Kingston needed to staunch the bleeding of employees at Sidewinder quickly.
And yet, as Last Chance’s private jet streaked through the sky and he stared at the blank page on his laptop screen, no matter what he wrote, it sounded like what Nicole would call “more venture capitalist bull hockey.”
He stared at the glowing rectangle, deleting anything he dared write, as they flew over Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York and then landed at White Plains, a regional airport in Westchester County, New York, that was friendly to the private planes belonging to those who worked in New York City or affluent western Connecticut, both less than an hour away by car.
As he disembarked down the staircase to the tarmac, he yelled back to the pilot, “Has the plane been reserved for tomorrow?”
The shout came back, “No, sir. The schedule is clear until next week.”
“Turn it around. We’re going back to California tomorrow morning. Schedule take-off for six.”
Kingston did not acknowledge the leap of his heart at the thought of seeing Nicole Lamb, bantering with her, standing close to her in elevators or the anteroom of her lab so soon.
He especially did not look at the fact that he was gleaning information from her about her friends as he pretended to be someone other than the evil venture capitalist who’d bought her company and held all their livelihoods hanging from a puppet string between his fingers.
8
The Rattler Line
NICOLE LAMB
The following day, Nicole had a meeting with the sales department at two o’clock to update them on new golf club models that would be commercialized in time for the summer golf show season a month hence, so she de-garbed and stopped at the first-floor employee lounge on her way to get a candy bar because the sales folks’ vendoland was much better than the slim pickings in the tech break room.
So she was shoving a Snickers in her pie hole as she juggled a tablet computer and a bunch of slippery paper with her notes, and her hair was sticking out like a pine needle compost heap where her goggles strap had snarled it and the humid Tyvek coveralls had made her whole body sweaty, when she walked into the conference room with the long table.
Kingston Moore was sitting at the foot of the table, looking sharp as lasers in a dark blue suit with an open collar.
Yeah, Nicole thought the new guy was kind of hot, sitting there with his bright blue eyes and dark hair, even though she had very little chance with him and no time for pursuit.
But why did the universe conspire to embarrass her, too?
Nevertheless, she had a meeting to run. “Hello, sales team. How is everything going, down here on the first floor with the good air conditioning?”
Laughter from the rest of the sales team, and Kingston wrote something on a pad of paper in front of him.
The sales team, other than the hottie lurking down at the other end of the table and staring straight at her, was a panel of people who looked like they’d been crafted by AI to sell exorbitantly priced items to straight white men.
Two nubile white twenty-something women with probably plastic surgeon-crafted boobs and definitely bleached-blond hair were at the top of the table near Nicole’s right hand. She might have mentally dismissed them except that Morgan and Meagan asked the best questions, took sharp notes, and could play the vapid airhead at golf shows right up until a customer wanted specs. Then they could both reel off the numbers and explain their importance, becoming the cool girls who liked sports.
They solda lotof golf clubs.
The other five people at the table were Ben and Andy, who looked like junior country club pros into all the latest tech and gadgets, and Rich and Ron, who appeared to be grizzled country club pros with decades of sun damage and had seen golf fads come and go but would set you right with the perfect set of clubs for you.
And then there was Kingston Moore, sitting at the end of the table with his hands folded on his paper, leaning in and peering at Nicole like she was prey.
He didn’t fit any of the roles.
Maybe they’d hired him to act like the club champion who vouchsafed the secret for his sudden drop in handicap to you, which would be his new clubs, which you could buy for the low-low price of?—
Just kidding. Sidewinder didn’t have a value line. Cheap crappy clubs were antithetical to the company’s primary mission.
Still, Kingston Moore was—disconcerting.
Nicole didn’t understand the machinations in Human Resources, and that’s why she was in tech.
She announced, “Okay, let’s start with the specs on the Mojave short iron series that we just put on the train for production. We expect the commercial product to be ready for wholesale orders in a month, with delivery in three.” She tapped a button on the control panel on the table, and the lights dimmed as her slides projected on the screen behind her. “The Mojave is an extension of our flagship line of clubs, the Rattler line?—”
She expounded on the benefits and discussed the specs in detail. She’d worked on the data for hours.
