Daddy's Virgin (A CEO Boss Romance Novel)

He scowled at me. “Call it whatever the fuck you want, then. Two hundred to the winner.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “And make no mistake — I’ve been practicing. I’m better than you might think.”

I snorted, but I was only half listening to his final words. Instead, I was trying to calculate how much I had in my bank account. I wouldn’t get the month’s pay for another couple days. And, it had been a bit of an expensive month for me, between taking Vanessa out to dinner a couple times and paying for fuel as we drove around, as well as all the basics like buying things for the house and a new pair of boots to wear around the ranch. I was pretty sure I didn’t have two hundred dollars in my account, much less two hundred dollars I could afford to lose on a bet.

But at the same time, I didn’t think I was going to lose.

Something inside me insisted it would be stupid to go along with the bet, especially since I had no idea how much practice Mike had been putting into his riding. For all I knew, he could be preparing to blow me out of the water.

But I didn’t think so. If he’d really been putting in as much training as he said he’d been, surely he wouldn’t have come back here just to bother me. It wasn’t as though he had any hope of regaining his pride, not in White Bluff.

“Let’s go,” I finally said, reaching out and shaking Mike’s hand, decision made.

“Trethan, really?” Brent hissed at me as Mike stalked over toward the bull and pulled himself heavily up onto its back.

I shook my head. “You didn’t see him last time,” I said. “It was abysmal.”

But even as the words left my mouth, I grimaced, noting that Mike was handling the bull a lot better this time. He must have been serious about practicing. It appeared to have paid off. I grimaced.

“You’ve got this,” Brent said confidently.

“Of course, I do,” I said flippantly, even though I wasn’t so sure.

Mike was far from graceful on the bull, but he held on for longer than I expected. The bull finally tossed him off, but not before he put up an impressive time. He strutted around the mat, proud as a peacock. A few people even cheered for him.

I wasted no time in approaching the bull, though, knowing that the sooner I got started, the less chance my nerves would overcome me.

I got on the bull and nodded over at Mickey, gritting my teeth as the thing sprang to life. For the first couple seconds, I thought I was definitely going to get thrown, embarrassingly quickly. The

memory of Mike’s ride flashed in the back of my head. I tried to ignore it. I focused on how much was on the line with this ride and the fact that I didn’t have enough in my bank account to cover our bet.

The bull made a wild buck, and I barely clung to the thing, digging in with my fingers, my knees, my toes. It was barely enough to keep me seated there. And I could hear the collective gasp that went through the crowd. They knew as well as I did that I was close to falling.

But then, I suddenly thought of something else. That two hundred wasn’t a ton of money, but I’d told Vanessa I would help her any way that I could.

I had to stop thinking. I had to focus. I narrowed my eyes and found the rhythm, easily surpassing Mike’s time before I was thrown. I rolled through the fall and then popped back up, waving my hands to acknowledge the crowd’s cheers.

Mike looked apoplectic when I shot him a grin, but when I hopped out of the ring, he thrust out a hand, shaking mine with a firm grip before shoving his cash at me. “You got lucky this time,” he spat. But that was the only thing he said before stalking out of the Roasted Bison.

“So, drinks on you for the rest of the night?” Brent asked, a smirk on his face as he clapped me on the back.

I shook off my bad feelings about Mike and forced myself to laugh. “I’m not so sure about that,” I told Brent, the gears clicking in my head as I looked down at the envelope in my hand.

“Come on, man, share the wealth!”

“I plan to,” I said slowly. I looked over at him. “Do you think I could earn enough money doing things like that, betting on riding the bull against people, that I could help Vanessa fund her gallery?”

His eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

“I mean, people do it with pool, don’t they?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said. He frowned. “But they don’t do things like that in White Bluff, Montana, do they? Maybe if you moved to a big city, you could give them a run for their money. But no one in here is going to go up against you, not after the performance that you just put on.”

I sighed and shook my head. “You’re probably right,” I said, taking one last glance back at the bull. “So, I guess drinks are on me tonight.”

I couldn’t quite quell the surge of bitterness inside me as I said the words. I wanted so badly to be able to help Vanessa, but at the same time, I knew that Brent was right. Unless I planned to move away from White Bluff, there was no way I’d be able to drum up enough bets to help her raise the thousands of dollars that she needed. And offering anything short of that would just feel like I was belittling her efforts, not understanding the full scope of the project.

I shook my head again and went to order another round of drinks.

Chapter Twenty-Six