Lyric and Lingerie (The Fort Worth Wranglers Book 1) (2 page)

What the hell was she supposed to do now? Three degrees in astrophysics had never prepared her for a situation like this. Was there even a protocol for how to react after flashing the flight crew?

A part of her—the logical scientist part—was screaming at her to shove her tits back in her corset, but at the same time her ass was hanging out mooning the world. She wasn’t sure which was the priority. Thank God she’d sprung for the full Brazilian bikini wax. For seconds that seemed like hours, she couldn’t do anything but stare at him with her best deer-in-the-headlights impression—mouth open and eyes wide.

“Well?” he prompted again, professionally arched eyebrows bouncing off his hairline. “Let’s get this show on the road. I have to finish preflight.” He looked her up and down. “And you need to stow your um … belongings.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lyric finally limped down the aisle to her seat, looking like a candidate for the Home Depot version of Project Runway, her not-so-lucky-Loubies still clutched in one hand and her purse in the other. Who knew? She could have saved the two hundred dollars she’d spent on the corset and bought a roll of duct tape instead. Thanks to Tre, the flight attendant with delusions of couture, she was now the proud wearer of a one-shouldered tube dress in duct tape silver. Or as Tre had called it,
Luminous Steel.

He’d thought her problems were solved, but Lyric wasn’t so sure. Tre had pulled the tape so tightly that she now had a uniboob of epic proportions, plus he’d taken a full inch off the hips she’d already gone two weeks without carbs to get.

Still, while she was grateful for Tre’s fast thinking, she had a feeling sitting was going to be a problem. God knew walking was. Maybe she could just lean against the seat and hope for the best. Seat belts were highly overrated.

As she worked her way down the aisle, her mincing steps moving her a whole two inches at a time, she drew an awful lot of attention. She tried not to make eye contact, but then again, so did everybody else. Except for an old guy in a garish Hawaiian shirt that she couldn’t help but envy. Not in a million years would she have ever guessed she’d be lusting over neon frangipani.

For a second, she thought longingly of the emergency fifty she’d tucked in the top of her corset before this whole nightmare of an evening had started. She’d offer it to him in exchange for the shirt, but God only knew where the money was now or what she could use to access it. Federal regulations had made even nail clippers illegal, and it was going to take the Jaws of Life to cut her free from this getup. She didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do if she had to use the bathroom halfway between Honolulu and the mainland.

The old woman caught Lyric staring at her husband and glared daggers at her. Clearly, the look of longing on her face was more obvious than she’d been aware of. As the woman elbowed her husband in the side, Lyric considered explaining her desire was for the shirt not the man. But after a second, she decided that would only make her sound like an even bigger lunatic than she already looked, and to be honest, she was afraid one more incident would have Tre tossing her ass back onto the tarmac.

She settled for smiling brightly at the woman, whose glare only intensified. Giving up, Lyric jerked her gaze up and away from the unhappy couple, then immediately regretted it. With the cabin lights on full blast and the darkness outside, the windows were perfect mirrors—and she couldn’t help but catch sight of her reflection in the one closest to her.

One look had her longing for the good ole days of corsets and Dr. Danzinger’s drool, when the only thing she’d had to worry about was looking like a slutty version of Cinderella. Right now she looked more like a walking advertisement for BDSM. She could see the YouTube video caption now:
Bondage on a Budget
. She winced. Make that a really
low
budget.

Her mother was going to be mortified. In her mother’s mind, this debacle just might trump her father’s heart attack. Livinia Angleton Wright was equal parts Jackie O and Hitler, and she’d drilled four things into each of her four daughter’s heads: a lady always looks her best, smiles in the face of adversity, never raises her voice, and supports her husband—well, partner. Since the family was fifty percent sure that Lyric’s cousin Sue was a lesbian, Mother was attempting forward thinking. Unfortunately, her mindset started in the 1950s, so she had a lot of ground to cover before normal was within reach.

Lyric finally made it to her seat—in the last row of first class. The window seat, and half of her aisle seat, was occupied by an open newspaper and the man who was holding it. His long legs were spread wide like he had some really big business that didn’t allow for his knees to touch and made it necessary for him to take up the entire row. She couldn’t see his face, but his enormous hands and extra-large shoulders were visible even around the newspaper.

Dear God, she was riding back to the mainland with the Hulk. She leaned forward a little, trying to decide if the green tint on his skin was real or just a trick of the bad lighting. Thank God, no green, but she did notice a titanium knee brace wrapped around his right knee that would have done Iron Man proud. Even if he wasn’t the Hulk, this man was massive. Lucky for her, the duct tape had shaved off those extra inches.

“Excuse me,” she told him, inching her way out of the aisle and into her row of seats. He scooted over—or at least as over as he was able to—with a flick of the newspaper, but didn’t lower it by so much as an inch. Which was fine with her. No one needed to see what was going to happen in the next sixty seconds.

Taking a deep breath, she bent her knees and attempted to lower her butt gently onto the seat cushion. If she was careful, she could perch on the edge and then slide slowly back against the seat and all would be good.

It was working, too. A couple more inches and she’d have it—then it would be smooth flying all the way to Texas. To her daddy.

The thought of him lying pale and sick in a hospital bed shattered the final remnants of her concentration, and she lost her balance, falling the last few inches into the seat. The subsequent screech of ripping duct tape—which sounded an awful lot like a double-bean-burrito-initiated attack of gastritis—echoed through the plane. Faces turned to gawk at her. Beside her, the newspaper twitched as its owner tried to shrink his extra-large body back against the window.

Hands raised like a traffic cop, she leaned into the aisle so that everyone could see her face. “It was the duct tape, I swear,” she said loudly enough for all of first class to hear. It might have just been her, but it seemed like the entire section breathed a sigh of relief.

Sensing movement beside her, she turned back around just in time to see the newspaper fly back into place so that all she saw were a few strands of shaggy blonde hair. Seriously? She didn’t know what was up with her antisocial seatmate, but it was starting to get on her nerves. While she wasn’t up for conversation, having access to her armrest would have been nice.

She had just buckled up when Tre’s voice came over the plane’s loudspeaker. “Folks, please fasten your seat belts. It’s past time to get the show on the road. We apologize for the delay, but our last passenger blew in with a severe wardrobe malfunction. Bad news is it put us a little behind, but the good news is we found another use for duct tape.”

Lyric decided Tre was like Splenda, all sweet and nice in the beginning, but the bitter aftertaste lingered for hours.

She slunk down even lower in her seat. As the engines fired up, she pulled out her cell and dashed off a quick message to Harmony, letting her twin know when her plane was landing—and asking if she could bring a dress, a pair of scissors, and some acetone to the airport. Harmony wouldn’t think twice about it. After all, it wasn’t the first time her twin had had to bail Lyric out of trouble—and, unfortunately, probably wouldn’t be the last; however, it might be the one that appealed to her most, considering Harmony’s secret desire to open the world’s first drive-thru dominatrix dungeon and bakery. Opening a place where she could lash someone with a cat-o’-nine-tails while they were enjoying one of her homemade éclairs had always been a dream of hers. She’d been kidding, of course. Lyric was almost fifty percent sure she had been kidding.

Seconds later, the plane taxied down the runway and then they were in the air. Lyric closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but now that she was sitting still, all she could see was her father’s face.

When she was six and he’d taken her to the roof of the courthouse to see her first solar eclipse.

When she was twelve and they’d built their own telescope from scratch.

When she was eighteen and had burrowed into his arms for comfort after Heath Montgomery, the boy she’d had a crush on since she was ten, broke her heart into a million pieces.

When her mother had called with the bad news, she’d told Lyric to get home to San Angelo as quickly as possible, but when you were an astrophysicist for SETI, quick was relative. And how ridiculous was it that it took her two minutes to launch something halfway to the moon but nine hours to go a measly five thousand miles here on earth? Was it any wonder she always had her head in the clouds? Life on earth was a million times messier.

Her whole life was about predictable outcomes, and people were decidedly unpredictable. Take Rob the Knob and the new love of his life. He’d come home two weeks ago, telling her that he was moving out because Mercury was in retrograde. He’d found his soul mate in an astrologer and part-time hula dancer, and the time was finally right for him to follow his stars. She wasn’t sure what it said about her—or their relationship—that her first thought hadn’t been murder or anger or even sorrow. She’d simply wondered how someone could read Mercury in retrograde while wearing a coconut bra and a grass skirt.

Mercury in retrograde—what the hell did that even mean anyway? And why was it permission for Rob the Knob to dump her two years into what she’d thought would be the last romantic relationship of her life?

A lone tear trickled down her cheek, but she wiped it away impatiently. Her daddy was going to be fine—he had to be fine—because who else was going to calm her mother down when she found out that Robert Carrington III had dumped her daughter for a cheesy hula dancer? God knew there wasn’t enough Valium in the world—or in her mother’s private “vitamin” stash—to do the job.

Knowing she was going to go nuts if she had to sit here for the next eight hours thinking about her father’s heart attack and her ex-fiancé’s duplicity, Lyric reached for the in-flight magazine. But when the first article was on how some scientists now considered astrology a new branch of science, she slammed the thing back into the seat pocket in front of her. Clearly the writer’s stars were also retrograding. Apparently it was contagious, like yawning or Ebola.

Tre chose that moment to flounce down the aisle. He stopped at her seat, held a blanket out to her. “Here’s your cape, Wonder Woman. I thought you might be cold.” He glanced down at the shoes and purse she’d crammed into the seat pocket in front of her. “You need to stow those under the seat in front of you. In case of turbulence, the last thing Wonder Woman needs is a stiletto in the eye.”

“I couldn’t bend that far. The dress is too tight.”

“Whining is so unbecoming. Don’t you know we girls have been suffering for fashion for centuries?” But he reached forward and pulled the shoes out. “We’ll just store these overhead. No bending necessary.”

He flicked the blanket open, stood back debating his options, and then slid a corner into her cleavage like a huge napkin before tucking the rest around her. “Can I get you anything else?”

Lyric swallowed the lump in her throat, absurdly grateful for the fact that she’d somehow ended up on a plane with a flight attendant who was kind and benevolent in his own bitchy way.

“A glass of water would be nice.”

He patted her shoulder. “Oh, honey, you’ve earned a lot more than a little H two uh-oh. I’ll be right back.”

Beside her, the newspaper was shaking. She hoped it was laughter and not a seizure, but from this angle she couldn’t be sure. What was with this guy anyway? He made the Unabomber seem chatty.

Tre came back brandishing an entire basket of liquor bottles in one hand and a glass of ice in the other. “I didn’t think one would be enough. What would you like?”

Lyric eyed the display, thought of the long flight in front of her, and said, “Yes, please,” as she scooped the entire basket right out of his hand. “And a glass of cranberry juice when you get a chance.”

“Great idea. Give your liver a vitamin infusion before hitting the hard stuff … like breaking the fall from a ten-story building with a pillow. Just for fun, I’ll bring you some tomato juice too. I’d hate to have to slap your forehead later because you coulda had a V8.” He glanced at the newspaper. “Can I get you anything, big guy?”

The newspaper didn’t so much as quiver, but a muffled, “No, I’m good,” did float over the top of it.

“He’s famous,” Tre mouthed. He leaned down and whispered next to her ear, “Who knew a newspaper was so versatile? Reading material and shield from the hordes of comatose passengers who are even now leaping over the seats to get to him, pen in hand for autographs. It’s a good thing you’re duct-taped into that dress, Wonder Woman, otherwise you might jump him too.”

“Who is it? The Rock?” She would have eased up and peeked over the paper, but in this dress, easing was anything but easy.

The paper rattled angrily, and Tre’s eyes widened. “I don’t think he’s a WWF fan. I’ll get that cranberry juice now.”

Traitor.

Lyric watched him hightail it down the aisle. Oh sure, he had no problem flouncing down here and riling up Mr. Uncongeniality, but the second things got a little tense, he left her to deal with the fallout. This was all she needed … a narcissistic, Rock-hating seatmate with a bionic knee and possession of HER armrest. She opened a bottle of vodka. To hell with the cranberry juice. She couldn’t wait that long.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lower the paper about halfway. She couldn’t see much from this vantage point, and after Tre’s latest stunt, she didn’t want to be too obvious. Famous people didn’t like being gawked at—or so she’d heard. Under the guise of turning on her overhead light, she elbowed her way onto the armrest and tried to peek around the paper. It moved to block her view. This guy was cagey, but curiosity had been her guiding star—take that, Rob; she had stars too—for as long as she could remember. Since subterfuge wasn’t her strong suit, she shoved the basket his way. “There’s enough for two.”