She cocked her hip to the side and placed one blue-gloved fist on it. “Are you asking to see my big, thick, pointy swords?”
He winked at her, exaggerating it behind his safety glasses. “Now, if I would’ve said that, HR would’ve had to get involved.”
Nicole huffed one chuckle. “Okay, come on, but let’s make it quick.”
Oh, the entendres he could double on that one. “HR would definitely have something to say about that.”
Her low chuckle wafted back to him as she badged them into the back corridor, where she shoved her paper hood back off her mahogany hair, tugged her mask strings down to let it dangle, and unzipped her coveralls with a groan.
Her throaty sound caught Kingston off-guard as he loosened his protective gear. Yes, it was sound of pleasure and relief, and deep in the animal part of his brain, he wanted to make her make that sound again, and more, and deeper.
He needed to get a grip on something other than his dick because he needed information, not to get laid.
He needed that, too, but that wasn’t his goal that night.
Was it?
Nicole badged them into her office and shut the door behind them, closing them in the small room bristling with swords shining on the back wall. “Okay, what is it you wanted to know,really?”
How you taste,rose in Kingston’s mind, and he shovedthatthought straight back down into the murky caveman depths from whence it had come.
Instead, he went direct, if slightly sideways from the actual truth, as he sat in one of the chairs before Nicole’s desk. “Look, I heard through the grapevine,” that grapevine being the due diligence discovery spreadsheets when he’d bought her company, “that Sidewinder Golf was a few weeks away from bankruptcy, andthat’swhy Joe sold it. If Last Chance hadn’t bought you, Sidewinder might not have been able to meet payroll on May first. A sign on the door that day would have told everyone that you weren’t getting paid and not to come back.”
Nicole was standing across the office from him, and she grabbed a filing cabinet as she leaned back, resting against it.“What?”
“Yeah. It’sthatbad,and that’s why I’mreally damn interestedin whether there’s an undiscovered blockbuster in this place that we can leverage to profitabilityreal soon.”
“I—I did not know it was that bad. Heck, I didn’t know it was bad at all. I mean, we’re selling clubs as fast as we can make them. We have a backlog that is longer than our year-to-date sales. People are screaming to getonthe waiting list.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you looking at new clubs, then?” she asked, looking straight at him. “We need to expand manufacturing so we can deliver the clubs we’ve already taken deposits for.”
“Yes, and we—”Be careful, Kingston! Jeez!“Notwe,surely. I meanthey,the people at Last Chance, Inc., are already looking at additional manufacturing capacity to fulfill the backlog.”
“Where?”she asked, still staring straight at him.
God, that direct eye contact was so sexy that he could feel his body flinch, trying to rise from the chair, stalk over to where she stood, and pin her against the wall to kiss her senseless.
Butt in chair, asshole.
“China, of course,” he said.
“Most manufacturing capacity is located in China. Which site, though?”
“Dali Manufacturing, in the western part of China, near the Myanmar border.”
“Dude,Dali?It’sawful!First of all, goods have to travel eleventy billion miles to the coast for shipping, and secondly, it has a dirty reputation for stealing patented secrets. If we send our specs there, you can plan ona millionknockoffs of Sidewinder’s clubs hitting the online shopping sites for atenthof the price by next year.”
“But, by then—” Kingston didn’t finish his sentence. He’d almost said,By next year, Last Chance can win the bet, dump this turkey, and get out of the position.
“Wecan’tlet them infringe on our patents like that,” she said. “Really, the intellectual property of what’s in Sidewinder’s clubs and how we make themisthe company. We can’t lob it out there willy-nilly, especially if we have anything truly innovative and revolutionary up our proverbial sleeves.”
“And what do we have?” Kingston asked, honing in on what she obviously wanted to tell him.
“What do we havewhat?”
“Anything innovative and revolutionary?”
