Chase ambled across the asphalt. “Getting your ass chewed by the big boss?”
“Jesus, McKay. Ya think?” Elroy rubbed the skin between his eyebrows. “I can’t fix this for you. Lou Bishop is threatening to pull every penny of PBR sponsorship money if we don’t take action against you.”
“What kind of action?”
“Lou wants you suspended from competition.”
Chase’s blood boiled. “I’m getting suspended because Lou Bishop barged into my private room and didn’t like that he’d caught me in bed with two women?”
“Neither of the women in question was his daughter.”
“So the f**k what? I’m not with Sheree.”
Elroy cocked his head. “Does Sheree know that?”
“What the hell kinda question is that?”
“FYI, McKay, Sheree’s been blabbing to every bull riding mag and pro rodeo blog that you two are practically engaged.”
He never read those magazines. It pissed him off that some “expert” asshole gave commentary about how to improve a specific bull rider’s riding percentage. Yeah, Chase had an idea how to improve too—stay on the damn bull for the full eight seconds. “That’s bullshit.”
“So why’d she throw the ring at you?”
“I have no idea.” He held up his pinkie. “You think I gave her this ring? I’ve never given a woman a piece of jewelry in my life.” Chase tossed the ring to the ground and pulverized the cheap piece of shit beneath his boot heel. “Besides, no one believes her.”
“Her father believes her. That’s our biggest problem.”
Chase froze. Our. Not his.
Elroy started pacing. “I told you not to get mixed up with her, Chase. Told you not to take her to dinner. Told you not to encourage her. Told you whatever you do—don’t sleep with her. But did you listen? No. Women like Sheree get what they want. Period. For some reason, she set her sights on getting you.”
“Since she can’t have me, she causes a scene with Daddy as a witness to get me tossed off the tour.” He hadn’t a clue a total lunatic lurked beneath the surface of polished Sheree Bishop, former Miss Rodeo USA. Sheree was on the hunt for a husband—a bull rider husband. His biggest mistake was ignoring her, believing she’d switch her affections to another rider once she got wind of his extracurricular sexual activities. But Sheree’s determination had only increased.
“So this incident, coupled with the one in Lubbock last week…”
His thoughts rolled back to his last PBR performance. He’d bucked off at two point four seconds and decided to drown his sorrows at a local honky-tonk. Some dumbass redneck made a remark about the superiority of Texas bull riders. Given Chase’s shitty mood and four shots of Chivas, he let loose on Texas cowboys being soft, jeering they wouldn’t last a single winter day in the real West. Then he added a crack about butt-ugly Texas longhorn cattle not being good for nothing but trophy heads. Two Texas guys took offense. They dragged him outside, puffed up with Lone Star pride, intent on teaching a Wyoming sheep f**ker a lesson.
Chase beat the living shit out of them.
Three other guys jumped in the fray. When Chase got control of his rage, five men were moaning in the dirt, mopping blood from their bruised faces, and he was still standing. Wobbling a little, but still standing.
Until the cops tackled him, cuffed him and threatened to arrest him for assault. But ten minutes later they released him, because not a single man came forward to press charges. They all claimed to be too drunk to remember who’d taken the first swing.
But the truth was no man wanted to admit that five-foot-seven-inch Chase McKay had taken on five Texas tough guys, all who topped the six foot mark…and won.
Luckily no one had uploaded streaming video to YouTube of PBR bad boy Chase McKay busting heads. But his ass smarted after Elroy ripped him a new one the following day.
And it was more of the same tonight.
Elroy said, “This attitude isn’t helping you. And we both know this situation has been building for a while, because you, my friend, like to fight and f**k. Not necessarily in that order.”
Through the haze of anger, he demanded, “How’d you guys get a key to my room anyway?”
“Sheree told the manager you were despondent about your bad ride and she feared you’d do something drastic like kill yourself.”
“Bitch thought of everything, didn’t she?” he muttered. “I get why the big bosses would be upset by what happened in Lubbock. I screwed up. In public. But tonight? I was in my private room. If Sheree lies believably enough to break in there, why wouldn’t Lou suspect she was lying when she told him we were practically engaged?”
“No clue. But it changes nothing.” Elroy sighed. “Bottom line: you’re off the tour.”
Fury lit his insides and Chase got right in Elroy’s face. “This is bullshit and you know it. I have fans. Those fans bring revenue to the PBR. And what do you plan to tell the blogs and trade mags about my abrupt disappearance? Because if this ‘incident’ is presented to the public as I’m a discipline problem, then I’ll fire right back about nepotism with the PBR’s newest Daddy Warbucks corporate sponsor.”
“First off, you signed a shitload of nondisclosure forms. Even if you’re pissed—and between us, yes, you have a right to be—you can’t violate the terms of the contracts. This is short term, Chase. Does this suck? Absolutely. That’s why the PR arm will release news of a recurrence of your previous injury, which is a perfect excuse for why you rode so shitty tonight after being last year’s defending champion. Fans should be happy to know you are recuperating until you’re ready to ride again.”
The PR spin machine thought of everything. “Tell me Winnie ain’t gonna be involved in issuing the statement.” He’d been taunting Winnie, his assigned PR person, for the last year. The woman was too sharp, and saw right through his bullshit attempts to rattle and distract her. Plus, her comments, always softly spoken, grated on him, mostly because she was dead-on in her assessments. And he hated she saw things about him that he tried to hide from everyone else.
“Look at it this way. The PBR goes on hiatus for two months. So you’re really only missing three performances instead of eleven.”
Chase didn’t exactly relax, but he realized if he was going to f**k up, he’d picked an ideal time to do it—because he might actually have a chance to fix it. “Can you guarantee I’ll be on the roster come August?”