Claiming The Cowboy (Meier Ranch Brothers 3)

“How can we get ahead of this?” Gretchen asked.

Darcy looked as if she was giving the issue serious thought. Then she whipped out, “I have an uncle, nicknamed Bruiser, rumored to be in the Chicago mob. He’s always hinting about a visit.”

Gretchen shot her an unamused look. Normally Darcy’s razor-edged humor was precisely the levity this office required to stay sane. But the train from Sanity had pulled out of the station, headed for Surreal. “How did Dale know we were even looking into the property?”

“Arline Pryor at the county records office called me the evening after I went to visit her to tell me that someone had come in after me, asking for the same information.”

“How do we know it was Dale?”

“She said he had pocked skin and three-day-old cheese breath.”

In concert, they both uttered, “Dale.” Evidence not admissible in court, but proof enough, nevertheless.

“Who else knows?” asked Gretchen.

Darcy doodled something. Likely, a scribbled-out circle. She was stalling.

“I’m a source girl,” said Darcy. “Firsthand accounts. Things like that.”

Gretchen winced. The donut scenario under her desk looked more tempting by the minute.

“Pickford?”

“And Meier.”

“You didn’t.” Oh, God. More likely, Darcy’s doodle was a scribbled-out heart. If anyone out at the Meier ranch knew, Chase knew. Gretchen could almost taste the two layers of maple—frosting and crème-filled.

“Call him. Explain everything how you told me. That it was such a huge decision for the town, you sat on it for a few days until this event blew over. It’s the truth, Gretch.”

“I don’t think he’ll see it that way,” said Gretchen. “Besides, I have more immediate problems. Making rounds to the city attorney and the other board members before they hear this from Dale is priority one. Reschedule all my calls and meetings for the next few hours. Chase will have to wait.”

“What about Dale?”

“Got any sexy single aunts up in Chicago who owe you a favor? I need a few days to get us past this event. Nothing distracts a man like a woman.”

“Or a woman like a man.” Darcy giggled, clearly delighted with her own joke.

Gretchen, not so much.

“Anything else, boss?”

“Yeah. Write this down. A to-go order for Cake My Day.”

12

The moment Gretchen’s gavel hit the block, signaling the end of the specially-called city council meeting, Chase was out the door.

“Chase, wait.”

Marble-floor acoustics ground out every one of his retreating steps like a bowling ball hurtling toward a 10-pin collision. Behind him, her click, click, click felt a little like a fucking tap dance right on the muscle of his heart, those heels he had grown to appreciate now like a woodpecker’s beak carving out flesh. He didn’t stop. He didn’t turn to look. His brain had already registered the buzzing chatter that accompanied her steps. Half of Close Call had poured out into the hallway to witness their confrontation. In light of recent developments, the council meeting had apparently become the place to be. But they wouldn’t be getting a show today.

She didn’t catch up to him until he had charged through the exit to the side parking lot.

Just as he gripped the handle on his truck door, she called out his name again. Her tone was different, stripped down from her polite mayoral request to stop to one that was strangled, desperate, wounded. He couldn’t imagine what she had to be wounded about—he was the one who had to go back to his investors and tell them he had failed—but that one goddamned note around his name brought him up short, iced his tense muscles. He didn’t trust himself to speak. It wasn’t his burden, anyway.

“I kept my word to vote for rezoning,” she said. “The motion to delay again wasn’t my idea.”

Her progress stalled on the steps, fifteen feet away, maybe more, as if the parking lot was filled with revolutionaries that wanted her head on a stake. Maybe she simply wanted something to hold. Her grip on the handrail blanched the already-pale skin of her knuckles.