Page 50 of Skins Game

Well, it was just a simulator. Maybe he’d gotten wrapped up in it.

He set a golf ball on a tubular range tee and backed off to take a few long, slow practice swings.

The Excalibur club was so exquisitely balanced that it felt like a silk rope in his hand, whipping back and forth. “Is this a stiff flex?”

“Yeah.” When he glanced back at Nicole, she was watching him closely and called out, “Is it okay if I video you?”

“Sure,” he said.

“It hasn’t been swung by anyone with agoodswing,” she said. “Just techs, and you know, they’re fine. But I want to see what it canreallydo.”

Excitement trickled through him. “You want me to put it through its paces?”

“Sure,” she said with a grin. “Knock it out of the park.”

He swung the club in long arcs, feeling the break point and how the club responded to him, then stepped up to the ball and shot it off the tee like a bullet.“Wow.”

When he looked back, Nicole was holding up her camera and grinning.

“That was an extra thirty yards and dead-center,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said, lifting her eyebrows like she’d tricked him with magic.

“This thingcan’tbe legal.”

“It is. Well, itshouldbe. It’s not ready for production, so we haven’t submitted it to the PGA yet.”

“This will sella millionunits,” he said, admiring the rippling metal on the shaft in the simulated sunlight.

“A million units isn’t Sidewinder’s business model. We’ll sell a hundred units to therightpeople and make the other million die of envy.”

“Right,” Kingston said, watching the aqua and silver ripples on the club head.

This magic club could save Sidewinder and Last Chance, Inc., but he needed to sell more than a hundred golf clubs to do it.

16

The Centurian Card

NICOLE LAMB

The next morning, the doors unlocked with a click, and scores of employees walked into Sidewinder Golf to find their uptight head engineer and that nosy new guy sacked out on the couches in the front lobby.

Nicole sat up and rubbed her eyes in the glaring morning sunshine streaming through the glass walls.

Across the coffee table on the other couch, Kingston rolled up and glared at the people crowded around them. “Show’s over. Back to work.”

Everyone laughed.

Nicole demanded of the crowd, “What are you guys looking at?”

“You got locked in the building last night, didn’t you?” Arvind asked, his thick eyebrows rising.

“Yeah, what about it?”

He spun and addressed the crowd. “Who had this week?”

Morgan was swiping on her phone. “I’ve got the spreadsheet. It’s Caitlin Moffett. Caitlin! You won!”