The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(94)

He points over the field to a tall guy in a cowboy hat who’s currently talking to the ladies who run the Pink Box and the nail salon.

They’re all giggling.

The ladies, I mean. The cowboy is smiling, but I can’t make out much more than that with dusk settling over the field.

“Who do you think it is?” I ask him.

He leans in and whispers, “Jonah Beauregard.”

I choke on air and try not to laugh. “Willie Wayne. Why would Jonah Beauregard . . .”

Wait.

Hell.

No, she didn’t.

My grandmother did not actually invite more people from our social circles here to become better people . . . did she?

Willie Wayne grunts. “She told us all she wanted to buy that community center to host her biographers and whatever you call the people who make movies about people. Documentarians? I dunno. But I do know she hasn’t had a single visitor, and I’m thinking it’s because she doesn’t want to tell us her real plans, and I think her real plans are probably way more terrifying, and I think Jonah Beauregard has something to do with them.”

He’s right that Gigi was making up the story about her biographers, but I think he’s wrong about her using it as an office for expanding her soul-improvement project.

She’d just move them into the school.

I eyeball him. “How do you even know who Jonah Beauregard is?”

Me? Of course I know who Jonah Beauregard is. We don’t run in the same circles—he’s old Texas oil money, and I’m old Upper East Side Remington Lightly money, so we’ve never met in person—but any good socialite knows what’s going on in other socialite circles.

It’s the backup plan if your own life falls to shit.

Willie Wayne mutters something.

I give him the Lightly eyebrow.

“Lola’s Tiny House,” he repeats, louder. “Lola was talking about him on last week’s episode, so I looked him up.”

“There’s a new episode?” I hiss.

His grin goes sly. “If you weren’t so busy with the hanky-panky, you could have time for the watchy-watchy.”

“Watchy-watchy?”

“Bingey-bingey?” He grins bigger.

I try—and fail—to not smile back. “You’re ridiculous. Come on. Let’s go investigate this supposed oil heir and find out if he’s really who he says he is.”

Gigi’s overseeing a beanbag-toss game. Carter’s propped on a picnic table, strumming his guitar. Dad’s deep in conversation with some people from Deer Drop. Tavi’s disappeared.

Naturally.

Right when it’s time to clean up.

Bridget was playing the beanbag game, but she’s disappeared too.

So has Teague.

Huh. Maybe they both had to use the restroom.

Willie Wayne and I approach the small cluster of women and the cowboy, who straightens and nods to me. “Ms. Lightly?”

Beneath the cowboy hat, he’s wearing an Armani jacket over a white button-down, Tom Ford jeans, cowboy boots that I know nothing about—dating Texas money was never on my radar enough for me to learn boot fashion—and a belt buckle the size of the Milky Way.

He has a short beard, a noticeable scar beneath his left eye, and the confident air that comes with growing up in high society.

If this man isn’t Jonah Beauregard, he’s doing a damn good impression of the oil heir.

“Mr. Beauregard.” I hold out a hand, intending to shake, but I get a gentleman’s kiss to my knuckles.

“Call me Jonah,” he says with a warm smile that catches me off guard.

Not because I think he’s faking it any more than the people in my old circles do.

But because it’s a weirdly familiar smile.

Total déjà vu moment here.

“Jonah.” I extract my hand. “Please tell me my grandmother hasn’t blackmailed you into being her next victim.”

His smile grows broader. “No, ma’am. I’m here on personal business of my own.”

“He’s looking for someone,” one of the women around us whispers.

“His long-lost brother,” the other chimes in.

“Now, ma’am, I didn’t say that I was—” he starts.

“Who else would you be looking for?” Willie Wayne interrupts. “Unless you’re secretly in love with Tavi Lightly?”

“Excuse me,” I interject like my brain hasn’t just gone spinning, “but there are two eligible Lightly daughters here for a man to be secretly in love with.”

All of them study me for a second.

“Nah, he wouldn’t be crushing on you,” Willie Wayne declares.

One of the women elbows him.

“He meant that in the nice way,” the other woman tells me.

“Your personal business?” I prompt Jonah Beauregard again.

There’s not an official rule number four of being a Lightly, but if there were, it would be Never forget what you know about other members of the upper echelons of society.

Didn’t think I’d need it here, and I don’t want it, but everything I know about Jonah Beauregard and his family is flashing through my brain.

Can’t help it.

It’s what I’ve been trained to do all my life.