Lyric and Lingerie (The Fort Worth Wranglers Book 1) by Tracy Wolff, Katie Graykowski Page B

on.
    “It’s going to be okay.” His tone was that of a preschool teacher comforting a four-year-old.
    “Define okay.” God, she really was a snippy bitch—and getting snippier by the second. She couldn’t help it. Her old college roommate, Tiffany, had said that emotional stress always brought out Lyric’s inner Cranky Pants. Since Tiffany had been the manically perky cheerleader type, Lyric’s inner Cranky Pants had become her whole persona that entire semester. Now, not only had Cranky Pants taken up residence, but she’d brought Crazy too. Which meant that if Lyric wanted to get to San Angelo in one piece, she needed something to do besides sit here thinking about everything that could go wrong for her father.
    As the chorus to “Cherry Cherry” rang out for what seemed like the millionth time—it turned out the song was on a never-ending loop—she knew exactly what to do to pass the time. If she could build a rocket at the age of nine out of nothing but fireworks and a Coke bottle, she could damn well figure out how to make Neil Diamond stop singing.
    She shoved her phone back in her purse. Prying her legs up from the seat, she unbuckled her seat belt and attempted to slide onto the floorboard, but she kept sticking to the seat. After repeatedly peeling her shirt and boxers from the leather, she grabbed the shirt hem, wound it around her hand, and looped it in a knot at her waist. In a maneuver that was part stop-drop-and-roll and part turtle-stranded-on-its-back, she ducked under the dash. Her position—head, neck, and shoulders on the floorboard, while her torso and legs flailed around on the seat—gave the double benefit of muffling the music a little and gave her access to the wires that ran close to the radio.
    “Are you okay?” Heath demanded anxiously. “Is the pot smell getting to you?”
    “It’s not the pot that’s getting to me. I’m just looking for some wires that will—” She cut herself off in mid-sentence, because she was going to say “stop Neil Diamond,” but she didn’t want to offend Cherry again. Not for one second did she believe the car was actually a sentient being, but she’d read Christine , and on the off chance that Stephen King had something there, she figured it was better to be safe than sorry. “I’m hoping to find an answer to the pressurized carbon situation we’ve got going on here.”
    Heath looked at her like she was speaking in tongues. But that was nothing new—she’d spent her whole life having to explain herself, one way or the other.
    “You know,” she said, jerking her head toward the stereo, “pressurized carbon. It makes …” She trailed, leaving him to fill in the blank.
    “A mess?”
    “Diamonds,” she finally told him, exasperated. “Pressurized carbon makes diamonds.”
    “And you hope to find some under the dash? I only spent eight grand on the car. It might be flashy, but I don’t think it’s diamond studded.”
    Seriously? Lyric rolled her eyes. How many hits had he taken on the football field through the years anyway? She almost asked him, but she didn’t want to make Cherry Cherry mad. They seemed to have bonded.
    “I don’t want diamonds. I want to stop …” She raised her eyebrows.
    “Oh my God, it’s another one of those fill-in-the-blank questions.” He hummed along with the chorus of “Cherry Cherry.” “I do better with multiple choice. Like … you want to stop—blank. A. Global warming, B. Poverty, or C. Those misguided souls outside of the US who keep referring to soccer as football. D. All of the above. E. None of the above. FYI—if you choose E, none of the above, it’s a deal breaker. That soccer thing really bugs me.” He did that one-eyebrow-up thing. “See how it works?”
    Before she could answer, Heath went from humming to mouthing the words. Lyric shook her head. It looked like she was in this all alone. He had obviously fallen under Cherry Cherry’s spell and crossed over to the dark