The second they stepped into Austin Bergstrom Airport, Lyric took off in a knees-together, Gangnam-style trot. He didn’t know where in the hell she was going, but she sure was in a hurry.
“Lyric?” Heath ran after her, his bad knee turning his own run into a shuffling gallop.
“I gotta pee now …” she sing-songed and picked up the pace. “And I can’t put a hold on it.”
“But how are you going to—” He watched her disappear into the women’s bathroom. “—get out of that dress?”
It didn’t take long for him to figure out that she was going to be right back out. She might not have been thinking about the mechanics of stripping off that damn dress, but he’d spent entirely too much of his adult life getting women out of their clothes to know that it was going to be a problem. A serious problem.
He glanced around, saw a small station of plastic flatware a few feet away near the restaurants. He wasn’t sure what good a plastic knife was going to do against tightly wrapped duct tape, but he was willing to give it the old Wrangler try. But when he got up to the institutional silverware holder, the only things left were a bunch of sporks and one sorry looking plastic knife.
He grabbed them all, along with a couple of straws and a handful of mayonnaise packets for lubrication. He decided to leave the mustard where it was.
He made it back to the bathroom just as Lyric limped out, a look of crestfallen agony on her beautiful face. With a smile, he held up his plundered booty. “I’ve got you covered.”
She stared at the mismatched selection he’d picked up, then rolled her eyes. “I’m not a cheeseburger, Heath.”
“Yeah, well, the selection was limited. I did the best I could.” He crouched down next her. “Let’s get you out of this dress.”
She glanced around wildly. “Not here.”
“Why not here? I thought you had to go to the bathroom.”
“I’m not wearing anything under this duct tape.”
He froze, even as his heartbeat went wild. “Nothing?” She’d said so earlier, but he’d thought she was kidding. He swallowed. All that lovely white skin, and the only thing between it and him was a thin veneer of tape. There wasn’t a man alive who hadn’t had that dream a time or two.
“My dress ripped, remember?” She shuffled from foot to foot.
Lyric hummed the chorus of Beyonce’s “Put a Ring on It.” Huh?
“Yeah, but what about your underwear?”
“The dress was too tight. I didn’t want a panty line.” She sucked in air like it was going out of style.
“Lyric Wright, are you telling me you weren’t lying when you told me you were traveling halfway across the Pacific in nothing but duct tape?” He might have a heart attack himself, especially now that he was picturing all the bare skin just beneath his hands.
“Well, it wasn’t by choice. Believe me.”
Standing up, he propelled her back through the bathroom entrance. They were already attracting a fair amount of attention, and there was no way in hell he was stripping Lyric down in front of half the men in the Austin airport.
“Heath. This is the ladies’ room.” She sounded scandalized.
“Would you rather go into the men’s room and do this?” Over his dead body, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Well, no. But you’ll get in trouble.” She looked around like she was waiting for some sort of bathroom bouncer to appear and toss him out.
“By who? The bathroom police?” He laughed. “Sweetheart, we’re in the Lone Star State now. Short of losing the Super Bowl or wearing 49ers colors, there’s not much I can do in this state that will get me into trouble.”
“Seriously?” She eyed him with disgust.
“This is the great state of Texas. When people talk about the Holy Trinity, they’re talking about Jesus, the NRA, and the Fort Worth Wranglers. So yeah, you and I could drop down right here on this surprisingly clean tile and go for it, and the only comments people would make would be to offer suggestions … to you. And they’d still want me to sign their tits.”
“You know this from experience?” She glanced at the floor, and he could just see that huge brain of hers filing away the facts. Despite the potty dance she was doing, it was really an example of Lyric at her finest. Never judgmental, simply interested in gathering information. At least, until she said, “Well, just so you know. If it gets to that, I’m taking the top. And if you hurry and get this dress off, I just might be willing to give it a shot.”
It was the wrong thing for her to say. Now his mind was filled with all kinds of inappropriate images, namely of Lyric and her double Ds above him as she followed the advice of T-shirts everywhere: Save a horse. Ride a Cowboy.
But he could tell things were getting critical, and he really didn’t want her to have an accident, so he ushered her to the large handicap stall at the back of the restroom. As he locked the door behind them, one of the women who’d been primping at the mirror called, “When’s my turn, Deuce?”