Bullet reached over and touched her chin. “Look at me, darlin’.” When she did, he took his own deep breath. “I love you, Tristan. Up until I met you, I didn’t know what it was to truly love a woman. Now I do. It’s the same way I feel about my kids. When I’m not with ’em, I think about ’em all the time. I can’t imagine a world without them in it. If they’re hurt, I wanna take their pain and carry it for them. If they’re sad, I wanna make ’em smile. Whatever isn’t workin’ in their life, I wanna be the one who fixes it. And with you? I want to be the only man who ever touches you. The only man who ever makes love to you again, until the day I die. The idea of touchin’ a woman other than you makes me sick to my stomach.”
He couldn’t tell by the look on her face whether she believed him or thought he was full of shit.
“Ask anybody. I’ve been a monk the last few weeks. And it wasn’t because I thought that it would win you back. There wasn’t anybody other than you I wanted to be with. Nobody.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t; maybe I’m playing the naive fool again, but I believe you.”
His eyes opened wide. “You do?”
“Yes, I do,” she told him. “I also believe you aren’t the father of the child in the subpoena.”
“And what if it comes back that I am? Will you believe it’s a setup?”
“That’s harder, but…I will.”
“There are ways to prove I’m not, you know, but not until after the baby is born. At some point, I’m gonna have to know who this woman is, and once I do, I can ask for my own test. It’s the time in between that will be hardest.”
“Maybe we can find out who she is now.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’, but I haven’t come up with any ideas how to yet.”
“Lyric is working on it.”
“She is? I was gonna ask her what she thought, but then I ran into you in the elevator…”
Tristan told him about the conversation they’d had earlier at the bar.
“I have no idea how to find her, but you know Lyric. God knows what she’ll come up with.”
Bullet didn’t have any ideas either. At least short term. As he’d just said, once the baby was born he could ask for another test, and have it performed by someone neither of them knew. He’d get a court order to make it happen if he had to.
“Bullet, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Here it came. His shoulders tensed as he waited for her to speak.
“No matter what happens, you need to know this. I love you too, Bullet.”
“You do?”
Tristan smiled and shook her head. “You’re all I’ve thought about, Bullet. I’ve wished with everything in me that we would somehow find out this was a mi
stake. It never occurred to me that it was a setup, but it should’ve. I owe you an apology, Bullet. A big one. I should’ve trusted you. Jesus, I should’ve just talked to you.”
“So, what’s next for us, Miss McCullough?”
“Right now we need to get you into those chaps.”
1994
“No, Dottie. This is not up for discussion.”
“But you saw him as well as I did. Billy is a natural born bronc rider.”
“We saw him one time, tryin’ to break a spirited horse. That doesn’t make him a bronc rider.”
“You may have seen him one time, but I’ve seen him a lot more.”
“What are you talkin’ about, woman?”