Page 115 of Skins Game

Right up until you remembered it was a game that people wagered stupid amounts of money, betting who could hit a rock into a hole with a stick the fastest.

She tried smacking the ball again.

Tink.

Golf clubs should not gotink.

The golf ball smacked into the simulator’s screen and dropped to the Astroturf mat, while the virtual ball continued into the blindingly blue sky above the ocean churning on the rocks below.

And a proper golf club striking a ball should make a bright metal-on-ceramicclick,not a sound like ice cubes dropped in a whiskey class.

At the Baccarat Hotel, when Kingston had poured himself a drink at the minibar in the suite, the diamond-clear ice cubes bouncing in the crystal glass had rung out atinklike that.

Her worry over the sound wasn’t aesthetic or even marketing. The metal itself had a resonance it shouldn’t have, which meant energy was being lost instead of being transferred to the ball, so the ball wouldn’t fly as far, and that was indicative of a design flaw.

And she was going to figure out what the heck was wrong with it.

Assuming that the problem wasn’t operator error, which it might be.

Nicole still wasn’t very good at golf.

Nicole was barely adequate at golf.

Most people who play golf as badly as Nicole did quit.

Which meant the problem might not be within the club but how she was hitting the club.

So, there might not be a problem with the Excalibur. In the hands of a good golfer, a person with enough strength and height to smash this men’s-length club the way it should be smashed, there might be notink.

The club might produce a proper bright metallicclicklike a splatter of sparks, like it was supposed to.

Nicole kept hitting the club, trying to figure out whetheritwas the problem orshewas, and so she didn’t look up when thedoor to the outside world clattered closed somewhere beyond the computer and couches.

She lined up a new ball.

Tink.

Darn it.

Footsteps had stopped behind her, and she didn’t even bother to look up because the languid saunter of expensive leather shoes and fresh wood on the thin carpeting had already told her who it was.

“Did you need something, Kingston?” she asked without looking up from the golf ball on the unnaturally green plastic grass in front of her bare toes.

His voice was even and steady, as if he were perfectly in control of his emotions. “I was going to hit a few balls with the Excalibur manufacturing prototype, but I see you beat me to it.”

“This is the regular men’s length. The long shaft is over in the racks.”

“Thank you.”

The footsteps walked away, and Nicole sucked long, slow breaths through her nose, trying to calm her fluttering heart.

Adrenaline was the worst thing for golf. Some pros took beta-blockers to regulate their heartbeats as performance-enhancing drugs.

Hitting the ball in that state wouldn’t give her any usable data.

Nicole backed up, letting the golf club fall to her side as she stepped away from the ball.

The next simulator’s projector whooshed as it initialized, and it cast light into the whole room.