The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(25)

“Blackmailing you with what?”

“Oh, wow.” She pulls herself straight. “You really can see the stars from here.”

Discussing anything with her is hopeless. She won’t tell me a damn thing she doesn’t want me to know. So I nod to the stars. “Yeah. You can see the whole actual universe. Not just the Upper East Side.”

She doesn’t answer.

I set my plate aside and cut a glance at her profile again. She’s sinking back into the seat, but slowly, like she’s testing the view, seeing how far she can sit back before the overhang blocks the best of the night sky.

Like she’s never seen stars before and wants to keep staring, but she’s also bone tired.

Hell, I’m bone tired, and I didn’t do half of what she did today.

Despite my initial impressions of her, she really does know how to do the hard work.

“Doesn’t look like that on the beach in the Hamptons?” I ask her. “Or did you never actually look up?”

“Shh. Don’t ruin it.”

Now that, we can agree on.

I lean back myself, kick my feet up again, and let my eyes wander over the night sky.

Could go up to the roof.

Got a telescope up there. Straight view up all the way to the heavens. No overhang or scraggly red pine branches blocking nature’s canvas.

But that would require moving.

And leaving Phoebe alone.

She’s not bad company when she’s keeping her mouth shut.

But more, I don’t want her snooping in my house.

The minutes stretch on, and eventually, I realize she’s not gazing in wonder at the stars anymore.

Nope.

Phoebe Lightly, headstrong, arrogant, out-of-place, take-no-prisoners boss lady, is snoring softly in my deck chair.

I stare at her in the darkness. I can only make out her profile, but I still stare.

She’s pretty in her own way. I’ll give her that. Probably has a gym membership to keep her naturally slender body in its original shape. Doesn’t need the YouTube videos on makeup that Bridget’s always watching to know how to put her face on. Has drive. A person can’t not have drive and survive a place like Manhattan.

Yeah, she’s right. I’ve watched enough Gossip Girl—two episodes, for the record—to know that.

But the thing that keeps giving me pause?

She made me promise not to hurt her grandmother.

Take Estelle Lightly’s money and name away, and she’d be a public nuisance.

Or possibly that schoolteacher everyone was terrified of in sixth grade.

But there was a raw threat in Phoebe’s do not hurt my grandmother this morning.

She cares. She cares about someone other than herself. And isn’t that the first step in being a good person? Who would Phoebe Lightly be if you took her money and name away?

Hell.

There I go.

I’m doing it.

I’m starting to believe in the damn movie, too, all because someone new turned up in town, lost but unafraid of the work to get through it.

“You know better,” I mutter to myself.

She doesn’t stir.

So I do what anyone who’s a good person would do in my situation, and I let her be. Even if I don’t want her here. Even if everything she stands for is everything I’ve avoided my entire adult life.

She’s still a person. She worked hard.

She’s earned her peace.

For tonight, anyway.





Chapter 8


Phoebe


Teague Miller is a mystery.

Mr. Grumpy Lumberjack covered me with a wool blanket and let me sleep on his tree house deck under the stars, and now he’s providing me with the best cup of coffee to hit my lips in my entire life.

Not that he’s aware he’s providing me with coffee.

I’m helping myself, since I don’t know where he is. The door into his secret lair was unlocked, and this level just happens to have a working kitchen with a coffeepot that I figured out all on my own.

If he didn’t want me in his private areas, he would’ve locked the door to keep my cranky bones and stiff muscles from getting inside so easily.

Actually, there might not be a lock on the door. I wonder if that’s because the lower levels lock? Something tells me it’s not because he doesn’t care about his privacy.

As soon as the caffeine makes its way through my system, I’m investigating the hell out of this little house in the trees.

Eat your heart out, Lola Minelli.

This tiny house is actually charming.

In addition to the galley kitchen with the life-giving coffee maker, there’s a small dining nook and an alcove with a desk on this level. The floor is warm under my bare feet—I had to ditch the Pink Gold shoes I grabbed at the Pink Box because they were rubbing my Achilles tendon wrong and leaving a blister—and there’s also an open hatch with a ladder leaning down to the floor below, along with another hatch and ladder across the room leading to another story above.

Eventually I’ll get there, but right now, I’m utterly fascinated by the wall of pictures over the dining room table set for two.

There’s one of Teague holding a baby wrapped in blue in a hospital. Another of Teague with a little boy on his shoulders at an aquarium. Teague and Sherry—no, Shiloh—swinging a slightly older little boy between them with elephants in the background, like they’re at a zoo. The little boy by himself in a formal picture, wearing a blue graduation cap with Kindergarten Bound! scrawled across his gown, his brown hair thick and peeking out from under the cap.