Claiming the Cowboy: Meier Ranch Brothers, #3

By Leslie North

A rodeo star who's as wild as a bull…

Rodeo rider Chace Meier has had enough of hard hits, wild women, fame and fortune. He's ready to find a new dream, and being at his family ranch has always kept him grounded. So when he's asked by a friend to help open a distillery in his hometown, he's raring to go. Only one thing stands in his way—the prim and proper mayor of his Texas town. The sedate and sophisticated Gretchen de Havilland has not one red hair out of place on her gorgeous head, but not even her adorably aloof attitude will put Chace off. He's looking to put his town on the map, and he'll turn on all his charm to do so.

…and the woman who ropes him in.

Town mayor Gretchen de Havilland has her professional career all planned out. A few more years in local politics, and then it's on to her dream of being attorney general. She's hoping to make a name for Close Call, Texas as the perfect place to raise a family, and her vision definitely does not include having a distillery as a draw. Rough and ready Chace Meier may be used to getting his way, but if he thinks Gretchen can be swayed by his unruly hair, taut muscles, and sexy smirk, he has another thing coming.

The cocky cowboy needs to convince the town council to rezone in order to open his distillery, and the levelheaded local mayor is dead set on her political path. With both wanting to help Close Call, can they put their differences aside and create a future for the town and each other?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie North
• Release date: May 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386425892

Book preview

1

For a string of days—Gretchen de Havilland had lost count, but something close to two years, because she started around the same time she became the youngest person and only female ever elected as mayor of Close Call, Texas, population 2,122—morning coffee at Cake My Day had been her thing. Not because the house roast was especially great—it had a faint whiff of singed beans and flat, square notes if it wasn’t masked with sugary cream or pumps of vanilla—but because it was an excuse to add the Clint Eastwood-inspired High Plains Sifter raspberry-filled powdered donut to her order. And because a town’s bakery was the tax-paying pulse of the community—frequented by those who rose with the sun, attacked the day with purpose, and had a little extra in the mason jar to splurge on donut holes. No politician worth the air God gave her would make policy decisions based on constituents who frequented The Gritty Somewhere bar or the hourly-rate Starlite Motor Lodge.

On this drizzly morning in early April, however, Gretchen simply wanted to be invisible for five minutes. Ten, tops.

She didn’t feel like a leader at all. With bad humidity hair, an even worse disposition from being up most of the night working on budget spreadsheets, and no prospects to replace the lead organizer for the town’s sesquicentennial celebration happening in a month, she wanted—just for five minutes—for it to all be someone else’s responsibility. Not that she didn’t love being mayor. She did. But, she supposed, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t want to be Ruth Bader Ginsburg some days.

Close Caller-Times in hand, open to the Dear Agnes column, she sank her teeth into the blissful, yeasty, and absurdly powdery decadence that was her morning donut. The sugary pocket of raspberry jelly did not fill the pastry’s epicenter but squeezed a lop-sided burst at the corner of her mouth with the subtlety of a firehose. The carb load crowded her mouth while she scrambled for a napkin.

And found none.

Beside her table, a prime street-view that might as well have been engraved mayor for the regularity with which she occupied the space, a man entered her personal bubble.

Denim.

Tall.

Good gracious, but that was a big belt buckle.

Her hand shielded the blob dangling from her lips.

Here. He held out a paper napkin.

She accepted it, unable to make eye contact until the offending globule was no more and she could form words around the sticky dough. On an ambitious swallow, the bite vacated her mouth but left a powdery blizzard on her lips.

Gretchen glanced up—a serious challenge given the blinding, plate-sized, gold and silver crowning glory at the man’s trim waist. Past the retro white chambray shirt with the dark, tattoo-like embroidery at the shoulders, her gaze reached the face of the man sporting such extravagance. He was one of those Wrangler jeans models on the Tractor Depot inserts of the Sunday Houston Chronicle crossed with a dark-and-edgy-haired vampire actor. Ninety-nine percent bomb factory, one percent familiar.

She inhaled a tiny gulp.

The ensuing sugar blizzard at the back of her throat sent her into a coughing fit that twisted his slightly boyish features into a frown. Even in a moment of distress, he was a far cry handsomer than the usual morning crowd. And while she squeaked out an apology, washed the powder down on a heathy pull from her coffee cup, blinked back tears that had sprouted, and generally recovered from the urge to crawl under the table, that one percent clicked: championship buckle, Meier-brother cheekbones, a vague recollection of the least ambitious person in her graduation class.

Folks in town said you’d be here. I wanted to catch you away from your office. Chase Meier spun a chair backward and straddled the seat as if he was prepping to go a good eight seconds.

Seven second longer than she wanted to give him.

Gretchen kissed her privacy goodbye—again—and flipped a switch in her demeanor, a skill set she had perfected in law school. Her all-business countenance, a composed presentation that included the right cross of her ankles, the right measured words for a media response, and a veil of confidence she did not always possess.

An aversion to City Hall? she asked.

More like an aversion to formality.

What can I do for you, Mr. Meier?

For starters, you can call me Chase.

Calling him Chase brought to mind his more infamous moniker around town: Chase the skirts. Oh, and most likely to bed a Nashville starlet—in the informal poll not publishable in their senior yearbook.

"Right. An aversion to formality. What can I do for you, Mr. Meier?" she repeated, gently apprising him of how the exchange would go down. She was no longer the freckle-faced, ginger girl who once spotted his jacket sticking out of his locker in an empty high school hallway and seized the opportunity to yank it free so that she’d have an excuse to talk to him when she told him she found it. The jacket had been bulkier than Gretchen anticipated, but she was nothing if not tenacious. She wrestled it low and pressed her heels against the locker’s lower vents for leverage. Chase picked that exact moment to visit the drinking fountain. They both froze, his jacket twisted between her thighs, his smile the precise degree of amused as at this moment. That charm he flexed all the way back to the single kindergarten ladies wouldn’t work on her. Gretchen was no longer the girl who needed an excuse to talk to anyone. Now, people wanted to hear what she had to say.

I want to turn the old welding warehouse at the far end of Main into a distillery and tasting room.

Ninety-nine percent bomb factory of a different sort.

He was direct, she had to give him that. In her line of work, chock full of bullshit, candor went further than chamber-of-commerce talk. She knew the property well. It was a fire-code-violating blemish on a town that was polishing up nicely during her tenure. That didn’t mean she wanted to see just anything replace it.

That property is zoned industrial. Anything beyond that—tasting room, retail store—would be in violation. Not to mention the alcohol restrictions inside town boundaries.

What about the bar?

Grandfather clause. The Gritty Somewhere predates the law that has been on the books since 1979, said Gretchen. Why not parcel off the Meier ranch? Go at it from an agricultural direction? You’ll meet with less resistance.

From you?

She blinked back his boldness. From everyone who wants to see this town grow in the right direction.

My investors want people, traffic.

Go to Houston or Austin.

Indie labels get lost in urban areas. To sell, it has to have a story, and Close Call has a great story. It’s all about visibility, the brand. He did a clumsy Vanna White flourish with his hands in the vicinity of his head and torso in case she woke up under a rock that morning and didn’t know the most successful bull rider in the state hailed from her fair hamlet. Mentally, she rolled her eyes.

You? Her tone did an unintentional jaunt into the non-political arena of sarcasm.

Me. I’m the face of the company.

His face would make for a smooth, warming intoxication on the senses. But for the life of her, Gretchen never understood the whole rider-atop-an-angry-bull-as-celebrity thing. Bull riding seemed more like something twelve-year-old boys did on a double-dog dare than a four-million-dollar industry with high-profile endorsements.

Quite a risk to marry your established brand with a fledgling operation, she said.

The real risk is in doing nothing. Living life afraid of what might happen.

His words were like steamy piles of manure in her mental courthouse. He was Tony Robbins in alligator boots.

Risk isn’t a political luxury. Her stomach growled. She glanced at her donut, wanted another bite, chided herself for not wanting to give the cowboy a repeat show. Why Close Call?

For one, I’m here. Off the circuit. For two? The land is already Meier property, leased out a dozen times over the years, but nothing really stuck. For three? This town needs…something.

Something? This town has a world-renowned Blake sculpture.

No offense, but I don’t know anyone who would drive five miles to see art, let alone hundreds of miles. If you’re not careful, Mayor, you’ll have a dying town inside of two years.

The jelly donut rolled over in her stomach, triggering a wave of nausea to her brain. Determined not to detour into sarcasm again, Gretchen nailed her response with a blend of steel and sweet, Southern manners she had perfected.

"In my twenty-one months as leader of this town, Close Call has seen unprecedented growth. New building permits, residential and commercial, are up three percent. City services are now optimized to operate within budget constraints, freeing up money to invest more in infrastructure and hire police officers, which—in turn—has lowered the crime rate by nearly twelve percent. I ran on the platform Committed to Families, Committed to Growth, and I don’t see how manufacturing and selling liquor inside the town limits advances that promise."

"No one doubts you’re a good mayor, Gretchen. Chase paused for effect, no doubt to let that subtle dig at leveling their status sink in. But your narrow vision drives certain people away."

People who drink whiskey, get behind the wheel of their car, and hurt others?

That’s not fair.

You can’t deny that such an enterprise tempts unsavory behavior. Behavior that’s completely at odds with putting families in the community first.

"Plenty of family people enjoy alcohol responsibly."

And that’s their personal right. But under my watch, it won’t be encouraged.

Our distillery already has federal and state clearance from the first site chosen—hell, the whiskey’s been aging for damned near two years—but investors backed out of the full launch when that murder of the District Attorney’s family put Melba on the map for the wrong reasons. My partners want a rebrand, so they came to me. I didn’t seek you out for your permission, Mayor. I want to know the process here in Close Call.

Her brain tried not to linger on the entrepreneurially-sound decision to distance a business from the media frenzy five counties away. If she wasn’t careful, Melba’s toxic climate of corruption and opioid-related crimes would infiltrate Close Call. She couldn’t think of one sound reason to help Chase Meier navigate town bureaucracy.

He added, As a one-third shareholder of property that falls within the town’s boundaries and someone who contributes a sizable amount to the tax base, I voted you into office.

Except that.

Gretchen had long ago learned about the underlying you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours expectation with elected officials—especially in small towns. But after nearly two years, her insides still went all gooey to hear that someone had laid their democratic privilege at her feet. She would have pegged Chase Meier for a Dale Euclid supporter. Smarmy good-old-boy to the core should have been Dale’s campaign slogan. Chase was right. As a service to a voter who put his political faith in her, she owed him a nudge toward the proper channels.

You’ll need a lawyer to file the proper paperwork—rezoning applications, maps, schematics, drainage plans, declaration of land use, calculated distance from school zones. The City Secretary, Diane Mallory, can lead you through the paper trail. File a motion to add your business to a public meeting. Present your case. The city council votes, and more often than not, I cast the deciding vote as mayor.

Chase propped his crossed arms on the chair back. He skimmed a thumbnail along his pouty bottom lip repeatedly, his eyes staring out the window in thought.

Who else is on the city council? he asked.

She had considered that the belt buckle might be severing circulation, crunched as it was against his internal organs, interfering with brain waves or some such, but apparently his mind had been calculating a way around her vote.

Even service to a voter had its limits. She shook her head.

Ten people in this bakery can tell me the same information, he said.

Gretchen glanced around: the Owens brother not on a portable oxygen tank; the matriarch of the Pickford family hawking her cosmetic wares to a group of retired women over bear claws; Pastor Richards from the Cowboy Church wearing his Serminator T-shirt; and Mary Beth Peal, who treated gossip as an Olympic sport. Nearly all of them glanced in the direction of their mayor in a spirited discourse.

Making this harder on me will only make me more determined. Chase had straightened his spine, sat tall, introduced an unflinching stare to their conversation.

"Why is this so important to you? Why my town?" Gretchen hated how she sounded—quiet, sensitized, defensive, not at all the ruthless, trial-ready attorney she was once projected to be. Her hometown had made her soft.

Because this is my home, too. I want people to know about it, to see how special it is. He backed off his bull-busting tone, as if that was the way of it—eight seconds, hot and heavy, all in, then nothing but retreat. And I need something besides rodeoing, or I’ll climb into that chute until a bull puts me six feet under.

His admission pumped the brakes on her rapid-fire response—that they wanted different things but for the same reason and why couldn’t they table this discussion until she had more time to deal with it—preferably after the largest event the