by Leslie North
Gretchen’s mind raced. She couldn’t imagine what business he had with the city, unless he had ideas about the rest of the block. But Yancy knew they had already passed a motion to table that discussion. She shot a questioning look at Darcy.
Darcy handed Chase a handkerchief.
Traitor.
He blotted his forehead and put it back in his pocket. For the first time since he had entered the room, he looked at Gretchen. And not just looked. Really looked. Enough to galvanize the air in her lungs.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the council for rezoning the property on Main. My brothers and I and our investors intend to open a business the town can be proud of. And I’d like to publicly thank Emile Pickford for looking to the future and honoring the true spirit of this town.”
Chase glanced to the Pickford contingent assembled. Emile inclined his head and smiled.
“I came to this distillery opportunity with the idea that it would put Close Call on the map. On the rodeo circuit, no one had ever heard of the town or knew anything about how wonderful it is. I guess I wanted others to see for themselves that there were places like this left in the world. Lots of them. And when it comes right down to it, we’re the ones who oftentimes set the example for the rest of the world to follow. How things should be. How neighbors should watch out for each other. The kindness of strangers, though there aren’t many of those around here.”
This elicited a smattering of chuckles.
“Anyway, I came back here with this grand idea, and I met someone who challenged me every step of the way. Every time I thought I had things figured out, she would buck my plans to see if I’d get up again. Well, she had never met a bull rider, I guess. We’re stubborn with just the right amount of crazy thrown in. She is the most selfless, hardworking, intelligent person I’ve ever known. She has a great future ahead of her in state government, so this town is lucky to have her.” In case anyone had nodded off, Chase leaned close to the microphone and added, “That’s Mayor de Havilland.”
Heat bloomed at Gretchen’s cheeks.
Darcy started an enthusiastic round of applause that spread like Amens at a Sunday service. Dale Euclid rolled his eyes, lumbered to his feet, and left the room. When the noise died, Chase continued.
“She was the first person in a long time to value what I had to say, even if I didn’t say it in the fanciest way. And it took me leaving to realize that she always had, all the way back to when we were kids, and I sat in the school’s empty hallway beside her. Back then, I told her all the reasons she didn’t want to talk to me. And she convinced me of all the reasons people did. And it had nothing to do with how long I could stay on a bull. She taught me that there is a place for new ambition and new dreams when the first ones come true. And if those two things happen to collide with love, well, it’s better than any eight seconds, anywhere.”
Chase reached in his suit pocket, stepped to the side of the microphone, and knelt before her.
A din swelled in the room. Someone in the back of the room screamed “Microphone!” At which point, Digger Owens, romantic that he was, grabbed Gretchen’s microphone and held it mid-air, close to Chase. A sibilance of shhhs followed like someone had let loose a nest of rattlesnakes.
“No one else has ever made me want to challenge the Meier record on years of marital bliss, and my brothers already have a head start…”
Wes let out a whoop to make a cowboy proud.
“I love you, Gretchen de Havilland, mayor of Close Call and soon-to-be attorney general of Texas. Marry me, and I promise I won’t flip off anyone in your campaign pictures.”
A surprise eddy of laughter swirled up from her taut belly, nothing compared to the feeling of being avalanched beneath a wall of love and happiness and hope. Her hands shook, her eyes watered—not at all the confidence of a mayor—but she didn’t care.
Digger shoved the microphone close to her mouth.
“Yes.”
Cheers erupted around the room.
“Do we need a majority vote on this?” joked Yancy.
“No. Hell, no!” shouted Bettye. “Kiss her, already!”
Chase did. Long and sweet and laughing, right at the end.
“So much for an aversion to formality, Mr. Meier.”
“So much for resistance, Mayor de Havilland.”
And the Close Call city council meeting became an engagement party, complete with the finest specialty tortes for two hundred miles and the finest people anywhere on earth. The story may have been embellished a bit, as small-town folks are prone to do, but about this, one truth was undeniable: true love was sweetness and light and a box of donuts, jelly filling on the chin and all.
And that was no bull.
Epilogue
Gretchen’s favorite place on earth was the special events room of the Bareback Distillery and Tasting House. Crazy, she knew, given her tumultuous start with the entire concept of the place. Oak barrels that contained the whiskey of the future—their future—lined the shotgun-style room and extended all the way up to the twenty-foot rafters. The space was long enough for one continuous table and fifty chairs and intimate enough that the light strings that zig-zagged overhead created an unparalleled ambiance of magic. They had hosted dignitaries, anniversary parties, wedding receptions—including their own—and charity events, but none were as special as the celebration on election night.
Landslide victory, Gretchen de Havilland, state district attorney.
Of course, it took five years, a lot of campaigning, and a major delay in starting a family, but luckily Chase was accustomed to time spent on the road. When things became hectic, he always said any means of getting from one town to the next was better than a rodeo RV. She couldn’t say exactly why. Probably something to do with horse biscuits on the boots.
They saw the last of their guests out, mostly family, the knee-high tottering ones the hardest to convince to leave. Nat and January’s son, Clem, ran around, knocking on each barrel end, delighting in the unique sounds from the differing levels resulting from how they had been rotated, taken down, and sampled. Future drummer, no doubt, but it might have been their trip to Africa that had started his pursuit of rhythm. Wes and Livie’s son, Daniel, preferred things closer to home. The first time he crawled up on an empty barrel in the warehouse, Wes shot Chase a warning look. Future bull rider, that one.
Chase locked the door and turned off the lights, street side. When he rejoined Gretchen, the only lit bulbs came from the strings overhead. Chase pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
All right, the special events room was her second favorite place on earth. Inside her husband’s arms was definitely better.
After her toes were sufficiently curled, she said against his lips, “Hm. No longer tastes like dirt.”
Chase laughed.
“You know, it would only be fitting to have the first scandalous affair of my tenure as attorney general right here, the site of so much controversy.”
“You’re certainly wearing the right shoes for it.”
On purpose, Gretchen had chosen four-inch, cut-out, peep-toe heels in coral-dyed leather. The running joke: the closer she came to elected office, the more extreme her shoes. Mostly, she loved what her shoes did to him when their days were finished. She was pretty sure they had more sex with her sporting heels than barefoot. But the road went two ways. She had grown to adore Chase’s vast array of championship buckles, mostly for the kinky utility of the attached belts.
She knew there were times Chase missed rodeo. It would always be part of him, but he valued his health more than the eight-second thrill it gave him. Besides, he said, he had her for thrills now, and those lasted a helluva lot longer than eight seconds.
“I don’t trust these event tables,” said Chase, between kisses. “But we got a delivery of empty barrels today. Good, solid oak.”
Gretchen thought of the night in the pasture, how much she had wanted him then, how far they had come. The thought of a b
arrel and heels had her terrified and turned on, all at once. She took him by the hand and led him around the corner, near where she knew deliveries entered the building. Golden glow from the party lights filtered through the spaces between the barrels, leaving a brilliant and symmetrical artistic pattern on the vertical surfaces: barrels, concrete walls, Chase’s back, and, eventually, her bare breasts.
He draped a quilted delivery blanket over the barrel’s end to protect her skin from splinters then marveled aloud at how his whiskey casks, designed for strength and flavor and beauty, also happened to be the right height for him to enter her—all while her heels hooked the oak lip and her pleasured cries echoed through the finest artisan whiskey the state had to offer. And when she clung to him and gripped him and took him with her, he lifted her from the barrel, her legs around his hips, and carried her to the sofa in his office.
She snuggled against his warm neck, feeling the pull of fatigue in her eyelids, her limbs, and every sated part of her body in between. Achieving dreams demanded rest. She fought sleep valiantly, remembered Chase whispering, “I love you,” against her earlobe, remembered the gorgeous sight of him naked before he slipped back into his pants and settled beside her on the couch beneath a blanket. The woodsy smell of oak and Chase filled her senses.
Her life had gone according to plan. Except for one thing. Chase Meier was about as unplanned as a burr in a saddle. He was fearless and reckless and lawless. He also happened to be her best surprise of all.
End of Claiming The Cowboy
Meier Ranch Brothers Book Three
Tempting the Rancher, April 26th.
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Redeeming the Rancher, May 3rd.
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Claiming the Cowboy, May 10th.
PS: Do you love rugged men? Then keep reading for an exclusive extract from Wired.
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About Leslie
Leslie North is the USA Today Bestselling pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.
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BLURB
Star quarterback Marcus Kingston lives and breathes football. He’s trusted his abilities and instincts to get him this far, but an injury last season nearly ended his career. When his coaches want him to wear biofeedback technology to analyze his game, Marcus thinks the idea is ridiculous. Plus, the mousy scientist behind the project knows nothing about sports, and she quickly gets under his skin. But with another QB waiting on the sidelines, Marcus can either agree to participate, or be benched—permanently.
Scientist Clare Wynifred values intellect above most things. With her brain constantly working, she has little interest in her appearance and zero interest in sports. She never imagined her wearable tech being used to improve someone’s game, but its success with the team could get her a military contract. Clare may be too late to save her brother, but her technology could save the lives of countless soldiers. She just has to make it work with the stubborn quarterback, and she’ll be one step closer to her goal.
Marcus and Clare butt heads at first, but their mutual attraction quickly grows. And yet, with everything to lose, it’s easy to ignore that together they might be able to go the distance.
Grab your copy of Wired from
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EXCERPT
Wired was a check in the W column when sportscasters predicted a season-ending loss. Wired was watching tapes from the 70s and spotting a new trick route. Wired was backstage passes and tables at restaurants with a six-month wait and pedal-to-the-floor in a Lamborghini Veneno just because your name decorated an NFL jersey.
Wired was not…wired.
And Marcus Kingston, quarterback for the Portland Rogues, refused to be wired one damned minute more.
While his teammates celebrated a win and shed mud-soaked uniforms into the locker room’s equipment hampers, Marcus stayed in full dress: helmet, pads, compression shirt—none of it his original gear. Christ, even his mouth guard was different. Probably had some kind of digital saliva strip to detect foreign DNA should he decide to take half a dozen women up on their offers of a discrete hook-up.
He charged past equipment rooms, media rooms, and workout rooms, down a long, carpeted hallway, until he reached a glass-walled conference room at the epicenter of the staff facilities. Behind the partition’s gold-frosted Rogue mascot, his audience had already assembled for their congratulatory executive ass-slaps: coaches, team owner and his trophy wife, general manager, shareholders, board members—all gathered to pretend they had more skin in the game than money.
Marcus shoved his way inside.
Clusters of conversations gradually died as the room’s occupants shifted their attention to him.
Aware that he carried the stench of sixty minutes of rainy gameplay and more than his share of the stadium’s natural turf embedded in his facemask and cleats, he spit out his mouth guard and dumped his equipment onto the polished oak table, one item at a time.
Helmet.
“Last three minutes of the game—constant buzzing in my ear.”
Shoulder pads, not bothering to extract them from his jersey.
“First quarter—blinding orange warning light in my helmet to let me know I’m sweating in my torso region.”
Marcus waited for the ridiculousness of that nugget to settle in, but the Botox-paralyzed faces simply looked upon him as if he had committed the egregious act of pairing a cabernet with fish.
“Of course I was sweating. It’s fucking football.”
At the curse bomb, the owner awakened from his privileged coma.
“Marcus, we all want to congratulate you, but this is hardly the…”
Marcus’s cleats hit the table, effectively cutting off that response. The stench was strong enough to curl Coach Banaszewski’s wife’s ten thousand–dollar hair extensions. A few of the ladies present pressed delicate fingers beneath their nostrils.
“At halftime, I’m handed a printout from someone on the equipment staff that says I’m placing sixty-three percent more pressure on my arch supports than normal, which results in a two-percent slowdown of my overall running speed, and ‘could I please try to run normally.’”
Marcus reached for the lace ups on his pants.
A swell of protests sounded in the room.
His gaze leveled on the one person in the room most responsible for stripping the game of its sanctity: Claire Something. Caltech hotshot. Secret weapon of professional athletes. Newest team darling, according to his defensive linemen, who had nicknamed her ClaireBear. Marcus wanted nothing more than to drop trou, see that muted O of her lips stretch long enough bark off a kill call in a stadium of eighty thousand, but his hands stalled. He blamed her bizarre game-day attire: combat boots, frothy poet shirt, goth eyeliner, and a kilt that came closer to Raiders colors—for all he could detect of the color spectrum. She was cosplay in a room full of Republicans, and it was distracting as hell.
Marcus settled for adjusting himself—since he was in the neighborhood anyway—and amped up the point h
e had wanted to make with his filthy white pants atop the gear pile.
“And in the third quarter—mid-play, mind you—the pads at my thighs detect a leg cramp and swell like a goddamned life vest on a plane crashing into the ocean—which is the perfect metaphor for how that play ended, by the way.”
Coach Bana ran interference on him. Despite his advanced age, the six-foot-two Sean Banaszewski, former middle linebacker for the Patriots, mixed it up better than half the men on the squad.
Bana pressed Marcus toward the door.
“All right, King. Save it for the coaches’ meeting in the morning.”
“You and I both know the decision to use this tech happens around this table, not at the coach’s meeting.” Marcus spotted a cluster of spreadsheets unfolded like a buffet in front of Claire, his less-than-stellar performance reduced to numerals. He juked his coach, gripped the pages, and crushed them high into the air.
Caltech girl blinked back her surprise.
“This isn’t how you make great players and championships,” said Marcus. “This is how you kill them.”
“Not the time or place, King.” Bana’s tone was all spiked cleats, laced tight. “Locker room. Now.”
“He wants to talk now, Sean. Let’s talk now.” The owner set down his whiskey glass and made a show of settling into the leather seat at the table’s head, in case anyone present had a mind to forget Ogdon J. Sterling III or the Sterling dynasty, whose real estate fortune had allowed them to steal a franchise away from the third largest football market in the United States. “Seems I’m hearing a lot of excuses for piss poor play out there, son.”