Marry Me, Cowboy. Peggy Moreland
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saved for him and was rewarded with a beer shoved his way. With a nod of thanks, he one-knuckled his sweat-stained hat to the back of his head and closed a hand around the cold brew.
“Was beginning to wonder if you were going to make it,” Cody murmured in a low voice.
“Bull got in a pasture with some heifers,” Harley replied dryly. “Took me a while to convince him he didn’t belong there.” Hot and tired, he tipped back his head and took a long, thirst-quenching drink before setting the beer down and turning his attention to Roy Acres, Temptation’s mayor.
Seated on a tall stool centered in front of the long bar, Mayor Acres resembled a fly-fattened frog. His face flushed with the effort, he raised his voice a level higher to be heard over the scrape of chairs and the buzz of conversation as he called the meeting to order. The topic for the night’s meeting? Temptation’s quickly disintegrating population and the closing of local businesses.
Heads wagged regrettably as Mayor Acres read through the list of businesses that had closed in the past year. Lips pursed as Acres reviewed a survey taken at the local high school that revealed only seventeen percent of the students registered there intended to remain in Temptation after graduation.
Usually filled with raucous laughter and loud country music, the End of the Road was as quiet as a church on Saturday night as its occupants absorbed the depressing news about the town where they’d spent their entire lives. If something wasn’t done and done fast, Temptation, like so many other rural communities, would soon be nothing but a ghost town.
Few understood this better than Harley Kerr and Cody Fipes. They’d spent a lot of time over the past few years cussing and discussing Temptation’s slow decline. But unlike Harley, Cody had come up with a plan. Not one that Harley totally supported, but he figured at least it was a start.
With a tense glance at Harley, Cody stood and dragged off his hat. “Roy,” he said, nervously tapping his hat against his knee, “I think I might have a solution to Temptation’s problem.”
“Well, speak up, then,” Mayor Acres grumped impatiently. “That’s why we’re here.”
Cody hauled in a steadying breath, not at all sure how his idea would be accepted. “What we need to do,” he said slowly, “is to advertise for women.”
Somewhere in the crowded room the legs of a chair hit the floor with a loud thump, and one man, caught in midswallow during Cody’s brief recitation, spewed beer. Across the room someone shouted, “Hell. If you’re horny, Cody, why don’t you just drive up to Austin and pick yourself up a whore for the night?” The comment was met with hoots and hollers and a general round of back slapping:
Cody frowned. He hadn’t expected anybody to jump on his idea, at least not at first, but he sure as heck hadn’t expected to be made a fool of.
“That’s not what I had in mind,” he said dryly. “It doesn’t take somebody with a college degree to figure out that if you want to grow a town, you need women to do it. As far as I know,” he added, narrowing an eye at the man who’d told him to find himself a whore, “men haven’t figured out how to reproduce on their own just yet.”
He shifted, drawing his hat between his hands. “What we need to do is take a look at the businesses we’ve lost, assess what businesses or professionals we’ll need in the future and advertise for women to move here and fill those needs.”
At the word “need,” someone snickered and Cody shot him a look that would peel paint off a barn. Sorry he’d even bothered to share his idea for saving Temptation, Cody rammed his Stetson back on his head. “That’s all I’ve got to say,” he muttered, then sat down.
The laughter continued and Cody’s face turned redder and redder until Harley felt compelled to come to his friend’s defense. With a sigh, he pushed to his feet. “You boys can laugh all you want, but I haven’t heard a one of you come up with a better idea. Personally I don’t give a double-damn whether any women move here or not.” He waited a beat, then added, “But Cody’s right when he says it’ll take women to grow our town.” He clapped a hand on Cody’s shoulder in a show of support. “I, for one, stand behind him on this plan of his to advertise for women, and I hope all of you will do the same.”
What no one in the room realized was that the reporter from the county newspaper was busily scrawling notes on a steno pad, recording Cody Fipes’s plan to save Temptation right along with Harley Kerr’s endorsement of the plan. When the weekly issue was delivered to its subscribers on Wednesday, the entire county would read about the meeting in the small town of Temptation, Texas, whose population had dwindled to a depressing 978, and Cody Fipes’s suggestion for how to save it. By Thursday, the AP service would have picked up the story and carried it nationwide.
By Friday afternoon, news trucks and vans would line the narrow main street that marked the town of Temptation, their cameras rolling, hoping to capitalize on this story of the town who hoped to save itself by advertising for women.
Within forty-eight hours, single women from all fifty states would be gossiping—and maybe dreaming a little—about the small Texas town of Temptation where the men outnumbered the women eight to one.
One
Houston, Texas
A television sat on the apartment’s breakfast bar, its volume muted, while a suited anchorman on the screen droned out the six-o’clock news. Across the narrow dining room, Mary Claire Reynolds sat at her kitchen table, cradling her sleeping eight-year-old son, Jimmy, against her breasts. Her chin rested on top of his head while hot guilty tears streaked down her cheeks and dripped onto the boy’s red hair, the same unique shade as her own.
With Jimmy sitting in profile on his mother’s lap, his bruised cheek and split lip were visible to the two women sitting on the opposite side of the table. They had arrived as soon as they’d heard the news of the boy being attacked, offering, as they had so many times in the past, support and comfort.
Leighanna exchanged a concerned look with Reggie, then leaned across the table to lay a comforting hand on Mary Claire’s arm. “It’s not your fault,” she murmured softly. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
Mary Claire caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying to hold back the strangled sob that burned in her throat, and tightened her arms around Jimmy. “It is,” she said, unable to stop the hot angry tears that streaked down her face. “If I’d been home, this never would have happened.” She cupped a hand on her son’s tousled hair as if at this late date she could protect him from the fists of the gang of boys who’d attacked him. Her hand inadvertently touched the bruise on his cheek, and he roused and tried to pull from her arms. She hugged him tighter, rocking slowly back and forth, murmuring to him to soothe him back into a restful sleep.
When he had settled again, she pressed her lips to his head. “I never should’ve divorced Pete,” she murmured with regret. “I should’ve listened to my mother and simply looked the other way when he strayed.”
Reggie straightened, a look of shock on her face. “Mary Claire, you don’t mean that!”
“I do mean it,” she said fiercely. “If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been working. I’d have been at home with my children where I belong.”
“You were miserable married to Pete Reynolds,” Reggie reminded her. “He was a two-timing snake.”
Mary Claire lifted her tearstained face. “But we were safe. I’d gladly sacrifice my pride for my children’s safety.”
“What about the children’s happiness?” Reggie asked. “Would you sacrifice that, as well?”
Mary Claire closed her eyes against the painful reminder.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Reggie persisted. “The kids are happier now than they were when you and Pete were married. He never spent time with them. He was always too consumed with his job