Page 2 of The Undercover Cowboy

“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, hercredit 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. Thenhe 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…

Chapter Two

Nash Weaver

This would beso much easier if he could hold his badge up to the peephole and demand, “FBI. Open up.” Instead, Nash Weaver knocked on the motel door again. “Victor Lance. I know you’re in there. I just want to talk to you.”

The curtain shifted and he had a brief glimpse of the UPRC’s former veterinarian who had been arrested for doping up a bull that had killed a man last year.

“I’ve said all I’m going to say until the trial,” Dr. Lance said through the door. “Tell Jackson Blevins to stop bothering me.”

Jackpot.

Nash wasn’t there on behalf of Jackson Blevins, but he had a feeling the co-CEO of the UPRC was the main reason that Dr. Lance claimed he had been working alone when he shot up Sverre, an undefeated bull, last year with a steroid-like substance. Lance claimed that he had done it so the large bet he had placed on Sverre keeping his winning streak would pay out.

That had been true, but Nash didn’t think that was the entire story. Nash had a theory that Lance had been acting on Blevins’s orders and that Blevins was actively involved in trying to fix the rodeo events so he could bet on them and win more frequently. If Nash could prove that, Shelby could use that evidence to out Blevins from the co-CEO spot and maybe, just maybe, she could turn the rodeo around so that it was profitable.

“I just need a few moments of your time. I think we have a way to make things work out better for each of us.”

Another peer through the mustard-yellow curtain. “I know who you are.”

---