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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 ca
