The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(41)

I don’t like her.

And for years, I’ve hidden my self-loathing behind a full calendar and an entitled sense of being better than everyone around me simply because I happened to be born rich.

But why was I born rich, if not to enjoy it?

Do you, Phoebe? Do you really enjoy it? Are you happy?

We came here because Gigi said we needed to be better people, and she thought re-creating a movie would be a shortcut. I’m playing the game so I can get back to my life.

But “getting back to my life” feels like going back into a haze, and I don’t know if that’s the effect of almost a week so far removed from normal or if I’m truly waking up for the first time since I was born.

Teague sighs heavily and scrubs a hand over his face before lounging back in the passenger seat, crossing his arms, and staring at me.

“I’m driving, I’m driving,” I mutter.

Maybe Gigi’s right.

Maybe I don’t deserve a hot shower yet.





Chapter 13


Teague


Phoebe is correct. She can drive.

If by drive you mean not kill someone along the way.

Can’t kill a person if you don’t go more than ten miles an hour and ride the brakes the whole time while hunched over the wheel, squinting at the road.

“Can anyone else in your family drive?” I ask her as we lurch to a stop a quarter mile from the rickety bridge separating official Deer Drop land from the farthest reaches of Tickled Pink’s outskirts.

“There was a squirrel.”

“That was a shadow. And even if it was a squirrel, if there’d been someone behind us, you would’ve gotten rear-ended.”

She scowls and hits the gas, actually gunning it this time and flying through scattered stick debris.

I reach for my oh shit handle. “But if you can avoid crap in the road, do it, because—”

“I know how to fucking drive, Teague. Okay?”

Dammit.

Dammit.

This is why Shiloh says I’m not teaching Bridget how to drive either. I have zero patience for incompetence.

But there’s no way Bridge would be the same kind of menace that Phoebe is. Phoebe is all arrogance and snarls and gorgeous breasts and sexy determination and— And the car’s front right tire is thumping.

Thank fuck for that distraction. Sexy determination? I need to spend a night or two hooking up with someone in Deer Drop and get over this. “Pull over.”

“I’m not pulling over!”

“You have something stuck in the tire. Pull. Over.”

She hmphs.

I hmph back.

She yanks the wheel and slams on the brake, and we end up sitting with the back end of the Pilot sticking out into the road while the front end stops in a thicket of weeds perilously close to the edge of the Deer Drop side of the bridge. The sides of the road are lined with more of the pines and sugar maples that are prevalent up here, and there’s no small part of me wanting to disappear in the forest and hike myself into oblivion.

Instead, I yank my door open and climb out, cursing myself for wearing shorts.

She scrambles out behind me, and I glance back in time to see her staring at the ground like she’s contemplating kissing it.

Mental note: ask Shiloh to suggest to Estelle Lightly that her whole family take driving lessons if she’s buying them a damn car.

Not that the car will be a problem for a while.

The front right tire’s flat, and even in the weeds, it’s pretty easy to see why.

My eye twitches.

Can’t entirely blame her, even if I want to. I would’ve driven through that crap myself if I’d been driving alone.

She joins me on my side of the car and gives the tire a dubious eyeball. “Is that a flat?”

“Yep.”

“So we need to get towed.”

“Nope.”

“You can drive on flat tires?”

“No, you replace the flat tires with the donut to get you to the tire shop.”

Now that dubious eyeball is aimed directly at me. “You’re going to make me change a tire, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And lecture me about how leaves and sticks in the road can break tires?”

I squat and point to the piece of bone sticking out of the front of the tire. “No, but antlers can.”

Her lips part, and she angles closer to me. “Antlers?”

“Antlers. Off a deer.”

“I know what antlers grow on.”

I could bait her, but I’d like to get back home. And it’s freak happenstance that a part of an antler was in a pile of old sticks and leaves in the middle of the road. Probably blew off an old pickup truck. Can’t fault her for not knowing it would be there.

Takes just a minute to find the owner’s manual in the glove box and identify where the spare is, with Phoebe peering over my shoulder the whole time. Few more minutes to get it out with Phoebe insisting the whole time that she can do this if I just point to her what to do.

I let her try to undo a lug nut, get so turned on watching her muscles bunch while she squats in the weeds in that dress without complaint that I tell her she’s doing it wrong and make her move.

I also ignore her indignant protests when I pop the tire off, replace it with the donut, and tighten the lug nuts back down. “Got places to be,” I grunt at her.