Claiming The Cowboy

by Leslie North

  She pulled her father into another hug and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Daddy. No one should have to go through that twice in one lifetime.”

  His fragile shell, so much reduced from what it had once been, shuddered, part silent cry, part relief of pent-up stress. “I love you.”

  She couldn’t speak, could only hold him tighter.

  After a time, he sniffed and straightened and pulled free. He extended his hand to Chase, the only other person left in the house.

  “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” said her dad.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir. Chase Meier.”

  “I know who you are.” Neither angry nor welcoming, only neutral, her father’s tone spilled over into his next words. “Thank you for bringing her home safe.”

  Chase shifted his attention to her. “Gretchen, I’m so sorry…”

  “This isn’t on you, Chase.” Though part of her wanted it to be, ultimate responsibility rested with her. She never should have gone, gotten swept up in the impulsiveness that was Chase Meier. Since the moment she entered Gabriel Mendez’s estate, she had thought only of herself, her ambition, her wants. She cost her entire town—hell, an entire county—taxpayer dollars in manpower and resources. For what? Something she swore she would never do? Someone she swore she would never do? “It’s on me. But it’s probably best if you go.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but his gaze snagged her father, and he changed his mind. Chase looked caught between a cliff and an ocean, snagged in mid-air, not knowing which way to turn his body or look or fall. He brushed out a quick, silent wave and retreated out the door.

  Cool morning air eased in behind him. A few neighbors could be heard down the way, gossiping no doubt, catching the grapevine up on the latest development. His truck engine fired. She knew he did his best to tiptoe down the street, but he probably woke the town. Funny, how five minutes earlier it hadn’t mattered to her.

  Her father tugged her over to the couch to sit beside him. Lincoln sat at her knees, worry lifting hairy brows over his wet, round eyes. He blasted her with his hot, all-night-worry breath.

  Gretchen apologized again and cried to her dad. She was the mayor, but just now she was eight again, with all the emptiness and self-blame she shouldered back when she believed her mother’s death was her fault. That if she hadn’t asked her mom to get in the car, get on that highway before the sun came up to pick her up from a sleepover so that she could make it to her gymnastics competition on time, her mother would still be alive.

  After she relayed the story—running out of gas, the attorney general, the law library—leaving out most of the parts about Chase because it seemed easier, neater that way, she explained that she had forgotten herself in the excitement of it all. And she promised it would never happen again.

  She just wasn’t entirely certain which parts she meant.

  Wes entered the kitchen and smacked Chase upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Nice going, dickhead. You made the morning edition.”

  Chase coughed back the fat chunk of cinnamon bagel that circled his windpipe, chewed it with more precision then took another stab at sending it to his stomach. He grabbed the paper. His eyes immediately tracked to the headline: Mayor Found Alive After Scare. Subline: What is she hiding? Byline: Dale Euclid.

  He took a half second to appreciate the photo. Seeing her again, twenty-four hours after he left her at her house, even in an old campaign photo dated years ago, did crazy fucking things to him. Burned his thighs. Watered his mouth. Change her mayor’s office attire, and he would make love to her all over again in a shameless heartbeat.

  On second thought, the suit could stay. It was growing on him.

  Nat entered the kitchen and wagged his thumb toward Chase. “What’s up with this goober? He looks like that time we brought him back from getting his wisdom teeth out and declared that Miranda Lambert wanted to take him to prom.”

  “He’s reliving his sinful night as the mayor’s boy toy,” said Wes.

  “So that’s the secret she’s hiding,” said Nat. “I always thought he deserved greater respect.”

  “Are you two finished? Because I have this itch.” Chase reached down near his privates with both hands, did a grand show of scratching his boys, and brought out two middle fingers on the back side.

  Wes deadpanned a look to Nat. “Might be an STD.”

  Right about that time, Mona walked in on the love fest, headed straight for the coffee pot. “Way to class it up, boys. Someday this house’ll be overrun by women and y’all’ll be about as welcome as an outhouse breeze.”

  Nat leaned over and gave an exaggerated—and rather noisy kiss—to the wallpaper milkmaid January had turned into a duck-faced Mona Lisa-look-alike with the name Mona Lott written beneath her. The joke stemmed from Mona’s encounter with an old billy goat that knocked her over and broke her ankle in two places. No one missed the sexual innuendo that had sprung from it.

  Mona poured out her dark roast and added sugar and cream. “Y’all tell him yet?”

  Chase’s gut did a somersault. Coming from his brothers, anything was likely to be ninety percent bullshit, ten percent truth. But he held Mona to such high and accurate gossip standards that no one, not even him, wanted to hear something like that come from her mouth.

  “Tell me what?”

  The three kitchen invaders exchanged looks. Really, one look.

  Crap.

  His brothers looked to Mona with pleading eyes. She had a way about her that made bad news seem like it was served with a side of homemade preserves to make it go down better. They all settled in chairs at the table.

  “A few days back, Darcy Valentine came out here. Brought one of those tortes from Cake My Day.” She looked to Nat and Wes. “You know—the one with the raspberry layer and the cocoa powder that tickled Clem something fierce…”

  The eldest two Meier brothers nodded, fully enraptured in her diversionary tale.

  “Mona,” Chase snapped. “Darcy?”

  Mona politely cleared her throat and resumed her story. “Well, no woman brings a torte to callin’ unless she wants something. Turns out, she thought Clem might have had some information on that property on Main and ‘did he have any knowledge dating back to the town’s founding?’ Well, that got me to speakin’ about the story Clem would tell sometimes about how his great-grandfather would take him out to that very same place when he was a boy, and they’d stare at whatever it happened to be at the time, and he’d tell him about a house that once stood there with a fine porch for rockin’ and how it was destroyed by a fire. His great-grandfather had called it the reckoning house. Clem grew up believing it had something to do with all the reckoning and thinking his grandfather did in that spot.”

  Chase had no idea what this all had to do with him, but Mona damned near always steered things back around to an important point. She wouldn’t be the town’s advice queen if she didn’t.

  “So, long about twenty minutes into her visit, plied with enough of that liqueur-flavored raspberry sauce,” liqueur came from Mona’s lone-star tongue as lee-coor, “Darcy got to flapping her gums about how there were questions surrounding proper ownership of that place on Main where you aim to do business and might there still be some additional evidence to that end sitting around this old place?”

  Chase glanced to his brothers. “I’m not following.”

  “The property where you want to build the distillery?” said Nat. “Started with a land-grab under questionable circumstances.”

  “Which means that it’s possible it might have been Pickford land all along,” added Wes. “Seems some family rivalries stretch back further than we knew.”

  “Is there proof?” asked Chase.

  “See now, that’s the interesting part,” said Mona. “When I ran into Darcy the next day, I asked her if she’d had any luck on her paper trail. She was reeeeal quiet-like. Not nearly as chatty as the day before. Almost like she wished she’d nev
er brought it up.”

  “Does Gretchen know about this?” His gut flopped again; he didn’t want to know.

  Mona reached over to lay her hand atop Chase’s. “She ordered the investigation, sweetheart.”

  “Likely as a backup,” said Nat. “If the council passed the rezoning by a majority, overrode her vote, she’d have a recourse. All she’d have to do is announce her discovery, and determining the true ownership of the property would keep things tied up in the courts for years before a Meier, a Pickford, or anyone else could touch it.”

  “Long enough that your investors wouldn’t wait,” said Wes.

  “Sorry to break it to you, man,” said Wes. “Better you know it now than when it hits the front page. Dale Euclid ain’t gonna stop until he proves that he was the better candidate to elect.”

  Chase sat back in his chair and exhaled. He pictured Gretchen in her pluck it all-cursing glory. She was Disney and by the book and click-click-click professional-to-the-toes. No plan B because she had worked out plan A down to the last detail. The smartest person he had ever known. If Darcy Valentine knew the truth days ago, that meant Gretchen had, too. Her “Yes” in Austin the other night was meaningless.

  Being assumed an abduction victim was not a great way for Gretchen to wrap up her business week. Having the events from two days earlier splashed all over the front page of the Close Caller-Times with a bit of a salacious edge upped the challenge of her job to an unprecedented level. Feeling the inertia of her “secret”—Dale Euclid’s linguistic bomb, potentially nuclear to a politician, in reference to the history of the Main Street property and whether or not there had been a cover-up because she was in a purported relationship with Chase Meier—outdistance her capacity to keep up with all her mayoral and sesquicentennial duties plus find time to breathe and process all that had happened with Chase made Gretchen want to go all-in on a dozen Two Maples for Sister Sara donuts and curl up in the fetal position under her impressive desk.

  But she hadn’t been elected to cower from adversity. And she certainly hadn’t been elected to binge on yeasty sugar-loaded carbs.

  She glanced across her desk at Darcy, poised to write in her notebook.

  “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.

  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.”