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“Show-off.”

“I do like to give a show,” he answered.

She stopped and tapped her plush lips with a finger. Ashni was a petite fireball of beauty, brains, and bold ideas who had burst into his life with the subtlety and ferocity of a comet over a decade ago. His bad luck that she’d chosen his cousin over him and she’d blinded Bodhi to any other woman.

“We are a family-oriented organization.” She walked a circle around Bodhi, sparing a curious glance at the suit, who stared at Ashni the way most men and women did when they first met her.

Dumbstruck.

Ashni was drop-dead gorgeous. Almost unbelievably so. She was even nicer than she was beautiful. Smarter too. His cousin Beck was a lucky bastard.

“I’m aware,” he said easily.

“And I’m aware that there is nothing about you, shirt off or on, Bodhi, that is G-rated.”

He felt his first genuine smile of the day start somewhere in his heart.

“I always aim for the R-rating, ma’am. Roaringly awesome.”

“Really? Only awesome? Losing some of your swagger, are you?”

“Not so anyone would notice.”

She looked at the suit again.

“Bodhi, you in trouble?” she whispered.

“Never.”

“Keep it that way,” she said saucily and walked off.

Ash was a treasure. A prize, and Bodhi was beginning to think Beck was seriously brain damaged. He should have quit the tour three years ago, taken her to the ranch, started on the family Ashni so desperately wanted.

She’d be a great mom.

She was the total package. Everything he’d never have.

“Let me help you find the way out,” he said to the suit.

Later—much later after his score in both bronc and bull riding had ensured that he’d be in the final tomorrow—he sat in his rig alone, ice on his right shoulder and wrist and a finger of whiskey, a rare indulgence, on the table. He pulled out the letter. He looked at it. Turned it over and over. A few of the guys had asked about it. He’d blown them off with a joke.

He was a master at deflection and keeping secrets.

And the interest had turned, as he had skillfully led it, to other, more salacious rumors. Even his cousins hadn’t heard about the suit visit. He’d lied to Ashni. Told her the guy was the brother of a friend from college who’d just moved to Seattle for law school.

Wasn’t proud of lying to her, but desperate measures and all that.

Might as well rip off the Band-Aid.

Bodhi opened the letter. Not a paternity suit. He was very active but also very careful. Gloving up was as natural as brushing his teeth. It was a short legal explanation that the client had requested the letter to be hand-delivered to his only son within a week of his thirtieth birthday, and then a short, hand-written letter from his father.

His father.

The loser, his mom called him.

The man who “took the coward’s way out.”

His mother, a judge on the federal court in Denver, was not known for her mercy on or off the bench.