The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(22)

Dammit. She probably would.

“And here I was thinking I wouldn’t get a show with my dinner.”

She heaves a heavy sigh, and for the first time since Estelle Lightly showed up in my town announcing her intentions to bring her family of socialite miscreants here to make them into “good people,” I feel a twinge of something I didn’t expect.

Actual sympathy for a spoiled rich woman.

Is it possible for a sigh to sound exhausted?

How is she still upright? Last I saw, she was scrubbing the boys’ locker room shower with a vengeance while muttering to herself.

“Mr. Miller, I’ve battled through a field of goats and mosquitoes to get here, and I would very much like if you would send down the elevator.” She punctuates her sentence with a slapping noise.

Undoubtedly another mosquito.

Best thing about my house?

Mosquitoes don’t come as high as my lowest deck. They like it closer to the ground.

Heights are nature’s mosquito repellent.

“Goats are only back no thanks to you,” I point out. “Took me an hour to find the last three. Better not have let them out again.”

“Perhaps you could allow a woman to acclimate to your hell jungle before insisting she know how to handle feral animals. And all of your goats are here. I climbed the damn fence so I wouldn’t let a single one out. Happy now?”

There’s nothing feral about my goats. The mosquitoes, yes. Goats, no.

Phoebe Lightly?

Yeah, she’s probably hiding a feral side.

Not tonight, though.

Tonight, she’s coming back to see me when by all rights she should be passed out dead on her floor after all the work she did at the school today.

Fine.

I’m curious if she’s on drugs or if she’s truly that stubborn.

Or superhuman.

I drop my feet off the balcony, set aside my fish, flip on the lone outdoor light, and take the steps down two floors to send her Bridget’s elevator. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“I already regret it enough for both of us.”

There’s the distinct sound of skin slapping skin again, then the clink of the elevator latch shutting, followed by a grunt.

I pinch my eyes shut and heave a sigh of my own. “Hold tight.”

Four quick yanks on the pulley system later, there’s Phoebe Lightly, arms braced, legs braced, eyes wide as the elevator sways at the first deck level. She’s in filthy jeans and a stained Pink Gold T-shirt, her hair falling out of a ponytail, and the makeup she started the day with is completely gone. Or maybe the soft yellow glow of my night lighting makes her look like she’s not wearing makeup. “Do you just leave this thing on the ground when you go places during the day?”

“No.” I smirk. “I use the stairs.”

She silently mouths my words back to me, brow furrowed, until it sinks in. “There are steps?”

My goats all answer with bleats of Shut up, lady, it’s bedtime.

And I find a real smile for the socialite lady boss, which I hide by turning back to the stairwell taking me up to my dining balcony.

Of course she didn’t notice the steps.

They’re across the bridge to the smaller tree house that Bridget uses when she wants a quiet place to do her homework, and where I usually leave my fishing gear so it doesn’t stink up my main house.

Helps that the natural camouflage works well out here. Hides my garage and goat barn too. “What brings you by to disturb my dinner tonight?”

“It’s doomed. Gigi’s not giving this up. She didn’t even flinch at the raccoons. We passed a rat on the street in the city once, and she practically called in the National Guard, but today, she just stood there laughing at your raccoons. No, not just standing there and laughing. She took pictures. And then she made a meme with the pictures. She thought Be as happy as a raccoon in a gym locker was a meme-worthy phrase, and now she’s talking about having it printed and framed outside every classroom in the school and making Big Bertha our family mascot.” She hustles along after me with nary a whimper, but I do catch a subtle grunt or two when she turns at the first landing.

“Huh. Probably should’ve tried to catch a wild one instead of Big Bertha to put in there then. Thought the kits would be a nice touch.”

“You planted them there on purpose?”

Every time she shrieks, my goats bleat back, and this time, a few bats take off too. An owl or two call in to check on us too.

“It’s just Phoebe,” I call back in answer to the whoo, whoos.

“Oh my God, are we a reverse Cinderella? Do you keep mice in here too? Where’s your evil stepfather and stepbrothers?”

That almost makes me twitch. “Tavi’s come to Tickled Pink to save me, has she? The princess to my Cinderfella?”

“Yes, she’s going to take pictures of you and post them all over social media until your horrific existence in this ridiculous Peter Pan tree house is saved by the kindness of strangers donating to build you a real house.”

Despite the sarcasm dripping from her words, every muscle in my body tenses and my balls threaten to shrink back into my body. I turn the final corner on the outer stairwell and make myself take a deep breath before I answer. “She’s claiming us publicly? She’s posting pictures from Tickled Pink?”