The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(13)

“There’s a gate that you can open on that thing. Lock it when you get in so you don’t fall out and break your neck on the way up. Or don’t. Your choice.”

I spot the gate in question on one side of the big wooden box. “We can negotiate from here.”

“I don’t negotiate with people who can’t pull their own weight.”

I peer up.

He’s leaning over a deck, bare arms dangling over the edge, one hand holding a mug, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, hair hidden under that ridiculous hat, mouth hidden by his beard, so it’s impossible to judge if he’s proud of himself for making an awful joke or if he doesn’t realize his double meaning.

From what I know of Teague Miller so far, I’ll assume he’s aware he made a joke but also that he assumes I’m too haughty and highbrow to recognize that fact.

As if I didn’t already severely dislike the man. “You want us gone, so I don’t need to negotiate with you at all. You have more to lose here.”

“Maybe I changed my mind. Maybe someone convinced me that it’ll be another profitable venture for the town to leak pictures of you doing things like walking through goat shit and falling out of boats to a few tabloids back in New York. From where I stand, Ms. Lightly, you’re the one with a greater incentive to leave.”

I eyeball the crate again.

It’s hooked up on all four corners to a center pulley above the middle of the crate, and unlike the gate on the fence, the gate on this wooden box has a latch that’s not rusted.

He thinks I can’t figure this out and get up there?

He thinks I’m too precious? Too pampered? Too spoiled?

The man has no idea who he’s dealing with.

So I climb into that crate, and you’re damn right I figure it out. Without asking him where the button is.

I might be a rich city girl, but I’m not stupid enough to think he’ll make this easy on me. “If I fall to my death,” I say between grunts as I yank on the rope to lift the whole thing off the ground, finding it’s easier to move than I thought it would be but still not easy, “my family will sue you to the ends of this earth.”

He smirks over his coffee mug. “You assume they care that much.”

I twitch. Good morning, nerve. Get your sensitive ass back behind your gold-plated armor.

And then I slap my arm, where it feels like someone just stuck a needle into my skin. I pull my hand back, and—“Eew!”

“Ah, mosquito season,” Teague says.

I grimace and wipe the carnage on his rope while my makeshift elevator sways in the breeze. I’m two feet up.

I think I have twenty to go. “That was not a mosquito. It was—it was—it was a vampire bat.”

“Was too a mosquito,” he replies. “And that was a little one. Wait until July. They get as big as your fist then.”

“Mr. Miller, you’ve already sold me on leaving this hellhole. I’d like to discuss you channeling your energy to convince my grandmother.”

“Right here whenever you feel like joining me.”

The bastard truly is going to make me get all the way up into his tree house, yanking on a rope to tug up this makeshift elevator six inches at a time.

Also, I have no idea how to make this crate lower me back to the ground, as there’s some safety mechanism to prevent it from falling when I let go of the rope.

It does appear he has me at a disadvantage and out of other options.

“For the record, Mr. Miller, I’m not doing this because I like you.”

“Right back at you, Ms. Lightly.”

There’s a hint of a southern drawl in his speech that intrigues me.

In a know-thy-enemy way. Nothing more.

And by the time I reach the first level of his tree house, he is very much my enemy.

I’ve sweated through my blouse. I’m sporting six more bug bites on skin I can’t reach, and I have an itch on my ass that I refuse to scratch in public, as I am a Lightly, and I’m in danger of being late to Gigi’s family meeting if this negotiation doesn’t go well.

She’ll probably make me scrub toilets or chase the bats out of the theater myself.

Her brush with death hasn’t changed the rules. They’re simply now under the guise of I’m doing this to make you a better person.

I manage to get myself out of the basket and onto the solid platform, and then I make the mistake of looking at Teague Miller.

He’s moved so he’s now leaning against the railing on the deck, shirtless, with a coffee mug declaring him the world’s best tree hugger. And where he should be pudgy with a lazy man’s posture and have a birthmark in an unfortunate shape or a tattoo with his mother’s name misspelled across his chest, instead, his shoulders are broad, his pecs and biceps are chiseled in a manner that suggests he built this tree house by hand, he has a manly thatch of dark chest hair threaded here and there with errant silver strands over his tanned skin, all of it narrowing down his abdomen to point below the belt of his jeans, and he clearly isn’t experiencing any natural slouch for spending his days reclining in a cushioned chair on his fishing boat.

I subtly sniff, inhale the most delicious coffee scent to tease my nose in what feels like a lifetime, curse Anya at the coffee shop, then curse Teague too.

He crosses one ankle over the other and gives me the same once-over I’m giving him. “You look different dry—no, wait . . .”