Josephine stood outside of the door to the “bag room,” so marked with a golden plaque, where caddies arrived to retrieve their golfer’s clubs before tee off. Loud laughter reached her from the other side of the door. All men. Obviously, she’d known that would be the case—there were no other women caddying on the tour. Having grown up on a golf course, this male-dominated world was familiar territory. But she wouldn’t be working behind the counter of a pro shop today or giving someone’s teenager a golf lesson.
This was the highest rung on the professional ladder.
She’d absorbed every ounce of knowledge there was to soak in on this sport. She’d lived, eaten, and breathed it for years. Technically, though, one could make the argument that she hadn’t quite earned a spot this lofty—and she was positive that argument had already been made by the other caddies. Possibly even expounded on.
Deep breath.
Deep breath.
She would earn the right to be there. Starting today.
Josephine ran a finger over the golden plaque and started to push the door open—
“Hey.”
At the sound of Wells’s voice, her insides joggled. She turned to find him approaching, obviously having come from the player’s locker room, located on the other side of the clubhouse . . . and wow, time was doing nothing to dull the impact of him. She’d seen him only a matter of hours ago. And she’d seen him a ton over the last five years. But there was something about having all of that glowering energy directed at her that made certain parts of her anatomy bat their eyelashes. “Hey,” she responded. “I was just going to grab the bag and meet you at the starting point. I’m not late!”
A riot of laughter blasted through the door.
Wells looked at it. Then back at Josephine.
“Why are you standing out here?” Danger flickered in his eyes, muscles tensing, as though preparing for a fight. “Are they not letting you in?”
“No, nothing like that. I was just taking a second.”
He relaxed. Slightly. “Why do you need a second?”
There was no way on God’s green earth that she was going to tell her boss she was having a rare moment of intimidation. He needed to have full confidence in her now or he wouldn’t be able to trust her out on the course. “I was admiring the plaque.”
“Josephine, you’re such a fucking golf nerd.”
“I know.” She took a hard swallow. “Meet you down there?”
“Yeah.” He started to move, then stopped. “Do you want me to ask the tournament director for a separate bag room? No one would question it. And I guess . . .” He rolled a shoulder. “I would prefer it.”
“Why?”
“Might be some shirtless guys in there.” He glared at the door, then Josephine. “Just so we’re clear, this is not a jealousy thing. I’m just trying to preserve your modesty.”
“My hero,” she breathed. “Protecting my innocent nature one hairy nipple at a time.”
“Quit that.” He adjusted his stance and hesitated before asking, “Do you not like hair on a man’s chest, or . . .”
Why was he asking? Did he have a lot of the stuff?
Did he like it when a woman twisted it? Or would he rather twist a woman’s hair?
The breath seemed to get trapped in her lungs until she could slowly let it out.
Whatever Wells had underneath his shirt, he probably owned it. Just swaggering around in unbuttoned jeans, wet hair, and bare feet like a cowboy after a one-night stand, the very picture of confidence.
“I don’t deem men dateable or undateable based on body hair,” she said, trying successfully to rid herself of that far too appealing vision. “But I am very picky about feet.”
A dark eyebrow shot up. “Feet?”
“Yup.”
Briefly, his attention dropped to his cleats. “What are your judging criteria?”
“It’s not really something I can put into words,” she mused. “Cleanliness is very key, obviously, but . . . I don’t know. I guess I’m not overly partial to those long, skinny bones being visible at all times.” She shivered. “It helps that every man in Florida wears sandals.”
“That way, you can weed out the poor bony-footed saps.”
“Precisely.”
Frowning, he shook his head at Josephine. “Christ.”
Ignoring his obvious disapproval, she tipped her head toward the door. “You know I have to go in there or I’m going to be called a high-maintenance princess for the rest of the tour.”
Wells was already nodding. “That’s the only reason I didn’t already ask for the separate bag room when I entered us. It would have been bullshit, belle, but I didn’t want you having to deal with that. And let’s face it, I’d probably break someone’s nose and get us booted.”
For some reason, his use of the word “us” flushed her with warmth. As did his protectiveness of her. Funny, she always thought a man threatening violence on her behalf would be a turn off. Coming from Wells, it only made her feel embarrassingly giddy. “I’m glad you didn’t ask for a separate room.” She pushed at his shoulder. It didn’t budge an inch. “Go take some practice swings. I’ll try to survive the hairy-nipple forest.”
“Is that before or after the bony-foot fountain?”
And so, Josephine was giggling like a middle schooler as she walked into the bag room. When a hush spread through the packed gathering of dudes, she wasn’t thinking about their estimation of her. She was wondering if Wells had timed his visit and made her laugh on purpose, so she wouldn’t be nervous entering the testosterone zone. That wasn’t possible.
Was it?
Josephine scanned the wall for Wells’s name, which would appear over a designated locker holding his clubs, along with her official uniform.
“Over here, Josephine,” called a familiar voice.
Ricky, the caddie she’d met at the party last night. He stood toward the back of the bag room, indicating the locker beside his own.
“Thanks,” she murmured, sidling up beside him and opening the door to find a fresh, white mesh vest with the name Whitaker on the back. Her inner fangirl must still have been lurking deep down, because a squeal threatened to burst from her throat. Forcing herself to be all business, she tugged the loose vest on over her head, satisfied that it paired well with her pleated black skort, and she shouldered the heavy leather bag. “Are you heading down?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” Ricky replied, grinning. “If we don’t have a good round, at least we know there’s a good round of drinks afterward.”
“Amen to that.”
All eyes were on them, the two newcomers, as they headed to the exit.
“Good luck with Whitaker,” someone called behind her. It was a veteran caddie she recognized well. He carried the bag for Calhoun and got a lot of screen time while his pro cleaned up at every tournament. “His last three caddies hated his guts.”
“She’s going to need more than luck,” said someone else. “She needs a miracle.”
“Legend has it, Whitaker’s game is still at the bottom of the lake at Sawgrass.”
Snorts and chuckles filled the room.
“That’s enough,” one of the older caddies snapped at the men, before winking at her. “You’re going to do just fine out there.”
Josephine gave him a grateful look. “I will, thanks.” She hesitated before walking out the door behind Ricky. Now would be a good time to show them they could push her around if they wanted, but she could give it back just as easily. “By the way,” she called to the caddie who’d made the crack about Wells’s leaving his game at the bottom of a lake. “I’m sure it’s not your fault your golfer always ends up in the sand trap. But maybe if you like the beach so much, you should book a vacation, instead.”
A roar of laughter carried Josephine out of the bag room.
Ricky fist-bumped her.
And that was the last good thing that happened that day.
* * *
Golf tournaments lasted four grueling days.
On the afternoon of day one, shit did not look good.
As a once-certified Wells Whitaker fangirl, she’d already been aware of his difficult attitude. But he must have shoveled cranky pills into his mouth by the fistful, because as soon as she handed him the driver at the first hole, he became a stone-faced gargoyle. Everything she suggested was greeted with a grunt or some sort of disagreement. He did so much cursing, not one, but two, officials had to roll up on their golf carts to warn him, and he’d broken his five iron by bashing it into a tree.
As soon as they finished, Wells stormed off the green to deliver his daily scorecard to the officials.
“Damn,” Ricky said, coming up beside her. “And I thought we had a bad round.”
Simultaneously, they looked over at Ricky’s golfer, Manny Tagaloa. He was standing just off the green, utterly still, with a towel draped over his head.
“At least you finished even,” Josephine muttered, throwing her bag up onto her shoulder. “We’re going into tomorrow three over par.”
“Drinks after we clean up?”
“The stiffer the better.”
An hour and a half later, Josephine slumped onto her stool beside Ricky at the hotel’s lobby bar. They were lucky to find seats, with sunburned and half-drunk golf spectators taking up every inch of real estate. When the bartender finally found a moment to take their orders, Ricky asked for a pint of lager and a lemon drop martini for Josephine. Normally, she would avoid something so sweet, but her blood sugar was flagging after walking all day and she desperately needed the boost.
“How did you get hooked up with Tagaloa?” she asked, after sighing into her first sip.
“He’s a friend of my brother’s from college, actually,” Ricky answered. “We met at a bachelor party. Vegas. We were paired up for a round and something clicked. He got his tour card a week later. Right place, right time, I guess.”
“Love that for you.”
“Me too.” The other caddie laughed quietly to himself. “What about you and Whitaker? How did that happen?”
“Well.” She drew out the word. “I used to be a fan. Like, that’s an understatement. I was a sideline warrior. Wore his merch to tournaments and cheered him on.”
Ricky’s eyes widened during her explanation. “Back when he was winning?”
“No, as recently as a month ago.”
“Wow.” He took a pull of his beer. “That’s . . . admirable.”
“Thanks. That’s how we met, anyway. Then he quit.” She peered down into the yellowish-white depths of her drink. “When the hurricane hit Palm Beach, he happened to be in the neighborhood and came to check on me. It kind of just . . . went from there.”
Ricky blinked a couple of times. “He happened to be in the neighborhood?”
“That’s right.”
Another pause. “Doesn’t he live in Miami?”
“Yes. He was visiting a friend.”
“Huh.” He watched the television behind the bar for several seconds, which, of course, was showing a recap of the day’s best golf shots. Safe to say Wells would not be featured. “And this friend was . . . whom?”
Josephine wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer to tell me. Which probably means it was a woman.”
“Right.” He brought the pint glass to his lips again. “Not sure I would bank on that.”
“Oh. Why?”
Before Ricky could answer, Josephine’s phone started hopping around on the bar. She picked it up, expecting her parents to be calling with some heartfelt encouragement. But it wasn’t her parents. It was Tallulah.
She gasped and snatched the phone to her chest. “I’m sorry, I have to answer this. My friend is calling all the way from Antarctica.”
“Jesus,” Ricky said, shooing her away. “Go.”
“Be right back.”
“Don’t be surprised if your drink is gone,” he drawled.
“It’s yours.” As soon as Josephine hopped off the stool, she tapped the screen to answer and held the phone to her ear, venturing into a slightly less populated section of the bar. “You’re alive! I was starting to think you’d succumbed to frostbite or an angry walrus attack.”
“The day is young.” Tallulah sighed lustily. “It sounds like you’re in a bar. I remember those. Vaguely. Are you on a date, Miss Doyle?”
“A friendly one, maybe. I’m in San Antonio at the Texas Open.”
“And no one was shocked.”
“Tallulah, you’re not going to believe this.” She hopped in a tiny circle. “I’m caddying for Wells Whitaker.”
“Yeeeessss, Josephine.” Her best friend drew the word out, clearly not believing her. “And I’ve joined the penguin colony. I’m their illustrious new leader.”
Josephine gasped. “That’s amazing. Do you get benefits?”
“Only the best. Dental and everything.” Tallulah made a halting sound. “I miss you so much. I love what I’m doing, but they put me on assignment with three scientists who don’t grasp the concept of sarcasm. When I leave the research center and tell them I’m going for a swim, they take me seriously. I mean, if I dipped in a toe, I would probably die.”
“Have you tested that theory just to be sure?”
“I love you. Come to Antarctica. We have porpoises.”
“I would, but I have to wash my hair?”
“And caddie for Wells Whitaker, of course,” she said, in a very wink-wink-nudge-nudge tone. “What is he like one-on-one? And by he, I mean his derriere, obviously.”
“Juicy as ever. You can’t spell khaki without the ‘a’ and the ‘h.’ As in ahhhhh, there’s that tight bubble butt.”
“Oh yes.” Her friend’s muffled laughter made a smile bloom on Josephine’s face. “That old slogan.”
“It’s a classic.” She stepped aside to let someone pass on their way to the bathroom, her back bumping into something hard. “Sorry,” she said, half turning, but failing to look at who was behind her. “Unfortunately, the butt doesn’t make up for his temper. Or his lack of manners and inability to take helpful suggestions. Or his—”
The phone was plucked out of her hand.
Josephine whirled around, her gaze connecting with an unshaven jaw, before traveling upward to meet an unreadable pair of brown eyes.
Wells.
Was standing in front of her.
How much of her phone call had he overheard?
“I don’t know what my caddie was going to say next, but I’m guessing it was something like, ‘Or his tentative backswing.’ She loves to give me shit about that.”
Josephine could only gape.
“I might disagree with a few of her points, but everything she said about my ass is true. It’s world-class.” He ended the call and handed the phone back to Josephine. “Up to bed. I don’t want you hungover in the morning.”
Shock washed over her like an icy waterfall, followed by anger spouting like a geyser in her middle and shooting acid up into her throat. “My best friend was calling me from Antarctica, you donkey. I haven’t talked to her in three weeks.” If that was an instant flash of regret that moved in his face, she didn’t care to acknowledge it. “And it doesn’t matter if I’m hungover or chipper as a bluebird, I might as well be talking to a brick wall out there!”
His smile was tight. “At the very least, you enjoyed the ass show.”
“Hang on to it with both hands, because right now, it’s all you’ve got.”
A lump moved almost discreetly in his throat. “Quitting already?”
Josephine’s irritation graduated to the next level. “Is that what you were trying to do? Test me to see if I’d quit?”
He crossed his arms. “Are you?”
Something about his belligerence and the challenge in his eyes made her recall their conversation early that morning. Maybe I take chances and set them on fire. Buck isn’t the first one to get sick of my shit and bail. Well, if he expected the same of her, he hadn’t been paying attention. Nor would she give him the satisfaction of being like everyone else. “Nope! I’m staying. If for no other reason than to piss you off.” She looked down at her phone helplessly, knowing she could try to call back the number, but it probably wouldn’t connect. She’d tried several times in the past after getting disconnected. Reception was horrible where Tallulah was working and she was allotted only so much time on the landline.
Dammit.
A very dramatic bubble expanded in her chest and she needed to get upstairs before it burst. “For better or worse, I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
She shouldered past a stone-faced Wells on her way to the bar. After a brief apology to Ricky that he seemed to understand—since the entirety of the bar was now silent in the wake of her argument with Wells—she left some money for her drink and beelined for the lobby elevators. One of them opened right away, thankfully, and she stepped into the empty car.
Before the doors could close, a big hand slammed down between them, trundling them back open. Wells had followed her? Brave man.
After observing Josephine for the barest moment, he moved into the elevator beside her, both of them staring at the numbers overhead as they ticked upward, the air between them vibrating like the tail of a rattlesnake.
“I shouldn’t have hung up the phone.”
“We’ll pile it onto your mountain of transgressions.”
She sensed him wincing. “A whole mountain, huh?”
“By the end of the week, we should have a full range. We’ll call it the Dumbass Alps.”
“You really intend on staying that long?”
“I’m not going to answer that question again. If you thought I was going to quit so easily, why did you ask me to caddie for you in the first place?”
As soon as the doors opened on her floor, she practically leapt through the breach, leaving her question hanging in the air. Wells’s heavy footsteps followed behind her. “Whether you’re going to bail or not is a valid concern, Josephine. Hell, you’re quitting this conversation pretty easily, aren’t you?”
She threw her head back and groaned at the hallway ceiling. “Only so I don’t put you on the injured list for the rest of the tournament.” Having reached her door, she slid the key card out of her clutch and slapped it down on the sensor, making the green light flash. Her intention was to go inside and shut the door, restore her calm in the peace and quiet of the enormous bathtub or perhaps one of three seating areas, like Goldilocks’s angry cousin. But something had been in the forefront of her mind for the last twenty minutes. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ricky’s skeptical reaction about Wells’s unexpected arrival after the hurricane. So she stopped with a hand on the door and let her mouth take over, because anger had disengaged her brain. “Who were you visiting in Palm Beach? When you just happened to swing by Rolling Greens?”
A shutter dropped down, rendering his face expressionless. “What?”
“Who were you visiting?”
His cheek twitched. “I don’t like questions, belle. Remember?”
Surely, fire was bursting from her ears. “Oh, really? Well I don’t like this feeling that you’re playing games with me.”
That statement made him jerk back, visibly baffled. “I would not play games with you.”
“All day, you ignored me and brushed me off because you want me to quit, because it would justify your whole screw-the-world philosophy. That’s not a game?”
He blinked, staring at the wall for a moment, as if only now realizing what he’d done. “I . . . wouldn’t. Not intentionally.”
“Right.” She exhaled sharply. “I’m just so glad I get to ruin that expectation for you.”
“Everyone before you has quit,” Wells said through his teeth, taking one purposeful step toward her. Then another. A third. Until he was so close, she could taste the soap from his shower when she inhaled. He cupped the back of her neck and turned her around, then slid his fingers up into her hair, tightening them around the strands and drawing her head back as his mouth moved closer from above.
Everything inside Josephine went on the highest of alerts, her nerve endings blaring like miniature alarms, her mouth parting with the sudden desperation to inhale his exhales, breathe him in, despite the argument taking place. His body was so firm and hot against hers, his height and strength making her wonder if he could do anything but manhandle a woman in bed. Would he try to be gentle and lose it toward the end? Or never bother with gentle at all?
“You don’t want games? Fine. I wasn’t visiting anyone in Palm Beach. I came for you.” Those four words glazed her eyes and made her heart twist like a crank. “I’m sorry I hung up on your friend,” he said, very precisely. “I was standing there listening to all the reasons I knew you were going to fucking quit, belle—”
“I’m not,” she whispered, battling the urge to either bite his mouth or kiss it. Or both.
“We’ll see.”
Like, was he . . . not going to kiss her?
People didn’t engage in mere conversations with their mouths an inch apart. Right?
Maybe he really wanted to drive home his apology?
Goodness. His eyes were . . . so beautiful and rich from this distance, his hand so assertive in her hair that she couldn’t help wanting to offer him the whole package. Even if she was mad. Maybe because she was mad.
With his eyes fastened on her mouth, he slowly dragged his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. The breadth of his chest dipped and swelled. “Get some rest,” he rasped. “You have a long day of putting up with me tomorrow.” He released her with obvious regret and stepped back. “I’ll wear my tightest pants.”
“Thanks,” she said, dazed. “I mean—”
“Good night, Josephine.” He turned and swaggered down the hall. “Enjoy watching me go. You earned it.”
“I take it back. I quit.”
His booming laughter echoed as he entered the elevator, then was gone altogether.
Josephine all but sleepwalked into the room, the words I came for you repeating in her head until she finally fell asleep.
