Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 111959 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111959 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“Belle, you in there?”
Belle.
No one called her that but Wells.
No. No way.
No.
She turned around and nudged the door open with her toe, which wasn’t very difficult, since it hung by a single hinge. “Uh . . . hi? Whoever you are?”
A rush of breath. “Josephine.”
None other than Wells Whitaker’s face appeared in the doorway. Also, his body. It was there. All of him was there. He wasn’t dressed for golf, as she was used to seeing him. Instead, he wore a black hoodie, jeans, his signature backward ballcap, dark hair sticking out from every side. His sideburns were overgrown, on course to collide with his unshaven facial hair where it scaled the sides of his sculpted face. His eyes were bloodshot and the smell of alcohol was basically the third occupant in the room.
Yet, despite the fact that he currently looked like human roadkill, he somehow retained his mystique. His Wells-ness. This was the guy who would lead the ragtag group of strangers in a dystopian universe. Everyone would just follow him without question. No one would be able to help it, because he had this way of moving and observing that said, Yeah, okay, civilization is dead, so what?
And he was here.
“What . . . is going on?”
His eyes moved sharply over her body, as if assessing for injury. “You’re okay.” A beat passed, his gaze meeting hers and holding. “Right?”
Physically, she was fine.
Just a little worried about the obvious hallucination taking place.
“Yes. I’m . . .” She blinked several times, trying to get her eyes to stop playing tricks on her. “What are you doing here?”
He rolled a single shoulder. “I just happened to be staying with a friend, not too far away. I remembered you saying something about your family owning . . . a pro shop? While I was out walking around, looking at the damage, I kind of just stumbled on this place by accident.”
Josephine gave all of that a moment to sink in and none of it made the remotest lick of sense. “But . . . really? You came to stay with a friend in the direct path of a hurricane? And . . . this course is two miles from any residential area. You’d have to walk—”
“Josephine, you know a lot about me, right? Probably way too much.”
“A Sagittarius raised in southern Georgia, you were discovered by one of golf’s most legendary masters, Buck Lee, while—”
“Then you also know I hate answering questions.”
That was the understatement of the century. Wells had once spent a full thirty minutes scrolling on his phone during a post-tournament press conference, completely ignoring the rapid-fire questions about a shouting match that had ensued with his caddie on the sixteenth hole. When his time was up, he’d calmly gotten up and swaggered out of the media tent, earning himself the nickname the Media unDarling.
“Yes, I do know that about you.”
“Good.”
Leaving that single word hanging in the air, Wells waded into the water left standing in the shop, charting the damage from beneath a furrowed brow. Josephine was grateful for the break in conversation, because now that her initial shock over Wells Whitaker appearing out of the blue had worn off, she was remembering all the reasons she’d made the painful decision to relinquish her fangirl status.
True, fangirls didn’t quit. They were loyal to the end. But that day on the golf course, when he’d torn her sign in half, he’d ripped apart something inside her, too.
Apparently there came a point when a fangirl needed to be more loyal to herself.
And she didn’t deserve to be treated like yesterday’s garbage.
Her faith in that decision was stronger than ever that morning, faced with the potential loss of something that truly mattered—her family’s legacy and livelihood.
“Have you called the insurance company yet?” Wells asked, hands propped on his hips, slowly bringing his attention back to her. “Were they able to give you a timeline?”
“Um.” Oh no, her voice was shaking. She swallowed the thick feeling in her throat and looked down at her hands. “Um . . .”
“Hey.” He stabbed the air with a finger. “Uh-uh. Are you crying?”
“I’d give it a sixty percent chance,” she said on a sucked-in breath, blinking rapidly at the ceiling. “Can you please go?”
“Go?” She heard him shifting in the water. “I see what you’re doing here. You’re telling me to leave this time. You’ve gotten it out of your system, okay? We’re even.”
“I’m not keeping score. I just have a lot of important things on my mind and you are not one of them.”
He caught that statement on the chin, his jaw giving a sharp flex. “Tell me the important things on your mind,” he said in a lower tone.
“Why would I do that?”
“I’m asking you to.”
“Do you even remember what happened last time I saw you?” Her curiosity was genuine. Did he think he could just walk into her shop and demand that she detail the way her life had taken a catastrophic left turn? She couldn’t even tell her own parents. “Do you?”