Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

He laughed. Unintentional, but keeping the caustic bubble inside already burned toxic. No way he wasn’t allowing her to share it. “You want a gold star? An attagirl from one of your constituents? Or maybe a quickie in the back seat of the truck to celebrate?”

Gretchen flushed Chase red, her head on a swivel. She closed the distance between them. “That’s not fair.”

“Don’t talk to me about fair. I still can’t open a business—on property that has rightfully been in my family for generations—all because your desire to keep this town wholesome outdistanced your ability to be fair.” His emphasis on wholesome made Close Call sound like a puritanical village hiding evil secrets.

“The final vote will happen at the next meeting. Plenty of time for this to die down and for the other council members to circle back to their original instincts. To my instincts. I meant what I said in there. People are going to drink, no matter how many laws are on the books. They’ll simply go to other towns and make bad choices out on the highway, which means some other little girl or boy may grow up without a parent. Better to have them here, to have parameters in place. Yes, the role of government is to ensure safety and responsibly, but we overreach when it becomes a matter of legislating personal choices.”

She was still masked, veiled, porcelain. “When do I get to talk to Gretchen, not Mayor de Havilland? I realize you can’t turn it on and off like a switch, but my issue isn’t so much with the woman I elected to office. She’s done nothing but put the town first. Always. My issue is with the woman who shared my bed.”

“Those women never should have been one and the same.”

Her admission was a captive bolt pis

tol, a cattle gun, to his gut, his heart, his fucking mind, all at once. Chase was stunned, waiting for her to take him down the rest of the way, like an animal to slaughter. He waited for the reminder of who he was: someone with a mindless disregard for those around him, those he loved. Someone who added no value to society beyond giving his audience an entertaining, rooting interest in an animal over a human life.

“My feelings for you clouded my duty to this town.”

“This town.” Chase nodded, long and silent, then opened his door and rammed his smelly-ass cowboy hat on his head, more in touch with himself than he’d been since he met her. “Always the town. Well, I know in all my ‘travels and fame,’ I may have forgotten ‘what makes this town so great.’ But I know one thing, without question. This scheming, this dishonesty isn’t Close Call. This represents something so far from the home town that I knew, I can’t see my future here anymore. This self-before-others betrayal, this disrespect, this talk of values when I’m struggling to find a single good one that represents the choices you made since that day in the bakery. Good luck with your town, mayor.”

“What about the sesquicentennial?”

So that was it. He just told her she drove him from the only goddamned home he had ever known, and her first concern was how her precious little party would look to the rest of the state. Nice to know she didn’t disappoint as a politician.

“It’s too late for us to back out as sponsor,” he said, barely able to look at her, barely able to muster enough conviction in his voice to carry his words over to her ivory-and-concrete tower. “Our brand will still be there, like we talked about. But the moment the event is over, we’ll find a Texas town that’ll welcome us.”

Chase climbed into his truck seat and fired the engine. Never had he been so grateful for his loud muffler. He depressed the gas because the full-bodied knocking in his ears balanced the chaos inside.

Gretchen’s hair had fallen from its perfect twist in a glorious torrent. Her disarray was exceptional, beautiful, the real her struggling beneath her carefully-crafted shell, but he couldn’t do it anymore. She yelled.

“I’ll help you find another property, outside the town limits, if the vote doesn’t swing your way next time.”

He slammed his truck door closed and said, “There won’t be a next time,” to no one, to himself. Reverse gear to drive, Chase peeled out of the city hall parking lot, breaking every goddamned law he could.

Close Call’s Sesquicentennial Days transcended all of Gretchen’s hopes. Crowds came for mouth-watering food, that small-town connection, and fun that incorporated all ages—from little ones pitching balls at the dunk tank to groups of college kids looking to snag the grand prize in The Amazing Close Call Race and celebrate with some specialty whiskey to seniors who preferred classic cars and a tour of historic homes. The final event, a concert by Jett Duncan, two-time country music award nominee and friend to Gabriel and Maria Mendez’s son, left visitors grinning all the way through the fireworks that Chase’s company had splurged on to cap off the weekend.

For what Chase had been able to pull off in such a short time, Gretchen was awed and grateful. And shattered.

She stood alone on the edge of the concert grounds, surveying the mass exodus, listening to the occasional chirp from her walkie-talkie—something from the police or fire chief, none of it requiring her intervention. At least for now. She had glimpsed Chase earlier in the day. He pretended not to see her. Somehow squeezing in an apology while flipping pancakes for charity didn’t seem fitting.

All weekend, investors and corporate scouts had sought her out, shoved business cards in her hand, talked big about how Close Call knew how to throw a celebration and how it was exactly the kind of town that might give their employees great quality of life. Everything from mom-and-pop plumbing businesses to international hotel chains looking for a new place to expand the budget-conscious arm of their empire. Gretchen should have been sky-high, riding the joy that the event brought to so many, reveling in an outcome far beyond anything she’d hoped for. And she was. In theory. In appearances. She just hadn’t quite figured out how to align her ambitions with her wants.

And she wanted Chase.

Not because he was no longer hers. And not because he made her feel things she had pushed aside in the pursuit of her goals for so long. Every single thing that had gone right in the past month had been a direct result of her loosening the reins on her agenda, embracing the unplanned, occasionally breaking the rules for the bigger picture. His instincts led to the attorney general’s house, to a celebration worthy of the town’s spirit, to her conquering fears and moving past the hurt of isolation she should have moved past when she was eight.

Bad boy, fuck-off Chase Meier was the absolute worst companion for an upwardly-mobile politician hell-bent on election to Austin, but he was the absolute best companion for her. Gretchen. The woman who didn’t curse because she thought her mom might hear. The woman who sat on the sidelines of too many rodeos in favor of books and learning. The woman given a role of privilege who too often slipped into a mindset of burden without someone around to remind her to breathe, even if only for eight seconds.

Gretchen’s father came over, two folding chairs in hand. She wasn’t sure how he got them to her or where they came from, but she had never been happier to get off her heels. He wrenched them both open, settled into his chair, opposite hers, and glanced out over the vacant field littered with unimaginable trash that gave her a near-coronary simply looking at it.

“Mess, huh?” she said.

“You look out and see empty cups and stepped-on funnel cakes and plastic containers filled with nacho cheese that looks radioactive. But that’s not what I see.”

“What do you see?”

“Fun,” he said. “And a few brassieres.”

Precisely how Chase would have described it. Gretchen surprised herself when she said it aloud. She smiled, for maybe the first time that day, as Gretchen. It felt good, this authentic side, when no one was looking. Chase was right—she was two different people. Chase was right about a lot of things.