Josephine could relate.
She gently booted the remaining customers, locked up the Golden Tee, and drove home to Palm Beach Gardens. She and Wells had purchased the house before the wedding just over seven years ago and he’d immediately replaced the normal, perfectly fine bathtubs with the biggest, most obnoxious ones he could find. The one in their en suite played music and had twenty-seven jets and nine color settings. He’d also soundproofed the walls.
Suffice it to say they spent a lot of time in that bathroom.
She parked and headed for the front door, taking a moment to smile through the glass at the scene that greeted her. Wells, hat on backward, standing in the living room with an infant strapped to his chest. A portable putting green was spread out in front of him, their four-year-old daughter poised to take her shot with the miniature club he’d given her for Christmas. Her auburn hair was in its usual tangle, poking through the edges of her skewed princess crown, her toes painted a familiar blue.
They matched Josephine’s.
As soon as Mabel finished taking her putt, Josephine walked into the soundless celebration—out of deference to the sleeping baby—and immediately had a four-year-old gunning straight for her, grubby arms wrapping tightly around her legs.
“Mommy!”
“Nice shot, Mabes! You’re amazing!”
As she stooped down to hug her daughter, Josephine locked eyes with Wells a few yards away and couldn’t stem the fountain of emotions that plumed inside her chest. Her breath ran short, hot pressure spreading behind her eyes. It was always like this when he came back from a four-or five-day absence during the season. He looked more than a little haggard and she knew it was from missing them. They’d been falling asleep on FaceTime for the last few nights and waking up the same way. But December was just around the corner, which meant a full month without traveling—and she was counting the days.
“Hey,” she murmured when her husband approached, reaching up to cradle his stubbled face, her heart sighing when he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. “You’re home now.”
He nodded. Opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. “Belle,” he said raggedly, like it had taken all of his strength.
Something was up. He needed to talk to her. She could read him from a single word.
“Okay.” She lifted onto her toes and kissed him, flutters carrying through her stomach and beyond as he slid unsteady fingers into her hair and deepened the kiss with a low, lingering groan. “Are you all right?” she whispered when they parted for air.
Wells kept their foreheads pressed together. “I’m so much better than all right. You’re here. It’s when I’m away that I’m not good.”
“I know.”
“My family is here.”
“And we’ll always be here.” She looked him in the eye until he got through a deep breath, but something continued to weigh on his mind. “Let’s get the kids to bed.”
Wells nodded and the four of them climbed the stairs together, Wells taking their son, Rex, into one room, Josephine herding Mabel into another. Half an hour later, she went looking for her husband. He wasn’t in their bedroom or the kitchen, but intuition told her where to find him, and she was right. Wells stood in the center of his trophy room, her gorgeous champion in sweatpants, no shoes, ink swirling high and low on his broad back.
If she tugged down his pants, she would find her name tattooed on his right butt cheek.
He’d threatened to do it for years and she’d assumed he was joking.
Nope. It had been her thirtieth birthday present.
Property of Josephine in bright blue ink.
Wells turned at her entrance with shadows in his eyes, but his arms opened automatically. On her way into them, she cataloged the changes in her husband over the last eight years. Lines fanning out from wise, contented eyes. The barest sprinkle of gray in his chest hair and stubble. He still radiated confidence, but it was quieter now, like he’d grown into it. And she had so much pride in the man he’d become, it almost hurt to breathe.
They swayed, locked in each other’s arms for a few moments while Wells hummed the first few bars of “California Girls” into her hair.
He pulled back and looked her in the eye while tracing her cheekbones with his thumbs, and she couldn’t help but fall even harder for this man, surrounded by accolades but directing all his affection at her. “Josephine.” He smiled, kissed her softly. “I’m retiring.”
A jolt passed through her. “You’re . . . what?”