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Chapter One
Dolly Keller
Dolly Keller’s perfectly manicured nails tapped away at her smartphone screen, while her eyes scanned the chaotic scene of the opening day of the United Professional Rodeo Circuit rodeo’s season in Killeen, Texas. She hoped this year would be better than the last one, for all their sakes.
Leaning up against a dusty, weathered wall of a nearby barn, Dolly was aware of the cowboys trying to get her attention. As the head of social media for the UPRC, she oversaw the social media accounts of the rodeo and its athletes, including Nash Weaver—a terrible bull rider who made her job far more challenging than it needed to be. To be fair, though, he wasn’t a real cowboy. He was a retired FBI agent who was helping his sister nail her partner for fraud or something RICO-related.
Her thumb hesitated over the “post” button. Dolly wanted one last look at the portrait of Nash she had edited. His muscles taut as he gripped the reins, Nash was a study in concentration and grit. The sepia filter gave the photo a timeless quality, which would hopefully obscure the fact that his recent performances had been less than legendary.
“It’s a good thing you’re sexy as hell,” she murmured. “Because you can’t ride for shit.”
Nash’s sister, Shelby Miller, the former president of the Women’s Professional Rodeo Circuit and Jackson Blevins, former head honcho for the men’s rodeo, had combined their companies into the UPRC two years ago. At first, it had been exactly what the two organizations needed to stave off bankruptcy. But lately, things hadn’t been going well. Shelby was convinced that Blevins was doing something shady, but she didn’t have any proof. Her brother Nash was undercover to see if he could find any dirt that Shelby could use to get rid of Jackson, his poor spending habits, and even worse behavior.
“Come on, Nash,” Dolly muttered under her breath as she scrolled through his latest slew of unimpressive posts. A cactus? “Give me something to work with here.”
“Hey, Dolly! Got any tips for me to go viral?” a voice called out.
She looked up to see Taylor Keating approaching her. Taylor was another problem. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be, and that made him difficult to brand. He was an excellent bullfighter, one of the guys who made sure that after a bull rider got tossed, the bull got back into the pens without harming itself or anyone else. But every now and then, Taylor would get it into his head that he wanted to “make it big” and entered into the bull-riding events. He was okay, but nothing to get excited about.
“Sure thing,” she said, refusing to let a little thing like lack of talent stand in the way of a bull rider’s fame and fortune. “Try using a trending hashtag and tag the rodeo’s account for some extra visibility.” Not that he knew what was trending or would even remember to do this. She’d offer to do it for him, but she didn’t have the time. She had to make Nash a superstar. Or at least a fan favorite, otherwise it was going to look suspicious that he was still on the roster when better bull riders than him weren’t making the cut. “It’s opening day, so you should get some traffic.”
Taylor looked like a deer in headlights. “Right,” he said, staring at his phone in confusion.
“Here,” she said, taking pity on him. “Sit on the fence over there and look thoughtfully into the distance.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know, look at that hot dog vendor and think about what you want to order.”
Taylor hopped up on the fence and hooked a leg over the rail. His gaze caught on something over her shoulder and his face broke out in a sexy smile.
“Not bad,” she said, taking the picture and posting it to the UPRC rodeo’s main site. She tagged him and added a few of the hashtags he could use. She went over to the fence to show him what she did. “Just use these hashtags when you take pictures around the rodeo today.”
“Will do.”
She glanced behind her to see what he was grinning at. It was her oldest sister, Loretta. She was pulling a beach wagon with her paintings in it, probably going to set them up in her pavilion in the vendor area of the rodeo. Dolly resisted the urge to shove Taylor off the fence for looking at her sister like that.
“She could probably use some help setting up,” she said instead. Taylor was a nice guy for all his indecision, and Loretta could use a little of that right now.
“I’ve got a few minutes,” he said, jumping down and heading over to Loretta with a cocky swagger.
Dolly hoped she was doing the right thing by sending him over there. But then Loretta’s face lit up and they started to talk animatedly to each other. Feeling like she had done her good deed for the day, Dolly went back to her problem child: Nash Weaver.
As she walked toward the arena, she studied Nash’s social media posts. His pictures were decent—hell, some of them were downright breathtaking—but his captions left much to be desired. As she swiped over the posts that fans tagged him in, a deep furrow etched between her brows. Her eyes darted from one social media platform to another, taking in the dismal engagement numbers and the slew of negative comments that seemed to follow Nash’s every move like a dark cloud.
“Damn it, Nash,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head. “Why’d you have to go and mess up last season so bad?” She could only hope that he had taken her advice and gone to Trent Campbell’s bull-riding school at the Three Sisters Ranch in Last Stand, Texas, during the off-season. Because the new season started now. There was no more time to fool around.
She knew promoting him wouldn’t be easy after the season he’d had, but the depth of animosity from the fans was more than she’d bargained for. Dolly had managed to turn around reputations before—it was part of her job, after all—but the stakes on this were higher than normal. It wasn’t just about convincing people that Nash was worth watching, it was about making sure that Jackson Blevins kept him on the payroll so Nash could snoop around and see what dirt Blevins was dealing in.
But even if Blevins wasn’t doing anything illegal, he didn’t mind putting lives at risk if it meant more tickets sold. He had to know there was an ongoing problem with drug tampering and betting on the animals. One cowboy, Mick Mickelson, had lost his career due to an injury when Hitchcock Livestock tampered with their bulls and tried to get insider information to place bets on the outcome of the rodeo events. Another cowboy, Ronnie Sunderland, died last year from riding a bull that had been injected with a steroid-like substance. Both times, her baby sister LeAnn could have been on that bull.
“Hey, Dolly!” Finn Laker, the new hotshot bull rider, called out as he swung into the saddle. He was scheduled to carry out the American flag in the opening day ceremony today. He flashed her a grin that did nothing for her but the buckle bunnies went crazy-pants over. “Ready to make me famous?”
“Always, cowboy,” she replied, her voice steady as she raised her camera and snapped a series of him and his pretty palomino horse. She didn’t know Finn all that well, but she did know his daddy. Or she used to. Dolly hoped that she wouldn’t run into Jefferson Laker, or if she did, he wouldn’t remember her. Jefferson was an oil baron who went through wives like Dolly went through shoes. She had met him during a dark time in her life, and he had been kind. But she was deeply ashamed of herself for the choices that had led her to that point. It would be better for everyone around if she never saw Jefferson Laker again.
“Did you get my good side?” Finn asked.
“No,” she said. “Because you’re sitting on it.”
“You know it.” He winked at her before turning his attention to the gathering crowd.
Dolly rolled her eyes but couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips. He was as charming as he was rich. She should have sent him Loretta’s way, instead of Taylor.
Nah, she couldn’t risk it. She didn’t know what she would even say to Finn’s father if she ever saw him again.
Five years ago, Dolly had been let go from her professional cheerleader squad. She couldn’t pay her rent and her bills were piling up. Her parents had been on the road with LeAnn, going from rodeo to rodeo across the country. In hindsight, Dolly should have tracked them down. But she had been too stubbornly independent. One of the girls she had been sharing an apartment with had been a stripper. Dolly couldn’t dance or she might have tried it.
Another of her roommates got her a job as an escort. Dolly hadn’t realized that the escort service was really a high-class prostitution ring until she went for her final interview with them. Of course by that time, her car had been repossessed, her credit cards were maxed out and she was a few weeks away from being kicked out of her apartment for not paying rent.
But she had made it clear that she wouldn’t do anything sexual with any of the clients. They got a date and a friend for the evening. That was it. If they didn’t like it, they could choose another girl. Dolly had been lucky with the men who’d selected her. No one tried to force her into having sex. They’d asked. They’d begged. They’d even offered her a great deal of money. But Dolly hadn’t wanted to cross that line.
Until Jefferson Laker made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Jefferson had wanted someone to spend the week with him at a destination wedding he was going to be a guest at. He picked Dolly out of the escort service’s catalog because he recognized her as having been a pro cheerleader for his favorite football team. He was willing to pay her one hundred thousand dollars for one week. The caveat? She had to sleep with him.
At first, Dolly had refused. But then she thought about it. One week. One week and she could pay off all her bills, leave the escort service and start fresh with a new career in a new city. She could go home. She could pretend that it had never happened, if she wanted.
Dolly had it all planned out. She would do what she had to do for a week and then she’d start her new business as a YouTuber doing high-end makeup tutorials and workshop-related affiliate products. She thought it would be no big deal.
She had been wrong.
Dolly had managed to pretend to herself that having sex for money was a good business decision right up until she started sobbing on the end of the bed in a luxurious five-star hotel suite.
Jefferson could have raped her. He could have thrown her out and demanded a refund. He could have asked the escort service to send another girl. He hadn’t done any of that. He gave her a whiskey and sat next to her until she stopped crying. Then he said that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. But if she still wanted the job, she would need to pretend that they were a couple. His most recent ex-wife was going to be at the wedding events all week. She was a huge football fan and had left him for a quarterback from a rival team last year.
Dolly had rallied and slept on the couch for the week. In public, she played the part of a smitten girlfriend, hanging on Jefferson’s arm and on every word he spoke. She wore a tiny bikini and bounced around with drinks in her hand. Jefferson had been so happy with her performance, that not only had he paid the fee, but he let her keep the jewelry he had bought her to show off.
“Keep ’em,” he had said when she tried to give them back. “If you get in another bind, sell them instead of yourself.”
She still had the diamonds. It was a reminder of what could have happened and why she would never let things get that bad again.
Of course, now she had an ex-FBI agent and Jefferson’s son in her small circle of acquaintances. Dolly woke up in cold sweats at night, picturing the confrontation when one or both of them found out about her escort days. Nash always had such a pole up his ass—she could only picture him looking down on her. And for some stupid reason, she wanted him to like her. They had butted heads all last year, but there had been a simmering attraction that had been underneath it all. She liked bantering with him, enjoyed spending time with him, even if he was grumpy as a grizzly before his first cup of coffee.
Finn, on the other hand, would waste no time telling all the cowboys. If her past got out, in addition to dealing with the sly looks and innuendos, Dolly could lose her job at the rodeo. The UPRC had a morality clause in their employment contracts to show their commitment to family values. And she needed this job. Her Dallas apartment was expensive as hell. If her reputation took a hit, Dolly could be canceled on social media. She could lose her social media followers and clout. Her ad revenue on her personal accounts would tank. It would be a professional disaster that rivaled the one that made her go to Leisure Industries.
But the personal disaster was what truly terrified her. If her family knew that she had worked as an escort, they’d be so disappointed in her. And that was something Dolly couldn’t bear to think about.
So if that meant that she would have to keep Finn Laker and Nash Weaver at arms’ length, it was a small price to pay. Unfortunately, she and Nash would have to work closely together this season—at least until he performed better in the rankings. She could only hope it wouldn’t take him too long…
End of Excerpt
