Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

Driving down an empty road at seventeen miles per hour did something to a person. Made a person wonder why so many people liked yoga because it moved at a snail’s pace. Made a person contemplate how busy was too busy to fill a gas tank and charge a cell phone. Made a person feel triumphant because the Prius battery was designed for instances such as this, when no gas meant trekking long distances in a recent peep-toe pump indulgence. Mostly, though, puttering along a back-country road made a person itemize past choices—life, education, a particularly sexy cowboy she shouldn’t want but did.

Gretchen hadn’t had her wits about her since seeing Chase that morning near the fire station. Actually, since the night in the meadow. One of the most spontaneous and fateful nights in recent memory. She was fast learning that was the way of him—instinctive, fearless, impulsive. And though he had kept his word—that he wouldn’t peek while she changed, that he would catch her if she fell—men like him were not prone to integrity, long-term. The last person a respectable politician needed around her was someone who lacked integrity. At least, that was the argument she had laid out for herself for a solid week. Nearly water-tight and foolproof on cross-examination.

So why in her ambitious, zero-time-for-anything, zero-space-for-insurgency life, did Chase Meier factor so prominently in every breath?

A tumbleweed in the other lane outpaced her Prius.

The sky rumbled. Maybe not the sky—exactly. Rain wasn’t supposed to move in until later. A quick glance right and left assured Gretchen she was, quite possibly, the last person in civilization.

Another low, heavy growl lumbered through the air.

What the hell was that?

Gretchen glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the bottom half of a truck grill and a chrome bumper, roughly the size and shape of Tennessee. It wasn’t a thunderstorm—it was a Chase storm, equally as destructive, unpredictable, and dangerous.

She gripped the wheel harder and rededicated herself to getting to the Gas-N-Sip before she spontaneously combusted of embarrassment. How the hell was she supposed to manage an entire town when she couldn’t even manage the basics of living—running errands, emptying her bladder in a timely fashion, eating?

As if on cue, her stomach rumbled. Illegal-decibel rumbled.

Monster headlights flashed in her mirror.

“Yeah, yeah, we all know you have big…tires…and an ego to match.” Gretchen lowered her window and motioned for him to go around.

To which he promptly honked his big-ass American-made horn. Clearly, he would not let the situation play out to its natural and planned conclusion: twelve gallons of unleaded and gas-station orange chicken in a to-go box.

Gretchen pulled off onto the road’s shoulder, careful to put on her turn indicator and hazard lights. She was not about to gift wrap him ammunition for all the times she did not adhere to the law.

He pulled over behind her and exited his truck as if he were a deputy of Hotsville, a fictitious neighboring town in which men were required to adhere to laws of confidence, virility, and swagger. Instead of a badge, Chase sported a belt buckle.

“Need some help there, chief?”

Somehow, his pet nickname for her riled in the light of day. She had been drugged on his kisses the first time she found it so charming.

“My cell phone died.”

“Looks like your fancy import bit the dust, too.”

“On the contrary. The battery takes over when the gas runs out. The beauty of embracing energy efficiency.”

Chase glanced around: train tracks, an old sofa dumped illegally that she aimed to bring up to city maintenance first thing in the morning, and a once-parking lot populated with weeds taller than corn stalks.

“Yep. Beauty all right.” He opened her door and stepped aside for her to get out. “Come on. We can’t be late.”

“Late where?”

“We have a dinner invitation to the state attorney general’s home, and I may have to break a few laws to make it there on time.”

“Gabriel Mendez?”

“You know any other attorney generals for the state of Texas?”

“You know Gabriel Mendez?”

Chase shrugged. “He’s a huge rodeo fan.”

Of course he was. The most powerful attorney in the state, quite possibly of all the states, worshipped at the altar of bull testicle–squeezing fun.

“Chase, I can’t go.”