grown Gretchen, the master puppeteer of this town, it was that she was used to cornering the market on directness. When others wielded that same boldness toward her, she wasn’t sure how to absorb it.

“Besides, rule number two, right?” he said, to bail her out of the intimate tangle of memories, of shared history. “Nothing happens without your approval.”

“Right.”

She recovered nicely. Stepped back into her mayoral veneer, one leg at a time. He made it his goal, every single time she was near, to strip away that gloss of perfection, break down her barriers, make up for the lost years of not ever telling her, “I’m sorry you don’t have a Mom anymore.” Not just because she held the key to his future, but because he wanted to make up for his indifference. The distillery business may have needed Gretchen the politician, but it was the trespassing on a dare, jelly donut-wearing, heart-in-her-palm Gretchen he wanted on his side.

“Might need that dinner after all. For all those approvals, that is,” Chase said. “How about Tanner’s, tomorrow night at six? It’s public. It’s loud. Not at all a place for lobbying.”

“Sure.” She didn’t sound sure. In fact, she made her way to the door as a polite form of escape. “We can discuss the Tour of Homes. We should probably get a jump on that.”

Chase followed. A Tour of Homes revved his enthusiasm like quilting bees and lectures on grassland prairies. “Isn’t that for old ladies who smell like ointment? Not exactly the distillery’s clientele.”

Gretchen shot him a look. An Objection! Irrelevant! look.

Not wishing to buck the forward progress they had made, he backed off. “You know what? We can talk about it tomorrow night.”

They walked outside. She lifted the hard hat from her head and handed it to him.

In the sun’s morning glint, her hair reminded him of a campfire—hot, intense, violently warm. He squinted so that he could covertly stare at its heated striations longer, but mostly his gaze dragged his focus across the street, kicking and screaming, to a man with a camera at his face, pointed directly at them.

Chase’s gut rode astride his body.

“Who’s that?” He nodded his chin toward the small-town paparazzo.

The guy lowered his fat lens enough for Chase to make out his face.

“Dale Euclid?” Wasn’t really a question. The Meiers knew the son of a bitch from a run-in a few years back related to unfair leasing practices of ranchers in the area. Dale had voiced his suspicions about their own operation. Wes had told him to fuck off. Clem’s directness ran in the family, loud and clear.

“Fearless reporter. Repeat violator of personal and professional boundaries. And now the proud owner of a handful of compromising photos.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong, Gretchen.” Not that he hadn’t considered something very, very wrong at least a dozen times since she walked into the warehouse.

“Probably best if you call me mayor.”

And just like that, progress bucked.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, but he couldn’t be sure she

heard him. She climbed into her Prius and drove away faster than most bulls realized they had a cowboy strapped to them. Likely it still wouldn’t be fast enough to outrun small-town gossip.

Chase stared at the insect across the road. Cockroach wanted a photo? Chase would give him a thousand words to go with it.

He double-barreled his middle fingers.

Dale Euclid brought the camera to his face and snapped another photo.

Great publicity for a bad-ass black label liquor. Not so great for a family-friendly distillery.

He stalked back inside, hoping he hadn’t screwed himself.

6

At three in the afternoon the day after striking the deal with her own personal devil, Gretchen told Darcy to hold all calls for an hour. Gretchen kicked off her heels beneath her desk, slipped into her sneakers, and left city hall by the side door closest to the florist shop. Virna once told her that when she saw Gretchen coming in heels, well, that meant she needed one of two things: a memorial offering for someone who had served the town in some way or a celebration for an employee’s life milestone. In both cases, great thought was given to the type of arrangement and what flowers hit all the right emotional notes. But when Virna spotted Gretchen wearing her canvas shoes, the florist knew to head to the refrigerated case and set her up with a bundle of her freshest daisies, her mother’s favorite flower. Those shoes were the surest indication she had something on her mind and needed the clarity that only a five-block walk to Our Lady of Mercy’s Cemetery could bring. Gretchen thought to change it up a bit so as not to be so predictable, but there was something comforting in not having to articulate, “I’d like some flowers for my mother’s grave.”

Virna gave her a hug and a bouquet at the door. Not a thing more. She would put the charge on Gretchen’s bill, as always. They had established long ago that a silent embrace put words to shame, anyhow, and often brought tears that smudged makeup. Virna had been her mother’s best friend.