Fangirl Down (Big Shots, #1)

“Stop looking at my boobs.” She moved back onto the path, her feet eating up the distance to the course. “There is nothing sexy about this caddie uniform.”

Wells followed, shocked to find he was . . . lighter. Despite the heavy baggage they’d spent the last five minutes wading through, he swore there was less tension in his neck. Even his legs were looser, to say nothing of his mind. Christ, was he open to . . . caring again, like Josephine had asked of him? “You’re wearing a uniform with my name on it, belle. There is nothing hotter.”

She pretended to gag. “How about this? If you eagle the first hole, you can . . .” Her mouth snapped shut, flames scaling the sides of her face. “Never mind.”

His pulse picked up. “Oh, I’m going to need to hear the rest of that sentence.”

“It’s unprofessional. I was just . . .”

“Flirting with me?”

“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “I wouldn’t flirt with my boss.”

If he wasn’t careful, this whole exchange was going to make his dick hard and they were going to be on live television in the next couple of minutes. Unless his cock was auditioning for the role of stunt double to his nine iron, they needed to cool it. Although he didn’t want to completely shut down the opportunity to talk about the nature of their relationship. What was allowed, what wasn’t. Just to make everything really, super clear. “We need to have a conversation about this later, Josephine.”

“No, we don’t. It won’t happen again.”

“What won’t happen again?” Masochist. “I don’t even know what you were going to propose.”

“It was silly. If you eagled the first hole, I was just going to offer to pose for a picture in my caddie uniform.” Pink was rushing upward toward her hairline. “Since you think it’s so hot.”

His kingdom for that single picture. “You’re on.”

“I . . . no,” she sputtered. “No, that’s definitely not appropriate boss-employee behavior.”

“No, it’s not. And if I had been the one to propose this bet, I’d be at fault. But it was you, so I think we’re staying on the right side of decorum.”

“I’m shocked you even know the word ‘decorum.’”

“You’re the one suggesting a pantsless picture in your caddie uniform.”

Her mouth fell open. “Who said anything about pantsless?”

“Sorry, the crowd noise is . . .” Wells tapped his ear. “The cheering really swallowed up what you were saying exactly.”

Josephine smirked—and he knew. She was going to call his bluff. And his dick was definitely going to land the stunt double role. “Actually, I said pantsless and braless.” She batted her eyelashes once. Twice. “You need to work on your listening skills.”

His saliva evaporated into dust. “Hand me my driver.”





Chapter Fourteen




Wells did, in fact, eagle the first hole.

She couldn’t even look him in the eye as she collected his driver.

What had she been thinking?

What were they both thinking?

Was she actually going to send him a half-naked picture?

Since the moment they’d torn down the third wall between player and fan, they’d spent 90 percent of their acquaintance arguing. And 90 percent of those arguments were about pulling his head out of his ass. Was she attracted to him? Yes. No sense in denying it after the indecent thoughts she’d been having more and more lately, which were inexcusably heavy on butt biting.

Wells was level ten hot.

That wasn’t in question.

But he was also her boss. And she was all he had. His mentor and manager had deserted him. Blurring the line of professionalism would be a terrible idea. Like, awful.

“I was thinking, Josephine,” Wells said, coming up beside her, just outside the tee box on the second hole. “I shouldn’t be the only one benefitting from a bet today. This calls for a fair trade off.”

“We need to be talking about yardage,” she blurted.

Did his lips twitch? “I wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t get something out of the deal.”

“I have everything I need.”

Very briefly, his attention dropped to her thighs. “Do you?”

A bead of sweat trickled down her spine. “Good thing you’re not mic’d up right now.”

He hummed in his throat. “What do you want in exchange for me taking par on this hole? The suggestion has to come from you.”

“For decorum’s sake? I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.”

Wells let a beat pass. “I think I like flirting with you. I think you want to flirt back.” His expression was serious when he looked down at her. “And as long as you know your job is safe and I would literally cut off my own legs before wielding my power over you, maybe we need to just fucking flirt, belle.”

How did he manage to make the word “flirt” sound like an epithet? “That isn’t what you said on Wednesday night.”

“Now I’m qualifying what I said. As long as you’re the one initiating . . .”

“The flirting?”

“And you know there’s no pressure at all—”

“I do. I know that.”

“Then we fucking flirt.” He squinted out at the fairway. “Name the terms of your bet.”

What was happening here? They were in the middle of a golf tournament laying down ground rules for flirting? How could she be having so much fun while being completely and totally caught off guard? Truthfully, though, she believed Wells when he said there was no pressure, because she felt none. He would never use his position to do anything that made her uncomfortable. Was her intuition enough of an excuse to take a tiny step forward? Safe enough to pose the mother of all bets?

His eyes challenged her to do just that, but there was reassurance there, too.

Josephine filled her lungs for courage. “If you par this hole . . .” She craned her neck to give his booty the tiniest peek, but couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Um.”

Slowly, Wells’s mouth edged up into a grin. “You want a picture of me dropping trou?”

And to think, she’d woken up this morning believing she led a mostly normal life. “I’m not sure there is any point in denying that I like your butt after you overheard my phone call last night.”

“Juicy.” He winked at her. “You called it juicy.”

Josephine closed her eyes and released a withering sound. “Just play the shot, you clown.”

Wells laughed.

He laughed.

Josephine’s legs almost gave out. Her eyes shot open, hoping to catch the tail end of his laughing face, but he was already back to concentrating on the shot he was about to take, stepping right to left and examining the angle, feeling the wind.

His swing followed through, without the hesitancy he’d developed over the last two years, and the ball dropped down on the left side of the fairway. A smattering of applause rippled through the crowd assembled behind them.

Wells handed her the driver. “Good call, belle.”

Josephine might have spent the rest of the morning driven to distraction by the fact that she’d just won a bet that guaranteed her a personal snapshot of Wells’s rear end, but she was too transfixed by the glimpse she was getting of the old Wells. He consulted with her before every shot, both of them poring over yardage books and hunkering down side by side to compare notes on the angle of the green. He almost seemed to be having . . . fun.

But all that progress came to a screeching halt on the eighth hole.

Josephine and Wells were shoulder to shoulder, waiting for Tagaloa to take his putt, when Buck Lee appeared on the sidelines. He was just one face among the crowd, but his arrival was like a bucket of cold water tossed on Wells. His expression slowly grew shuttered, his movements less natural.

In no time, he’d dropped two spots on the leaderboard.

“Hey. It was a tricky slope. Shake it off.”

When he didn’t bother to respond, Josephine’s stomach sank.

The next hole went worse.

Buck Lee left, as casually as he’d arrived.

And that’s when her glimpse of the old, astonishing Wells Whitaker winked out completely.