Page 18 of The Perfect Putt

“What do you mean?” Confusion laces her tone.

“I mean your vision, your big business idea. What’s your dream?”

She pauses and I’m not sure if it’s hesitation or because she needs to focus on navigating. “I think we’ve shared enough secrets for today.”

“These were secrets?” I question.

“They are to someone like me.”

I look out the window as we pass by the ocean and ponder her statement. I’m glad she opened up and we did something other than throw half-hearted insults back and forth, but I can’t help but wonder if I’m getting in over my head. Because the more I learn about Ellie, the more I want to know. And that is a dangerous thing.

Chapter eleven

Miles Day

“I hope to hear from you soon,” Sam, the owner of a new protein shake company, says to me.

I force a smile and shake his hand. “I’ll be in touch with my answer within the week,” I tell him. This is the second to last meeting of the day, and I’m exhausted. All I want to do is go home, fall onto my pillow, and sleep for twelve hours. Instead, I have to leave here and head to dinner with more executives who are trying to convince me to work with them. After that, there’s a forty-five minute drive home with Ellie by my side.

I look over at her as she slides her laptop into a pale blue messenger bag. She’s done great in all of these meetings. She’s taken diligent notes, and she made sure we kept to schedule by softly tapping my arm when it was time to wrap things up. The first time she touched me, I almost jumped in surprise. And every time after that, my heart skipped in my chest. I thought about asking her to have a different signal, but I didn’t want it to be obvious how she was affecting me.

I finish saying goodbye then walk out of the conference room with Ellie in step beside me.

“One more to go,” I say with a sigh. “You’re doing great by the way.”

She looks up at me, surprise written all over her features. “Thank you.”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

“I thought you’d make a joke about my years of college being worth it or something,” she says with a half smile. “I didn’t expect a genuine compliment.”

“I did say to always consider my words to be teasing.”

She shakes her head, looking as if she’s holding in a laugh. “That’s it, I’m quitting.”

“Wow, already? You haven’t even worked a full week yet.”

“Yeah, well, my boss is a jerk who can’t be genuine,” she says, a laugh escaping her.

“I can be genuine, I just choose not to be.”

She rolls her eyes at my words.

I reach for her arm, softly pulling her to a stop in the middle of the empty hallway. She meets my eyes, then glances down at where my fingers are wrapped around her wrist. I let it go.

“In all seriousness, you’ve done amazing work today. I’ve tried to schedule days like this on my own and I always end up running over in meetings, then I’m late to others because I forget to check the time. And that’s if I didn’t accidentally overbook myself.” I shake my head as I recall my past mistakes. “But you’ve made this entire day go smoothly.”

A soft smile graces her lips. “Thanks for saying that. I’m glad today has gone well for you.” She looks down at her phone in her hand. “But if we want to keep our streak of punctuality, we need to get changed and head to dinner.”

I glance at my watch. She’s right, we’ve only got fifteen minutes until dinner and we still need to get changed. I just have to throw on a blazer, but Ellie has to change her whole outfit. We book it to the car, and Ellie grabs what she needs before heading back inside to the lobby bathrooms.

After I shrug on my blazer, I lean against my car and check my phone for any notifications. I’ve kept it on Do Not Disturb most of the day. The group chat I have with my four friends seems to have had some activity while I was away.

Jason: Hey Shaw, what should I do if a woman hates me like Sutton hated you?

I raise my eyebrows at the first text then keep scrolling.

Shaw: Marry her? That’s what I’m doing.

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