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“Oh, God, not him again.”
Tristan looked over to where Lyric motioned. There stood Harris Jones, and to her shock, he looked even worse than the last time she saw him.
“You keep turnin’ up, like a bad penny. Or shit on the bottom of my shoe,” Lyric said to him.
“I’m not here to see you.” Then he looked at Tristan. “Can we talk?”
“I’m sorry, Harris, but I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“You’re back with him? How could you be? You swore over and over again that you couldn’t forgive my infidelities, but he gets some whore pregnant and you just look the other way?”
Tristan didn’t know where Harris got the idea she was back with Bullet. Maybe because she was sitting at the bar with his sister. “This isn’t any of your business,” she told him.
“I can’t believe this. I never dreamed you’d forgive him.” He turned and walked away.
“Didn’t that strike you as odd?” Tristan asked Lyric who watched as Harris walked away.
“Yep.”
“No, not him. What he said. He never dreamed I’d forgive him. Isn’t that weird?”
“To be honest with you, I think the guy is as dirty as they come. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out someday that he set this whole thing up to get you away from Bullet. Problem is, there’s no proof.”
“What about the girl, Lyric? Why would a woman claim someone is the father of her child, if she knows he isn’t?”
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna make you a promise right here and now. By the time the last gold buckle is awarded this week, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“He’s ridin’ great,” Bill told Buck. “But otherwise, it’s as though the light went out.”
“Damn mess.” Buck shook his head. “Has he found out anything yet?”
“Nope, but he said somethin’ about gettin’ the results in January.”
They thought he couldn’t hear them, but Bullet could. Their voices carried to where he sat on the back of the chute, waiting for his turn to get on the back of a bull. He rode by rote. No emotion. No excitement. His nerves were icy steel. Part of him hoped he’d buck off, because then, maybe he’d feel something.
He was loading broncs to bring them to Las Vegas, a couple of weeks ago, and cut his hand good on a sharp piece of metal on the trailer. He watched the blood pour from the wound, but couldn’t feel it.
Billy, Jace, even Ben tried to talk to him about the paternity test, but he didn’t have anything to say on the subject. He may have been drunk that night, but there’s no way he had sex with the woman accusing him.
It had been months since he had sex with anyone other than Tristan McCullough. A fella may be able to forget having sex when he was doing it with randoms every night of the week, but once you committed yourself to one woman, it wasn’t something you’d forget.
He rode. He didn’t buck off. He waited for his score. Robotically. Eighty-two points. He walked through the back of the arena to gather his gear and heard someone talking on a cell phone.
“It didn’t matter to her.” He recognized the voice and the man speaking. Harris Jones. He went back around the corner, out of sight, to listen to more of the conversation.
“You have to make sure the test comes back with him as the verified father.” Silence. “What’s it gonna cost me?” More silence. “You better make damn sure your cousin gets the samples switched.” Another long pause. “Yeah, well, as long as she don’t show up here, we’re all good.”
He had to find Lyric, tell her what he’d heard. If anyone could find out who this woman
was and get her here, Lyric could. If she didn’t, Bullet was going to get slapped with a paternity suit that would seal the fate of the rest of his life. Tristan would never believe it was rigged and he wasn’t the child’s daddy.
Tristan rode the elevator alone from the twenty-second floor to the nineteenth, where it stopped. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. She opened them again when she didn’t hear anyone get on. She looked up, and Bullet stood in front of her.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. The elevator doors started to close, and both reached out to stop them.
“Get on the elevator, Bullet,” she told him, and then folded her arms.
“How are you?” he asked once the doors closed.
