At four-thirty, while Kingston was deep in discussion with Caitlin, passing a prototype club back and forth and peering down the shaft in turn and commenting on its superior straightness that extended to the microscopic level when Nicole nodded at the phone in her hand and tapped it one last time.
An instant later, his own phone in his front trouser pocket chimed and buzzed under his Tyvek coveralls, the vibration a little too close to his dick’s half-mast bell-end for comfort.
Nicole’s sharp eyes were right on him, examining how she’d sent an email to the Last Chance, Inc. email address, and he’d received one at precisely the same time.
Lying to her about who he was made his skin crawl.
As soon as Caitlin finished her dissertation on the perfect straightness of the golf club, she said her farewells and headed for the lab’s exit.
Yes, it was a quarter past five o’clock. These technicians should have left work a few minutes before.
Hourly and salaried employees leave when the work day was over.
Owners stayed longer, and Kingston was used to twelve-hour work days.
After making the rounds of all the techs, each one expounding on their golf club-related specialty, Kingston and Nicole ended up at the corridor leading to her office and the break room in the back of the lab.
“So, that’s all the new clubs we have in the works,” Nicole said, her voice muffled from her mask and Kingston’s Tyvek hood over his ears. “I guess we’re done.”
They were withholding information. Kingston could smell it. “Is that everything?”
“Everything to speak of.”
Oh, that was waffling. He’d used that one himself. Obviously, projects existed that were not to be spoken of. “Is it?”
“Sure.”
She was holding out on him.
Should he pull the I’m-really-your-bossrabbit out of his hat yet? Pulling rank seemed like a douche move, as was the reveal of the hogwash he’d been peddling.
Instead, he went with, “Well, those are someamazingclubs. Reallyinnovative.Trulygame-changers.”
He put his heart into it, too, raising his eyebrows in enthusiasm and shoving all the sarcasm right down into his shoes.
Her sharp sideways glance from behind her safety goggles looked like she wanted to contradict him.
Good.
The new clubs she’s shown him weren’t innovative game-changers. They were, at best, incremental improvements on technology already incorporated into Sidewinder’s Rattler line or, at worst, cosmetic marketing gimmicks.
Golf clubs’ shafts don’t need to bestraightdown to the molecular level. They need greater consistency when they bend from the angular momentum of the swing.
Kingston looked directly back at Nicole, lifting his cheeks and crinkling his eyes so it looked like he was smiling behind his mask, a skill everyone learned during the Covid pandemic that came in handy when garbed in protective clothing.
And then he waited.
Nicole’s shoulder twitched first, and then she cocked her hooded head to the side, and then she broke eye contact and looked away. “Yeah.”
“Those clubs will change the face of the company.”
“Sure.”
Which was what Nicole said when she was fibbing. She did not disagree nor confirm.
Kingston sucked in a deep breath through the blue surgical mask over his face and said, “Those Mojave clubs you showed me are definitely enormous improvements. You should be so proudof them, and they’ll be blockbuster additions to the Legendary line.”
“Oh, they’re not for the Legendary line,” she said quickly.
