“If you just move your arms, the club isn’t as stable as if you put all your weight in your hips and swing from there. Like this.”
He takes one hand off the club and puts it back on my hip, then pushes me in the way he wants.
“You see the difference?”
No, not at all. But to be fair, I can barely concentrate with him behind me like this. Especially with me bent so my ass is grinding into his pelvis with every swing of my hips. And I know that isn’t just the mini pencils they gave us to keep score. There’s nothing mini about the log I feel behind me.
“Babygirl, you’re blushing again.”
His voice has my pulse fluttering as I grip the putter tighter. What he calls me sends a rush through me like no other name ever has.
I nod because I can’t help it. I’m not going to say what I’m thinking. Not after what happened at dinner. Twice, I opened my mouth, and things that I wasn’t expecting to ever say out loud to him flew out. And then he couldn’t let it go. Even said he liked how it made color flood my cheeks, and that my thoughts of him were what got it there.
He did all the talking. Guessing, really. Probably hoping for more blushing. It worked. And I never denied his words. Because it was true. Anything about him intended in any way but platonic had heat creeping up my neck.
I’ve thought about him a lot. Like,a lot. Even before he woke up. Wrong on so many levels, I know, but even then I didn’t stop. It was just a crush on the older guy in the coma. The one I told things to and would imagine as the voice of reason in my head.
Then he woke up, and bam! Everything changed. He said things and looked at me in ways that no man has ever looked at me before. We might have rarely spoken, but when we did, he listened. He remembered, and he asked questions about me, and not just the normal bullshit nurse-to-patient talks. It was like he saw me as someone beyond the other nurses, making me feel special. Seen.
And the way I felt his eyes on me when I was in the room, or as I left? It sent goose bumps down my spine each time. Still does.
I might have thought about those eyes and his words—and every part of his salt-and-pepper hair and chiseled body that doesn’t seem possible for a man his age—more times in the shower than I can count. I know I’ve thought of him each time I used a certain toy I keep hidden in my drawer at the house.
And now he’s calling me Babygirl. Something I only fantasized would leave his lips one day.
I can hardly breathe, let alone speak to him. So nodding is all he gets from me.
He chuckles, and I swear I feel his lips against my neck a second before he backs up and gives me space.
“Try it again.”
Easy for you to say.How can I concentrate now with so many other wicked thoughts popping into my head since he had to call me something that should only be reserved for smutty books and fantasy land?
I take a deep breath and try to remember what he said about moving the whole body, including the hips, and not just letting the arms swing the club. I pull back and gently tap the ball.
“Fuck.”
“Well, that’s one way to do it,” he says with a clear laugh of surprise.
Apparently, my idea of gentle still needs some work. Somehow I hit it over two other holes and into the small pond in the middle. That isn’t even part of the course, just a decorative feature.
I turn to him and put the putter over my shoulder. “Think it’s safe to say my golf career will start and end here today.”
With all the pride I can muster, I march over to the sign-up window and ask for another ball. They don’t evenbother to ask why, which is very kind of them. But by the third ball, I’m getting the side-eye. I swear the teenager manning the place let out an audible sigh of relief when we turned in our putters to end our game.
“Ice cream?” he suggests.
“After getting a beating like that? Of course. Remind me never to play a sport against you again.”
“Oh, come on,” he snickers, throwing an arm around my shoulders as we walk back to his ride. “I’m not good at everything.”
I stop by his motorcycle and cross my arms, giving him my most skeptical look.
He leans forward with a laugh as he pulls the helmets out. “Okay. I kind of am, if I remember right. But hey, there might be something I don’t remember that I suck at.”
“Gee, I can’t wait to find out what that is.” My sarcasm ends with an eye roll as I let him secure my helmet.
“Might take a while. Up for sticking around for a bit to find it?”
