Wells had done it.
Somehow, he’d convinced the golf gods to bring him back on tour.
When Josephine arrived at the resort in San Antonio, she went straight to the clubhouse with her carry-on—now containing a dress and heels—because she wasn’t going to bother checking in to her room if Wells hadn’t succeeded. The ornate, Spanish-style building with high-domed ceilings was a hive of activity when Josephine walked in, sports reporters everywhere, caddies she recognized from television commiserating in groups—all of them men.
Imposter syndrome blocked her progress and she almost turned around and ran straight back out the door. It helped to remember that she’d yelled you suck at some of those caddies at one time or another while watching them on television. And she’d meant it. Thoroughly.
Garnering her courage, Josephine moseyed up to the desk clearly marked CADDIE CHECK-IN, relieved when the woman behind the computer monitor gave her an open, friendly smile. “Hello. How can I help you?”
“Hello.” Josephine pushed down the handle of her carry-on suitcase. “I’m checking in. I’m caddying tomorrow for Wells Whitaker.”
A good half of the conversations in the room seemed to die at once.
The woman’s kind expression froze on her face, her eyes ticking to the rest of the room briefly, before landing back on Josephine. “Wells Whitaker. I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. The acoustics in here can be a challenge.”
“That’s all right. Yes, I said Wells Whitaker.”
“Oh.” A jerky nod. The poor woman was probably pressing a button beneath the table to alert security. Silence was spreading in the room like a ripple in a pond and all Josephine could do was stand there, bite the inside of her cheek, and let the fire climb the back of her neck. What had she done? Flown all the way to San Antonio after two text messages? To caddie for a highly unreliable man? “Okay, let me just pull up his information . . .” The woman reared back in her seat. “Oh! Here he is. I thought . . . well, I didn’t know he was competing.” She scanned the screen for a moment. “You’re Josephine Doyle?”
The air flat-out vacated her lungs.
It was real. This was really, actually happening.
“Yes, that’s me.”
The woman nodded, giving her a once-over that was almost . . . proud? “Well. I’ll definitely be tuning in to watch tomorrow, Josephine.” She turned to face a rolling file cabinet behind her, seeming surprised to find a blue folder with Josephine’s and Wells’s names printed on the top. She handed it across the desk with a flourish. “Here is your schedule for the next five days. Your official pass should be in there, to be worn around your neck at all times during competition. You’ll need it to gain access to the caddie locker room, where you’ll find your uniform tomorrow morning. There’s also the almighty scorebook in the folder, course yardage charts, and some drink tickets for the welcome cocktail party tonight.”
“Welcome cocktail party?” Josephine repeated. That explained the dress.
“Why yes, it’s tradition. We have to give the golfers a chance to rile one another up before they tee off. Makes things interesting.” She reached across the desk and gave Josephine a conspiratorial arm squeeze. “Don’t let them rattle you.”
“I won’t.” Easier said than done. She could still feel a dozen sets of eyes piercing into her back. “Do you know if Wells has arrived?”
“Impossible. I would have heard everyone gossiping like middle schoolers.”
“Or alerting the local authorities.” Her new friend laughed, and Josephine gave her a grateful look. “Thanks for your help.”
“There’s more where that came from. I’m Beth Anne and I’ll be here all week.”
Josephine turned from the desk to find the entire room full of caddies staring at her.
Some of their smirks were curious, others were an obvious intimidation tactic, but they were all smirking in one way or another. If they’d overheard she was caddying for Wells, their reaction wasn’t the least bit surprising, since he’d won the unofficial award for Biggest Dick in Golf five years running.
One of the reporters had noticed interest spiking in Josephine’s direction and was furiously flipping through her notes, obviously trying to make sense of the newcomer, and Josephine’s head swam at the very idea of being questioned by the press, so she tucked the folder beneath her arm, yanked up the handle of her carry-on, and beelined for the exit.
Josephine arrived at the buzzing hotel lobby a few minutes later, intending to check in and get the key to the cheapest room in the resort, which she’d booked earlier in the week. Leaving that sort of thing to Wells didn’t seem wise and she wasn’t going to lose this opportunity over a few hundred dollars.
But when she gave the clerk her name, he only looked at her in confusion.
“I have two reservations for you, Miss Doyle.”
“Oh.” A tiny bit of pressure ebbed from her chest. “He did it. He booked me a room.”
“Yes . . .” The young man’s eyes ticked between her and the computer monitor. “I’m going to go ahead and give you the room I think will make your stay most . . . comfortable.”
“Great.”
Five minutes later, Josephine stepped into the most palatial, over-the-top hotel room she’d ever seen in her life. No, it couldn’t even be termed a “room.” It had three seating areas.
“Three?” She let go of her suitcase just inside the door and wandered through the suite in a daze. “But I only have one butt,” she muttered.
Her toes sank into the soft, rich burgundy carpeting. Soothing music played from the television, the air-conditioning taking her nerves away on an unseen breeze. A giant, jetted tub called to her from the bathroom and she made a short, breathy sound, her hands flying to her mouth. She bypassed the rustic four-poster bed sitting in its own separate room and went straight to the tub, twisting the hot water nozzle and stripping off her travel clothes. One did not simply pass up the chance to soak in a tub when one’s apartment shower was the size of a shoebox and had all the water pressure of a limp handshake.
Once the tub was filled to a steaming 60 percent, Josephine shook the black elastic band out of her hair, massaging the ponytail tension headache from her scalp, and stepped into the porcelain haven. She dunked straight under and emerged from the surface with a moan that could easily be interpreted by her neighbors to mean something else entirely. But so be it.
This was paradise. Traipsing all over a golf course and dealing with Wells’s surly attitude would all be worth it if she could return to this room at the end of each day. Josephine stayed in the bathtub so long, the water started to cool. So she added a little more hot, the soothing temperature enticing her loudest, most appreciative moan yet—and the noisy gurgle of running water muffled the sound of a door opening and closing.
Josephine shut off the nozzle with a frown, her head turning toward the bathroom entrance. Surely, that had come from next door.
Those footsteps, too. They were coming from the hallway, right?
All six feet two inches of Wells appeared in the bathroom entrance.
Josephine screamed, the piercing wail echoing off numerous marble surfaces.
“Jesus Christ!” Wells boomed, turning around quickly to give her his broad back.
But not before he saw her naked breasts. Looked right at them. Oh God. Oh God!
She lunged over the side of the tub for a towel and stood, wrapping it around herself. “What are you doing in here?”
“Funny,” he said evenly, despite the muscular tension in his shoulders. “I was just about to ask you the same question.”
“This is the room they gave me at check-in.” Finished securing the white, luxurious terry cloth about her body, Josephine smacked her forehead. “Once I saw the room, I should have known it was yours. I’m . . . this . . . ughhhh.”
Still facing away, Wells crossed his arms. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean, obviously this room is yours. The bathtub bamboozled me. Drew me in like a gator to a roasted ham or I would have pieced it together—”
“Can I turn around yet?”
“If you don’t mind that I’m in a towel?”
Briefly, he tipped his head back. “I think I can suffer through it, belle.”
“Then . . .” She glanced at her reflection over the bathroom sink and winced at the black half-circles of mascara beneath her eyes, the wet hair dripping onto her shoulders. “I guess so.”
A beat passed before he turned around again, focusing on a spot over her shoulder before finally making eye contact. Were his pupils bigger than before or was the steam distorting her vision? Because she could almost feel her own dilating to the size of salad plates over being in close proximity to this tall, sinewy athlete in the intimate setting of a bathroom. Wearing no clothing while he was fully dressed. Something about that contrast was sending an unwanted ripple of goose bumps down her spine, as was the fact that he looked a lot healthier than the last time she’d seen him. The cords of his colorfully inked forearms stood out like he’d gotten back into lifting weights, a very distracting biceps vein disappearing up the sleeve of his shirt.
Stop looking.
“I booked us the same kind of room. Yours should look exactly like this.” Did his attention drop to the knotted towel between her breasts, pricking every inch of skin below her neck? Or were her nipples puckering from the air-conditioning? “My name was on both reservations, so they must have given you my key by mistake.”
“Oh.” So . . . he had booked her this extravagant suite? Why? “I would have been happy with a normal room.”
“All that moaning you were doing in the bathtub suggests otherwise.”
Indignation snapped in her throat. “If you heard me moaning, why did you walk in here?”
“Did you hear yourself? You sounded like an injured animal. I thought someone was on the verge of death.” His gaze ticked to the tub, back to her. “Is this your first bath?”
“Says the man who almost needed a chainsaw to cut his hair last week.” They smirked at each other. “Women don’t just miraculously appear in your room.”
He propped a forearm on the doorjamb and raised a single eyebrow at her.
“Oh, I see. They do.”
Something about the realization made her skin shrink. But it wasn’t jealousy. No way. Sure, she couldn’t help but have a healthy appreciation for an attractive athlete with a prolific posterior, but that wasn’t why she’d supported him all those years. She’d been his number one fan because, at the height of his success, there was no one more exciting than him on the course. No one more daring and irreverent. He’d never been in it for the accolades—she’d witnessed love for the game in his every move and it had drawn her in.
Women could come stocked in his mini fridge for all she cared.
That spike lodged in her neck was simply a product of having her bath cut short.
“For some absurd reason . . .” Wells pushed off the door frame, running a hand down the back of his neck. “I feel the need to clarify. Women have appeared in my room twice—and both times, I called security. It wasn’t a welcome surprise, unlike a moaning redhead in my tub—”
“What are we going to do about the mix-up?” she interrupted, alarmingly relieved while still being distinctly embarrassed. “Should I call the front desk?”
Wells regarded her levelly for several moments. “No. You stay here. I’ll go down and get a key to the other room.”
Josephine pondered that. “But if the other room was meant for me, there could be a man waiting in my bathtub.” Batting her eyelashes, she slipped between Wells and the door frame, staunchly ignoring the butterflies that scattered in her stomach when he gave her mouth a prolonged look. “I should probably take it.”
He turned to face Josephine where she now stood in the living space, a muscle popping ominously in his cheek. “You’re here to focus on golf.” He gave her a meaningful look. “So am I.”
All at once, she became very aware that this man was now her boss—and he was right. They were in Texas to play golf. Getting into a bickering match with a golfer who could change her life by winning was not the wisest move, was it? And being that Wells was her boss, she should spend as little time as possible standing in front of him in an extremely brief towel. “I’m focused.”
“Good,” he said, back to having his arms crossed. Aloof.
“Are you?”
“I’m always focused. It just hasn’t translated into winning lately.”
“What are you focusing on?” she asked, even though she should probably shut up and get dressed.
“Golf,” Wells spat out. “I thought we established that.”
“What part of it? Your swing? The leaderboard? The shot you’re taking? The next hole?”
“We talked about the questions, Josephine,” he snapped.
She held her ground. “You’re going to have to start answering them or I won’t be able to do my job, Wells.”
He adjusted his stance, leaning forward a little, wafting his scent in her direction. He smelled like pine and a hint of something else. Like the interior of a new car. Warm leather? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she shouldn’t be envisioning things. Things like dragging her nose along the curve of his strong neck to further study the origin of those leather and pine notes. “My old caddie didn’t ask questions,” Wells pointed out.
Josephine squared her shoulders and took a step in his direction. “I wouldn’t have taken advice from your old caddie two inches from the hole. He was a banana brain.”
“A . . .” Was he holding back a laugh? “You’re going to have to learn some meaner insults if we’re going to be spending time together.”
“Fine. He was human-shaped shit stuffed into some khakis.”
“Better.”
“Thank you. Answer the question. Which part of golf are you focusing on?”
“All of it. At once.” The words clipped their way out of him. “My pathetic world ranking, the possibility of another shitty finish, the disappointment from everyone, from . . . Buck, the fact that the fucking club feels like a foreign object in my hand now, when it used to feel like an extension of my arm.” He tilted his head, took a step closer to Josephine. “Does that answer your annoying question?”
His honesty created a sharp ache in the center of her chest, but she refused to let it show on her face. “It’s a starting point,” she managed.
Wells snorted. “A starting point to where?”
They were toe-to-toe now.
Close enough that she could feel his breath on her face.
When had that happened?
His fingertips were near enough to the edge of her towel that it seemed almost natural for him to brush those digits along the fronts of her thighs. But it wasn’t natural. Not with her boss. So she suppressed the urge to inch forward and find out how his thumbs would feel digging into her hips. And yeah. Wow. She didn’t need any more proof that her dry spell had turned into a dry era.
“I guess we’ll find out where you’re headed . . . together,” Josephine whispered.
“Together.” This time, there was no mistaking the way his light brown eyes tracked down to her mouth, his chest expanding. Enough that it almost touched the knot of her towel. Ever so briefly, his attention strayed to the bedroom located over her shoulder and his eyelids sagged. But just as quickly as it happened, he locked his jaw and stepped back. “I’ll meet you outside your room tonight at seven.”
“For what?”
“The party, belle. We’re going together.”
Stupid pulse. Please stop racing. “Why?”
The glint in his eyes was sort of . . . dangerous looking? “Because I’m not going to give the other caddies a chance to eat you alive.”
“I can handle myself,” Josephine insisted.
“Yes, but if they came for you, it would piss me off.”
“Does anything not piss you off?”
Wells ignored that. “And we need me calm and focused, right? We’ve already decided that.” He backed up until he reached his suitcase, picking it up with a very distracting biceps flex. “You’re not one of these women who takes a million years to get ready and makes us late, are you?”
“No.”
“Great.”
Wells started toward the door, then stopped, changing directions toward the mini fridge. Josephine watched curiously as he yanked open the door, observed the contents, and slapped it shut again. “There are juices in there, if you need them. Apple and orange. Do those work for you?”
It was embarrassing, really, the way she had a hard time finding her breath in order to answer that gruffly delivered question. This man was rude to her one second, and in the next, he was considering her blood sugar needs. What complicated corner of the universe had he come from? “Yes. And I brought stuff, too. Glucose tabs and . . . thanks.”
He left the room with a grunt.
Josephine sat down slowly in one of the many needless seating areas. She’d known joining Wells on his comeback was going to be an interesting ride. One hour in and she was already positive she’d underestimated exactly how interesting.
