The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(43)

She blinks, and her body tenses.

Jesus.

I’m tensing too. “You’re right,” I add.

Pretty sure she couldn’t go back to flailing around again right now even if she wanted to.

I’d bet my tree house and every last one of my goats that I’m sorry and you’re right aren’t phrases that she hears from anyone beyond people who are paid to say it to her.

Her grandmother saying sorry?

Not a chance.

Her parents?

When pigs fly.

Her siblings?

And where would they have learned that being wrong is okay?

I know her world.

I don’t want to remember that I know her world, but I do.

Apologies are for the weak. Do something wrong, you double down that you’re right until everyone around you believes it too.

I fucking hate her world.

She licks her lips again. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she whispers.

“Do what?”

“Make me like you more.”

Before I can let myself begin to process what that means, Phoebe Lightly does the last thing I would’ve expected a week ago and the first thing on my list of Events I’ll Regret Tomorrow.

She angles her lips to mine, and she kisses me.

And I do the last thing I would’ve expected of myself a week ago, and I let her.

Let her.

Fine.

I’m lying. I’m not letting her.

I’m meeting her halfway.

Of everything I thought kissing Phoebe Lightly would be—and yes, unfortunately, I have thought about kissing Phoebe Lightly—soft was not the first word that would’ve come to mind.

Soul sucking, yes.

Angry, definitely.

Controlling.

Manipulative.

In charge.

Unpleasant all around. That’s what I expected from kissing Phoebe Lightly.

But soft? Tentative? Curious?

From the woman who tried to make an entire lake bow before her, who meets every challenge with such headstrong will that she’d probably leap out of a plane without a parachute just to prove she could fly?

Never.

Yet here we are, with her lips asking permission from mine for this to be something more.

Like she needs this kiss to assure her that no matter who she is or who she isn’t, she’s still worthy of simple human affection.

Fuck.

I like this kiss.

I like soft Phoebe.

I don’t care if I have a sticker burr poking through my shirt too close to my armpit or if a wild boar’s about to leap out of the woods and trample us.

She tastes like cinnamon and a fresh spring morning. Like sipping chai in the sunshine after the rain. Her fingers dance across my neck, like she’s afraid to touch me but unable to resist at the same time. Her lips part, and God.

Soft, vulnerable, sexy Phoebe.

I’m such a sucker for a lost soul. Especially when that lost soul is doing so damn much work to find herself despite all the reasons she doesn’t have to.

A horn honks, and she leaps back as much as she can with us tangled on the ground like this, gasping, eyes wide for a split second before she tumbles sideways, getting me in the gut once again with her elbow. “I didn’t—we didn’t—that didn’t—”

“Hello, there,” Deer Drop Floyd calls. “You folks need a hand? Oh. Teague. It’s you.”

Fucking Deer Drop Floyd.

“Just a flat tire,” I tell him.

A flat tire, blue balls, and a blossoming obsession with one unexpectedly and inconveniently attractive socialite lady boss.

“We fixed it, thank you.” Phoebe’s managed to get untangled enough to rise without assistance—naturally—and she’s smoothing a hand over her not-so-fancy, but still undoubtedly expensive, dress and cardigan.

She doesn’t look at me.

Deer Drop Floyd lifts his sunglasses and sets them on top of his ball cap, squinting at her, then at me, then back to her. “Aren’t you—”

“Getting back to Tickled Pink now,” I interrupt. I grab Phoebe by the elbow and point to the passenger seat. “I’m late to see my daughter. Later, Floyd. Thanks for stopping.”

“Couldn’t hardly not, what with your bad parking job.”

Phoebe flinches.

I mentally flip off the asshole who stole Ridhi’s coconut-pudding recipe. “Thanks, Floyd. I’ll put that in my self-improvement bucket.”

That, and no more kissing Phoebe Lightly.

She’s a blip. And not the kind of blip I need to have a fling with, no matter how much progress she makes on her own definition of being a better human.





Chapter 14


Phoebe


Teague Miller broke me with a kiss.

Yes, yes, I know. Technically, I kissed him.

I could argue he made me do it by being so kind and competent and patient, except I’d be lying to myself.

One, he’s not patient. And two, he didn’t make me do anything.

Nothing I didn’t want to do, that is. And this morning, less than twenty-four hours after the sticker-bush kiss, listening to Gigi’s analysis of the scene in Pink Gold when Whitney Anastasia realizes that Tickled Pink is actually the golden gates to heaven and that she can’t pass through town to go see if her son made it to heaven until she’s done enough good deeds to even her balance sheet, I’m realizing that Gigi can’t make me be a better person.