by Tracy Wolff
“Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what you should do.” He grabbed her father’s hand, trying his damnedest to ignore the sweat rolling down his spine as he asked, “How about those prime numbers?”
Lyric crossed her arms and just stared at him. Goddammit.
“I hear hospitals are full of bacteria. I’d sure love to hear some horrifying statistics of deaths caused by drug-resistant MRSA.” He smoothed down the hair at the back of his neck. Did his damnedest to keep his voice, and his hands, from shaking. “Or better yet, how many meteorites strike hospitals every day? What are the chances of me being hit by one on the way back to Cherry Cherry?”
She shot him a look that told him she wasn’t going to let him distract her, and that’s when he got desperate. Even went so far as to consider pulling up some of those sexting pictures she seemed so okay with and showing her things that would make him blush.
But before he could do any more than swipe his thumb across the screen, Lyric had picked up her chair and set it down beside his.
“We’ve known each other a long time, Heath. You just spent four hours getting me here so I can be with my father—after buying the pimp-mobile to end all pimp-mobiles and chewing me out of the tightest duct-tape dress known to man.”
He shrugged, even as he made sure he was looking anywhere but at her. “That’s what friends are for.”
“Exactly. You helped me over and over again today. Now I’d like to repay the kindness.” She was all business, no sympathy anywhere to be seen. He knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t coming from a place of pity, but that knowledge didn’t make him feel any less pitiful.
He glanced out the door at Jeannie, who was typing furiously on the desktop computer in front of her. The last thing he needed was for this to get out before his agent and the team had agreed how to handle it. Then he leaned into Lyric, his pulse hitting marathon runner speed as he forced himself to say out loud what he never had before. “My knee is better, but I’ll …” He swallowed the flood of spit in his mouth. “I’ll never play football again.”
Oh God. Hearing himself say it out loud made it real like nothing else could. Not the surgeries. Not the meetings with one specialist after another. Not even the phone calls and texts from his agent that he’d been dodging for days. Saying it out loud made him realize that the one thing he’d always been able to count on, the one thing that made him him … was gone. He had nothing, he was nothing, without football. Just that scared little boy dodging his father’s fists, waiting to be noticed as something more than a punching bag.
Lyric took her time digesting what he’d told her. Then she leaned back and crossed her mile-long legs in front of her. “Good.”
“Good?” he sputtered, certain he’d misheard her. He’d just spilled the greatest tragedy of his life, and all she could say was good?
“I heard that every game is like a car wreck to your body. Have you never heard of post-concussion syndrome?”
Of course he’d heard of it. He was a huge Will Smith fan. She didn’t seem to get the gravity of the situation. He. Couldn’t. Play. Football. EVER AGAIN.
“What if you were injured and couldn’t be an astronomer?” He had to make her understand that his life was over.
“What kind of injury are we talking about?” She looked intrigued. “To be honest, I can’t imagine any kind of injury that I would sustain that would end my career. Even if I lost both of my legs and my arms, with today’s advances in technology, I could still work. I guess maybe some sort of traumatic brain injury would prevent me from analyzing the necessary data, but because of the brain damage, I’m not sure I would know enough to miss it.”
He closed his eyes, shook his head. And tried not to be annoyed—and endeared—by the fact that Lyric was a scientist first and a human being second. Or maybe third.
If he’d wanted a shoulder to cry on or a cheering section for his pity party, he should have chosen someone else to hear his deepest, darkest secret. Somehow, that knowledge didn’t make him feel as bad as it could have.
“But this isn’t about me. It’s about you.” She looked like she was getting ready to take notes on some kind of mental notebook. “We just need to figure out what you should do now. So … besides football, what are you good at?”
He racked his brain and came up with absolutely nothing. Breast signing wasn’t actually an employable skill. Neither was drinking beer or charming women. Not that he really needed money, but he couldn’t just sit on his ass for the rest of his life. Sloth wasn’t really his style.
“I know …” Her eyes lit up. “You’re really good at sex.”
“I am?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I am. Yes. But how do you know?’
Her face clouded for a second, but then she pushed the darkness away. “Everyone knows, Deuce. It’s not exactly a well-kept secret.”
It felt like there was more to the story, but before he could explore it, she’d already continued. “Which means … porn. You could totally get paid for having sex.” When Lyric was excited, her voice tended to carry … like all the way to Mexico.
Jeannie looked up.
He caught Jeannie’s eye and hunched his shoulders. “Tourette’s. It takes a little time for the meds to kick in.”
Slowly Jeannie nodded and went back to typing.
“Why don’t we talk about this later?” He wasn’t much of a praying man, but he was willing to hit God up right now if it meant Lyric would change the subject.
“What about Hugh Hefner?” Lyric’s eyes scrunched up in concentration.
“What about him?” He’d never met the man.
“He’s really old. You could take his place.” She was dead serious. “Someone has to be the next Hugh Hefner—why not you?”
She looked like she was actually giving him valuable vocational advice.
“I’m going to have to take a pass on that one. Silk pajamas give me a rash.” He laced his fingers through hers. She was taking his new life very seriously. It was sweet in a really odd, really Lyric kind of way.
“You’re making this difficult.” She sucked on her bottom lip in concentration.
“Now you know how I feel.” He appreciated her help, even if he didn’t want it.
She sat silently for a couple of minutes, and he swore he could practically see the wheels turning in that great big brain of hers.
Her eyes grew wide as she sat up. “What about your daddy’s ranch?”
“What about it?” He hadn’t given the land much of a thought in years.
Lyric glanced at her father, her voice breaking. “I know Daddy’s kept an eye on it for you all these years.”
And that was when it hit him. She needed to talk about something other than her father. Other than her fears. Which meant he was just going to have to bite the bullet. Because if she needed to focus on something else, he was happy to let her. Even if it sliced him into ribbons in the process.
“I’ve never really thought about ranching.” The land had been in his family for generations, but his father’s heart hadn’t been in it. Or it might have been in it, before his mother had ripped it out and run over it with her Caddy on the way out of town. After that, he’d started the tequila diet and forgotten all about how to be a rancher and a father.
“I haven’t been home in a while, do you still have cattle?” Lyric looked like she was making a mental list of things he needed to do.
“Yes, five hundred head … give or take.” He’d hired a caretaker who’d been seeing after the ranch ever since he got his signing bonus.
“Good. Then you should at least give it a try. I bet you’d be good at it.” She sounded like the decision had already been made.
“How do you know?” Sure, he’d sort of worked the ranch, but it wasn’t his passion. Not like football was.
“Because you’re good at everything you do.” Her confidence in him was humbling and—not going to lie—a huge ego boost. He felt like he could leap a tall building in a single b
ound.
He leaned into her, thinking that he’d plant one on her cheek. Her hair smelled nice … really nice.
“Did you just sniff my hair?” Confusion muddled her Wranglers blues.
So kissing her was probably out. “Umm, no?”
“Yes, you did.” Her eyes turned the size of Oreos. “Oh God, it smells bad … right?” She pulled a lock of her blonde hair to her nose. “It’s smells like Cherry Cherry.” She grabbed the neckline of her shirt and brought it to her nose. “Shit. All of me smells like Cherry Cherry. I hope the cops don’t show up here. The last thing I want right now is to be dragged to jail for excessive pot use. Especially since I’m sober.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out, felt surprisingly right when he applied it to her. “I won’t let them take you.”
She leaned over and put her nose on his bicep. “How come you smell good and I smell like Neil Diamond’s sticky pleather hell beast?”
He sat up and looked around, alarmed by the vehemence in her voice. And the volume of it. “Don’t say that too loud. We still need to get home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Cherry Cherry can’t hear us in here.” Still, she leaned in close to his ear. He couldn’t help but notice that she’d lowered her voice.
“You think I smell good.” That knowledge made him grin hugely as he mentally picked the canary feathers out of his teeth.
“Gloating is so unbecoming. Just because you’re one of the shiny, pretty people, doesn’t mean you need to rub it in to the rest of the ninety-nine percent.” Lyric rolled her eyes so far back in her head, she probably saw her first day of kindergarten.
“What the hell does that even mean?” God, he loved to see how her mind worked. “Shiny, pretty people?
“You know … the perfect people … the popular kids who always end up smelling like a rose.” She shot him a come on, you have to know what I’m talking about look. “You could fall in a swimming pool full of mud and come out looking charmingly disheveled, while I’d come out looking like that chubby kid who fell in Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I get dirty.” At that moment, feeling the heat of her body against his as he looked into her big blue eyes, he wanted to show her just how dirty he could be.
“Not the embarrassingly sloppy kind of dirty.” She shook her head. “You get sweaty. Maybe you even get muddy. But you’re never actually a mess. That’s why you smell like sandalwood and expensive shower gel, while I smell like pot and pleather. There are two kinds of people in the world—the cool kids and the rest of us.”
“That is so not true.” He watched her, looking for signs that she was joking. But she was dead serious. He knew there were more than two kinds of people in the world, because Lyric was in a league all her own. “You’re the coolest person I know.”
He really hadn’t meant for his voice to go up so that it kinda sounded like a question, but he had all kinds of thoughts and feelings bombarding him right now. Thoughts and feelings that had very little to do with friendship or football or anything but how much he cared about Lyric.
She didn’t know that though, and as she unlinked her fingers from his, he knew he’d made a tactical error. “Thanks, but I know exactly who I am and where I fit in. And I’m okay with it.”
It didn’t sound like she was okay with it.
“I’m okay with it …” She uncrossed her legs and then crossed them again. Her stripper high-heeled leopard shoes really showcased her fantastic legs. Her left foot wiggled a mile a minute as she sucked in her bottom lip. “Most of the time.”
He had a feeling that something else was going on here. This wasn’t about being popular.
“You never did tell me why you are wearing those.” He pointed to the shoes.
If memory served, Lyric was more of a jeans and Converse kinda girl.
“Cocktail party from hell.” She smoothed a wrinkle out of her boxers. “My ex was there with his new fiancée.” She wouldn’t make eye contact. “I thought wearing a little black dress would make him think twice about his new life with Mistress Kailana.”
She didn’t sound sad as much as she sounded broken, like her confidence had been torn to shreds just like her little black dress. “Who’s Mistress Kailana?”
“Rob’s fiancée. He’s known her all of two months.” She pulled at a loose string on the hem of the boxers. “She’s an astrologist.” The last sentence sounded a lot like “she’s a crack whore.”
“How long were the two of you together?” He really didn’t want to know. This man had hurt Lyric, which meant he was an asshole. Lyric didn’t deserve an asshole. She deserved someone who understood her quirky sense of humor and her need to spout facts as a means of self-soothing. Not to mention someone who thought her double Ds and mile-long legs were the sexiest things he’d ever seen.
“A little over two years.” She slipped her feet out of her high heels and massaged her right pinky toe. “Why do cute shoes always have to hurt?”
“It’s a mystery. But after the day you’ve had, you deserve a foot massage.” Gently, he picked up both of her bare feet and settled them onto his lap. He started with the arch of her left foot and worked his way from her heel to her toes and then back down again. Little by little, inch by inch, he felt her body relax. And since he’d spent his life knowing when to hold onto the ball and when to pass it, he asked, “Want to tell me about Rob?”
He needed to know if she’d ever loved him. Or worse, if she still did. Had that little astrology-loving creep broken her heart?
All of the tension in her body had migrated over to his. He didn’t know Rob, but he wanted to kick the little weasel’s ass, then use him as a hood ornament in the closest demolition derby before kicking his ass again.
“He has PhDs in both astronomy and astrophysics. We met at work.” Lyric leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. “You are really good at that.”
It took every ounce of self-control he had not to growl. So lover boy was smart. Heath really couldn’t compete with smart. He was no dummy, but he was no Lyric. Not by a long shot.
He gritted his teeth as he pictured Lyric bouncing on top of some Coke-bottle-glasses-wearing, no-muscle-tone-having, elbow-patch-jacket-wearing professor type. Of course that was who she’d go for. Of course that was who she’d want. Not a washed-up quarterback without a future whose idea of higher math was balancing his very big checkbook.
He moved to her right foot.
What would it take for her to look twice at him?
He wasn’t an idiot. Christ, he had an MBA from LSU, but he wasn’t Lyric smart or goddamn Rob smart. Fuck it, he could run circles around Rob. He was willing to bet ole Robby-boy didn’t know a trap drill from a fire drill.
“Ouch.” Lyric flinched. “That’s too hard.”
“Sorry.” He eased up, told himself to cool off.
Lyric sucked on her bottom lip again. He knew it was her thoughtful pose, and he’d seen her do it a thousand times through the years. Why the hell hadn’t he ever noticed how sexy it was when they were in high school? He’d been an idiot, obviously. Because right now, there were few things in life he wanted more than to suck on her full bottom lip for a while.
She did it again, and he nearly groaned. Make that one thing. Only one thing he wanted more than to suck on Lyric. And when her tongue darted out to lick that lip, he knew kissing her was running a very close second.
“I think I always knew he was a jerk,” she finally said. It might have been the only thing she could have said that would get his attention away from that sinful, luscious mouth of hers. He would pay good money to watch her eat a popsicle or a lollipop … or, well … he could think of several things he’d love to watch her suck on.
“Yeah? So why’d you date him?” Not that he hadn’t dated some women who were less than Lyric quality simply because they had some very obvious … uh … charms, but somehow he’d expected better of her. But when sh
e shot him a look, brows lifted, he wondered if maybe he was wrong. “So, uh, Rob the Knob had a very big … knob, huh?”
He choked a little saying it. Not because he was squeamish about the size of another man’s dick. He was secure enough in his own that he didn’t have any need to overcompensate. But he sure as hell didn’t like the idea of Rob’s knob being anywhere near Lyric’s luscious mouth—or any other part of her, for that matter.
“Oh, God no.” She rolled her eyes. With a frown curling on her mouth, she was all sexy teacher. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel his own knob stir after that. Which … there had to be some special place in hell for men who got hard-ons over a woman while sitting at the bedside of her comatose father. Could coma victims read minds? He’d read that they could hear everything going on around them, but since her father was straddling that line between death and life—was he having an out-of-body experience? Heath looked around. Was Bowman watching them right now?
If Bowman could read minds, he’d probably rise up out of bed and strangle Heath with his IV line. He sent Bowman happy, mellow thoughts that had nothing to do with getting his baby girl naked on the floor right now.
Was it his imagination or had Bowman’s hand moved?
“Not that it matters,” she continued, lowering her voice to a whisper as she glanced at her sleeping daddy. “There are a lot more important things than the size of a guy’s penis.”
“Jesus, Lyric. Are you really going to say the word—” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “—penis, with your daddy lying there?”
She thought about it. “I’m pretty sure my daddy knows I’ve seen a penis before.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean you need to rub his nose in it. Some things fathers don’t need to hear about.” Or best friends for that matter. He knew he was the one who’d brought this whole nightmare-inducing topic up for discussion, but that didn’t mean he wanted to think about Lyric touching anyone’s penis but his. Not Rob’s and not any other guy’s either. Lyric was hi—
