Lyric and Lingerie (The Fort Worth Wranglers Book 1) (17 page)

“We certainly do,” her father said, but his voice was a little weaker than before. The pain medicine was dragging him under, and he was fading fast. “I am walking you down that aisle, sugarplum, so I don’t want to hear any more talk of elopement.”

Umm, she was pretty sure she wasn’t the one who had brought it up. In fact, she wasn’t the one who had brought any of this up—including parachuting to the altar. That was all Heath. But he had such a way of spouting bullshit and making it believable that even she was wondering why she wanted to elope instead of have a big ceremony.

“Wait, I’m missing something here.”

Heath put his arm around her and pulled her close. “I let them in on our little secret.” What ridiculous lies was Heath Montgomery spouting now?

She cut her eyes over to him. She had a very bad feeling. “What secret?”

To her knowledge, they didn’t have any secrets—well, that he knew about.

“The wedding, of course.” He kissed her cheek. “I told them all about how you proposed to me and I said yes.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but no words would come out. He’d told her parents they were engaged? Was this some sort of joke? She checked his pupils for signs of drug use or possibly head trauma, but all she saw were mirth-filled pools of muddy brown.

“Our wedding?” What the hell was going on?

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep it from them any longer. I know you had your heart set on something small, but I want a huge wedding with ten bridesmaids, a ring bearer, and the whole deal.” He squeezed her extra hard. “Look how happy your mother and father are. I told you they would be.”

She was going to kill him. Once she got out of this room and away from her just-out-of-surgery daddy, she was going to absolutely murder him. And it was going to be painful too. Rob the Knob had insisted on taking her to that exhibit on torture through the ages a few weeks ago. She’d hated every minute of it, but at least one good thing had come out of it. She’d learned a hundred and twenty-seven different ways to make a man wish he was never born, and she was going to use every single one of them on Heath.

Well, maybe not the penis shackle. It clamped the penis to the big toe of the right foot. It seemed unnecessarily dramatic, and what man was flexible enough to touch his right toe to his penis? Plus, where would she get one this time of day? It was doubtful Amazon Prime could have one to her by tomorrow. And shipping on eBay took forever.

Oh my God. What the hell was she going to do? It was one thing to say they were together and to make up a ridiculous story about how they got that way. For the record, she wasn’t actually okay with that either. But it was another thing altogether to tell a man who was only a few hours out of open-heart surgery that they were going to get married. What the hell was she supposed to tell her father when Heath decided the joke was over? And how many years was she going to have to listen to her mother go on about how stupid she was to let Heath get away?

“I’m so happy for you, sugarplum.” Her father beamed at her. He was in awful good spirits, considering.

She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. “Me too.”

She snaked her hand around Heath’s waist and pinched the crap out of his backside. If only she’d had a nail, she could use him as a voodoo doll.

“I’m just so damn happy.” Heath swiped fake tears from his eyes.

Yep, she was going to kill him. As soon as she got her hands on some hydrofluoric acid and a penis shackle.

“What did you do?” Lyric turned mean eyes on him. Her look was so sharp, he should be missing some vital organs. At least she’d waited until they were in Cherry Cherry to bite his head off.

“What did I do?” Heath played stupid as he stuck the key in Cherry Cherry’s ignition and prayed that she turned on. He was at least halfway sure that Lyric wouldn’t murder him as long as the car was in motion in a populated area. Mostly because she had a strong sense of civic duty and wouldn’t want to risk mowing down any innocent bystanders. And also, witnesses.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Her voice was a lot more strangled sounding than usual.

When he didn’t immediately answer, she went to snatch the key from the ignition. He stopped her, but then gave up the game with a sigh. He’d known he was going to have to face the music. He’d just hoped for more time to come up with an explanation his logical, brainy scientist would actually buy.

One that was a lot more convincing than the truth, which was that he really didn’t know why he’d told her father they were getting married. Sure, he could make the argument that he’d wanted to put a very sick man’s mind at ease. And that might even be part of it. God knew, Bowman Wright had been more of a father to him than his own ever had, and he couldn’t stand seeing the man worry about Lyric when there was something he could do to put his mind at ease.

But using that excuse was also a cop-out, because there was another reason he’d done what he’d done. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was there in the back of his mind, niggling at him. Trying to get him to pay attention to it.

But he knew better than to pay attention to little niggles in his mind—ninety-nine out of a hundred times, they led down a slippery slope from which there was no escape. He was already lying at the bottom of one such slope, his damn bum knee keeping him from climbing back up to the top. Which was why he’d be damned if he deliberately charged down another one. Especially without knowing what lay at the bottom waiting for him.

But that didn’t solve his immediate problem, namely that Lyric was still sitting next to him, furious and fierce and absolutely breathtaking as she demanded an answer he didn’t have. And while he might not be Lyric smart, he wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d be able to put her off much longer.

“It’s one thing to tell them we’re together, but another thing to actually tell them we’re engaged. What were you thinking?” Lyric threw her hands up.

Maybe he could insane-logic Lyric enough that she actually believed him. “Your daddy was worried about dying on that table. I just wanted to give him something to ease his mind. Now he doesn’t have to worry about you. All he needs to do is concentrate on getting better.”

“So you told him we were getting married?” she shrieked loud enough to drown out Neil Diamond singing about his Sweet Caroline. Cherry Cherry coughed in warning.

“No, of course I didn’t. I swear. I just told him we were together. He extrapolated the rest.” That was mostly true. He pulled into traffic and prayed she wouldn’t hit the driver. Maybe he should ask her for some scary car crash statistics. That might distract her.

“My father
extrapolated
that we were getting married?” She shot him a look that would have brought a lesser man to his knees. It was a good thing for both of them that his ego provided a lot of cushion. It would take a more than a couple dirty looks to penetrate its protection.

“Well, extrapolate might be a little bit of an exaggeration.” Heath nodded. “Now that I think about it, I might have hinted that we were engaged.”

“Hinted? How do you hint about an engagement?” She scrubbed her face with her hands.

She had a point, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

She ground her teeth together. “Can you please, for once in your life, be straight with me?”

“I am being straight with you.” Or at least, straight in a meandering kinda way. Straight was relative.

“No, you’re talking in circles. Or ovals or octagons, I don’t even know at this point. But you aren’t being straight with me.” She was coming unhinged. It was a little frightening.

“Octagons have straight lines,” he felt honor bound to point out. Especially since they had just pulled up at a stop sign. He was nothing if not helpful like that.

“I don’t even know what to say. This is insane.” Lyric let out a little scream of frustration.

He had no idea what it said about him that he found the sound incredibly sexy. So sexy, in fact, that he couldn’t help wondering if he could get her to make it again. Preferably when they were in bed together and she was underneath him. Or on top of him. Or trying number twenty-two in
Cosmo
’s list of best sex positions.

Number twenty-two was a little bit more labor intensive than some of the other positions, but he had a feeling it would be totally worth it. Especially with Lyric’s killer legs. And especially if he could make her come hard enough to scream.

Just the thought made him hard, which he normally considered a prodigious turn of events. But right now, with Lyric looking at him like she planned on chopping off whatever body part caught her attention, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little concerned.

Maybe it was that concern that finally prompted him to make a real overture to her. Or maybe it was the tears swimming in her baby blues, tears she was trying so hard to keep him from seeing. Suddenly this felt a lot less like they were playing a game and a lot more like he was just fucking with her.

And he wasn’t that guy. Or, at least, he wasn’t that guy with Lyric.

Pulling Cherry Cherry over to the side of the road, he turned to her and took her hand in his. And tried to be as genuine as he could be, something he didn’t have a whole lot of practice with. Not when he’d spent so much of his adult life bobbing and weaving and making sure no one got close enough to depend on him. And more, making sure no one got close enough that he depended on them.

“Look, Lyric, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be an ass. It’s just, I don’t know what to say here. When he woke up, lucid for the first time since we got there, and saw us cuddled on that damn chair together, he assumed we were together. I started to contradict him, but he was so damn happy. So excited that we had found each other after all these years and that we had come back to San Angelo together. Then he went on about how he’d always known we would get together.”

“So you told him we were engaged?” She made it sound like the dumbest thing ever. Again, she had a point.

“I didn’t know what to tell him. Not after all that. So I kind of just went along with it, and then things snowballed and the story got bigger and bigger—”

“That happens every time you open your mouth.” She shook her head.

He grinned. She had him there. He’d never seen the point of little white lies. If you were going to be damned for a liar either way, why not make it the biggest, tallest, most impressive lie ever crafted?

If nothing else, it made everything a whole hell of a lot more fun.

“We have to tell him the truth,” Lyric said after a minute. “You know that, right?”

He did know it. He also knew that she was channeling a whole stern teacher thing and it was kind of doing it for him. Then again, right now everything about Lyric Wright was doing it for him. Maybe that was what happened to a guy when he got engaged.

“Heath, tell me you know that we have to tell my daddy the truth.” Lyric still looked stunned and angry and sexy.

“Of course we do. Absolutely.” He patted her knee.

“Tomorrow.”

“Wait a minute? Tomorrow? That doesn’t exactly give him much time to recover.” Heath wasn’t ready to give up the lie. Bowman had to make it. His family needed him, and if Heath was being honest, so did he. He needed the other man’s no-nonsense advice. Life without football was bad enough. He couldn’t lose the only father figure he’d ever had.

“More like it doesn’t give you much time to run away and leave me stuck holding the bag.” Lyric shook her head like she couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

“Hey. I resent that. I may be a lot of not-so-great things, but I’m not a runner. And I sure as hell don’t leave anyone holding the bag on my screwups. If you think we need to tell your father tomorrow, then I’ll tell him tomorrow.” He threw Cherry Cherry back into gear so hard that she shuddered, and Neil Diamond—who was now singing about blue jeans—flickered for a second.

The car whined and started to stall out in protest, but a smooth foot on the accelerator solved everything. Everything but the fact that Lyric didn’t trust hm. And the fact that it gutted him that she didn’t.

They spent the rest of the car ride to Lyric’s family ranch in silence. It had been over a decade since he’d been there, but that didn’t seem to matter. He knew the route like the back of his hand. Much like he used to think he knew Lyric Wright.

But time changed everything, and it had been a long time since Lyric and he were friends. A long time since they had hugged out in her tree house or swam at the river or gone for ice cream together at the Dairy Queen. And this woman sitting next to him, with the tattoo high on her thigh and distrust in her heart, he didn’t know her. And she sure as hell didn’t know him.

Why then was he still thinking about getting her naked? Thinking about kissing every inch of her beautiful body until she begged for more.

Thinking about giving her more, about splaying her out in the middle of her childhood bed and making her come six ways from Sunday.

And why the hell did he feel so rejected? It wasn’t like he’d woken up this morning in love with her or anything. Wasn’t like he actually wanted to marry her.

As he made the final turn onto the long, private road that led to the Wrights’ house, Lyric finally broke the silence.

“Look, Heath, I know that you care about my father and that you were only trying to help in your own way. But …” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This is major. When we go our separate ways, my parents are going to be devastated. I’ll be dealing with the consequences of this for a very long time.”

She made it sound like being engaged to him came with nuclear fallout.

“I’ll make it right, I promise.” He had no idea how.

He did what he did best in situations like this. He shot her the grin that his PR team said polled best with hot women between the ages of twenty-one and forty and waited for her panties to hit the car floor.

You could take the player out of the Wranglers, after all, but you couldn’t take the Wranglers out of the player.

Not much at the ranch house had changed through the years, at least to his eye. Oh, sure, the couch in the front parlor was fussier and the art on the wall more expensive than it had been twelve years before. The brown leather furniture in the family room had been replaced with different, bigger brown leather furniture, and the Persian carpet Livinia was so proud of in the dining room was a bit more worn than it had been. Other than that, it was like stepping back in time, where the only things that had really changed were himself … and the woman he’d once considered his best friend.