Claiming The Cowboy Read online

  Get the vote. Then worry about what came next.

  Box of bottles riding shotgun, Chase turned onto Main, headed for the old welding warehouse. His attention snagged on a crowd gathered outside the fire house. Nothing but dark jump suits and dudes but for one exception: fire-engine red spiked heels, flawlessly toned calves, and a classy trim skirt cut to the knee. Gretchen stood in the middle of a tight cluster of dressed-down firefighters like one delicious red licorice whip inside a cluster of foul-tasting black ones.

  She laughed, open-mouthed, lipstick bold against her white teeth, as if the fire chief had told her the funniest, family-friendly joke in the history of the world.

  Chase’s stomach turned rancid.

  He wanted nothing more than to floor it, put the scene behind him before Gretchen rocked red inside the day’s every moment of downtime and he blistered himself trying to suppose what might have been so fucking funny. But Miss Bess Scandy picked that exact moment to cross the road, grinding traffic to a halt.

  Miss Bess waved at him as she passed his truck grill. Chase peeled his fingers away from the top of the steering wheel long enough to flash her the customary small-town greeting. Likely, Miss Bess had caught the rather potent overload of testosterone in the air and followed her ambitious instincts mid-town. At a complete stop, he tried not to look over at Gretchen.

  In vain.

  Gretchen picked that moment to glance up at the stopped traffic. Immediately, her gaze zeroed in on his truck. Almost as immediately, her joyous expression sobered.

  His chest burned.

  Road clear, Chase was again tempted to floor it. His modified, illegal-decibel muffler would rumble out enough horsepower to turn every head of the assembled Close Call Fire Department and cause grannies in the vicinity to turn sour-faced and cup their ears. A satisfying, dick-measuring thing to do, for sure.

  But Chase didn’t do it.

  Satisfying or not, playing by the rules—Gretchen’s rules—was the only way to ensure a city council vote in his favor. He needed this distillery, this new life, to keep him from the shallow numbness of his old life.

  Chase nursed the gas pedal and continued down Main as if her loaded stare hadn’t just hog-tied his heart and his balls together, rope burn and all.

  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.”

  “Why not?”

  Hello? Did he not grasp the gravity of her predicament?

  “I’m not dressed…I’m not ready.”

  “You look amazing, as always.”

  How could a statement rouse such paradoxical reactions? She didn’t know if she wanted to wring his neck or be a polite southern lady and accept the compliment with dignity.

  “I can’t leave my car here.”

  “I’ll call Nat or Wes to come fill it up and take it to your house. Leave the key on top of the tire closest to the weeds.” Chase flashed a know-it-all smile. “Any other excuses why you can’t be alone with me?”

  Gretchen felt as if a swarm of something Texas-sized had been let loose under her skin. She exited the vehicle, gave a sharp tug on her jacket hem to snap it back into place, and raised her chin. “None whatsoever.”

  Chase leaned close, mere inches from her cheek. He brought with him the scent of leather and soap and the woodsy, masculine aftershave she had sampled nose-to-skin during their kiss.

  “Careful, chief,” he whispered. “Nose up like that does nothing but drown you in a rainstorm. Certainly doesn’t convince me.”

  Lightning came early that day. None that any could see, but feel? That was something else entirely. His words, straight from lips that were divinely crafte
d for sin, bolted straight to the flesh between her legs and left a trail of hot electrical pulses through her ass and thighs.

  Seventeen miles per hour did this to her. Made her wonder how she would ever get through another night in the presence of the irresistible Chase Meier with her morals intact.

  9

  The future that Gretchen de Havilland envisioned for herself looked a little like Gabriel Mendez’s estate.

  Okay. A lot.

  Her father would, of course, be there. And she wasn’t much for swimming, but an infinity pool would help keep the Texas heat from being too oppressive. The library on the front of the house would be filled, floor to ceiling, with law books, and no one would doubt that she had earned her place alongside the most powerful elected officials in state government.

  But how far was she willing to go to ensure that happened? She could keep her promise to Chase to vote for the rezoning and still leak the information, but the questionable ethics in that plan made her skin crawl. Would the payoff be worth the fallout?

  Gretchen sat alone on the back porch. Porch was an understatement. There was enough pebbled pavement and intricate landscaping and gorgeously understated garden lighting before her to constitute an entire small town of porches. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead. The promised evening rain pelted the open spaces and speckled the pool surface. She inhaled the air’s fresh cleanse, burrowed deeper into the soft plush of the outdoor chair cushion, and waited for Chase’s surprise.

  After a meal that paired the best of Texas cuisine with the flavors that captured the Mexican heritage of Gabriel Mendez and his family, the attorney general and his wife, Maria, insisted that Gretchen and Chase take in the east view while the couple attended to urgent but brief business that had arisen. Gretchen had thought it best to express their thanks and leave. Chase had other plans. After homemade sopapillas and native honey, he asked Gretchen to head out ahead of him, that he had something that would blow her mind. Then he added understated jazz hands for her eyes only.

  For her entire wait, she thought only of the one thing that would, in turn, blow his plans.

  The ownership of his property on Main was open to dispute. They both knew the Pickfords wouldn’t pull their punches, if it became known.

  “Gracias,” she heard him say to the staff person who opened the kitchen door on his way out. Chase carried a small tray stacked with black-label bottles and bar glasses and a fancy splay of beverage napkins. He placed the tray on the ottoman and settled into the chair beside her.

  “That’s sweet. But I don’t drink.”

  He looked down at his joined hands. His lips pressed together in a sad smile.

  “I know you don’t, Gretchen. I never told you this, but I always wanted to. I’m sorry you lost your mom.”

  Chase’s tone was contrite. Absent all teasing, all cockiness, all artifice, his words stoked her ears, her heart, every space in between.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry about your dad and your grandfather. They meant so much to the town. The Meiers, my gosh…go all the way back…” She stopped blathering and watched the rain because she wasn’t sure how to frame the information so that she didn’t look like someone who had kept a secret. She had nothing.

  “This,” he said, by way of announcement, “is our distillery’s answer to creating a consumable that’s family friendly. These are samples of what is possible, already on the market in Europe, but I’m hoping to go local—things unique to the region, the state—and offer our own twist on distilled botanical water.”

  She leaned forward, intrigued. “I love the bottle.”

  “Honestly, I think the label graphics and the glass shape are half the battle when you’re asking people to pay top dollar for premium water.”

  “So what would make someone purchase this over, say, a virgin cocktail?”

  “Sugar content. Today’s drinker is more health-conscious than ever. Most of the non-alcoholic cocktails have syrups and artificial ingredients to get the drink to taste anything close to the kick that alcohol brings. When people who can’t drink for whatever reason—religion, principles, medical reasons, designated drivers—go out with their friends, this offers them an alternative that’s distinctive.”

  “How do they taste?”

  “I don’t know yet. I thought maybe you’d want the honorary first sip.”

  Gretchen turned all the labels: cucumber-rosemary-mint, basil-dill-lemon, kale citrus, pineapple-ginger, orange-fennel, star anise-hibiscus.

  “Let’s each take one.”

  She played it safe—cucumber, rosemary, and mint. Chase went for the unknown. Typical. Gretchen didn’t even know what star anise was.

  The bottle chilled her lips. Rosemary wafted to her nostrils and lay potent on her tongue, before the mint and cucumber rounded out the refreshing sip. Gretchen loved it.

  One glance at Chase nearly had her spitting out her mouthful. His label might as well have read anchovy-maple for all the delight that distorted his features.

  “Oh, God…that tasted like dirt.”

  A hearty laugh charged from Gretchen’s lungs. Enough to turn his frown to a smile.

  They took turns sampling the other flavors. Gretchen passed on the star anise-hibiscus. She valued her delicious meal and didn’t want to see it splattered all over the meticulously groomed azaleas beside her. With each pass of the bottle, she grew more attuned to the familiarity of it all. Not once did they bother with the bar glasses. They simply sipped after each other as if there was no distinction where one mouth stopped and the other began.

  When they had sampled all the flavors, Chase said, “We’ve already added one copper still to the inventory with plans for three more. The first batch of Rio Grande jalapeno-cactus could be ready by the time the distillery opens its doors.”

  He was doing all this to impress her, to follow through on their agreement.

  “Chase, there’s something I have to—"

  “There’s more. Such an operation requires locally-sourced herbs. Helps advance the marketing. So I want to open a community garden not far from the distillery. Local school children could tend it and learn science and agriculture, and a percent of each bottle sold could go toward an annual college scholarship.”

  It was so much more than she could have hoped for. At that point, it didn’t matter to her his reason, just that the town would reap so many benefits. “Chase—”

  “One more thing. I can’t turn back time to the night someone drank too much and made the decision to get behind the wheel and changed your life forever. But I can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Not on my watch. The distillery wants to start a ride-share program. Anyone who drinks has to check their keys with the hostess, like a valet. Non-drinkers who offer to drive drinkers home will get complimentary food or drink vouchers for an alternate night. And we’ll make sure that someone on staff can always drive people home, as a backup.”

  His ideas came faster and faster, like a deluge she was powerless to hold back, and she was left saturated in his respect. Respect she didn’t deserve.

  “Chase, I don’t know what to say. You’ve clearly given this a great deal of thought.”

  “Say we can do this. We can both be winners here.”

  The rain had backed off to sprinkles as if it, too, leaned in to hear what she decided. Not predisposed to rash choices, she took a sip of the pineapple-ginger, her second-favorite of the six, to give herself time. Had she allowed her feelings for him to influence her temptation to say yes? No. No, she hadn’t. The logical side of her brain mounted the facts in this case: the benefits to Close Call above and beyond the obvious economic perks, that he had single-handedly saved her high-profile event, that he had brought her here because he knew what it might mean for her future. Most of all, saying yes made what happened a hundred and fifty years ago a moot point, a footnote in history where it belonged. With a yes vote, Chase got his distillery. She got her family-first agenda. All without messy legal entanglements for a cash-strappe
d town.

  Still, she felt the gravity all the way through the soles of her feet.

  Gretchen took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  She nodded.

  Chase launched to his feet and scooped her up with him. At his full-bodied embrace, the energy he brought to the moment had to go somewhere, she supposed. He spun her, again and again, hooting and hollering as if he had won the state lottery and had completely lost himself in the possibility of it all. His exuberance was infectious. Not the most conventional way of sealing a deal in politics—usually a sweaty handshake sufficed—but this was no ordinary deal and Chase was no ordinary man.

  “We thought we heard a bunch of carrying on,” Gabriel said. He had come out to the patio, hand in hand with Maria. “What are we celebrating?”

  Without hesitation, Chase answered, “The future.”

  Gabriel flashed a grin, ear to ear. “The best kind of celebrating.”

  “We’re glad we caught you in good spirits,” said Maria. “We had been doing some construction on that first bridge onto our property—fortifying and raising it. You probably saw the equipment on the way in. Unfortunately, the rain has made that area a bit of a river. We have two cottages for family when they visit. We were hoping you’ll be our guests for the night. The water should recede by morning.”

  Chase looked to Gretchen, a silent deference for her to choose. Not that there was much choice. She expected Chase to say that his jacked-up truck could get them home, no problem, but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “If you don’t think it would be an imposition…”

  “We would love to have you,” said Gabriel. “It will give me time to show you my library.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Constitutional reads are almost as good as chamomile before bed.”

  “Don’t forget the rare-edition legal thrillers.”