Lyric and Lingerie (The Fort Worth Wranglers Book 1) (28 page)

Heath folded the bandana over and over and used it to cover his eyes. He tied it at the back of his head.

“I give up.” It was Harmony. “What’re you doing?”

“It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding.” He settled back in the chair and crossed one ankle over the other. “This is the only wedding I’m ever going to have, so I want to do it right.”

“So why did you come?” Harmony never passed up an opportunity to give him a hard time.

“I didn’t want to miss any of the action. Now come on, tie me up.”

“You are so odd,” Harmony said.

“What is goings on with the bandana?” Gregor spoke from Heath’s right side.

“He doesn’t want to see the bride in her dress before the wedding.” Livinia was on his left. “It’s so romantic.”

Heath had been called many things, but romantic had never been one of them. He kinda liked it. Heath the romantic was so much better than Heath the washed-up quarterback.

“I don’t know about this one,” Lyric said as fabric shooshed against fabric.

“Which one did you try on first?” He might not be able to see her before the wedding, but he could imagine her.

“It’s strapless and has lace cutouts.” Lyric sounded like she was right in front of him. “What do y’all think?”

“Well … huh.” Livinia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It barely covers your
nipples
.” She whispered the last word.

It took all the restraint Heath had in him not to rip his blindfold off.

“Heath picked it out.” Harmony threw him under the bus.

“Maybe the next ones wills be better.” Gregor was always there to offer suggestions and extra
s
’s.

“Okay.” Lyric shooshed back to the dressing room.

“Are we sure the dress is a no?” Her nipples were covered. If that was good enough for prime-time TV, it should be good enough for his wedding.

“Well, unless you want the whole wedding party to know what color Lyric’s areolas are.” Thank God for Harmony, keeping it real.

Heath lifted his blindfold.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to keep that on? Although using it as a gag instead would be way more helpful.” Harmony was always there to offer a suggestion. He so didn’t love that about her.

“I don’t need the blindfold if Lyric isn’t going to wear that dress for the wedding. Besides. I want to see her nipples.” He rubbed his hands together.

“From what I can tell, you always want to see her nipples.” Harmony was just a little ray of sunshine.

“Harmony.” Livinia sounded scandalized. “You shouldn’t say such things. What’s gotten into you?”

She made it sound like the viewing of nipples was illegal.

Heath didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make him sound like a perv.

“I am havings trouble with the wedding cake.” Gregor sat down heavily on the creaky settee.

So he was going to let Livinia stand?

“Livinia, I’m sure Graynor would love to give up his seat for you.” Manners mattered, and pointing out Gregor’s lack of them mattered more.

“Oh, I don’t mind standing. He’s royalty.” She said it with such reverence that Heath half expected to find that Queen Elizabeth had walked through the front door.

He shot Gregor a look that said he knew Gregor was about as royal as he was, and he’d better get his ass out of that damn chair.

“I insist, ma’am.” Gregor stood and pointed to the settee.

“Uh huh, that’s what I thought,” Heath muttered under his breath. He slid the blindfold back into place. “What’s wrong with the wedding cake?”

“It is the constellations.” Gregor shifted over Heath’s right shoulder. “My baker is havings trouble with the shapes. They are not fittings well together.”

“Fitting together how?” The picture he’d had in his mind of his and Lyric’s wedding cake didn’t involve puzzle pieces.

“If we are stackings them together, they do not flow.” Gregor sounded frustrated.

“Don’t stack them together. Arrange them on the table as they would be in the sky. So if I’m standing in the backyard at night and I look up, that’s how I want the constellations to be arranged.” Heath smiled to himself. No one would notice their placement but Lyric, and she was the only one that mattered.

There was a long moment of silence.

“But that will be
ugly
.” Gregor whispered the last word just like Livinia had whispered nipples.

“It’s my and Lyric’s wedding, and we will have exactly what we want.” That was final.

It shouldn’t be too hard to replace Gregor. Although, Heath would miss the extra
s
’s.

“Constellation cakes. They shouldn’t be a problem.” Livinia jumped in to smooth things over. “We can decorate them with rhinestones or something.”

“Rhinestones, that is good.” Gregor was boxed in, and he knew it. “I likes it.”

“Here’s the next one,” Harmony announced.

There was more swishing.

“What do you think?” Lyric didn’t sound sure about it.

“Good Lord, it’s indecent. It actually doesn’t cover your nipples.” This time Livinia didn’t whisper. It must have been the shock.

“Okay, that’s it. A man only has so much restraint.” Heath couldn’t help himself. He loved Lyric’s nipples—and her thighs and her ass and, well, pretty much everything else from head to toe.

He lifted the blindfold, and he had to admit, the dress had some promise. She looked like a slutty bride—the lingerie-looking top cinched in her already small waist and pushed her tits up. He wouldn’t mind peeling it off of her … in private, where he would be the only one admiring those nipples.

“I think this is a no.” Harmony turned Lyric around and pushed her toward the dressing room.

“Have we found anything we like?” Miss Mildred, the shop’s owner, said barely above a whisper. In the thirty minutes that he’d been in the store, he’d come to find out that Miss Mildred had to be eight hundred years old and never uttered a word that wasn’t barely above a whisper.

Heath had to strain to hear her.

“Yes, well, we’re trying several gowns on,” Livinia said in a voice that was also barely above a whisper.

Apparently it was catching.

“Deuce, there’s a problem,” a male voice boomed from the front door.

Everyone turned around.

Jimmy-Joe Taggart of Taggart Furniture next door stood out of breath in the doorway. “I saw you come in here and you’ve got a big problem.”

“What’s wrong?” Heath stood.

Was the building on fire?

He sniffed. It just smelled like old people and fabric.

Taggart lumbered forward. “They just announced the team roster for training camp and your name ain’t on it.”

Everything inside of Heath screamed as his heart broke into a million pieces. Now the whole world would know he was a washed-up quarterback. He pulled in gulps of air that burned his lungs. He had to get out of here. He couldn’t stand the questions that would follow or the pitying looks at the answers he’d have to give them. If God was out there, he would swallow Heath whole and be done with it. Heath hit the front door at a wobbling run.

His knee was on fire, but his heart was numb.

Lyric checked the clock on her phone for close to the millionth time. It was 10:18 p.m., a whole minute later than the last time she’d checked it. Big surprise.

It was impossible for time to slow down—she knew the formula that proved it was impossible. But she’d be lying if she tried to pretend the seven hours since Heath had stormed out of the dress shop hadn’t felt like seven days. Because they had. They really, really had.

She’d wanted to go after him, but Heath had been moving fast, and she’d been dressed in a three-thousand-dollar monstrosity that didn’t exactly lend itself to running. Plus, she could only imagine the headlines tomorrow if Heath Montgomery was seen running away from a woman in a bridal gown on the same day his forced retirement became public.

So she’d stopped long enough to change back into her street clothes, and by the time she was dressed, Heath was long gone. She’d borrowed Harmony’s car and gone looking for him, but she hadn’t found any trace of him. Even stops at his favorite bar, restaurant, and ice cream shop had yielded her nothing—no one had seen him. No one had a clue where he was.

Which was why, seven hours later, she was wearing a hole in her bedroom carpet as she paced back and forth, dressed in a pair of Harmony’s old pajamas.

Damn it, where was he? Why wasn’t he answering his cell? And why was he hiding from her, of all people? Heath had always talked to her, even way back in junior high and high school.

The fact that he was shutting her out now hurt, especially since she was walking around with his very big, very beautiful ring on her finger. She knew this whole wedding thing was fake, but she couldn’t help feeling like their relationship had changed. There was something between them that felt real.

Frustrated, worried, and more upset than she wanted to admit to herself, she checked her phone for the millionth and one time. Still no Heath. Damn it. Was this stupid thing even working?

It took every ounce of self-control she had not to reach for a screwdriver and take the damn phone apart just to make sure. She’d reached her closet again, so she turned around and started pacing back to the window.

Where could he be? San Angelo wasn’t that big a place, and he hadn’t been here in a long time. While everyone in town would pretty much open their house to the Deuce, she knew him well enough to know that when he was like this, hanging out with people—having to be “on”—was the last thing he wanted.

She paused at her window, looked out over the dark landscape, and told herself not to worry. Heath was in pain, but he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t do anything crazy, no matter how upset he was. He wouldn’t—

That’s when it hit her. The tree house. Heath was at the tree house.

It was where he’d always gone to think when they were younger. It was where he had gone to escape his daddy’s drunken rages and where he’d gone to lick his wounds when he hadn’t gotten out of the house fast enough to dodge the blows. It was also where she’d given him her virginity all those years ago.

Damn it.

The tree house was the one place she’d avoided like the plague since he’d told her he loved her and then called her by her sister’s name. She’d sworn then that she would never set foot in the damn thing again. And she never had.

She stripped off Harmony’s pajamas and pulled on the yoga pants Heath had brought to her daddy’s hospital room the other day. Ugly past be damned. Heath was hurting, and she needed to be with him. He’d held her hand all the way from Hawaii, all the way from Austin, all the way through her daddy’s surgery. And even if he hadn’t … even if he hadn’t, she would still want to be with him. Still want to hold him as his own world fell apart. No way was she letting him go through this all alone.

Her mother was at the hospital, so there was no one to make excuses to when Lyric slipped into her Birks, made her way to the kitchen for provisions, and then headed to the garage, where her daddy’s truck was parked.

As she pointed the truck toward the tree house—toward Heath—she tried not to think about the last time they had both been there. Tried not to think about the days and weeks and months that had followed, when her heart had felt like it had literally been ripped out of her chest. It was a different time, and they had been different people. Dwelling on that night would only end up hurting the both of them.

She drove west toward Heath’s thousand-acre spread. The Concho River Ranch hugged a good bit of the Concho River. Lyric bounced along in her daddy’s old Ford pickup. The night was quiet and so was the cab of the old pickup truck. It felt strange to be in a vehicle without Neil Diamond playing, and she kind of missed it. Not that she was going to tell Cherry Cherry that.

She rolled her eyes. God, now she believed that old Caddy was alive?

It had been so long since she’d been out there that she almost missed the turnoff to the ranch. The sign was missing, and the trees on either side of the road were overgrown. Heath wasn’t kidding about his place needing work. It was good that he’d hired a new caretaker.

Maybe this place really would be where Heath ended up.

She shook her head. She knew she had suggested it, but she just didn’t see him as a rancher. He hated solitude, and he needed people. Who would he tell his crazy-ass stories to if he lived all the way out here? She was pretty sure the cows wouldn’t appreciate them.

It took her three tries, but she finally found the old two track that led down to the river. She smiled to herself as she drove along it, letting the good memories come instead of concentrating only on the big, bad one that had loomed over the ranch—and her relationship with Heath—for so long.

In high school, Heath had done some of his best fast-talking trying to convince her and Harmony—mainly Harmony—that skinny-dipping was the most efficient way of swimming. No clothes meant no drag. She remembered that on one particularly bright sunny summer afternoon, as they’d all been sitting on a log by the river drinking Shiner Bock, Heath had stripped down to his boxers and dared them to do the same. Lyric knew that if Harmony hadn’t been there, she totally would have done it.

And embarrassed herself all over again.

Back then, she would have done anything to make him love her.

That was the hold Heath had once had on her. That was the hold he still had on her.

The heart she no longer listened to broke all over again for her teenaged self who only had eyes for Heath Montgomery. He hadn’t loved her then, and he didn’t love her now. No matter how it felt when they had sex … no, when he made love to her. They were way beyond just sex.

Her past feelings were getting tangled up in the now. The engagement had started out as a misunderstanding and grown into a giant mess. She was starting to believe that it was real.

She glanced down at the shiny diamond on her hand, the one that had made her heart beat way too fast when Heath had given it to her. Even though she knew Heath wouldn’t end up with a girl like her, that didn’t matter. Just like it hadn’t mattered in high school. She’d known that he wanted the popular cheerleader and not the teacher’s pet who asked for extra homework to fill the empty hours that should have been filled with dates.