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r floor.
You could take the player out of the Wranglers, after all, but you couldn’t take the Wranglers out of the player.
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Chapter 15
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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.
“I’m beat,” Lyric said as she walked straight through the main part of the house to the back staircase. “Make yourself at home. You know where your old room is, right?”
When Heath’s father had started staying out all night instead of cooking supper for his eleven-year-old son, Bowman had given Heath the guest room, and it had been his ever since.
“Yeah.”
“Good. If you need food, obviously help yourself.” She was so tired, the words were beginning to blur together. “I need to crash.”
She sure as hell did. And he did too. Partly because he was almost as tired as Lyric was, and partly because all the flying and driving and sitting he’d done over the last couple of days had really aggravated his knee. He was afraid if he didn’t lie down soon, he was going to fall down.
Not that he was about to tell Lyric that. She’d probably insist upon carrying him up the stairs, or at least spend the next half an hour trying. And since he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, he was pretty sure her attempts would be nothing but an exercise in futility.
Besides, he was injured, not permanently disabled. As long as he took it slow going up the stairs—and avoided thinking about how much this whole thing fucking sucked—he’d be okay.
“Sounds good to me,” he said as she made her way up the long, circular staircase. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She gave a careless, drunken-looking wave. “Yes. Tomorrow.”
From his spot on the bottom step, he watched as she climbed the stairs. And while he knew he shouldn’t be checking her out—they had just clarified the fact that they were only friends—he couldn’t help the way his eyes were drawn to her very shapely ass. Any more than he could help the way, as he watched her ass sway back and forth, his brain immediately kicked into gear with a whole host of sexual fantasies he was better off not thinking about.
But knowing what he should do and actually doing it were two very different things, especially when he was stretched out on his bed hours later, staring at the ceiling and willing himself to go back to sleep, all to no avail. It was early yet—really early, according to the old-fashioned alarm clock next to his bed, but he’d been listening to Lyric move around her room for the last half an hour.
The sounds were muffled, like she was trying to be quiet, but it was very obvious that she was doing something. Their rooms did share a common wall, after all. Just more proof, he knew, that Livinia had always trusted him with Lyric. When he’d been a teenager, he’d spent more than one night under this roof—when his dad was on an angry bender, when he was sleeping it off in jail, and one unforgettable night when he’d decided to wave Heath’s granddaddy’s prized Colt pistol in Heath’s face.
Each time, Livinia had put him in this room, next to Lyric, instead of in the one down the hall that shared a common wall with Harmony. Guess it had been obvious back then how he’d felt about Harmony … and how he’d thought she’d felt about him. Right up until they slept together and, somehow, he’d ruined everything.
But it wasn’t Harmony he was lying here thinking about right now. Wasn’t Harmony that had his head spinning and his dick aching. No, that was all Lyric. All brainy, bold, beautiful Lyric.
His teenaged self must have been an idiot, because there was no other explanation as to why he would have fallen for Harmony back then when Lyric was around. Sure, Harmony had always been the one with the short skirts and high heels and sexy perfume, but Lyric had been the one with the wicked sense of humor. The one with the crazy ideas that always got her into trouble. The one who was so full of life that she was constantly tripping or falling or causing one disaster after another because her body could barely contain all her joie de vivre.
And she still was.
He’d spent the day in that waiting room with both of them, and for a moment—just a moment—he had wondered if his old feelings for Harmony and their shared past would rear their ugly head. But he hadn’t felt so much as a twinge, even when he was sitting right next to her. How could he have when he’d spent the whole day unable to so much as look away from Lyric?
Even know, when he should be sleeping, he couldn’t keep his mind off of her. Or the fact that at this very moment she was in the shower, hot water streaming over her pinup-star body. Hands rubbing soap along all that glorious skin. Washcloth sliding between those glorious thighs of hers …
And fuck. He had just gone from turned on to really fucking turned on in the space of a couple of seconds. But who could blame him when he wanted nothing more than to bury his own hand, face, cock, between Lyric’s gorgeous thighs.
Sweaty, groaning, and more turned on than he could remember being in a long damn fucking time, Heath slid his hand under the covers. Fisted his hand around his rock-hard dick. And began to stroke himself as images of Lyric bombarded him from every side.
Lyric in that ridiculous excuse for a duct-tape dress, her gorgeous breasts all but falling out the top of it.
Lyric in the airport restroom doing the potty dance as he was on his knees in front of her.
Lyric upside down in Cherry Cherry, her long, curvy, million-dollar legs right in his face as she spouted some ridiculously little-known fact or other at him.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Who the hell could have guessed he’d find the fact that forty gazillion meteors hit the earth every day… so damn sexy. Then again, it wasn’t the meteors he found sexy. It was Lyric. It was all Lyric.
