Peggy Moreland - Marry Me, Cowboy

I’ve lived my whole life in Temptation, a small town with an unlikely name in central Texas. Though there were those who considered living in Temptation a hardship and couldn’t wait to escape, I’ve always loved it here and never gave a thought to leaving.

Since I was old enough to walk, I followed my father around the ranch, learning from his experience. I gleaned a ton of it on my own when I took over the place at the age of seventeen after his death. I fell in love when I was sixteen, married my high school sweetheart three years later and brought her home to my ranch.

Though I never gave it much consideration the first time around, I thought my expectations for a wife were simple enough. I wanted a woman I could love and care for, and one who was willing to love and care for me in return. She’d have to be a strong woman, someone who could stand the isolation of the land and still thrive, one who was both independent and dependent at the same time. I wanted a woman—a partner, if you will—who’d stand by me through thick and thin. I wanted, simply put, a home and a family and a woman to share it all with.

But my first wife didn’t share those expectations. When we married, she was looking for a way out of Temptation, Texas. So when she left, taking my two kids with her, I sealed off my heart and swore never to love again.

When my old buddy, Cody Fipes, started this fool plan to advertise for women to move to Temptation to save our dying town, it never occurred to me that my heart might be in jeopardy again.

Prologue

Sixty or so men were crowded into the End of the Road Bar, the official gathering place for the male population of Temptation, Texas. Some sat slumped at tables with their backs rounded against spool-back chairs. Others straddled bar stools, their dusty, mudcaked boots hooked over the stools’ lowest rungs. Those unfortunate enough to have arrived too late to claim a proper chair hitched a foot against chipped plaster and pressed their shoulders to the wall, while still others leaned back on elbows braced against the long, scarred bar.

Having made the trek into town straight from work on their respective farms and ranches, most of the men wore jeans and boots. Others sported bib overalls over soiled T-shirts. Since there wasn’t a lady in sight to complain about the breach of etiquette, to a man their heads were covered, either with straw cowboy hats or monogrammed caps advertising farm equipment or feed.

Arriving late, Harley Kerr stopped just inside the door and looked around. Cody Fipes, his friend and Temptation’s sheriff, sat at a table in the rear of the room. Harley slipped into the empty chair Cody had 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.