The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(75)

“Just—stay. Let me make a phone call, and—”

“No, no. I’m good.” She blows out a breath. “I just needed to get that out, and now I’m going to go back to being rational, good-hearted Phoebe who wouldn’t have blinked if I’d busted in on you in the middle of poker night with your buddies. This is only because your kid saw me nearly naked.”

She’s hot as hell. I don’t know what she did to her hair or her makeup, but the whole thing put together—it’s like she planned a night of role-playing “sixties call girl comes to visit the tree house man.”

I subtly adjust my boner and hope Bridget isn’t watching. “You ever sneak out to parties when you were fifteen?”

“Fifteen?” She huffs. “Try eleven.”

“Shh. Jesus. Pretend you’re the parent here.”

“Oh.” Her eyes go wide. “Oh.”

Her skin is gorgeous. And when her mouth goes round like that, the ideas that form in my head— “Bridget! Hey! Rematch on that Yahtzee game?” Phoebe says.

“Ugh.”

I know that ugh too.

That’s the ugh of I thought you were on my side and I could sneak away out of the other side of the house while my dad was distracted staring at your cleavage.

Fuck.

“Did you walk all the way over here in that?” I ask Phoebe after verifying with a quick glance that Bridget is, indeed, heading back inside again.

“Would that turn you on more?” she whispers.

“Yes.”

She licks her lips.

Not good not good not good.

I literally cannot remember the last time a woman licking her lips made me this hard.

“No,” she finally says. “I changed in your weird little fishing storage foyer at the top of the stairs. I just dived into the elevator because it was closer.” Her brows twist. “Oh my God, this town has truly broken me.”

“And yet, I like you so much better this way.”

“Hm.”

I should not be smiling at this woman, but her clear befuddlement with apparently liking that I like her is irresistible.

It’s like we’re both having identity crises.

“Stay,” I start, but she shakes her head.

“Give me the town’s Wi-Fi password, and you can text me when it’s clear to come back.”

This feels like a trap.

All of it.

Every bit.

“Did you convince Bridget to ruin our plans so that you could get the Wi-Fi password?”

God, she’s hot when her lips purse out.

Actually, is there anything she does with her lips that isn’t hot?

“Brilliant and devious as that would be,” she finally says, “I would’ve just paid her for the Wi-Fi password and then let you service my loins.”

“Oh my God, could you two please stop talking?” Bridget shrieks.

I scratch my beard. “At least I know where she’s at . . .”

Phoebe smiles. “You know where to find me if she happens to decide to pout at someone else’s house instead.”

“Hitting on Deer Drop Floyd because you’re desperate?”

“In the principal’s office, Teague. In the principal’s office. Now, if you’re not going to give me the password, let me down so I can go finish dying of mortification in peace.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

“And you don’t need to book an appointment on my calendar to see me naked. Okay? Just . . . drop by and tell anyone who sees you at the school that you’re there about the electricity.”

I glance up at the next level, where I’m fairly certain Bridget is listening in on every word. “Noted.”

She glances up too. “Does she want a party?” she whispers.

And that’s how my booty call turns into an evening in the cafeteria of the old high school instead, with Phoebe mixing virgin drinks for me, my kid, my ex-wife, and her current wife, while Carter Lightly—sorry, Carter Hardly—attempts to provide musical entertainment to go with our charades game.

But my ex-wife still pulls the ultimate cockblock at the end of the night. “You staying with your dad?” she asks Bridget on our way out, when I’m hoping to turn around and sneak right back in.

Bridget nods. “He’ll let me sleep in.”

“Will not,” I declare.

“She’s up at five if she stays with us,” Shiloh says with a smirk.

“Bakery help,” Ridhi agrees.

“After she helps us wash the fire trucks.”

I glare at both of them.

They snicker, attack Bridget with hugs and kisses, link hands, and stroll off into the night.

“I could go home by myself,” Bridget tells me.

Not with that twinkle in her eye, she can’t.

I look back at Phoebe, who’s leaning in the school doorway beneath the giant BOYS sign etched into the concrete overhead.

Wi-Fi, she mouths.

“Dream on,” Bridget says. “If the town gets that million for keeping you off the network, I’m using my part of the scholarship money to study landscaping so that I can put the Fountain of Everlasting Eternity back in, but better. I’ve missed the crucial part of childhood where I frolic in fountains while my parents either take pictures or shriek at me to get out before I freak out all the other people who are watching.”