When they arrived at the first tee, a familiar figure stood beside a caddie, instructing the man on how to clean his balls properly. The sandy-blond superstar’s forehead was pinched in irritation, although when he turned to face the television cameras, his smile belonged in a mouthwash commercial. Buster Calhoun. What was he doing here?
“Please, belle. Tell me we’re not paired up with this shithead.”
“I . . . didn’t think we were.” Josephine gave the other caddie a sympathetic look as he cleaned the balls with a more vigorous approach. “There must have been a DQ. Or maybe a couple of dropouts? Something that made them restructure the pairings.”
That wasn’t true. Calhoun had dropped in the tournament ranks. Down to Wells’s level. But she didn’t want to say that out loud and remind him that, although they had a good chance of finishing in the money today, they had a long way to go before his name started appearing in the top ten again. Whereas the guys at the top of the leaderboard were going to walk away today with payouts in the millions or six figures, Wells would be doing well to take five. A far cry from his earlier days on the tour, but a vast improvement.
Now all she had to do was get him there. Get through this round without dropping a zillion shots and leave Texas with something he didn’t bring with him. Optimism.
Wells plucked off his cap and plowed five fingers through his hair. “Over fifty golfers remaining, and it had to be this leftover prom king.”
“I can hear you, Whitaker,” Calhoun remarked dryly over his shoulder.
“That was the plan,” Wells called back.
Josephine shook her head at Wells.
What? he mouthed, dropping into a stretch.
Dammit. This curveball was the last thing they needed this morning. Wells might be playing better by leaps and bounds, but his progress was shaky. Fresh. He was learning to walk again. Being paired up with the number one golfer in the world, whom he didn’t get along with, was the obstacle she hadn’t seen coming.
As Josephine filled in the pertinent details in her scorebook, a shadow appeared on the ground in front of her. Without looking up, she knew those perfectly white Nike cleats belonged to Calhoun. His name stitched into the swoosh sort of tipped her off. “Well, if it isn’t the woman of the hour, the lovely Miss—”
“Nope,” Wells shouted, coming up beside her. “She’s busy. Forever.”
Calhoun laughed. “Oh, come on now, Whitaker, I’m just making polite conversation.” His voice was as smooth as glass, but an ugly glint lurked behind his blue eyes. “I’ll admit to thinking you were some kind of gimmick when this tournament started. Or maybe bringing in an amateur caddie was just another way for Whitaker to belittle the tour. You’re the real deal, though, aren’t you, Miss Doyle?” He winked at her. “I’ve been paying attention.”
“I’m only going to say this one more time, Calhoun. Put that attention somewhere else,” Wells said in a very low, precise tone. “Fast.”
The clean-cut pro wasn’t finished. “What are you worried about? That she might jump ship and come to play for a winning team?” Another infuriating wink in Josephine’s direction. “Offer’s open, Miss Doyle.”
She slid in front of Wells before he could lunge for the other man, his chest coming up against her back. “I’m good right where I am, thank you.” She reached down and subtly rubbed her knuckle against Wells’s fisted hand, letting out a breath when his fingers uncurled. It was an unconscious action that was meant to remain only between the two of them, but Calhoun’s gaze was sharp—and he caught it, a knowing smile spreading across his face.
“Aha,” he drawled. “Guess I might be playing better, too, if she was my caddie.”
“See, now I’m going to fucking kill you,” Wells growled, wrapping an arm around Josephine’s middle, obviously preparing to physically move her out of the way.
Oh dear. This was bad.
She dug in her heels as firmly as possible, but those efforts quickly proved futile. Her feet were leaving the ground. But she couldn’t, under any circumstances, let a fight ensue between Wells and Calhoun or they wouldn’t just be kicked out of the tournament, Wells would be off the tour permanently. The fact that Calhoun goaded his temper wouldn’t mean anything to the officials—all the blame would be on Wells, thanks to his track record.
Josephine twisted around to face Wells, sucking in a breath over the murder spelled out in his eyes. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey.” She struggled to get her feet back on the ground for leverage and finally succeeded, grabbing the sides of his face. “You’re letting him get in your head. That’s exactly what he wanted.”
“He disrespected you, Josephine.”
“That says more about him than it does about us, doesn’t it?”
A muscle popped repeatedly in his cheek. “I can’t let it stand.”
“No, you can’t. So beat him on the golf course.”
Wells continued to pin Calhoun with a death stare over her shoulder. “But I won’t get to hear any of his bones snapping that way.”
Calhoun let out a strangled cough.
An official approached hesitantly from her left. “Is everything all right over here?”
“Yes,” Josephine said, firmly.
“No,” growled Wells.
Josephine gave the official the sweetest smile she could muster, considering she was holding back a bull from charging at a red flag. “We just need a minute.”
“One minute to tee time, folks.”
“We’ll be ready,” she assured the official, before refocusing on Wells. “Listen to me. If that smarmy, self-important jackass is trying to rattle you, we must be doing something right.”
“I can hear you,” Calhoun complained.
“That was the plan,” she called. Then, quietly, to Wells, she said, “Block out the noise. It’s just you and me out here.”
That wasn’t remotely true. In the few minutes they’d been standing there, getting ready to begin their round, a crowd the size of a small army had amassed. Commentators were chirping into microphones, spectators were shouting for Wells. For her. If she listened hard, she could hear the buzz of a drone overhead, no doubt capturing a bird’s-eye view of the course for the television audience. It was total and complete mayhem.
For golf.
“I don’t like backing down from a fight,” he said. “You know that.”
“This one isn’t worthwhile.”
“I strongly disagree.”
Getting nowhere, she had no choice but to play her final card. “Are you forgetting about our wager?” she whispered.
She’d never seen a car hit a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour, but she suspected it looked something like Wells reacting to her reminder. The momentum of his ire came to a screeching halt. “I’ve decided to wait until we’ve played eighteen holes to kill him,” he said briskly.
“That’s all anyone can ask for,” Josephine said on a relieved exhale.
Wells held out a hand for his driver and she laid the club across his palm, smiling to herself as Calhoun snorted and swaggered back to his own camp.
One crisis down.
How many more to go?
* * *
One. One crisis to go, it turned out.
And it happened on the final hole.
Wells remained steady throughout the morning, managing to maintain his position on the leaderboard. Fifteenth place. To Josephine, they might as well have been in first.
All he needed to do was make par on the eighteenth hole and Wells would bank thirty thousand dollars. Ten percent of that would go to Josephine. Three thousand dollars. On top of the Under Armour sponsorship money. It was more money than she’d ever had at one time. But at that very moment, the imminent hope of rebuilding the Golden Tee and restoring her health insurance came second to Wells getting his professional footing back. Every time he swung the club, he did it with a little more of his old finesse.
The crowd had doubled since the morning—and they were excited.
She could practically hear her parents freaking out on the couch at home.
That being said, Josephine was allowing herself to anticipate the changes she would make to the family shop. The shine of new hardwood flooring, the wall of reference books, the technology she would incorporate to modernize the space. How she would take it from a necessary stop for visitors to an experience that would keep them coming back.
She’d dream more later, though.
Right here and now, she was focused on Wells. Finishing the day off strong.
Calhoun was sulking over in the rough after an average round, waiting for Wells to take his putt. Meanwhile, Josephine stood on the green of the final hole. One putt. A single putt and they could go home winners, at least in her book.
But Wells was . . . frozen.
They’d conferred on yardage, angle, wind speed. And he’d just . . . stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
He rubbed the center of his forehead and blinked at the ball. “What happens if I miss this?”
“You can’t think like that.”
“What is the difference in the payout if I miss?” He closed his eyes. “God, I don’t want to fuck this up for us, belle.”
“You won’t.” She handed him the putter. “Visualize the shot.”
“That’s the thing—I can’t.”
“Okay. Let’s say you could visualize the shot. What would it look like?”
His head turned slowly. “Where in God’s name do you come up with this shit?”
She grinned. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
He made a grudging sound. “Better than good.”
Laughter went up from the crowd. She could hear the electric whir of the camera, the dropped voices of the commentators. How much was being overheard? She had no idea, but it didn’t matter right now. There was only her and Wells.
“What does it look like?” she prompted again.
She watched the life rekindle in his eyes, cogs turning in his head.
Then he got into position. Took a breath. And sank the putt.
You’d have thought they’d just won the Masters, based on the crowd’s reaction. The resulting roar was so loud, the ground shook beneath Josephine’s feet. Everyone moved at once, reporters rushing onto the green, security holding back fans, beer sloshing onto khaki.
Wells dropped his putter, walked straight past a reporter asking him a question, and scooped Josephine off the ground into a bear hug. She laughed freely into his neck, hot pressure building against the backs of her eyelids. So many emotions hit her at once. Joy. Relief. Pride—and not only in Wells, but in herself.
Maybe for the first time ever, the dream she’d been nursing for years took a more distinct shape. She could bring this firsthand experience of working with a professional golfer—no, the best professional golfer—and pour that familiarity into the Golden Tee. She could take what she’d learned and drag her family’s business into the twenty-first century . . . with the knowledge and confidence to back it up now.
A little fissure formed under her skin at the reminder that she’d eventually have to leave Wells and the tour, but . . . that had always been the plan, right?
She was thoroughly distracted from thoughts of the future, of leaving, when Wells pressed his mouth to her ear, bathing it in a hot exhale. “Josephine.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s get out of here.” His fist tightened in the back of her shirt, his chest beginning to heave. “Don’t make me go another minute without you.”
She looked around in a daze. “Every sports reporter in Texas wants to talk to you.”
“Fuck ’em.” He wrapped an arm around Josephine’s shoulders and used his body to shield her as they moved through the raucous crowd. “It’s just you and me.”
