Coulda Been a Cowboy

“It’s Greg Higgins.”

His agent. “Oh.” He fell back onto the bed. “Tell him I’ll call him later.”

“I already told him you weren’t up yet. He said it’s important.”

With Greg, “important” was always relative. He might be calling simply to pass along a compliment the owner of the Stingrays had paid him. Or it could have to do with Rachelle. When Tyson forked over the one mil in exchange for her signature on the custody papers, she’d agreed not to disclose the terms of their agreement—and it made Greg even madder than Tyson that she’d flagrantly disregarded that stipulation. They couldn’t fix it now, but maybe something else had happened. Or maybe she was trying to renege on their deal.

“Fine.” He reached for the telephone next to the bed, but Dakota spoke as his hand closed around the receiver.

“He called on line two, which I finally figured out is only in the office.”

“How’d he get that number?” Tyson asked.

“It must be the one you gave him.”

Which meant it had originally come from Gabe. Tyson hadn’t expected two lines. This was supposed to be a remote cabin.

When he started to get up, the door closed so fast Tyson startled, then realized he’d fallen into bed in just his briefs last night. When he’d thrown off the covers, he hadn’t even considered that his near nudity might offend Dakota. He’d lost all sensitivity to modesty after spending the past decade dressing and undressing in a locker room that allowed female reporters to wander through at will. But he found it interesting that Dakota had beat such a quick retreat.

He grinned at the memory as he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and headed down the hall to the office. And that was when he caught the scent of bacon, eggs and…waffles? There was coffee, too. This was certainly a better morning than the one he’d spent yesterday. He couldn’t wait to gorge himself. He hadn’t had a solid meal since he’d picked up Braden.

The receiver was resting on the ink blotter next to the football player he’d drawn yesterday. He brought it to his ear and said hello, then realized that someone had added a number to the jersey on the paper. His number. Imagine that. Dakota had never mentioned football, and yet she knew his number.

“We’ve got problems,” Greg said.

Pasty-skinned and habitually nervous, with what he called a “power haircut” and football tattoos on both forearms that looked like a failed attempt to fit in rather than an extension of his own personality, Greg worried about everything, which drove Tyson crazy. But it was also one of the reasons Tyson kept him around. Tyson viewed life as one big picture; Greg minded the minutiae.

“What kind of problems?” Tyson wasn’t nervous. Buying the wrong kind of toilet paper could be a serious problem for Greg.

“That bitch went on Montel Williams yesterday.”

“That bitch” was, of course, Rachelle. “She already disclosed the terms of our agreement,” he said, wondering why Greg had to wake him up for this. “No use getting our jocks in a knot over that.”

“But that’s not all,” his agent went on. “She hinted that you took advantage of her when she was down on her luck.”

Tyson sat up straighter. Now he was worried. “I took advantage of her?”

“Yeah. She led everyone to believe…” Greg hesitated.

“What?” Tyson snapped.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Say it anyway.”

“That you forced her to have sex with you.”

The image of Rachelle climbing into his bed filled Tyson’s mind. Sleeping together had been her idea. He hadn’t demanded, or even asked, for anything.

He rubbed his left temple. “Shit.”

“I contacted her, told her you’d sue her for libel if she ever said that again.”

“Good. I will.”

“It doesn’t end there.”

Why not? It should. He’d fulfilled his end of the bargain, and now he was trying to live with the fallout. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She…she said she was thinking of going to the police and telling them the same story.”

“That I raped her? The only thing I forced her to do was get the hell out of my house!” He drummed his fingers on the desktop. This couldn’t be happening.

“It’s her word against yours.”

“Then I’ll take a lie detector test.”

“No, you won’t. Those things aren’t completely reliable. They depend on the interpretation of the technician. If, for some strange reason, the tech happens to screw up and we get a false positive, we’d be done for. That’s a risk we can’t take.”

There had to be something they could do. “I know if we check her background, we’ll find she’s no virtuous saint.”

“Doesn’t matter. Just the claim will drag your reputation through the mud. You’ll lose your endorsements. Strive Athletic Equipment is already acting funny after that newspaper article. I had to send Howard the private investigator’s report that made you decide to take Braden in the first place.”

“What’d he say?”

“That he wasn’t happy. And he told me what we already know—with endorsements, the truth doesn’t really matter. It’s the public’s perception of an athlete, that’s all. You can’t be perceived as a womanizer or a jerk or a man who has no kindness for the mother of his baby, no feelings.”

Just because he refused to wear them on his sleeve didn’t mean he didn’t have them. Rachelle had cut him to the quick. Even Greg didn’t understand how betrayed Tyson felt. “So what’s the bottom line?”

“We’ve got to stop her.”

“How? I don’t even know why she’s doing this!”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Tyson jumped to his feet. “She got the money she wanted.”

“But she didn’t reach her true objective; she wasn’t admitted to your world.”

Tyson knew Greg would understand that. The man had been trying to fit in since he started agenting. “She expected me to marry her?”

“I’ll bet that was her fondest dream. Now that she knows she’s not going to get it, she wants the money and the baby.”

Turning the slats of the wooden blinds to protect his eyes from the glare, Tyson began to pace. “She’s not getting the baby. That’s bullshit.”

“You’re committed to ‘no’?”

“To the tune of $1,000,000, remember?”