Asia: can we please quit discussing Scott?
Imani: sure. Tiff, has anybody bought that run-down golf course of yours yet?
Oh, jeez. Any topic but that.
She chewed her pizza, trying to figure out what to say.
Asia: Tiffany, are you there?
Imani: yeah, Tiff. Why aren’t you answering?
I’m chewing! She typed with one thumb sliding over the keyboard. It left a faint grease smear on her phone screen.
Asia: we’re waiting.
Tiffany swallowed the pizza. The middle of the slice was still a little cold, but she was too hungry to care. She composed her thoughts and then dictated them into her phone. “Loralinda didn’t have anything new to say this morning. She left about ten, so I don’t know if anything happened after that.”
Imani: did your paycheck bounce? I heard Dylan’s paycheck bounced.
Dylan Connor was one of the bag boys, one more typical of the breed. He’d just graduated from one of the local private schools and had been accepted to an Ivy League university for the fall. His father wanted him to “learn some responsibility” before he left for college by working at one job in his life not connected to his family’s business. Dylan had probably been smoking weed out behind the oleander hedge when Mrs. Lombardi had waited over half an hour to get her golf bag out of storage.
Nevertheless, Tiffany checked her bank account, and she saw that her paycheck had been deposited and then the same amount had been deducted from her account immediately afterward. “Dammit!”
She texted her cousins, OMG, my paycheck bounced. I’ve got to call people.
They commiserated and offered her loans, but Tiffany had enough money in the bank to cover a couple of weeks.
Her first call was to Coach Kowalski, who hadn’t noticed that his paycheck had bounced, too. He shouted some swear words that Tiffany had never heard out of him before, even on the golf course. He said, “I’ll make sure that senior staff, and that includes you, gets paid tomorrow. I’ve got to tell you, Tiffany, bouncing paychecks is a bad sign. If I were you, I’d apply over at Pequot Municipal and Safe Harbor Country Club before the other instructors do. You put down my number, and I’ll give you a good recommendation.”
“Thanks, Coach. What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to call Bob Russo right now. He’s the finance committee chair, and he should be able to move funds around to cover the paychecks. First thing tomorrow morning, though, I’ll tear the finance committee a new one. I don’t care what they have to do. Those assholes should not be letting people’s paychecks bounce, ever.”
“I mean, aren’t you going to need to find a job?” Tiffany asked.
Coach Kowalski sighed. “I don’t want to start over again at some new course. I was planning to retire within a few years. It looks like it’ll be a few years sooner than I anticipated. Do you need a loan to tide you over, Tiffany?”
“I’m okay for a few weeks.” Even though she was looking at her bank account with complete terror. She’d managed to save a little bit of money, but it was less than she was going to need.
“I guess you’ve always got your parents.”
Oh, now that would be mortifying. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow what happens with the finance committee.”
“Thanks so much, Coach. I really appreciate—”
And, of course, absolutely of course, Tiffany’s phone chose that moment to die.
“Ack!”
She pushed the button on the side, praying, but the stupid thing just showed her a graphic of a red, empty battery and refused to cooperate.
Tiffany grabbed her purse to dig her charging cord out, but a friend of hers at the club had borrowed it that morning because she was freaking out about a call from her boyfriend, and she hadn’t given it back yet.
Dammit.
She went to her bedroom and dug out her laptop, where she pinged Asia and Amani to move over to DM’s because her stupid phone had died so she couldn’t even scan the QR code to reply to texts over her computer.
They chatted for a while longer, during which Asia received another report from her mother, via Latoya, about how Tiffany had strolled all over the golf course with the tall guy wearing the NGC uniform of a red club shirt and khaki golf pants that afternoon, going in the clubhouse, walking through the meadow, etc.
So Tiffany had to deny yet again that anything was going on because it wasn’t, but every one of her denials added fuel to the fire because evidently Latoya had taken a picture of them and that was making the rounds in her family.
When one of them sent it to her, she saw that she was laughing while Jericho was smirking down at her with one eyebrow raised and a devilish grin on his face, which made him look stunningly handsome.
Okay, Jericho Parr was already stunningly handsome, but it was a particularly good picture of him, too.
After more LOLz and skulls on her screen and some good-natured ribbing, Tiffany told her cousins to go screw themselves and closed the computer so she could go to bed.
The next morning, Tiffany dragged herself to work because she was a responsible girl who’d grown up in a good home, and that’s what she did even though her paycheck had bounced.
As always, she checked out her car as she walked toward it, making sure that both her taillights blinked on and off as she approached and noting for the thousandth time that her license plates were still valid and did not need to be renewed for another six months. Once she got in, she fastened her seat belt and made sure it clicked firmly. Then she inspected her surroundings to verify that nothing was loose to distract her or cause her to look away from the road, and nothing was hanging from her mirror either.
Thanks to Baby Jesus on a cracker, she found her old car charger under the seat while doing her pre-flight inspection and plugged her phone in so it could suck up at least a little juice while she drove. She tucked the connected phone in the tiny storage area in front of the gear shift because she did not even glance at her phone while she was driving, ever.
Once on the road, she drove carefully and precisely, just a few miles under the speed limit but not suspiciously slowly like she might be drunk. She rolled to a complete stop at every stop sign and exaggerated her movements as she turned her head first right, then left, then right again before she continued.
Her father had taught her the very specific rules for driving while Black because you never knew who was watching.
As she approached the golf club, she breathed a sigh of relief at once again making it to work where people knew her and would go to bat for her, but something was off.
The parking lot was full of cars.
Not just full. It was overflowing.
The Newcastle Golf Club parking lot was never full of cars at nine o’clock in the morning, especially on a Friday morning. For some of the weddings that rented out the club, the parking lot filled up and people had to park on the lawn in front of the clubhouse, but wedding receptions were never scheduled for nine in the morning. A few of the charity events that booked the golf course and the clubhouse could pull in this many people and cars, but those were always on Mondays and never in April. Ladies’ League was Wednesday, but the parking lot was usually only half-full for that. Wednesday afternoon Men’s League maybe filled the parking lot to three-quarters of its capacity.
Tiffany could not put together a reason for this swell of people, and she sent some bad vibes at her stupid phone for still being at two percent charge because she couldn’t call Coach and find out.
People were parking on the road outside of the club.
The cars out there weren’t luxury sedans or sports cars like if the club was hosting some massive charity outing she had forgotten about. Some of them were the middle-class sedans and SUVs that members drove, and the old jalopies and beaters were driven by the staff.
Tiffany parked by the side of the road and hiked down the driveway to the parking lot.
As she wal
ked, she texted her cousins, At the club.
Good, they texted back.
A few people were hurrying toward the clubhouse. It looked like Tiffany was the last one to arrive for whatever this was.
Coach Kowalski was standing outside on the porch, and he started leaning over the railing and waving her up when he saw her. “Tiffany! I tried to call you! The meeting is starting right now. We need to get over there. Hurry!”
“What the heck happened?” she asked him as they trotted around the clubhouse and out to the back where a crowd larger than Sunday dawn service but smaller than Easter Sunday at the Methodist church stood around the putting green.
A podium had been set up on the back deck that overlooked the practice putting area.
Coach Kowalski took off his NGC hat and ran his fingers through the remnants of his hair. “When I called Bob Russo and the other finance committee members last night, all hell broke loose. There wasn’t any more money, anywhere, in the accounts. The club hasn’t paid invoices for the restaurant supplies or pro shop orders for the last month. In the wee hours of the morning, the committee decided to sell the club to that golf conglomerate, Croon Golf, that had put in a bid last month. But once Croon heard about the bounced paychecks, they backed out.”
Tiffany looked in horror at the gathered people. “Then, that’s it. The club is closing. It’s closing today, isn’t it?”
Kowalski shook his head. “One of the finance committee members heard about a guy who might be interested in investing, and he called him at three o’clock in the morning. He put in a lowball bid, and the finance committee accepted it on the spot. We’ve been bought.”
“No way,” Tiffany said to Coach Kowalski. “No freaking way. Who bought us? A condo developer? Are they going to bulldoze the course?”
Kowalski was saying something, but Tiffany was looking at the fairway and green of the eighteenth hole that spread over the land in back of the clubhouse. She’d lost her first tooth out there, playing golf with her dad when she was five. This patio, right there, was where golf coaches from the HBCUs and other universities came to sit and watch NFA’s varsity team every year and decide whom to offer scholarships to. Young golfers’ lives were changed right there on that green when they were offered those scholarships, when they were the first people in their families to ever go to college because tuition and upkeep and four years off from working were just inconceivable to their people.
It was where the recruiter from Tennessee State had offered Tiffany a full-tuition scholarship five years ago, and she’d accepted on the spot because she’d known there was no way her father could finance her college education on an enlisted person’s salary, even with the GI bill.
Dear Jesus, they couldn’t pave over the club. This was people’s hopes and dreams.
The door from the clubhouse opened.
Jericho Parr—Jericho freakin’ Parr—strode out of the clubhouse wearing a tailored suit and holding a cordless microphone.
The chair of the club’s finance committee, Bob Russo, scurried beside him, ducking his head obsequiously as he spoke to Jericho. Bob was practically cringing in front of Jericho like a naughty dog, making hand gestures that looked like he was offering gifts to placate a conquering general.
Tiffany had never seen Bob Russo act so beta. Loralinda and Tiffany called him Napoleon behind his back because he strutted around the golf course and made Coach Kowalski chew members out if they were playing too slowly in front of him. He bragged about his Sicilian Mafia connections so much that the other guys of his foursome called him The Tiny Godfather.
That was weird.
And it was weirder that Bob was bowing and scraping in front of Jericho Parr.
Oh, no.
She gasped.
No way.
Tiffany’s jaw had dropped so far that the weight of it pulled her forward, and she stumbled with shock. Kowalski grabbed her arm so she wouldn’t bash her face in on the fieldstone wall around the clubhouse’s deck.
As Jericho lifted the mic toward his lips, his startlingly blue eyes caught Tiffany’s gaze, and he smiled.
The bastard actually smiled.
She should have known Jericho Parr wasn’t a goddamn bag boy.
A Revelation
Jericho
The first staff meeting after the acquisition was critical.
Later meetings would be important, too. Jericho’s appointment with the finance board would be delicate, and he would need to discern exactly how bad Newcastle Golf Club’s finances were. He already knew they were bad. Bouncing paychecks and empty accounts told him that the club was operating deeply in the red.
But poor indicators like that meant that his initial valuation of the club would be lower than he’d anticipated.
They meant it would be easier for him to win the bet.
But first, he had to get through the first meeting.
The chair of the finance committee, Bob Russo, prattled on about what a good investment Jericho had made in the club and how excited he and the other members would be to turn the club from an amateur-led nonprofit to a professional business venture.
In Jericho’s experience, most non-profit organizations weren’t excited at all to be purchased by venture capitalists. Most were outright defiant, and that’s why the first meeting after the acquisition was so important.
Jericho stood on the rear patio of the clubhouse, fieldstone slabs under his brown dress shoes. The sunlight was bright that April morning, warming the air despite the spring breeze blowing the daffodils and tulips in the flowerbeds around the clubhouse.
Over by the asphalt cart path, movement caught his eye.
When he glanced over, the head pro Kowalski was standing next to Tiffany Jones as she gaped at him. Her gorgeous dark eyes were wide open, and her plush lips that he had wanted to run his thumb over and then kiss the day before formed a perfect circle.
That brought dirty ideas into his head, but he smiled at her before he looked away. If he’d kept looking at the round, soft opening her lips made, he would’ve embarrassed the hell out of himself in front of the crowd of members and staff of Newcastle Golf Club. At least he was wearing underwear that day, unlike the day before when he’d thought he was going to pitch a tent every time Tiffany sauntered ahead of him while she showed him around the club.
He tapped the microphone to test it. Muffled beats thumped from the speakers hanging on the edge of the roof of the clubhouse.
Time to get on with it.
“Hello, Newcastle Golf Club!” Jericho said. His deep voice rolled over the crowd, and he smiled at them.
A few people smiled back. That was more than he’d hoped for.
“My name is Jericho Parr, and I represent Last Chance, Inc., a venture capital firm located over in Stamford. I’m pleased to announce our new partnership with NGC.”
Some of their stares were outright hostile, which again, Jericho had expected. If you didn’t make a few people mad, you were failing as a venture capitalist. The trick was not to piss everybody off and decimate the business.
Jericho continued speaking. “I’m going to be personally working to ensure the success and future of Newcastle Golf Club.”
He caught Tiffany Jones’s gaze with his again, and the sunlight shining off her high cheekbones and elfin chin was beautiful.
He said, “You’re going to be seeing a lot of me around here.”
Big Plans
Tiffany
Tiffany and Coach Kowalski found seats at the main table of the board room near where Jericho Parr was standing and waiting for the staff to settle down before starting the meeting. Bag boys, waitstaff, and other club employees sat in chairs around the table or on the floor, and a few stood and leaned against the walls.
Jericho Parr had made a pretty speech to the membership outside about all of his big plans for Newcastle Golf Club, but as his plans had become bigger and bigger, Tiffany’s suspicions had grown.
Jericho talked about re-digging the
bunkers and filling them with fresh, high-grade sand.
Fluffy, he’d said.
He pointed to the roof of the clubhouse as he talked about maintenance that had been deferred but would now be completed.
He talked about formal dinners and white-tie balls for members and other exclusive benefits that would expand their membership rolls.
All that sounded like it would cost a lot of money, and Newcastle Golf Club didn’t have any money.
Jericho Parr did emphasize, however, that their bounced paychecks would be covered by the end of the day, at which point the entire staff breathed a sigh of relief and calmed down.
Tiffany was not calm.
If Tiffany got any more worked up, she was going to find herself clinging to the ceiling by her fingernails and screeching at him.
She must’ve been grinding her teeth or something because Coach Kowalski patted her fingers clenched into a fist around the arms of her chair and surreptitiously whispered as he pretended to look behind them and said, “It’ll be okay.”
After the meeting ended, Jericho stood by the door and shook hands with the staff as they filed out.
Tiffany stuck out her hand and shook his firmly like her military daddy had taught her to do while looking him straight in the eye. “I’d like to discuss your plans for the club in more detail.”
His hand swallowed hers.
Tiffany was not a tiny little woman like her cousin Asia was. Men’s hands didn’t usually engulf her hand like that.
But she didn’t usually have to look up quite so far to make eye contact with a guy, either.
“I would appreciate your insight on my plans,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “How about we play a round?”
Her jaw dropped again. “I am not that type of—”
Coach Kowalski stepped forward. “Now, you see here, young man. Just because—”
“I mean golf,” Jericho said, chuckling and squeezing his eyes shut like he was embarrassed. “I mean, would you like to play a round of golf tomorrow on the course to discuss your insights for the club?”
Under Parr Page 6
