It was a valid argument, one that made perfect sense. But as the evening wore on, she kept sneaking glances at the sleep chair, in between finishing the article on the perfect blow job and starting one on how to rock his world with one quick set of Kegels. And each time her eyes fell on the sage-green fold-out, she couldn’t help thinking about Heath any more than she could help the way her heart fluttered.
A little while later, there was another knock on the door. This time, when she looked up from an article on the top twenty-five most popular sex positions, it was to find Heath standing at the nurses’ station, shopping bag in hand.
“Whatcha reading?” he asked, strolling into the room like he owned the place.
“Nothing.” Her cheeks flamed as she dropped the magazine on the rolling table next to her.
Heath wasn’t just the top quarterback in the NFL because he could throw like a bullet. He also had razor-sharp reflexes, and he snatched the magazine out of midair before the thing could even close.
A huge grin spread across his face as he read the title of the article. He flipped to the blow job page. “That looks good.” His finger moved down the page. “Done that, would like to do that, hated that, wouldn’t try that even on a dare. Oh … I like number twenty-two … only …” He turned the magazine upside down. “I think it takes more than two hands.”
She grabbed the magazine and tossed it onto the chair. “I was reading 101 Hair Tips, if you must know.”
Dying to change the subject—partly because she was completely humiliated at this point, and partly because Heath’s teasing felt way too familiar—as did the feelings stirring inside of her—she glanced around a little d
esperately, looking for something, anything, that might distract him.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the shopping bag he was carrying, a reusable bag that had the Fort Worth Wranglers logo emblazoned on one side and Heath’s face emblazoned on the other. “Do you seriously carry bags around with your own face on them?”
“It just so happens that I have the entire collection of Fort Worth Wranglers grocery bags in my suitcase. They’re collector’s items.”
“Of course they are.” She rolled her eyes.
“But this one was a gift. I was shopping at Super Walmart—pretty much the only place to shop on a Sunday evening in San Angelo except for Paula’s Porn Palace, and I figured we already had that covered.” He shot a pointed look at her TexAss-covered ass. Then he extended the bag toward her. “This is for you.”
“For me?”
“It’s nothing fancy—nothing like I could have picked up at the Porn Palace, but I figured you’d probably like a pair of yoga pants, a toothbrush, a bra, and a shirt that’s your size. Not that the boxers aren’t attractive, but …”
Just that easily, her heart melted. While the scientist in her knew that wasn’t actually possible, the rest of her felt so warm and fuzzy and endeared that she didn’t even care. No wonder women everywhere threw themselves at Heath like he was Tom Hardy. He was actually better looking than Tom, and a really nice guy. She’d spent so much time hating him during the last twelve years that she’d forgotten about the nice-guy part.
“Thanks.” As she reached for the bag, her voice broke, and the tears that had threatened all day burned behind her eyes.
“Oh, darlin’.”
The next thing she knew, Heath was dropping the bag and picking her up. Then they were settled on the sleep chair together, her cuddled on his lap and his arms wrapped tightly around her.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, his calloused fingers stroking her hair, her cheek, her back. “He’s going to be okay.”
She nodded, her face buried in his strong, sandalwood-scented chest. “I know.” And she did. She really did believe that her larger-than-life daddy was going to be okay. She had to believe it, because the alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.
Too bad she couldn’t say the same about her heart.
* * *
Chapter 12
* * *
Lyric woke up alone, curled into a ball on the sleep chair, and desperately missing Heath’s warmth. He’d slept with her here all night, cradling her in his arms as he lent her both his body heat and his shoulder to cry on. Now that he was gone, the thin blanket someone had stretched over her in an effort to combat the hospital’s brutal air-conditioning just wasn’t cutting it.
Sitting up, she shoved her crazy hair out of her face before blinking several times in an effort to clear the sleep from her eyes. That’s when she saw them. Heath sitting next to her daddy’s hospital bed, his head bent as the two of them talked, probably plotting to take over the world.
Mostly, Heath was doing the talking, and her daddy was doing the grinning. That was Heath—all boyish charm and fast-talking. He could talk Eskimos into not only buying ice, but buying a commercial ice machine too.
The research she’d done in the middle of the night, as the doctors slowly began bringing her father around from his medically induced coma, provided strong evidence that humor helped people heal. The research also proved out that patients with positive, upbeat attitudes were more likely to get through surgery without complications.
Considering that life in the Wright house was complicated enough—especially for her daddy, who had to keep her mother happy—Lyric was totally a fan of zero surgical complications. Especially considering that it was only a couple of hours until he had his chest cut wide open and his heart stopped.