The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(112)

I’m crying and laughing as he swoops me up in his arms and kisses me, a complete disaster of a socialite but a total badass in all other ways.

“I’m going to love you so hard you won’t know what hit you,” I whisper between kisses.

He smiles, and that simple joy in his expression brings me to tears all over again.

“Do your worst, Ms. Lightly,” he murmurs against my lips. “It’ll still never top how much I’m going to love you.”





Epilogue


Teague


Catching fish isn’t as easy as it used to be considering I now have someone yammering my ear off in my boat, but turns out it’s a lot more fun.

“I don’t get it,” Phoebe says as she holds up the present I was hiding in the cooler.

I cast out and stifle a grin. “Made me think of you.”

“It’s a stuffed pink penguin. Why does that make you think of me?”

“Dunno. Must’ve been something I dreamed.”

“Reminds me of you too, Phoebe,” Willie Wayne calls from his boat. “From that time you tried to waddle into Dylan’s boat in that tight pink getup that first day you came to Tickled Pink.”

Phoebe lowers her sunglasses and looks at me, lips pursed. “So if I got you a stuffed porcupine making a face like he had indigestion because it reminded me of you . . .”

“He’d cut it up and wear it as a hat,” Bridget calls from the pontoon boat where she’s floating with Shiloh, Ridhi, Anya, and Jonah.

The whole town came out to celebrate Phoebe and me getting back from New York, and everyone and their brother’s out on the lake. Including my brother, who’s staying at the motel while he decides how long he wants to stick around Tickled Pink.

If Bridget gets her way, he’ll be here until we’re all old and gray.

Pretty sure I’d be okay with that.

“You comfortable now?” I ask Phoebe.

She’s perched in my recliner, while I’m sitting in the beanbag chair she made me put in the boat and swore she’d sit in, then couldn’t get comfortable in once we got out here.

She shifts. “I don’t know. There seems to be a spring poking me wrong. I might have to just sit in your lap.”

“You do that, we’re both going in this lake.”

That smile playing at the corners of her lips is making me need to shift too. “Do you know,” she says, “in all the weeks that I’ve been in Tickled Pink, I have yet to see you fall in the lake?”

“Tried it once. Lake spit me back out.”

She laughs.

“You two are so gross,” Bridget calls.

“We do it to annoy you,” Phoebe calls back. “It would be annoying to us if you didn’t think we were gross.”

Bridge stares at her.

Phoebe licks her finger, puts it on her own ass, and makes a sizzling noise. “That’s right. I’m on fire today.”

I do almost fall out of the boat then.

I’m both turned on and amused as hell.

“What’s that noise?” Jane calls.

“That’s just Teague laughing,” Shiloh calls back.

“I didn’t know he knew how to do that.”

“It’ll be okay. If it keeps happening, I know a doctor who makes house calls.”

“Quit picking on my boyfriend, or I won’t take your suggestions for taffy flavors when I open my candy store,” Phoebe says to the lake at large.

“Does she know that’s not actually a threat?” Willie Wayne asks Jane.

“Probably not,” Jane replies.

“I won’t let you ride the Ferris wheel when it’s done, either, and for the record, I checked this morning, and we do have enough money to start construction.” Phoebe settles deeper into her chair and smiles at me. “I really love this town.”

We float around the lake while she alternates between reading a book on her phone and telling me her plans to not just stop at building a new Ferris wheel next to our ivy-covered half wheel but also to add a carousel to the park, reinstall the Fountain of Everlasting Eternity, and search every closed-up building in town until she finds the old gates to heaven. I keep fishing, everyone around us talking and laughing. Her family’s not out with us today, but it’s all good.

We can hear Carter trying to play music inside the school. He’s got his amp turned up again.

Estelle and her boyfriend—who she still calls her butler—are at the community center. Phoebe tells me Niles is a painter, and Estelle’s set him up with a room with really good lighting and great views. Cranky old lady can’t tell anyone her real plans. Phoebe says we need to give her just a little more time to get there.

No idea where Tavi is. Michael either. Phoebe says she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be tight with him, and she’s okay with that. Sometimes, coexisting is the best you can hope for.

But she and Tavi have been whispering since we got back, and she won’t tell me what for.

I’ll figure it out eventually.

In the meantime, it’ll be sexual favors and withholding coffee until she caves. Rewards and punishments. I’m still learning which one works.

Fun, usually.

I’m good with fun.

More than good with fun.