“Is your flight in the morning?”
“Yes,” she responded. “Early.”
“Mine, too. Have a drink with me, tonight? We deserve to celebrate.”
His invitation seemed to relieve her, lines softening around her mouth. Was that promising? “Yes. I’d . . . like that,” she said, beaming up at him.
That’s when he knew.
Holy shit, he was going to ask this woman—his caddie—to be his girlfriend.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Getting ready for drinks felt like a bigger deal than usual.
Josephine should have probably stopped zoning out, staring into the bathroom mirror, Beautyblender forgotten in her hand as minutes ticked by unnoticed. But memories kept occupying her mind. Sexy memories. Wells’s tongue teasing her nipples, his hands unapologetically rough on her backside, the way sex with Wells was a surprisingly hot blend of disrespect and veneration.
“Might as well admit it,” Josephine said to her reflection. “You want more. Badly.”
In the past, she’d been treated like a fragile object in bed. Men who didn’t take the time to understand her diabetes asked broad questions before they went to bed together like, are you going to be okay?
Um, yes. She was going to be fine. Blood sugar corrections were just a way of life. Fixing lows and highs. That was her normal. They never acknowledged that she could do everything a person with a working pancreas could do, they simply held back with her, worried her glucose monitor might rip off or she’d need sugar halfway through.
But not Wells. And not because he didn’t care. In fact, she suspected he cared a great deal. She’d caught him checking her number on his app twice today. During a professional round of golf being broadcast live on television, money and respect hanging in the balance, he’d been thinking of her. Yes, Wells cared about her health. A lot.
He also seemed to recognize that her strength was more powerful than her condition.
Josephine swallowed, turning slightly to check her monitor where it always sat, attached to the back of one of her arms. If the darn thing didn’t rip off during sex with Wells, it could probably survive anything, because wow. Wa-how.
She’d been nursing a growing crush on the man.
Their encounter in the private bag room had shot that crush into a whole new category.
Was she officially falling for Wells Whitaker? The real man and not the persona she’d been following for the last five years?
“Oh boy,” she whispered. “I think I might be.”
Her stomach flipped over with the anticipation of seeing him in the bar, which was crazy, since she’d been in his company all day long. But there it was. She wasn’t looking forward to a whole week and a half without him, either. The shop desperately needed her attention, though. She couldn’t shirk her responsibilities, as much as she’d wanted to accept Wells’s invitation to Miami.
She looked down at her phone and winced at the time. If she was late for drinks, Wells would never let her hear the end of it. Allowing herself to enjoy the fizz of something exciting in her stomach—and it had nothing to do with the room-service club sandwich she’d scarfed down an hour earlier—she finished her makeup and put on the blue dress she’d worn to the welcome party at the beginning of the tournament, slipping her feet into heels and leaving the room.
In the interest of privacy, Wells was bringing her someplace off the resort grounds. Though she didn’t know where they were going, she’d been instructed to meet him at the lobby bar and he would take care of the rest. Josephine took the elevator down and exited on the main floor, relieved to see that the crowd had thinned considerably, thanks to the conclusion of the tournament. She walked at a fast clip, certain Wells was already sitting at the bar, probably practicing a lecture about punctuality. But she didn’t get very far before someone familiar stepped into her path just inside the alcove entrance, hindering her progress.
Buck Lee.
“Well, I have to give it to you, Miss Doyle,” he started, putting out his hand for a shake. “You certainly proved me wrong out there this week.”
Josephine kept her smile intact as they shook, although she couldn’t stop herself from bearing down with a tighter than usual grip. “I didn’t realize you were expecting me to suck.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t alone in that prediction, to be fair. Not because you’re a woman, of course,” the older man rushed to tack on. “Only because you’re a newbie. An unknown one, at that.”
“Right.” Go sell it somewhere else. “It was nice to see you again, but I’m late meeting Wells, and he’s prickly enough without giving him extra reasons.” Immediately, she regretted saying that. It was a comment she’d meant to be good natured and fond, but it came across like she was commiserating with Buck and that wasn’t the case at all. “Excuse me—”