Page 38 of Skins Game

She laughed. “HR will totally get you for that one.”

“Come on,” he said and winked. “Let me play with your clubs.”

“That should be my line.” She’d led him over to the racks of golf clubs lining the wall and selected one. “The Mojave set I was talking about at the sales meeting this afternoon is over here. We can start with that.”

“The Mojave line, huh? No real prototypes? No Legendary clubs that you’re still working on?”

It was kind of gratifying that he was so interested in her work. Most guys didn’t care about the design’s elegance and how hard she worked on them. “Luckily, I just made a couple of sets in the usual men’s shaft variations of the Mojaves for the trade shows in May. Righty or lefty?”

“Righty,” he said.

“How tall are you?”

He towered beside her and looked straight down his chest, like standing under a tree as the crown bent at her in a high wind. “Six-five.”

“Oh, so you have alongshaft.”

Kingston snapped his head up and looked at the wall. “The HR violations just write themselves.”

She laughed at him. “Seriously, though. You’re right on the dividing line. Half-inch or a whole inch extra for the golf club’s length?”

“Regular-long shaft, not extra-long, even though I’m right on the cusp.” He waggled his arms like a scarecrow. “Long arms and legs, so my wrist-to-floor measurement is right under forty inches.”

“Ah, okay. And regular shafts or…stiff?”

“Stiff,” he muttered.

“I’ll bet, what with—” She glanced up at him, deciding just how far to go, and she chickened out. “—yourlongarms,you probably have a high swing speed.”

They both paused while Nicole waited for him to say something dirty, but Kingston just raised an eyebrow at her.

Finally, he said, “So, yes. My clubs are fitted withlong, stiff shafts.Where are those Mojave clubs you mentioned?”

She cracked up and hauled a golf bag off the rack, checking one of the bands just below the club heads to make sure she’d grabbed the right ones. “Here you are. You’re the first to play with these.”

He tilted his head and asked, so innocently, “So, the clubs are a virgin set?”

She snorted and grabbed herself a women’s regular-regular set off the rack. “Yeah, theclubsare.”

He laughed behind her in the dim light as she turned and flounced back toward the simulator.

She asked over her shoulder. “Those clubs are theonlyvirgin things in the room,right?”

“I went to boarding school for secondary. I assure you, the clubs are theonlyvirgins in the room. Hey, let me carry those for you!” he called from behind her.

“It’s right here. I’m already?—”

The bag lightened in her hand and floated, and then the handle snaked from between her fingers. “Hey!”

“Wouldn’t want to appear unchivalrous to the woman with the swords,” he said, holding her bag in his hand and his back with the strap over his other shoulder. “You still might run me through. The night is young.”

She rolled her eyes and stalked over to the simulator.

Inside the brightly lit cube, they stood on the Astroturf floor, the tee box of the first hole of Pebble Beach all around them, even the bushes rustling in the wind from the ocean and waves roaring in the distance.

Kingston set their clubs over on the side. “I can almost smell the sea breeze.”

She went back to the computer. “Yeah. I wouldn’t put it past Joe Flanagan to have scented oil sachets just for the ocean courses. What tees do you play from?”