Page 8 of The Undercover Cowboy

Shelby was calling him now. Reluctantly, he answered it as he was heading toward the parking lot.

“What now?” he asked.

“Dolly seemed to have a good idea about you appealing to the fans more by doing promos around the rodeo.”

“Seriously? Why does that even fucking matter anymore?” He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He didn’t mean to take this out on Shelby, but he was so frustrated with the situation.

“Look, it’ll give you a reason to be on-site. I’ll text her to have a guest pass for you at the gates.”

“A guest pass?”

“It’s the best I can do. Maybe Dolly has some other ideas.”

Of that, he didn’t have a doubt. She always had ideas. The problem was they tended to skate the line of rule breaking and lying. Still, he couldn’t deny she got results. He wondered though if that made her more like Miles and his father. The comparison didn’t sit well with him. But the thought that maybe he’d judged Miles too harshly niggled at the back of his mind. Did the ends justify the means or was that the slippery road that had led his father down his life of crime?

“Meet her by the barrel-racing events. She’ll fix this. It’s what she does.”

Nash stopped dead in his tracks. He wanted to get the hell out of here. He didn’t like the feeling of being forced out of a situation again. But he didn’t have a choice. Not if he wanted to help nail Blevins to the wall.

Chapter Four

Dolly

Dolly wasn’t sureif it was anger that was buzzing through her right now or anticipation. Sure, she was pissed that Blevins had thrown a wrench into Nash’s investigation. But she was also glad that this gave her a chance to show Shelby that she was up for the challenge of making her brother a viral sensation.

Even if it was against his will.

After the whole fiasco with Jefferson Laker and the escort service, Dolly had tried to build safeguards into her life so that she’d never be that desperate for a job again. She was the queen of side hustles, from monetizing her YouTube and TikTok accounts, to putting up T-shirt designs on Etsy. At least she had had the good sense to put some of Jefferson’s money into her education. Her marketing degree had only got her so far in public relations. The rest had been self-taught through tutorials and mentorships and plain old trial and error.

There had been a lot of error.

Unfortunately, that had fed into her workaholic lifestyle and when she got this job at the UPRC when it merged, Dolly thought maybe—just maybe—she could let herself take it easy. But not right away. First she had to prove to the UPRC that she was invaluable—that would give her job security. And then Jackson Blevins decided to mess with that. She had to get butts in the seats. Trying to get posts to go viral was exhausting.

Damn Blevins to all hell.

She saw Nash striding toward her and the anger pouring off him would be Instagram gold with all that smolder. Dollyresisted the urge to fan herself. Maybe it had been watching him go eight seconds on that bull that made her toes curl in her boots—and she wasn’t a horny buckle bunny. She had a slight fear that Nash could bring out her inner floozy if he just smiled at her more.

The Texas heat hadn’t even reached the high nineties today, so she couldn’t blame that on why she was so hot and bothered. Her fingers itched to film him, but she wanted to give him some privacy while he dealt with the emotions of being fired by the man he was investigating.

She spoke first when he came up to her. “Don’t let Blevins get to you. He must have taken his asshole pills today. I’ve been dodging his calls all morning so he’s been texting me suggestions on how to make the UPRC go viral. And some of the shit has been pretty questionable.”

Nash’s glower grew even grimmer under the brim of his Stetson. “Questionable how?”

She checked her texts. “Wet T-shirt contests.”

“That’s a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“I reminded him that we needed to bring in families, not horn dogs.”

“What did he say?”

“His next suggestion was an after-hours club.”

“What did you say?”

“That I would look into it, but I thought that the arena fees wouldn’t cover what we could charge for admission.”

“Why is he bothering you with this?”

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