“How are you feeling, Daddy?” Lyric asked, leaning down to kiss her father when it was her turn. He was out of recovery but still a little groggy from the anesthetic and all the pain meds he was on, but he was lucid enough to reach out for her. Thanks to Heath, Jeannie was bending the ICU rules one more time and allowing all four of them in to see him, but only for a few minutes.
“I’m okay, sweetheart. You can stop worrying about me now. This should be a joyful time.”
“Umm, joyful?” She’d never considered open-heart surgery particularly joyful, but maybe her daddy wanted to celebrate the fact that he had made it through the tough part. That he was still alive. And if that was the case, she was totally down with that.
“Of course, joyful.” He tried to move a little, then broke off with a groan.
“Now’s not the time, Bull,” her mother said, shooting Lyric a glare. “You need to rest.”
“I am resting, my love. But I want to make sure my Lyric’s mind is at ease. I’m going to be up and out of this hospital bed in plenty of time to walk you down the aisle, sugarplum.”
“The aisle?” she asked, completely confused now. “What aisle?”
She glanced around for an aisle. Should he be up and walking this soon after surgery?
Heath stepped on her foot, hard, then started talking loud enough to cover up her yelp of pain. “Don’t you worry, Bowman. You know Lyric. She’s so untraditional. She keeps talking about skydiving to the altar, but I promise I won’t let that happen.”
“Altar?” she demanded. “What altar?”
She was pretty sure the hospital had a chapel, so why did they need an altar in here?
“Now, now, darlin’, this really isn’t the time to fight about our wedding. But I do want everyone to know that there will be an altar. I’m willing to negotiate on a lot, but I’m going to insist on that.” Heath was dead serious.
“Wedding?” She was beginning to sound like a parrot, but she couldn’t see to help herself. It was like the stress of her father’s surgery had made everyone go stark raving mad. “What wedding?”
She looked around for the happy couple.
“Lyric Wright, I know you don’t think you’re the romantic sort,” Heath told her with a glare, “but I am, and there is no way we are running off to city hall to elope. I don’t care how much you beg. We are going to do this thing the right way. ” He elbowed her in the ribs. “And the Wright way, as I know your momma and daddy agree with me.”
Why did she need to go to city hall? Maybe she was still asleep, and this was some weird dream? She almost slapped herself across the cheek, but that was what she would have done in a weird dream.
“We certainly do,” her father said, but his voice was a little weaker than before. The pain medicine was dragging him under, and he was fading fast. “I am walking you down that aisle, sugarplum, so I don’t want to hear any more talk of elopement.”
Umm, she was pretty sure she wasn’t the one who had brought it up. In fact, she wasn’t the one who had brought any of this up—including parachuting to the altar. That was all Heath. But he had such a way of spouting bullshit and making it believable that even she was wondering why she wanted to elope instead of have a big ceremony.
“Wait, I’m missing something here.”
Heath put his arm around her and pulled her close. “I let them in on our little secret.” What ridiculous lies was Heath Montgomery spouting now?
She cut her eyes over to him. She had a very bad feeling. “What secret?”
To her knowledge, they didn’t have any secrets—well, that he knew about.
“The wedding, of course.” He kissed her cheek. “I told them all about how you proposed to me and I said yes.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words would come out. He’d told her parents they were engaged? Was this some sort of joke? She checked his pupils for signs of drug use or possibly head trauma, but all she saw were mirth-filled pools of muddy brown.
“Our wedding?” What the hell was going on?
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep it from them any longer. I know you had your heart set on something small, but I want a huge wedding with ten bridesmaids, a ring bearer, and the whole deal.” He squeezed her extra hard. “Look how happy your mother and father are. I told you they would be.”
She was going to kill him. Once she got out of this room and away from her just-out-of-surgery daddy, she was going to absolutely murder him. And it was going to be painful too. Rob the Knob had insisted on taking her to that exhibit on torture through the ages a few weeks ago. She’d hated every minute of it, but at least one good thing had come out of it. She’d learned a hundred and twenty-seven different ways to make a man wish he was never born, and she was going to use every single one of them on Heath.
Well, maybe not the penis shackle. It clamped the penis to the big toe of the right foot. It seemed unnecessarily dramatic, and what man was flexible enough to touch his right toe to his penis? Plus, where would she get one this time of day? It was doubtful Amazon Prime could have one to her by tomorrow. And shipping on eBay took forever.
Oh my God. What the hell was she going to do? It was one thing to say they were together and to make up a ridiculous story about how they got that way. For the record, she wasn’t actually okay with that either. But it was another thing altogether to tell a man who was only a few hours out of open-heart surgery that they were going to get married. What the hell was she supposed to tell her father when Heath decided the joke was over? And how many years was she going to have to listen to her mother go on about how stupid she was to let Heath get away?
“I’m so happy for you, sugarplum.” Her father beamed at her. He was in awful good spirits, considering.