The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(63)

Estelle’s butler, who she’s rumored to be having an affair with, also has a table of baked goods set up.

His are labeled with fancy placards that say things like scones and crumpets and English biscuits, but most everything looks like hockey pucks.

To be fair, some are brown or tan hockey pucks, but those crumpets would definitely be mistaken for a real hockey puck.

And they’re charging double normal snowshoe baseball refreshment rates.

“Premium comes at a price, darling,” Estelle said to me when I questioned if she was trying to fleece our friends.

“What’s edibility cost?” I threw back before Bridget shushed me in a rare reversal of roles.

Dylan chuckles next to me. I slide him a look, remember I’m in my hat and sunglasses so he can’t see me looking at him, and nudge him instead. He’s about my height, white, brown hair, a few years younger than me, and the ladies in my life tell me he looks more like a high school quarterback than he does a plumber.

They also tell me he behaves much better than a high school quarterback.

And that’s usually when I tell them all to stop talking.

“What?” I ask him.

“All the fancy people in Tickled Pink. Think it was like this when they were shooting the movie all those years ago?”

“No.”

Willie Wayne chuckles. “Don’t mind him, Dylan. Got a burr up his butt because he doesn’t like that he likes one of ’em.”

“Which one?” Dylan asks.

I shake my head at them. “None. None of them.”

Willie Wayne nods. “That’s why he keeps dropping by the high school to tell them not to leave the doorframes out in the football field overnight when they’re painting.”

They’re ridiculous. “If we’re repurposing the building into a museum for the movie when they’re gone, we don’t need to be sanding bug guts off the doors and repainting them again ourselves.”

“He’s only been helping Phoebe, though,” Willie Wayne stage-whispers to Dylan.

“Ah. The taller one.” Dylan flips his baseball cap around and tilts his head at them. “What’s the story on the other granddaughter?”

“Social media influencer.” Jane follows the pronouncement by spitting in the dirt.

“Don’t trust her,” Willie Wayne adds. “She’s too nice.”

“Definitely an angle,” Jane agrees.

“Like she’s luring us in.”

“She’s a worm on a hook, and we’re the catfish.”

“Probably planning on writing an exposé.”

“Or painting herself as the victim of small-town life.”

“Not our fault her grandmother keeps trying to fix the plumbing herself.”

“And forgetting to put a sign on the door when she’s doing the nasty with her butler in the locker room.”

I cringe. “Can we not talk about that? Does anyone need that mental image?”

As if she’s psychic, Phoebe turns and looks directly at me.

Rumor made it around that the reason she was out in that thunderstorm was that she was the one who found her grandmother in the shower, naked with the butler, and that it was the straw that finally broke her.

And I can’t stop thinking how grateful I am that she turned to me when she needed comfort.

Been too long. It’s not that I like Phoebe Lightly. It’s that—all right, fine.

I like Phoebe Lightly. And she’s sexy to boot.

“Mr. Miller, could you please explain the rules of this game to us one more time?” she calls. “We seem to have different understandings of the goal here.”

“Goal’s to win,” I call.

“Yes, but we need to define win.” She’s fucking hot when her eyes narrow in determination like that.

“It’s like she knows we win if her family face-plants in the sawdust,” Jane murmurs.

Willie Wayne nods. “She’s the smart one.”

I angle over to the bench like I haven’t been itching to come this way since I set foot on the ball diamond. The rest of the Lightlys are watching me with undisguised suspicion.

You get used to it after a while.

Helps that they should be suspicious. Tonight? Playing snowshoe baseball?

This is one more step in my plans to convince Estelle Lightly that she’s not built for small-town Wisconsin life.

“Goal’s to score the most runs,” I tell Phoebe.

Tavi curls a lock of hair around her finger. Her dog’s also in a uniform, sitting on the bench beside her, its leash tied around the leg of the bench. “Do you get extra points if you make it around the bases without falling?”

“Nope.”

“Told you,” Carter mutters. “They just want to see us covered in sawdust.”

“And eating it too,” I tell him.

Phoebe frowns at me.

I grin. “What? We all eat it eventually.”

“Thank God I’m management,” Margot says.

“You’re playing with the rest of us, Mother,” Carter replies.

“The team that eats dirt together . . .” Phoebe frowns deeper. “I actually don’t know what we do to celebrate eating dirt. Teague?”

Why does my name on her lips sound like an invitation to strip her out of those baseball pants? “Sawdust. The team that eats sawdust together . . . sprouts . . . new trees. Together.”