Under Parr

by Blair Babylon

  Jericho caught up to her, and he must’ve thrown his stick away because he was holding a straw-stiff dead weed and breaking the hollow tube into pieces as they strolled. “Yeah. I was on the varsity team for two years, but it wasn’t a competitive sports school. Honestly, our sports were barely more advanced than intramural.”

  “What were you, Division Five?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did you play golf in college? Wait, I didn’t mean to ask that. I meant, how much golf have you played since high school?” A lot of people in the working-class town of Newcastle hadn’t gone to college. Her dad had only gotten his bachelor’s degree through the military, but he’d never commissioned as an officer.

  Jericho idly tossed pieces of his dead weed into the tall meadow grass around them. “I didn’t play college sports except in the rec leagues. The golf team was good at my university. I didn’t begin to qualify. You did, though.”

  “Yeah, I did. Division One.”

  Okay. Evidently, he’d gone to college then, at least some. The mystery of why Jericho Parr was employed as a bag boy deepened, but things happened to people in life. Some of her friends’ older sibs and her cousins had a sojourn in rehab or prison and had to begin again. At least Jericho was starting from somewhere and looked like he might work his way up.

  Tiffany said, “Tennessee State has a great ladies’ golf team, and it was an honor to be a part of it. We won the LPGA’s National Minority Collegiate Tournament twice while I was there, and we darn near did the other two years, too. We placed at the National Collegiate Tournament, too.”

  “That’s impressive,” Jericho said. “You must’ve been good in high school.”

  “I was on the varsity team for three years.”

  He grinned, and he was even more handsome when he smiled like that. “Yeah, that’s pretty good.”

  And now, for some dumb reason, she wanted to impress him. “I was three years old when my dad stuck a golf club in my chubby little hand.”

  He laughed. “Ah, you were a toddler golf prodigy like Tiger Woods.”

  Oh, yeah, sure. That was the obvious comparison, and she jerked her chin up and flipped her box braids in back of her shoulders as she kept walking.

  He asked, “Was your dad in the military, too, like Tiger’s?”

  Tiffany grumbled, “Yes.”

  Okay, the comparison was apt, accurate, and way too dang obvious, but couldn’t he have picked anyone else?

  “Your dad should have gotten you on David Letterman or Ellen, like Tiger was on the Mike Douglas Show when he was two years old. I’ll bet you wouldn’t have had to move the ball closer to the hole to putt it in like Tiger did.”

  Okay, that was a little better. “Yeah, but Tiger was living out in California. We’ve always lived in BFE, although all over the world BFE. No talent scouts from the Tonight Show were hanging out on the driving range at Fort Mag in the Philippines or Camp Hansen on Okinawa.”

  As they approached the clubhouse, Jericho asked, “That’s pretty cool that you lived overseas. I went off to a boarding school in Switzerland when I was six, and they lugged us all over the world during school breaks.”

  “When I was about to start high school, my dad got stationed in Afghanistan and Saudi again for no reason that he could speak of. We’re supposed to say he was a drill sergeant, but he was a Marine Raider, which is the special forces branch that does the murdering. We couldn’t stay with him there, and my mom wouldn’t have raised her three daughters and one son in Saudi Arabia, anyway. He managed to get stationed here at the Navy sub base down in New London for his last posting. He retired a few years ago. My mom’s family has been here ever since anyone can remember, though.”

  “My family’s from all over New England, which means Connecticut and Massachusetts, though my parents live in Stamford now.”

  Stamford, huh? Must be nice. But there were working-class parts of Stamford, just like there were working-class enclaves of people everywhere. “I have aunts, uncles, and a whole population of cousins here in Newcastle, too.”

  “Are they all members of the country club?” he asked.

  “Golf club,” she corrected him. Newcastle was a golf club, not a country club, which had sounded too hoity-toity to the founding members and her ears. “And, no, they’re not. My dad learned to golf in the military because a lot of military people golf. Even though he was a Marine, he was a liaison with some of the people who were in the Air Force, and everyone in the Air Force golfs. So to get along with those guys, he learned to golf. By the time I came along, my dad had definite opinions about essential life skills, and we joined NGC with a family membership.”

  Inside the clubhouse, Tiffany showed Jericho the dining room and bar area, which was predictably vacant at that time of the afternoon. She introduced Jericho to Mrs. Jorgenson and Mrs. Lincoln, who were having glasses of iced tea and planning the bridge club’s summer meetings.

  He asked them, “What are some of the other social opportunities for non-golfing spouses?”

  Mrs. Lincoln chuckled. “Oh, a few of us tried to get together a tennis league, but the tennis courts up on the hill by the driving range are in pretty bad shape. We just use the high school tennis courts in the evening instead of playing on the club’s beat-up courts.”

  “How about balls and formals?” Jericho tilted his head as he talked to them. “How many events per year does the social committee put on?”

  “Social committee! We haven’t had a social committee here for thirty years,” Mrs. Jorgenson laughed and playfully backhanded Mrs. Lincoln on the shoulder. “Can you imagine Gerald stuffed into a tuxedo? He’d look like one of those pugs that some awful owner put dog clothes on.”

  Mrs. Lincoln chuckled into her iced tea. “I cannot even imagine, Imogene.”

  Jericho tilted his head. “But don’t you have a New Year’s Eve party? Or a summer formal?”

  The ladies’ snickers turned to howls. Mrs. Lincoln hooted, “Can you imagine Demelza trying to dance? She’d break a hip!”

  Tiffany took pity on Jericho at that point, thanked the ladies, and beckoned him to follow her away.

  When they were in the hallway leading to the pro shop, he said to her, “I thought you said the club was a center of Newcastle society?”

  “Well, yeah, but I meant that the Girl Scouts set up a cookie table on the patio during cookie season, not that we throw a ball for the queen when she comes to town. NGC is where working-class families can get a membership for some good, wholesome fun. This is where kids can start learning the game in our free summer clinics and then play on their high school teams. Did you know that my high school sent twelve kids to college with full-ride golf scholarships last year?”

  Jericho raised his eyebrow again. “Is that a lot?”

  “It’s fantastic. Of kids who play high school varsity sports, only 0.6 percent of them will play college sports at all, let alone get a scholarship. Only six out of a thousand high school varsity athletes, not just all students but the varsity athletes, will even play in college. Getting a sports scholarship to college is extremely rare. That we got scholarships for twelve out of twenty graduating seniors was a freaking miracle.”

  While they were in the clubhouse, Tiffany showed Jericho the club manager’s office, which was where he would turn in his timecard, and she told him that he could eat in the kitchen for seventy-five percent off on the days he worked a shift. Plus, he got fifty percent off at the pro shop, and he should have gotten two red club shirts as his uniform.

  “Right,” Jericho said, looking off over the small pro shop’s merchandise. “Has anyone ever considered enlarging the pro shop?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “People don’t buy enough merch as it is. The end-of-season sale is always way too big because members just don’t buy enough stuff, not that they should. Balls are priced twice as much here as they are down at Golf Universe in New London. And the club shirts that Loralinda bought this year, I don’t know where she cont
racted them from.” She pinched the red fabric of her good staff shirt from a few years before, gesturing with it. “They used to be nice and thick, yarn-dyed fabric with good stitching, but now, well, you can feel—”

  For God only knows what reason, she reached out and gathered the fabric of Jericho’s shirt in her fingers.

  Through the thin, cheap fabric, four of her fingertips brushed the lower part of one of his firm pectoral muscles, while her thumb grazed the warm lumps of his hard abdominals.

  Damn, Jericho Parr was ripped under his clothes. She’d known from his broad shoulders and the way his shirt had clung to his lean waist and long legs when he’d been hitting balls on the driving range that he was muscular, but the hard abs right below his rib cage meant he must be shredded.

  Oh, no. No-no-no. She was feeling him up.

  Tiffany let go of his shirt and jumped back. “Oh, Lord. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to grab at you like that.”

  Jericho hadn’t jumped backward. As a matter of fact, he was leaning forward as Tiffany clutched her offending hand against her chest with her other one as if she’d burned herself. His lips were parted as if he’d been about to say something, but he rocked back on his heels instead. “No offense taken. I’d noticed the shirt was substandard quality.”

  “I mean,” she stammered, totally making things worse, “I’m your boss. I shouldn’t ever reach out at you like that. I apologize.”

  Jericho chuckled at that, looking down and to the side. “I assure you I’m not offended.” He glanced at her from under his brown lashes, and his voice was lower. “I’m not offended at all.”

  “We’re going to be working together.”

  “Right,” Jericho said.

  “I won’t do anything like that again,” Tiffany assured him. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

  “Noted, and no, you didn’t.”

  “It’s not fair. I’m your boss. That’s an unequal power dynamic, and it’s not appropriate. Again, I apologize.”

  “Are you telling me I should make the first move?” Jericho asked, stepping closer and towering over her. His smile had turned sultry.

  When Tiffany considered things that might be a bad idea, making out or more with a coworker and jeopardizing her job at NGC was dang near the top of her list.

  One of the few things that might be worse than that would be making out or more with the guy who there was no way and under no circumstances would she ever be able to bring home to meet her father. Any relationship with a thirty-year-old bag boy would be entirely impossible to justify to Master Sergeant Sherman Jones, ever.

  And yet—

  And yet Jericho Parr was six-four, ripped, and one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen in her life. His chiseled cheekbones and jawline were clean-shaven and smooth as marble, and she did not know how he got his blue eyes to turn dark and sexy like that.

  The brand-new club shirt Jericho wore should have been emitting a formaldehyde smell, but the enticing scent wafting from him that filled her nose smelled like cinnamon and a green meadow.

  An image of her scrambling up him like climbing a cliff face, her fingers and toes clinging to the crevices of his muscles, and then planting her mouth on his assailed her.

  Her face flushed hot, and she blamed it on the warmth rolling off of Jericho’s tall, muscular body, even as her knees wobbled. She was pretty sure the brace on her left leg was the only thing keeping her standing and not flopping at his feet.

  This was insane. She was insane. There was no way she could allow this guy to kiss her. Her cousins would stage an intervention and drag her off to Boston to get her head examined. “That’s not what I meant to say.”

  The breathiness in her voice sounded like she’d run ten miles. Sweat popped out of her skin.

  Jericho glanced down her body, his gaze traveling over her felt like he was brushing her skin with his hands.

  Her skin heated under her clothes, her whole body becoming more sensitive as she swore she could feel him looking at her.

  And then he was looking at her mouth, and her lips felt as if they were plumping like he was already kissing her. The seam where they touched together felt tender as if he’d rubbed his thumb across her lips.

  He asked, his voice low, “Are you sure?”

  No. No, she wasn’t sure. Her hands felt empty and like the only thing that could fill them was if she grabbed his shirt near the tanned column of his throat, hauled him into the dark bag room where they could hide between the tall shelves, and ripped that cheap shirt right off his broad chest while he kissed her until she couldn’t remember the past year and a half of disappointment in everything.

  Tiffany drew in a breath, but her inhale shook in her lungs. “I’m your boss. This isn’t going to happen.”

  He murmured, “So, it’s just that you’re my boss? If you weren’t my workplace superior, this would be all right with you?”

  The heat in his voice pushed Tiffany back. As soon as she’d put a few inches between them, she knew what was wrong with what he’d said.

  Tiffany got right up in his face with one finger pointing at his straight, patrician nose, and she channeled every NCO gene she’d gotten from her dad. “Don’t you dare quit. I don’t know why you’re working here as a bag boy at this point in your life, but it’s a step in the right direction, Jericho Parr. And don’t tell me what happened to you. There’s a lot of things it could be, and I don’t want to know any of them. Newcastle Golf Club is a great place for second chances. You shouldn’t mess yours up, and I’m not going to mess mine up either.”

  Jericho crossed his arms, but his smile seemed a little gentler. “Did you need a second chance?”

  Tiffany flipped her hand in the air. She was not going to spill the tea to a new guy she’d just met, especially one who would be designated as nothing more than a coworker. “Everyone needs a second chance sometimes. My next student will be on the driving range in two minutes, and I need to go give that lesson. Welcome to Newcastle Golf Club, Jericho Parr.” She walked away from him.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped walking but didn’t turn around. Why did she even stop walking? But she had. “What?”

  Jericho appeared beside her. “Let me walk you back to the range. My clubs are up there.”

  “Fine.”

  She was far too acutely aware of Jericho’s height beside her, his long legs covering the ground as they walked in silence, and his hand swinging inches from hers.

  What would happen if she flopped her hand out just a few inches? Would their knuckles brush? Would he catch her hand in his big, warm one and use their clasped hands to pull her against his chest and kiss her?

  Tiffany adjusted her stride to put a few more inches between them. Jericho was her coworker and would not be anything more.

  As they walked back up to the driving range, all the tees were occupied by a line of scrawny high school students wearing matching red golf shirts.

  Jericho gestured to them. “Who are those guys? Are they from a private school in the area?”

  Oh, he must think the matching team golf shirts were a school uniform. “No, those are the kids from Newcastle Free Academy. NFA’s varsity and JV golf teams practice here on school days from three to six, and NGC is their home course for tournaments.”

  Jericho squinted at them. “Doesn’t it annoy the club members to have a high school golf team commandeer the entire driving range every day?”

  “Nah, they’re used to it. Everybody knows not to come to the range at three o’clock, and if they want to play, to tee off before three-thirty. The golf teams reserve the first tee from three-thirty to four-fifteen.”

  Jericho lowered one sandy-colored eyebrow, a nifty trick. “Isn’t there a municipal golf course where they can play?”

  “The nearest muni is another twenty miles away, and that one’s not in the city of Newcastle. They’d have to pay through the nose to practice there.”

  “Nearest muni is twenty mil
es away, huh?” Jericho repeated back to her as he gazed over the driving range, nodding.

  They retrieved their clubs from the caddie shack, and Tiffany saw her three o’clock appointment on the far end, swinging wildly.

  Oh, dear. Where had Latoya picked up that wicked reverse pivot over the winter? They’d straighten that out first.

  Jericho nodded. “Right. Well, it was lovely meeting you, Tiffany. I hope I’ll see you around sometime.”

  She scoffed at him. “Yeah, you will. I’m your boss, remember?”

  Jericho grinned, shouldered his clubs, and began backing away. “You bet, boss.”

  “When’s your next shift?” she asked and immediately wanted to horsewhip herself.

  “I think I’ll be back sometime next week,” Jericho said. “It depends on my schedule.”

  “Yeah, well.” She couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t stupid. “Don’t you be late. Coach Kowalski doesn’t like it when bag boys are late for their shifts.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Jericho Parr strode off back toward the clubhouse, and she watched his fine ass in those clingy athletic pants for a minute longer than she’d meant to.

  “Coach Jones?” a girl’s super-soprano voice squeaked beside her. “I’m ready for my lesson. I’m set up near the end.”

  Tiffany glanced down at the high school junior with corkscrew locs and freckles. “Sure, Latoya. I’m ready, too. Let’s go.”

  When Tiffany glanced up to get one last look at Jericho because he shouldn’t have made it to the clubhouse yet, he had disappeared.

  Oh, she hoped he hadn’t accidentally taken the turn-off trail to the first tee, but if he had, he’d find his way back. He was a big boy.

  Yes, he was. He was a spectacular, tall man with a barrel chest. He was a very, very big man.

  “Coach Jones?”

  Tiffany sighed. “I’m coming, Latoya. Let’s see how your swing fared over the winter, shall we?”

  The Yips

  Jericho

  Jericho approached two other men who stood on the tee box at the first tee of Newcastle Golf Club and called out, “Hello, there!”