Page 12 of Skins Game

The doors parted, relieving Kingston of being in a cramped space with Nicole Lamb, and he strode out.

She bustled out beside him. “The third floor, which is the top floor, is R&D. We are a soup-to-nuts organization, from the conception of new golf clubs through design to commercialization and production. Actual manufacturing is off-site, of course, but everything else is under this roof.”

“And what’s your purview?” he asked, feeling his vocabulary become more British, practically arch, as he tamped down untoward inclinations toward the pretty, vulnerable Nicole Lamb.

He wasn’t at Sidewinder Golf to hunt for a date. He was here to inspect his acquisition, determine its potential, and discover redundancies in personnel or entire departments that could be outsourced.

Even the delectable little Nicole Lamb wasn’t safe from his cost-cutting scythe.

She said, “My team oversees the pipeline. We brainstorm dev with sales and the executive branches for high-level product ideas and blue-water industry niches. After that,we design products in CAD and IRL modeling, then cast or forge prototypes, and then produce the product for commercialization, and then we put it on the train.”

“A literal train?” Trains were inefficient.

“Metaphorical. It’s just the phrase that means we send the plans to the manufacturing plant to start producing it. If anything, we should say we put it on a slow boat to China.”

“That sounds like an extensive process.”

She shrugged one slim shoulder. “One time, we overhauled a wedge and took it from conception to the first manufacturing shipment in four months. That was the Scimitar Edge fifty-degree wedge, a blockbuster for Sidewinder.”

Nicole Lamb had produced the Scimitar Edge from concept to production infour months?Most golf products took three to five years to hit the shelves.

Kingston’s attention was a blazing spotlight beam on her.

The Scimitar Edge was a powerhouse of a golf club with excellent feel. Kingston had managed to finagle one for his set. It was so good that it felt like cheating.

Every time he’d played golf with his Scimitar Edge, he’d had his hands wrapped around her craftsmanship.

His palms grew sensitive, almost a tingle.

Kingston paused outside the door to her lab. “Four months? That’s astonishing.”

Nicole shrugged both shoulders this time, and her smug smile was cute as heck. “Just doing my job.”

“Why a wedge?”

“Because it’s a golf club, and we make golf clubs.”

“No, I mean, why not a driver? Everyone goes to trade shows looking for the magic driver, not another wedge. Some people already have four in their bag.”

“Your driver determines how high you score. Your wedge and putter determine howlowyou score.”

Because a miss-hit with a driver meant hacking a ball out in the woods and destroying your score for one hole on that bad luck, but the finesse shots around the green with wedges and putters were where you saved shots on every hole. “Drive for show, putt for dough.”

“Yeah, sure, if you want to put itthatway.”

“So we could conceive of a new product as late as early August and have commercial stock on hand for the PGA Show in December.”

“Ugh,shows,”she said, rolling her eyes. “Shows are for sales people, not R&D. You’ll be traveling with Gia Terranova to the shows and stuff. She’ll be your boss.”

Something in Kingston’s chest wentthud.“Right, myboss.”

Kingston also needed to remember thathe had a bossfor as long as this farce lasted.

He hadn’t had a boss in years.

After Kingston had finished his MBA, he’d worked in finance, jetting around Europe’s cities, negotiating and wooing, until Morrissey had one day written in their group chat,We should start a VC.

So they had.