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Prologue

Last Year, Seattle, Washington

“Bodhi Benedict BallantyneMcIntyre?”

“Bodhi will do,” Bodhi answered, looking up in surprise.

He popped up off the metal bench where he’d been sitting while he wrapped the wrist of his hold hand with medical tape.

Some suit walked down the cement flooring of the back staging area toward him with a look of grim determination. Not something you saw every day at an arena an hour before showtime.

Suits were trouble. Bodhi had tied on his boots and buckled on his chaps, but he didn’t have his shirt on. Too bad the suit wasn’t a woman. Whoever this was expensive-shoeing his way toward him—sniper gaze narrowed on the target: him—his odds of winning this exchange would vastly improve if the suit was female.

Bodhi swaggered over, spinning the roll of medical tape on one finger.

“Yeah.”

“You are Bodhi Benedict Ballantyne McIntyre?” the guy asked stonily.

The serious scenario had caught more than one cowboy’s attention.

“We’ve already ascertained that,” Bodhi said cockily. “You are?”

Bodhi felt more than the suit’s eyes on him now. Normally he liked the attention. But this—this didn’t feel good.

“You’re a hard man to find, Mr. McIntyre.”

“It’s Ballantyne.” He didn’t lose his smile, but no one called him McIntyre. No one. He’d ditched that last name in middle school with the stroke of a pen, his mother’s approval and a judge’s gavel. “My schedule’s posted a year in advance.”

He was a top-tier saddleless bronc and bull rider on the pro rodeo tour, not a CIA operative. And Bodhi never attempted to fly under anyone’s radar.

“You weren’t in your hotel room last night.”

“Ah, that.” Bodhi gave an aw-shucks grin. “Found a better offer.”

A king-size bed in a tricked-out hillside condo with wall-to-wall windows that looked out over Seattle’s Lake Union and the city, a wraparound deck and a hot tub with a sponsor’s daughter who had a thing for his leather, rope, and his Stetson.

Who was he to deny her? But there’d been no sleeping involved. Never was.

He heard a couple of mumbles from the too-nosy cowboys watching them, and his eyes narrowed. He reveled in the limelight but didn’t want it from a suit. And if the suit didn’t get out of his face, his cousins would come looking and start asking questions. And then Bowen, the oldest of the three of them, would worry about Bodhi’s wrist and the injury that wasn’t healing well. His wrist felt shot but nothing that tape and a brace couldn’t hold together until the end of the season in a few weeks.

“Bottom-line me,” Bodhi said. It wasn’t a suggestion.

“Oh. Yes,” the suit stammered, caught looking at Bodhi’s bare chest with the defined muscles and a couple of long scars—one of them surgical and the other where a bull’s horn had caught him as he flew over said bull and his vest had ridden up—or his pants and chaps had ridden low.

“I…ah…have a letter for you.” Suit’s gaze skittered away as he reached into his pocket.

“You don’t trust the mail?” Bodhi’s gaze hardened.

“It’s a court-certified letter.”

Bodhi’s heart rate kicked up, but he kept his expression easy. He had a lot of experience with keeping his emotions and thoughts shut down tight. First from kids at school because of his dad, and later his mom’s career. Teachers. His mom. His aunts. Now women, fans, sponsors, and the tour staff.

Bodhi held out his hand for the letter.

“You got ID?”

Seriously?