Under Parr

by Blair Babylon

  “Oh,” Coach Kowalski said.

  “Oh.” Tiffany’s mind had immediately gone to maybe playing around with Jericho. Maybe she was the one with inappropriate ideas. “I’ll arrange tee times for tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock?”

  “Perfect,” Jericho said, and his mischievous smile was back.

  Playing Around

  Jericho

  At quarter ‘til two the next afternoon, Jericho Parr walked toward the first tee, nearly bouncing on his toes with the anticipation of being in Tiffany Jones’s presence for four whole hours.

  The air seemed to sparkle with springtime freshness. The forecasted thunderstorm hadn’t materialized, and the day was burgeoning with heady possibility. The tulips in the flowerbeds around the clubhouse’s deck nodded in the light breeze.

  Jericho didn’t have any nefarious plans to pull Tiffany into a shady break in the hedge. Indeed, he would never. But he had a gut instinct that if she hung out with him for a while, she’d like him.

  Yeah, that was pretty damn cocky, but it was how these things usually went.

  It complicated things that Jericho was now Tiffany’s boss, though. He owned the HR department, too, so dating her wasn’t impossible due to draconian company rules. But Jericho also wasn’t an asshole, for the most part. Jericho attacked and conquered businesses as part of his job with Last Chance, Inc., and he didn’t want or need any conquering in his personal life. He liked hanging out with girls who liked him.

  And they all did. Objectively, he was a tall, rich, passably good-looking guy with decent taste in women’s jewelry and a sadistic trainer at his gym. Getting a girl to date him wasn’t hard.

  Relationships were, though.

  Far ahead, Tiffany Jones was waiting for him on the first tee box, idly swinging a driver to warm up as he walked down the cart path. Her casual motion seemed balletic, and her graceful finishing pose at the end of her swing looked like she might lift her trailing leg in an arabesque.

  The sun blazed over the felted practice putting green, and Jericho waved to the golfers working on their putts as he passed.

  Putting.

  Oh, no.

  Jericho prayed that his case of the putting yips had gone away in the intervening two days since he’d last played this course. Five-putting in front of Tiffany Jones, certified LPGA instructor and all-around beautiful woman, would be a level of Hell Jericho hadn’t yet experienced. This round of golf might be like silver needles dragged over the nerves in his fingertips.

  Jericho winched his mouth into a smile and waved at Tiffany as he approached. “Now on the tee box in the two o’clock tee time, Jericho Parr and Tiffany Jones!” he intoned as if he were the announcer at a golf tournament.

  Tiffany chuckled, but she turned her head away, her braided hair swinging to hide her face. Bright white balls fastened the ends of her braids and secured the tops at her scalp.

  Oh, jeez, no. Tiffany had been a competitive golfer, and that’s how a real announcer had announced her starting time at college golf tournaments, unlike the charity events Jericho paid to play in.

  God, he was an idiot.

  Jericho had managed to do something more stupid than his yips problem. That was impressive stupidity.

  He breezed on ahead, trying to cover up. “Looks like a nice afternoon. Good thing that rain never materialized.”

  Tiffany nodded and looked back at him. She seemed to be smiling. “Yeah, we close the course at the first rumble of thunder. Every golf course in the county was spooked by that foursome getting hit by lightning out at Greens of Grass Golf Course last year. We’re at about the same elevation here, so we don’t take chances.”

  Jericho glanced upward, but only a few cirrus clouds streaked the azure sky. “Looks like it’ll be fine. What tees do you play from?”

  “The tips,” Tiffany told him.

  “Wow. Ambitious.” Newcastle Golf Club was a long track with a high slope rating, a measure of the golf course's difficulty. Only the best golfers would play from the tips. “What game are we playing?”

  Tiffany raised one slim eyebrow and smirked at him. “Golf.”

  Jericho dug around in his bag, finding golf balls and tucking one in his pocket. “Yeah, but which game? Stroke play? Match play? Nassau?”

  “Skins.”

  He was hunting through the pockets of his bag for a tee, and he paused. It had almost sounded like she’d drawn out the word a little.

  Surely, Tiffany Jones wasn’t insinuating something dirty, was she?

  Because if she was, he was up for it. If she wanted to go back to her place or his hotel room or clear his desk in the office he’d commandeered in the clubhouse, he was up for it.

  Yeah, he was getting up for it. Jericho paused to let his dick melt a little before he turned around.

  Because she couldn’t have meant it that way, right?

  Well, he could give her another opening and see what she said.

  He stood and looked her straight in her dark, sultry eyes, grinning. “What are we wagering?”

  This time Tiffany paused, but her head was tilted a little to the side, and she seemed to be evaluating him from the corners of her tilted eyes. “Information.”

  Oh, Jericho knew when he was being flirted with, and he really knew when he was being played. “What kind of information are we talking about?”

  “Each skin is worth one question. Are you playing or not?”

  If she was going to ask him for the dirty kind of personal information, Jericho would answer any question she threw at him.

  Plus, the real reason he was out here was to pump her for information about the club, right? This kind of wager was perfect for him.

  And even though she was dang good at golf, Jericho could probably win enough skins to get some inside information about the club and the membership. It would be fine if he had to offer up a few facts or his thoughts in the process. “Deal.”

  She was holding a pink ball in her hand out to her side like she might have been holding a martini glass. “Got a Sharpie? I need to mark my ball.”

  “Uh, sure.” He rummaged around in the side pocket of his golf bag until he came up with a black permanent marker and tossed it to her.

  Tiffany wrote on her bright pink ball like she was printing her full name in block letters.

  Marking her ball with her whole name was kind of over the top. Because Jericho was playing standard white golf balls, he wrote his initials on his ProV1s to differentiate them from the standard white balls of any other guy he was playing with. You received a penalty stroke if you hit the wrong ball in golf, and some sticklers like Gabriel Fish would call it on you and make you take the stroke.

  But her balls were fuchsia. They weren’t going to mix up their balls.

  She capped the marker, tossed it back to him, and then gestured toward the tee box. “Would you like the honor?”

  Jericho spread his hand like he was inviting her to walk down the red carpet. “Ladies first.”

  Tiffany stepped up to the back of the first tee box, planted her tee in the ground, and balanced her pink ball on the tiny spike. She set up, readying herself to swing.

  At first, Jericho admired her form, meaning the athletic stance she took over the ball. She was perfectly balanced and comfortable with the game. He’d seen her hit a couple of balls a few days before, and he had the feeling that watching her wide, relaxed swing would never get old.

  And then he admired her form.

  Her form was all curves and softness, rounded breasts and hips around her hourglass waist, and he liked her womanly silhouette very much.

  Tiffany took a practice swing. Her clubhead whizzed through the air.

  Yes, her stance at the end of her swing reminded Jericho of a ballet dancer, the way her body was one smooth curve from the clubhead of her driver, through her arms, and all the way down to her long, willowy trailing leg pointing to the grass behind her. Her swing was really beautiful, feminine and powerful, graceful and yet strong.
The curves upon curves of her body enticed him, and he had to look away from her and back down the golf course lest he pop another chubby and embarrass himself again.

  Off to his side, a whiz was followed by a solid thwack, and Tiffany’s hot pink golf ball shot into the air and bounced straight down the center of the emerald fairway. It rolled up even with the water hazard on the right, which meant it had gone over two hundred and fifty yards, probably closer to two-seventy.

  That was on the short side for a male professional player, but it was an excellent drive for an amateur, especially for a woman. Professional golfers had won major tournaments with two-seventy drives.

  “Nice shot,” Jericho said as he stepped up onto the tee box.

  “Better than you’re going to,” she said.

  Oh, it was like that, was it?

  Jericho laughed. “You see that tree on the left there, the one that’s just past your ball?”

  “I assure you, Jericho Parr, I know every tree on this golf course better than you do.”

  Nice. “Well, that tree is where they’re going to build the Walmart between your ball and where mine’s going to land.”

  Tiffany cracked up, laughing at him while she slid her driver into her bag and tugged a tiger head cover over the bulbous head of the club. It was a little different than the one Tiger Woods used for his driver.

  As much as Jericho enjoyed making her laugh, he had a feeling she was laughing at him.

  He took a deep breath, relaxed his grip and his neck, and then drew back and slammed his club at the ball because he was going to kill that thing.

  Jericho’s ball soared into the air, drifted left, and then it turned and dove into the woods on the left side of the fairway.

  Tiffany held her hand against the brim of her golf hat to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun as she watched his ball hook off the fairway. “Long and wrong.”

  Jericho pantomimed being stabbed in the heart and dying, but she was right. Trying to kill the ball in golf was never the correct choice.

  As they strolled down the fairway of the first hole, the breeze picked up a little, bringing with it the green scent of newly mown grass. A collection of plastic bag tags on her bag, souvenirs from golf tournaments she must’ve played in, clattered like a child’s toy keys in the breeze.

  The air fluttered Jericho’s shirt and golf trousers against his body. He was trying hard not to be a total perv because he was Tiffany’s boss, but he did sneak one glance in the general direction of her face.

  And he caught her checking him out.

  Her gaze stroked downward, perusing his clothes pressed tightly against his chest, abdomen, and thighs as he walked, and then she bit her lower lip and smiled.

  Yeah, that steamy glance from her was worth buying the whole golf course.

  When Tiffany looked up, she realized she’d been busted and grinned at him before she turned away to look over the water hazard on the other side of the fairway, sparkling in the sunshine. “Don’t go out in the woods after your ball. If the Lyme Disease ticks don’t get you, the poison ivy will.”

  Yikes. “Thanks for the warning.”

  Jericho managed to find his ball near the edge of the woods and herded it back onto the golf course with a golf club, but he had to take an extra stroke because it had been out of bounds. At least he didn’t have to take an additional one for a lost ball, too. He stood over the ball, staring at his own initials JP he’d written on it, and concentrated.

  His next shot flailed off to the right, and only luck kept it out of the water hazard.

  Two shots later, he cracked the ball over the green and landed it in the deep rough on the far side, the course architect’s punishment for going over the green.

  Tiffany had knocked her ball to some shorter grass just off the green, and she chipped up near the hole. She pressed her ball marker into the velvety grass on the green and stood over at the side, waiting for Jericho. “You’re still away.”

  Ah, the three words that struck horror into any golfer’s soul.

  Jericho had a pretty good chip out of thick stuff, but yes, he was still away. It took him two putts to finally put the ball in the hole.

  Oh, that was painful.

  “Looks like I’m going to win this hole,” Tiffany said, crouching behind her ball and examining the slope of the green and the lay of the grass.

  Unless she five-putted, yeah, she was going to win the hole. “Maybe you’ll win this one, but I’ll out-drive you again on the next hole, and that’s what counts,” Jericho trash-talked back. “I’ll always be closer to the pin.”

  Tiffany carefully lined up her putt. Her pretty pink ball was about ten feet from the hole, and Jericho thought it would break about six inches to the left. It wasn’t an easy putt.

  As he watched her standing over the ball, he thought maybe she’d frozen, but then she lifted her chin and looked directly at him. “The problem is, Jericho, you drive for show, but you putt for dough.”

  As she spoke, she did not look back down at the ball, but her shoulders rotated as she kept staring directly into Jericho’s eyes.

  Her putter precisely tapped her golf ball without her looking at it.

  Her ball began rolling toward the hole, slowly curving toward the middle of the opening.

  Tiffany stood up, turned her back on the hole, and walked back to her bag to put her putter away.

  The pink ball fell into the hole with a hollow clatter.

  That was the moment when Jericho realized he had made a terrible mistake. Hitting a no-look putt in golf was much more difficult than turning your head while shooting pool or playing basketball.

  This was not going to be a game of golf.

  This was going to be a slaughter.

  This round was going to be a bloodbath because Tiffany was a much, much better golfer than Jericho or anyone he knew. She was going to win every skin on this sucker bet and interrogate him on every hole, and Jericho would not get even one piece of information back from her because he was going to lose, lose, lose.

  He might as well sit back and take it. “Nice putt.”

  Without turning around, she said, “Get that for me, would you?”

  He reached down and removed her ball from the hole with two fingers.

  On her ball, written in Sharpie, was the word GOTCHA.

  Wow, this girl was something else.

  Jericho was simultaneously devastated and turned on like he had never been before in his whole life. His skin felt every breath of the wind like a woman’s kiss.

  “Hey, here’s your ball,” he called.

  When she’d turned, he gently tossed it to her underhanded.

  Tiffany snatched the golf ball out of the air, but she’d also picked up her pitching wedge from where it had been lying in the grass. Holding the club’s shaft at an angle so that the club’s face was parallel to the ground, she dropped the vivid pink ball onto the club and gently dribbled it off the face of the golf club.

  As Jericho gaped, each of the ball’s bounces went a little higher until she held out the pen pocket on her golf shirt, and the last bounce dropped the ball directly into her pocket.

  Without speaking, Tiffany arched one manicured eyebrow at him and turned away, slung her bag over her shoulder, and started walking toward the next hole.

  This was going to be worse than he’d thought.

  Jericho followed her over to the second hole of the golf course. He didn’t have a problem with being beaten, other than he was generally competitive and didn’t like it.

  However, he knew he was standing in the presence of greatness. When Jericho had met some of the titans of the tech world at venture capital conferences, he hadn’t compared himself to them and fretted that he hadn’t reached their multi-billionaire status. He’d shut his mouth and listened to what they had to say and then asked what books they recommended he should read.

  Since he was about to be badly beaten by someone who was so freaking good at what they were doing, Jeri
cho needed to shut his mouth and learn something from the upcoming painful experience.

  The second hole on the Newcastle Golf Club’s course was a par-three, which meant it was a short hole. Good golfers should hit their ball onto the green with one stroke. The threesome ahead of them was still standing on the green putting out.

  He asked Tiffany, “So, you won the first skin. What’s your question?”

  Tiffany’s frank perusal of him didn’t feel sexual this time. “What are your plans for the club?”

  And here they went.

  Jericho wasn’t one to renege on a bet, so he said, “I bought it as an investment. I plan to increase its value as a business. Then, depending on how that goes, I’ll either sell it early next year or, if the return on my investment is good enough, I’ll keep it in the portfolio for my venture capital company. I think it’s unlikely I’ll keep it though.”

  Her eyes flared open. “Why would you sell a golf course if it’s making you money? You’re not that bad at golf. Don’t you want to keep it?”

  She hadn’t meant it as an insult, so Jericho didn’t take it as one. When a professional golfer tells you that you’re ‘not that bad at golf,’ you take it. If Tiger Woods had told Jericho that he didn’t suck too much on the course, Jericho would’ve had the quote tattooed backward on his forehead in diamonds so he could read it every time he looked in the mirror.

  He said, “The ROI for capital-heavy establishments like golf courses are rarely high enough for us to keep them. We get better profits elsewhere.”

  “But—but it’s a golf course.”

  “Right.” Jericho looked down the fairway to the second green, where the previous threesome was strolling away from the flagstick like they didn’t care how many tee times were open to paying guests that day at all. “But there are a lot of other opportunities. There’s a salad restaurant franchise we have that gives up thirty-five percent ROI year over year.”

  “You’re comparing Newcastle Golf Club to a salad bar?”

  “Only in terms of the amount of green it throws off.”