She looked like she was actually giving him valuable vocational advice.
“I’m going to have to take a pass on that one. Silk pajamas give me a rash.” He laced his fingers through hers. She was taking his new life very seriously. It was sweet in a really odd, really Lyric kind of way.
“You’re making this difficult.” She sucked on her bottom lip in concentration.
“Now you know how I feel.” He appreciated her help, even if he didn’t want it.
She sat silently for a couple of minutes, and he swore he could practically see the wheels turning in that great big brain of hers.
Her eyes grew wide as she sat up. “What about your daddy’s ranch?”
“What about it?” He hadn’t given the land much of a thought in years.
Lyric glanced at her father, her voice breaking. “I know Daddy’s kept an eye on it for you all these years.”
And that was when it hit him. She needed to talk about something other than her father. Other than her fears. Which meant he was just going to have to bite the bullet. Because if she needed to focus on something else, he was happy to let her. Even if it sliced him into ribbons in the process.
“I’ve never really thought about ranching.” The land had been in his family for generations, but his father’s heart hadn’t been in it. Or it might have been in it, before his mother had ripped it out and run over it with her Caddy on the way out of town. After that, he’d started the tequila diet and forgotten all about how to be a rancher and a father.
“I haven’t been home in a while, do you still have cattle?” Lyric looked like she was making a mental list of things he needed to do.
“Yes, five hundred head … give or take.” He’d hired a caretaker who’d been seeing after the ranch ever since he got his signing bonus.
“Good. Then you should at least give it a try. I bet you’d be good at it.” She sounded like the decision had already been made.
“How do you know?” Sure, he’d sort of worked the ranch, but it wasn’t his passion. Not like football was.
“Because you’re good at everything you do.” Her confidence in him was humbling and—not going to lie—a huge ego boost. He felt like he could leap a tall building in a single bound.
He leaned into her, thinking that he’d plant one on her cheek. Her hair smelled nice … really nice.
“Did you just sniff my hair?” Confusion muddled her Wranglers blues.
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So kissing her was probably out. “Umm, no?”
“Yes, you did.” Her eyes turned the size of Oreos. “Oh God, it smells bad … right?” She pulled a lock of her blonde hair to her nose. “It’s smells like Cherry Cherry.” She grabbed the neckline of her shirt and brought it to her nose. “Shit. All of me smells like Cherry Cherry. I hope the cops don’t show up here. The last thing I want right now is to be dragged to jail for excessive pot use. Especially since I’m sober.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out, felt surprisingly right when he applied it to her. “I won’t let them take you.”
She leaned over and put her nose on his bicep. “How come you smell good and I smell like Neil Diamond’s sticky pleather hell beast?”
He sat up and looked around, alarmed by the vehemence in her voice. And the volume of it. “Don’t say that too loud. We still need to get home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Cherry Cherry can’t hear us in here.” Still, she leaned in close to his ear. He couldn’t help but notice that she’d lowered her voice.
“You think I smell good.” That knowledge made him grin hugely as he mentally picked the canary feathers out of his teeth.
“Gloating is so unbecoming. Just because you’re one of the shiny, pretty people, doesn’t mean you need to rub it in to the rest of the ninety-nine percent.” Lyric rolled her eyes so far back in her head, she probably saw her first day of kindergarten.
“What the hell does that even mean?” God, he loved to see how her mind worked. “Shiny, pretty people?
“You know … the perfect people … the popular kids who always end up smelling like a rose.” She shot him a come on, you have to know what I’m talking about look. “You could fall in a swimming pool full of mud and come out looking charmingly disheveled, while I’d come out looking like that chubby kid who fell in Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I get dirty.” At that moment, feeling the heat of her body against his as he looked into her big blue eyes, he wanted to show her just how dirty he could be.
“Not the embarrassingly sloppy kind of dirty.” She shook her head. “You get sweaty. Maybe you even get muddy. But you’re never actually a mess. That’s why you smell like sandalwood and expensive shower gel, while I smell like pot and pleather. There are two kinds of people in the world—the cool kids and the rest of us.”