“Is there a reason why an orthopedic surgeon wouldn’t attempt a tendon repair like this one?”
The dark skin between Dr. Cooper’s eyebrows folded into confused wrinkles. “Maybe they’re not very good at surgery?”
Jericho hoped that wasn’t the case. “Do you know Dr. Gary Jones-Becker?”
Dr. Cooper’s frown deepened. “I know of him. He has privileges at Yale Medical Center, too. He’s supposed to be good, though his clientele runs toward geriatric tennis injuries, not professional athletes.”
Oh, hey, Jericho felt so much better that his shoulder was classified as a geriatric tennis injury. “I’m glad she’ll be in your hands, Dr. Cooper.”
On the drive back to Newcastle from Yale, Jericho said to Tiffany, “Tell me exactly what Dr. Jones-Becker said about your leg when you saw him last week.”
Even though Jericho was driving and the ribbon of the highway stretched far off into the rolling green hills, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Tiffany was staring out the passenger-side window of his Jag. Her voice sounded distant when she spoke. “He said that he didn’t see anything there worth repairing.”
“Worth repairing?” Jericho asked. “Cooper said it was a straightforward case. Those kinds of ruptures get surgery.”
She was still staring out the window. “He probably meant that I’m not worth repairing.”
Jericho tried to wrap his head around that statement as they passed a large rest stop and continued driving through the wild forest between New England towns. “You mean, like, had he seen you play golf somewhere? But that can’t be it. You played college golf. That’s not easy. And you had a scholarship. And you were being scouted to go pro, right? But it doesn’t even matter what he thought of your golf game. It’s still an injury that needs repairing, whether or not you go back to being a professional athlete and try out for LPGA Q-school or one of the minor tours.”
“No,” Tiffany said, her voice lilting in a tone that he’d come to think of as deceptively light. “It’s either because I’m a woman or because I’m Black, but it’s probably both.”
Shock slammed into Jericho like he’d been beaned between his eyes with a speeding golf ball. “I beg your pardon?”
She shrugged, a sinuous movement of her shoulders that Jericho could just see on the other side of his car as he watched the road. “Women usually have to go to doctors multiple times before they’ll even order tests because doctors think it’s either stress, or hormones, or women being ‘hysterical.’ It takes years to get a diagnosis for anything. And Black people are usually denied medical testing and procedures because doctors just don’t do it. Either the doctors think Black people are trying to get prescription painkillers or they think we’re lazy and want disability, or they just don’t care. So Black women get a double whammy. I’m used to it. I deal with it.” She sighed. “It’s just a lot of effort to deal with it sometimes.”
“What? I—you think Jones-Becker did that to you?”
Jericho was mostly watching the highway but was also sneaking little glances over at Tiffany, and she caught him looking at her. She nodded. “He said he didn’t see anything worth repairing, Jericho. I’m the thing he saw that wasn’t worth repairing.”
“That motherfucker,” Jericho growled. “I’ll put the word out. My geriatric friends with tennis injuries will go somewhere else for their surgeries.”
Tiffany sighed. “You don’t have to do that, and they probably won’t do it anyway.”
“Yeah, well, but then I’ll know which friends of mine will and which ones won’t, and that’s an important piece of information for when I’m deciding who I’ll do business with. Or who I’ll play a round of golf with for that matter.”
She patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”
Jericho resumed watching the road out the front windshield of his Jaguar as they sped along the rural highway, effortlessly passing other cars. He took his right hand off the steering wheel and laid it palm-up on the console between the two bucket seats.
She slipped her cool fingers in his, and Jericho smiled as they drove toward Newcastle. “Do you need someone to look after you while you recover from the surgery?”
“I think my mom and dad will force me to live at home for a while at least, and then I’ll be back at the club, giving lessons on crutches.”
He chuckled because he could see her doing that. “Let me know if you need anything, even a special delivery of shrimp scampi from the Westerly House.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’ll let you know.”
“I’m selfishly glad the surgery isn’t until next week, so we can golf at the Narragansett Club this weekend.”
She laughed. “Me, too. I would have put off the surgery to play there!”
Jericho chuckled. “A woman after my own heart.”
Group Text
Tiffany
Where you at all the time?
Asia’s text glowed from the screen of Tiffany’s phone.
Tiffany swallowed hard. Asia could sniff out deception at a hundred yards, let alone when it emanated from the phone in her hand. Working. Duh.
And she waited.
Tiffany had come back to her apartment to do laundry before her first lesson scheduled for noon. The washing machine and dryer sloshed and hummed while she watched the phone, waiting for Asia’s response.
Kk, Asia typed back.
Tiffany wilted with relief. She hadn’t wanted to explain.
That makes no sense, appeared on her phone’s screen, but the words were in a bubble from her other cousin Imani. Asia’s right. You haven’t been anywhere since last Saturday supper. Wya?
“Shit.” Her phone wrote the word as she said it, and she backspaced quickly while her mind spun. “May is still the beginning of the golf season. Every amateur thinks their golf game is more important than anything else. Plus, the NFA golf team booked me solid. They’re all as rusty as Troy’s car in high school.” She sent it.
Her washing machine beeped while she stared at the blinking cursor.
Asia finally texted, Aright.
Imani texted, You aren’t dating that Jericho guy on the down-low, are you?
No, Tiffany typed back quickly. She’d better not let them think she’d hesitated.
He’s still staying at the Newcastle Inn and Spa, Asia wrote. He must be doing something physical. He eats a ton for breakfast.
Tiffany couldn’t respond to that at all. They would know. Yeah, he still around the club. I think he’s listening to me about the improvements that they’re going to make.
So you’re spending a lot of time with him? Imani asked. You spending a lot of time on your back? And a bunch of emojis of eggplants and peaches.
You’re so crass, and ew, no. He’s just a business guy. He bought the club. He’s my boss. I would never, Tiffany lied.
Imani wrote, He sure is applying for a lot of building permits. Seems like every day there’s more paperwork coming from his office. Imani worked for the City of Newcastle in the construction permitting department.
Yeah, but he’s not changing the club that much. It’s just some upgrades. He’s not going to mess with the status of NGC, Tiffany insisted. They couldn’t hear her insisting through the texts, but she was.
If you say so, Imani wrote back.
Asia typed, Sounds like you know a lot about his plans.
Tiffany’s thumbs flew over her phone screen, swipe-texting as fast as she could. It’s where I work. Everyone at the club is talking about his plans. The employees have a new hobby of dissecting every word that comes out of Parr’s mouth because everybody’s worried they’re going to lose their job. I know everything he says because everyone knows everything he says.
Imani texted a nodding icon, and Tiffany could hear her sarcasm all the way through the phone. If you say so.
I say so, Tiffany texted back. There’s nothing going on between me and my boss. I don’t want to get fired.
That was clo
ser to the truth than Tiffany wanted to admit.
June was only a few weeks away.
It was both too soon and too late to tell anyone anything.
The Narragansett Club
Tiffany
The emerald velvet fairways of the Narragansett Club stretched over rolling hills toward the Atlantic Ocean glittering silver and gray under the sun.
Tiffany drove her cart toward the first tee box, following Jericho in his cart.
Her clubs rattled in their bag strapped to the back of the cart as they bounced down the cart path. Ahead of her, Jericho’s clubs bobbled in his bag like a flopping fish trying to escape a pail.
Jericho had insisted they ride golf carts to play the Narragansett Club rather than walk the course, saying that carts were included in the membership fee so it was a waste not to use them. But he’d been sneaking glances at her leg ever since their appointment with Dr. Cooper.
Anyone treating Tiffany like an invalid pissed her off, even though it was kind of fun to be carried to bed in his arms every night.
At the first tee, Tiffany lifted her driver, her longest club, out of her bag and strolled up to the tee box.
Jericho was already waiting there. “Ladies first.”
Tiffany smiled, but she was trying not to smirk as she plucked a scarlet golf ball from her pocket and held it in her fingers for a second, waiting.
Jericho glanced at the ball and looked back to her eyes. Then he startled and looked back at the bright red golf ball, his bright blue eyes widening. “Jesus, Tiff, you’re killing me!”
Tiffany never played fair in love or golf.
She planted her tee in the springy earth of the tee box, settled the bright red golf ball on it, and smacked it down the middle of the fairway. She watched where it landed though. The red was a dark color for a golf ball, and if she hit it into the rough, that red would be tough to find in the long grass.
Finding a golf ball that perfectly matched her new scarlet bra and panties had taken an hour in NGC’s pro shop the previous afternoon, but it was so worth it to watch Jericho stagger up to the tees, bite his lip as he looked between his ball and the fairway while sneaking glances back at her, and then sky the ball with a pop-up drive.
His blond hair fluttered in the ocean breeze as he glared at his ball. It flopped to the ground less than half the distance hers had gone.
“Come on,” Tiffany said as she strolled back to her cart. “You’re still away.”
Jericho cussed about cheating women and how could he be expected to concentrate because red, RED all the way back to his cart, but his next shot was a nice pick-up off the grass with a three-wood that sailed most of the way to the green. He grinned and winked at her.
There was a non-zero possibility that Jericho had thrown his drive for comedic effect, but Tiffany’s Marine daddy hadn’t raised her to lose when the other person made a tactical error.
Jericho acquitted himself well on the front nine holes of the Narragansett Club, ending up only three shots behind her. The club was, after all, his home course that he had played a thousand times or more, much like NGC was Tiffany’s home course. He knew where the hidden pot bunkers were that had been nasty surprises when Tiffany didn’t see them over the ridges, where the rough was especially deep and would swallow a ball, and which greens were sculpted into optical illusions like the seventh hole at NGC that was raised and tilted so that golf balls seemed to roll uphill.
The New England summer sun cast golden light all around them. They joked and talked trash until they made the turn back at the clubhouse, where Jericho got some donuts and coffee to sustain them for the back nine. He added two sugars and three creams to Tiffany’s coffee, just the way she liked it.
The caddies and staff seemed to know Jericho, calling him Mr. Parr and deferentially asking if he would like anything else. Tiffany considered sending NGC’s bag boys over here to take lessons in obsequiousness.
They were practically the only ones on the golf course. While they were at the clubhouse for the turn, Tiffany saw another foursome putting on the first hole, but that was it.
On the thirteenth hole, Tiffany mentioned, “I’m surprised there aren’t more people out here playing golf on a Saturday morning. I mean, you guys pay all this money for a private course so you can golf anytime you want, as much as you want, and yet there’s no one out here.”
Jericho laughed, a full-throated chortle. He was athletic as heck when he leaned back that way, his golf shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and heavy biceps. “First of all, it’s only May. A lot of members are still at their winter homes or traveling for the spring. Second, we don’t belong to the Narragansett Club to play golf. We belong to the Narragansett Club to belong.”
“I thought it was weird that you didn’t have a ranger herding foursomes to the first tee for their tee times. There’s only a few other groups out here. It’s practically deserted.”
Jericho grabbed her hand and started tugging her back into the foliage behind the tee box, as these holes were farther away from the ocean than the front nine. “Yes, we’re all alone. There’s nobody else out here.”
Tiffany began really slapping him and struggling to get away. “Jericho! There has to be poison ivy out here! There’s no way I’m traipsing off into the forest and getting a poison ivy rash.”
He laughed again, which was just weird. Nobody laughed at poison ivy. He said, “There’s no poison ivy. We have professional poison ivy pullers and goats scour the entire property every month.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely. We don’t allow poison ivy at the Narragansett Club. How gauche.”
Tiffany laughed and staggered after him as they stumbled over the rocks on the forest floor. Really, how rich do you have to be to rid your forest of poison ivy? They must have the peasants do it. “There’s no way Newcastle golf club could afford that. We just tell people not to go past the fieldstone walls if their ball goes out of bounds.”
Jericho swung her arm, flinging Tiffany in a circle as she crashed through the undergrowth that did not appear to have any leaflets-three in it, and she giggled as he pulled her against his chest. He murmured, “We’ll have to rectify that, if for no other reason than fucking out in the forest is one of the best kinds of afternoon delight.”
And it was.
Jericho shoved her up against a tree and kissed her until her head was swimming. He tweaked her nipple, pinching a twist that was just on the rough side of how she liked it. He’d figured out where her boundaries were over the weeks. While he didn’t barge past them, he went right up to the edge and delighted playing right at the out-of-bounds line. Pressure from his fingers at her waist slipped over her ribs, and he clutched her hips.
God, when he grabbed her like that, it brought to her mind the other times he’d dug his fingers into her hips and forced her to come so hard she’d been screaming, and the skin between her legs became sensitive. Her panties were damp.
Tiffany dragged her shirt out of her waistband, and Jericho slipped his hands underneath the fabric and splayed his fingers over her skin.
She reached for his belt and started unbuckling it.
Jericho ran his teeth down the side of her neck, and the warmth of his breath trickled inside her collar. He whispered, “I’d just meant a little necking, but if you’re up for it—”
“I’m up for it,” she panted, fumbling with the button and fly on her pants. “Dammit, how do I get my pants off?”
“God, you’re amazing,” he growled into her neck and ran his hands up her back under her shirt.
“Do you have a condom?” she whispered.
“I will carry a condom in my wallet for the rest of my life, hoping you’ll be around.”
Jericho grabbed the foil package out of his wallet while Tiffany wrestled her pants down over her hips. The waistband kept catching on her leg brace, and she nearly ripped her trousers trying to shove them down. “My knee brace, they’re stuck on it. We can’t—”
<
br /> Jericho grabbed Tiffany around the waist, spun her around, and bent her over to lean against the tree. Her pants bound her thighs together, but bent over like that, she was exposed. He rubbed himself against her opening, running his length between her thighs and pressing through her folds, and he reached around her hip to slide his fingers over the nub of her clit.
Desire shivered over her skin.
Jericho grabbed the back of her shirt collar with his other hand and whispered in her ear, “God, you’re so wet. I love it when you’re wet for me.”
His lips moved on her neck, and Tiffany bent farther, trying to sheath him inside of her. Her head spun with yearning.
He teased her with his fingers, slipping his hands through her folds and up inside her until she was grinding her fingernails against the rough tree bark. If she screamed, that other foursome out there would hear them, so she clenched her teeth together.
Just when she thought she was going to lose her mind, Jericho began pushing his massive erection between her thighs, still tied together by her pants at her knees, and then inside her.
Tiffany bowed her back and held onto the tree to push back against him. It was a good thing he was always careful to ease his way in because he could hurt her if he wasn’t mindful of that oversized driver he was wielding.
Jericho groaned, “God, you’re so tight. My God.” He stroked inside of her and rubbed her clit hard as he took her from behind, his cock crammed between her thighs and up inside her, and his hips slapping her ass. The sound of their flesh clapping seemed impossibly loud, echoing amongst the wood of the trees and fragmenting the bird song around them.
Jericho was skilled at everything he’d initiated her into, but fast and dirty screws were one of his specialties. Every time they’d had sex somewhere naughty, like when he’d bent her over his desk in his office or pulled over to the side of the road while they were driving in his Jaguar when she’d been wearing a sundress and no panties, he’d brought her to orgasm so hard that she’d thought she’d had an aneurysm.
Under Parr Page 16
