Wells watched the leaderboard shift on the television screen, his name slipping into the green bracket of players in the top sixty-four.
Unbelievable.
He fell back against the cushions of his hotel room couch and let out a gust of air. An odd, thick feeling crept into the space between his chest and throat, making it difficult to replenish the air in his lungs. He’d made the cut only once this entire season and it had been on a technicality, because the golfer ranked above Wells made an error on his scorecard.
But this?
This was legitimate.
And today’s comeback could be credited to only one thing.
Or . . . ten to be exact.
Josephine’s toes.
Wells dug his knuckles into his eye sockets and filled the suite with a semihysterical laugh. “You’ve lost it. You’ve completely lost it.”
That might have been true, but there was no denying that an atomic bomb of relief and pride and hope, goddammit, had imploded in his stomach when he’d pulled off her socks and seen those little blue miracles staring back at him. There they were, proof that Josephine still had faith in him. She was still his number one fan. He hadn’t lost her. And there had simply been no way in hell he was going to let her regret that.
Wells pushed to his feet and paced to the bathroom, planting his hands on the marble vanity and looking himself in the eye. “Do not go to her room.” He shrugged with forced nonchalance. “Just don’t.”
It wasn’t as though the mere act of going to her room meant something sexual was going to happen. Strange things were taking place inside him, though. Every day that passed with this woman in his life, he shed another layer of numbness and indifference. He was actually looking forward to playing golf tomorrow.
With her.
Near her.
Beside her.
Anywhere she happened to be.
Wells dropped his head forward. “Oh my God, get a fucking grip.”
He might have given her initiation rites when it came to flirting, but the complicated power dynamic between them remained. Currently, Josephine was depending on him for an income. She had a lot at stake.
His phone chimed in his pocket, dissipating his wayward thoughts.
Speak of the . . . angel.
It was Josephine.
Trying valiantly to ignore the tightness in his throat, Wells slid open the text message—and felt every ounce of blood in his body race south. It was a bathroom selfie of Josephine wearing her caddie uniform. And he didn’t know where the hell to look first. Because she’d definitely come through on her end of the bet. Big time.
No pants.
No panties, either, as far as he could tell.
“Holy mother of God.”
She’d tugged the hem of the pinnie down to cover her pussy, but the uniform was cut short by design, so he could see her hips, and there was no sign of underwear. Smooth porcelain as far as the eye could see, with a dusting of freckles in spots that made his mouth water. He was dying to grab and knead and lick her curves. Holy—she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath, either, but it was a fucking tease, because of the mesh. It allowed for only tiny peeks at the flesh beneath, but he wasn’t even going to pretend not to zoom in, trying to make out the dusky color of her nipples.
Right there. Puckered little circles.
He didn’t even care if his horny brain was filling in the blanks.
“Baby.” He raked a hand down the front of his pants and gripped himself. “Fuck.”
JOSEPHINE: Congrats on making the cut. Enjoy your new lock screen.
Wells took several deep breaths—and another five camera zooms—before texting back.
WELLS: Fuck the trophy. I win. Forever.
WELLS: The only thing missing is your face.
Her incredibly gorgeous face that he couldn’t stop thinking about.
JOSEPHINE: Ah, come on. I don’t mind if you leave your face out of mine.
JOSEPHINE: In fact, I prefer it.
He made an affronted sound, his head lifting to study his reflection.
WELLS: I give great face, belle, and you know it.
JOSEPHINE: You’re looking in the mirror, aren’t you?
This woman had no right knowing him so well. No right. And he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to get so lucky. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t alone. He had a . . . friend. A friend he couldn’t stop looking at half naked. Jesus Christ, those thighs.
WELLS: You still want it?
JOSEPHINE: Want what?
WELLS: Your picture of this juicy peach, belle. You still want it?
JOSEPHINE: 🙄 Yes. 🙄
It was a good thing Wells was already unfastening his pants and turning around, so the mirror was reflecting his backside. He’d checked out his own ass plenty of times in the mirror, but he’d never actually taken a bathroom selfie of the damn thing. It took him a few minutes to (a.) find the right angle/lighting and (b.) flex without making it look like he was flexing. But in the end, ha, he got a shot that passed inspection and fired it over.
No response.
Yanking his pants back up, buttoning them, he waited. Waited more. Maybe she’d gotten in the shower?
No, she’d take a bath. She loved that tub.
His condo in Miami had a massive one that he never used, but for some reason, he was suddenly very glad it was there. No conceivable reason.
And now his dick was hard imagining Josephine in his bathtub, caddie uniform plastered to her body. He’d get in there with her. She’d probably make a beard out of the bubbles or some shit—and why did that make his windpipe feel eight times smaller?
He was aroused . . . both physically and emotionally?
What exactly was he supposed to do about that?
Willing his erection to subside, because they’d agreed to flirt and trade pictures, not sleep together, Wells stripped off the clothes he’d worn all day and took a shower, somehow withstanding the temptation to stroke away the frustration.
On one hand, he didn’t have to live with the guilt.
On the other, his balls were stiffer than fucking doorknobs.
Great trade-off.
When he got out of the shower, she still hadn’t answered his text.
All right, now he was starting to get self-conscious. Had she changed her mind about his ass? Better to go ask in person than send some thirsty text, right? Hair still wet, dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, Wells found himself taking the elevator to Josephine’s floor, because apparently, he just wanted to make the pain worse. Somehow, though, staying away from her was its own brand of pain.
“Someone, please, tell me what to do about this girl,” Wells muttered, banging a little too loud on her door. “It’s me.”
After a beat, she answered. “Who is me?”
A vein throbbed in his forehead. “The only man you should be expecting,” he shouted.
“Relax.” She laughed, opening the door, skin looking quite flushed. Interesting. What had she been up to before he knocked? Oh, he had some idea. “I know golfers are weirdly territorial about their caddies, but you’ve really made it an art form.”
Wells couldn’t do anything but stare at the freshly scrubbed and shiny being standing in front of him. In bare feet and a bathrobe. He had a picture on his phone of this woman in nothing but a cropped mesh tank top. He’d sent her a picture of his ass. Were they just going to pretend that wasn’t true? Wells didn’t know. He knew only that, by some phenomenon, she looked equally incredible in the robe as she did half naked. “Uh . . . what?”
She shook her head at him. “Never mind. Are you going to come in?”
He held up his phone and pointed at it. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“My ass selfie, belle,” he exploded. “You didn’t send back a single fire emoji. Are your thumbs broken?”
“I was . . .” She flapped her hands around. “I didn’t know how to respond.”
“You tell me it’s a great freaking ass, that’s how you respond!”
“You already know it’s great!”
“I want to hear it from you!”
“Fine. Fine! It’s firm and bitable and distracting. It’s the kind of butt that probably makes other dudes too self-conscious to shower near you at the gym, because it puts all the other man butts to shame. If there was a harness on your back, your booty could be used as a seat on a roller coaster. Someone should whip it, honestly. It’s an ass-whipping ass.”
He immediately regretted asking for a response. Or maybe the problem was that he didn’t regret it at all and would be thinking about her biting into his butt cheek like an apple for the rest of his life. “Better.” He coughed. “You’re in a robe, Josephine.” Lord, he sounded like he’d been wandering in the desert for a week. “Do you want to put something on?”
Briefly, she looked down, then back up at him with an arched brow. “You’ve seen me in less now, haven’t you?” she said dryly. “But let me know if you’re going to succumb to the vapors. I’ll ring the front desk for smelling salts.”
With that, she let the door close, giving Wells no choice but to catch it and step inside, shutting it behind him. He’d made a mistake coming here. The room was fragrant from her bath, flowers and soap scenting the air. She’d turned on just a single lamp, lending a heavy intimacy to the room. Mood lighting that could only be termed as dangerous.
“Actually, I was going to get dressed and go to your room,” Josephine said, taking a seat on the couch and tucking her feet beneath her. “You saved me a trip.”
He hesitated at the end of the couch. “Why were you coming to my room?”
God man, try to sound a little less horny.
Easier said than done. He couldn’t stop wondering what, if anything, she was wearing beneath that fluffy white robe. And how warm her skin would still be from the bath.
Did hot water make her limber?
Enough, asshole.
Something might very well be happening here, between them. Not that he had any idea what it was. But their positions as employee and employer made the tightrope they were walking on very thin, so he needed to navigate it carefully, for her sake.
“Well.” She shifted her position, tucking a section of wet hair behind her ear. “What I was going to say . . . it seemed like a good idea when I was in the bath. But now that you’re standing here in front of me looking like you just woke up from a forty-year coma and found out cars can fly . . . I’m second-guessing myself.”
“Fuck. Sorry.” Wells dragged a hand down his face. She had no idea how embarrassingly apt a description that was. He sat down on the opposite end of the couch. “Guess I’m still a little shell-shocked after that round today.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I knew you had it in you.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?” he said in a rush. It was that or kiss her.
“Okay. Okay.” She folded her hands in her lap. Took a breath.
Oh, this was important.
Wells turned to face her a little more.
“I don’t want to be too long-winded about the whole thing,” she started. “But . . . you know, my parents were really protective when I was growing up. Because of . . .” She waved a hand at her insulin kit, which was sitting open on the coffee table. “You know.”
Wells swallowed. “I follow.”
“Like, my mother quit her job when I was diagnosed, so she could be home in case my elementary school called with an emergency. So, my parents were telling me everything was going to be fine, that I could live a normal, happy life like everyone else, but their actions said otherwise. I couldn’t possibly be like everyone else if they felt the need to alert my soccer coaches or the parents of my friends. Or if they screamed, ‘Do you have the emergency shot?’ at each other every time we left the house.”
A zipper had formed at the center of his chest and it closed one tooth at a time, tightening, tightening. “That was probably really scary.”
Josephine nodded. Took a moment to keep going. “Anyway, when I got older, I just needed to shut them out. When it came to my diabetes. For my own good. For their own good—I mean, the worry was going to kill them. They were doing their best. I love them. But I’m the one who has to live with it, you know? I’m the only one who understands. It’s hard when other people get involved, because they remind me to be scared.”
The air supply in the room had dwindled down to nothing. “Do you need to be scared?”
“If I overthink it? Yes. My life depends on this vial of insulin. But as long as I have what I need, I can live to be a hundred. People are told every day that they have conditions they can’t live with. That makes me lucky in a sad, doesn’t-have-a-working-pancreas kind of way, right?”
This wasn’t the first time it had hit Wells how easily he could have chalked this woman up to being an overzealous fan. A face in the crowd. A beautiful one, sure, but a mere member of his cheering section, nonetheless. When, in fact, she should be celebrated everywhere she went. Wells ached to tell her she was so fucking brave, but intuition told him she wouldn’t react well. It would remind her there was something to be scared about and she’d just told him she hated that.
He thought of the emergency glucagon shot back in his room, stored in his luggage.
The one her mother had overnighted him.
Should he send it back? How would Josephine feel knowing he had it?
“You are,” he said, without thinking.
“I am, what?”
“Going to live to be a hundred. I demand it.”
The dimple that formed on her cheek made him want to die. “You just don’t want to find a new caddie.”
Wells grunted.
She was sitting extremely far away.
Frowning at her, for some reason, he moved to the center of the couch, jerking his chin in a silent command for her to snuggle beneath his arm. “Come on. Before I change my mind.”
Instead of cozying up to him, she reared back a little. “What is this? What are you doing?”
“Sealing this bonding moment with a hug, Josephine. What does it look like?”
“But that was only my preface!”
“There’s more?” Was she trying to rip out his heart?
“Yes!” She stood in front of him, phone in hand, flipping it end over end. “I was thinking, you know . . . I’ve been expecting you to trust me blindly out on the course and you don’t really have a reason to. Trust me. But what if I trusted you with something? I don’t know. Maybe that would help.”
Wells’s raised arm dropped to the couch like a dead weight, his heart rapid-firing in his rib cage. “You’re going to trust me with something?”
“If you want it. There is zero pressure.”
“Yes.” He was shouting again. “Whatever it is, belle. Yes.”
“You haven’t heard what it is yet.”
“Yes.”
“Wells.”
“Yes.”
“You really want to follow my blood sugar on the app?” Pink faced, she fumbled her phone a little and his entire body covered itself with goose bumps. “No one has ever followed me, besides my parents and Tallulah, but it has been years since then. You wouldn’t have to do anything, obviously. You don’t even have to turn on the alerts. I can take care of myself. But it’s . . . I guess it’s just something that’s really vital to me. I thought if I trusted you with that, you might feel more inclined to—”
Wells pulled her into a bear hug.
He didn’t even remember standing up, but suddenly, she was in his arms, her blue toes probably a good few inches off the ground. His blood raced in so many directions he felt dizzy. Among all the mental chaos, one thought occurred to him over and over again. If this incredible human being was willing to share something so important with him, he had to be worth a damn, right? He had to be worth salvaging.
“For the record, you didn’t have to preface anything,” Wells said against her forehead. “If you want something from me, ask, Josephine. You’ve got a standing yes.”
She looked up at him and blinked a few times, as if surprised, before recovering. “I’ll remind you of that tomorrow when you want to use a hybrid when we clearly should be using your five iron.”
That mouth was inches away. Inches. “You bring this up during our bonding session?”
“Session adjourned,” she murmured, her eyelids growing suspiciously heavy.
They couldn’t have been any more obvious about staring at each other’s mouths. He saw the pulse fluttering at the base of her neck. “Is it, belle?”
“Well, um.” She wet her lips and his balls started to throb like a son of a bitch. “I was going to watch a movie if you want to hang out f-for a while.”
I shouldn’t. “Yeah. I’ll stay awhile.”
Wells didn’t realize he still had Josephine locked in an embrace until she wiggled free, dropping down to the couch. When she reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned on the television, he noticed her fingers trembled slightly. Hell, so were his own. Sitting down with Josephine—in a robe—was a ten on the Richter scale of bad ideas. But there he went, taking a spot close enough to her that the cushion dipped, bringing her up against his side and allowing him to put an arm around her shoulder.
“Josephine.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He held on to his willpower. “If you want me to leave, just say the word.”
Her chest rose and fell, glassy eyes trained on the television. “It’s just a movie, Wells.”
He swallowed a pained laugh.
It’s just a movie. Right.
And Josephine was just his caddie.
