The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(83)

If I were feeling masochistic, I’d ask myself why I’m so attracted to her, but I don’t want to dwell on how very, very similar we are.

Old memories have been haunting me enough lately.

I just want to lie here, with her fingers threading through my hair and lightly scratching my scalp, her heart beating strong beneath my ear, one rosy nipple in view every time I open my eyes, and just be.

No complications.

No past. No future.

Just now.

“I always wanted to do something naughty in a principal’s office,” I murmur against her skin.

“The office is my closet. This is actually the secretary’s room,” she replies.

“I always wanted to do something naughty with the school secretary.”

Her laughter gives my soul wings in a way I haven’t felt since— Nope.

Not talking about that either.

This?

This is temporary and fun, and my brain can shut up if it wants to go anywhere else. Or we can talk about her. “You’re baiting the Tickled Pink gossip brigade on purpose.”

She gasps. “I would never.”

I angle my head to eyeball her, and there it is.

That twitch of her lips that says she’s lying.

One more thing I didn’t expect to like about her, yet here we are. “Admit it, Phoebe.”

“I admit nothing.”

“Who are you protecting by taking the brunt of the gossip?”

She sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “Maybe I like all of the attention.”

“Including from the gossip rags in New York?”

And there’s the wince. “The night Gigi choked on her dinner and almost died, we were having an argument over a very public breakup I’d just gone through, and I told her there was always someone else waiting in the wings to make more drama. That it passes and people forget.”

“Only until it’s convenient for them to remember again,” I mutter.

Her laugh isn’t quite as lighthearted as it was a few minutes ago. “You learn quick.”

Shit. “People aren’t all that different no matter where they come from. And you’re avoiding the question.”

“It’s a silly question.”

“It’s proof you’re a good person.”

She falls silent, and I angle another glance at her.

It should be weird how comfortable it is to just lie here with her, but it’s not.

“I’m not a good person when I’m in New York,” she says softly. “Here, it’s like—it’s easier. When this year’s over . . . when it’s time to go back . . .”

She trails off as my pulse kicks up. “One day at a time, Phoebe. That’s a long way off. Also, do you always let in the strangers who knock on your window in the middle of the night?”

Her body relaxes beneath me again. “Only the ones who look like serial killers. They give the best orgasms.”

Smiling isn’t my normal expression. Bridget says I have resting twitch face.

Yet here I am, a near-perpetual smile on my face, because of Phoebe Lightly. “Only to the women we enjoy torturing the most.”

She sighs, but it’s not a frustrated sigh or a snorty sigh or a stuck-up sigh.

It’s a content sigh that comes with her fingers drifting down to trace my ear, making my cock stir again.

“Why is it so easy to just have fun with you?” she asks.

“I’m a fun guy.”

“You’re a grumpy fishing lumberjack.”

I lift my head and attempt to do that eyebrow thing she’s always doing.

She laughs softly while she keeps stroking my ear. “I know, I know. I’m a bitchy socialite workaholic.”

“Are you?”

She sighs again, and this one isn’t nearly as content. “I thought I could win this thing Gigi has us doing if I played her game and did a good job with it, except . . . I think I’ve done too good of a job. I can’t see myself going back to New York, to my job, to my social life, to my—to my past, and falling into the same habits without feeling like I’m giving up something that I never realized would matter to me.”

“Your . . . principles? Or just your principal’s office?”

She doesn’t laugh at the joke. “My soul.”

And that’s exactly why I like Phoebe Lightly more than I thought I would.

She has no idea how much we have in common.

I’ve made my own mistakes in life. Wondered about my own soul. Dug out of finding out I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.

Watching her choose the same for herself—it’s like having a front-row seat to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon after going in as a snake.

“I don’t know if I believe in heaven,” she says to the cracked ceiling. “I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. But I know—I know I’ve taken too much for granted. I have more money than some small nations operate with in an entire year. I have connections to high-powered people all over the world. I have access to personal assistants and consultants and concierges who can make nearly anything happen in the blink of an eye. And when I’m gone, they’ll all breathe a sigh of relief that they don’t have to deal with me anymore. They won’t miss me. They won’t talk about how I made their lives better. They’ll remember that time I gave them a watch so that I didn’t have to give it back to an ex-boyfriend, or the time I tried to sleep my way into a promotion, or the time I couldn’t be bothered to learn their names because if they didn’t fold my sheets right, I’d tell my personal assistant to fire them and find someone else who would.”