by S Doyle
“I think you would do better with a nice girl,” Grams pointed out.
“Grams, I’m not going to marry Tessa. Get over it.”
“Don’t use that tone with your grandmother,” Pop ordered.
Defeated, Kenny fell back against his chair and looked across the table to his friend for support.
Luke held up his hands to suggest Kenny leave him out of it. After all, he was hoping for another piece of pie with his coffee later.
The rumble of a car could be heard outside. Kenny stood up.
“That’s probably her right now. She said she was flying out after her final round today.”
“How did she do?” Reilly asked. “Twenty-sixth.”
Reilly could see Grams fussing with her silk top making sure it was devoid of crumbs. She also reached inside her pocket for a compact and a lipstick. Grams never went anywhere without a compact and some lipstick. Satisfied with the touch-up, she put a deliberate smile in place.
Pop fidgeted in his chair a bit as if readying himself to stand. It was just about the cutest thing he did, stand every time a lady walked into a room. Reilly wondered if maybe she should warn them now Erica wasn’t what Reilly would call… a well-mannered lady.
The sound of voices at the front door could be heard. There was a banging sound, probably Kenny seeing to Erica’s bags and golf clubs. She never traveled anywhere without hers, either.
“Holy shit this is like a real farm! I thought I was going to step in cow crap or something.”
Erica’s dulcet tones echoed through the house and Reilly heard her Grams whimper. Pop flushed purple and Luke closed his eyes in resignation. He knew as she did Grams and Pop had already formed their first opinion of Erica and it wasn’t good.
“Hey, bitch!” Erica came jogging into the dining room and gave Reilly a playful slap on the back of the head. “How about that fucking announcement? Can you believe it?! Thirty-eight!”
Reilly stood and pulled Erica aside. She made it look as if she was kissing her cheek but instead muttered in her ear.
“Grandparents. Old-fashioned. Lose the swearing.”
“Oh, shit,” Erica exclaimed. “I mean, oh… rats.” Erica gave a small little wave to the group situated around the table. Reilly noted that her Pop was still sitting. Not because he didn’t deem Erica less than worthy, she was sure, but if the stunned expression on his face was any judge, he was in shock. Erica’s mouth, like Kenny’s, was legendary on the tour.
“Hi,” Erica tried again. “I’m Erica Kim. I play with Reilly…”
“We know who you are,” Pop announced, finding his tongue. He stood up and offered his hand. “I’ve seen you play. You’re a fine putter.”
“Uh… thanks.”
“Erica, this is my grandfather, Seamus O’Reilly and my grandmother, Roberta.”
“Nice to meet you,” Grams said politely.
A little too politely, Reilly knew.
“You know Luke Nolan.”
“Sure, I’ve seen you play.” Erica nodded. “I heard you gave up golf? Wow. I don’t think I ever could. Well, maybe if I had won as much as Reilly. I mean, once you’ve got all that money, why bother with the grind of getting up and practicing every day?”
“Because you love the game,” her Pop answered.
Uh-oh. The situation was fast deteriorating. Sure, Reilly hadn’t been all that keen for her friend and her brother to get serious about each other, but Erica was her friend and there were certain obligations that came with that.
The woman was drowning. The least Reilly could do was throw her a life vest. “Erica, would you like some pie? Grams baked a fresh one just for your arrival.”
“Pie.” Erica drooled. “Pie is my favorite.”
Score one for the new girlfriend. Reilly watched Grams perk up at the revelation. She tried to stand so that she could lean over the table and cut a slice, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate and she slumped back into the chair. Luke reached for the chair to steady her.
Reilly moved, too, but stopped when she saw the flush of embarrassment on her face. Then Luke whispered something in her ear and the flush turned brighter and Grams was giggling. Giggling!
“Now Luke, you know we love you like a son, but I catch you flirting with my woman again and I’m going to have to get the shotgun out.”
Luke raised his arms in surrender. “You can’t fault a man for trying.”
“I suppose not.” Pop nodded.
“Holy shit, you mean he really has a gun?” Erica whispered to Reilly.
“Told you. Sit and eat pie.”
“Oh, I can’t eat it. You know my season diet.”
“Trust me. Your relationship with Kenny hangs in the balance. Eat the pie.”
“Gotcha.”
Erica took Kenny’s seat at the table and Reilly cut her a healthy slice.
“Oh, I have a message for you from Gus,” Erica told her around a forkful of apple and cinnamon.
Reilly groaned. She’d spoken with her agent just once since the announcement. She gave him her prepared statement and told him he would know when she did what she was going to do. He’d sputtered, he’d coughed, he’d whined and he’d begged. He'd said her whole life was riding on this single decision and should she make the wrong choice, everything everywhere would be ruined forever.
Gus had a flair for the dramatic.
“I don’t think I want to hear this.”
“He said he thinks he’s dying and the right thing to do would be to grant a dying man his last wish. He said if he had to he would apply to the Make a Wish Foundation and get them to lean on you.”
“Sounds like Gus.”
Erica dropped her fork on the empty plate and pressed her finger down on a few crumbs that had escaped the fork and popped her finger into her mouth.
“I think you’re doing the right thing,” Erica noted as soon as she removed the digit from her mouth. “Sure it’s great you got ranked so high, but do you want the entire planet scrutinizing you on every shot, pointing out every weakness? You’re a great golfer. You show up at the American and you’re nothing better than a circus freak.”
“I haven’t made up my mind one way or the other.”
“Are you seriously telling her she shouldn’t do it?” Kenny reached for Erica’s plate before she bent down and started to lick it.
“I can’t tell Reilly to do anything,” Erica corrected. “I just think…” She stopped herself for a moment as if once again trying to make sure she had it right in her head first. “I think it could hurt her career. I think it could end it. What happens after you play the American? Are you going to play with the men full-time? Are you going to play against guys like Roy Staddler and Sinjin Rye week in and week out? They’ll crush you. They’ll make you look like a hack and you know it.”
Reilly gritted her teeth. Erica wasn’t trying to be hurtful. They were fair questions.
“You don’t know that,” her Pop defended her. “You don’t know how she might stack up.”
“Sorry, Mr. O’Reilly, but I do. What’s your average driving distance?” she asked Reilly.
“Two-seventy something,” Reilly admitted. “But I’ve hit it over two-eighty.”
“Two-eighty. Yours is the top driving distance on the women’s tour, but it’s about forty yards short of where you would need to be to compete against the top-ranked men. So now you’re forty yards behind your playing partner. He’s hitting nine irons and wedges into the greens and you’re pulling out your five iron if you’re lucky. You know what those greens are like. It’s like hitting a ball onto a small patch of ice. You can’t spin it like the other guys with the club in your hand. You can’t get it high enough without sacrificing distance. In the end you go from being a legend to a footnote on the PGA tour. Your epitaph to golf will be: ‘The girl who couldn’t make the cut.’ Is that what you want?”
The room grew quiet. For the first time, Kenny and Pop were forced to hear what up until now Reilly had only been thinking. There wasn’t a
nything Erica said that Reilly hadn’t told herself a million times. It was brutal but it was the truth, and she didn’t want to be a footnote.
“I worked so hard to be the best,” she whispered. She looked first to Kenny then to her Pop. “Is it wrong to want to try and protect that?”
“No,” Pop said. “It’s not wrong.”
“Sorry. I don’t buy it. Sounds to me like you’re scared,” Kenny interjected. “This is one tournament. You fu… you mess it up, fine. You go back to doing what you’ve been doing. Why does it have to be some big thing? Why can’t it just be about a chance to play in a major?”
“Because she’s Reilly,” Luke answered his friend, although his eyes remained glued to her. “And I’ve never known your sister to play for fun.”
Reilly met Luke’s gaze and tried to read his mind. If he gave her any indication one way or the other about what he thought, it might have been easier. She trusted him when it came to the game. If he thought she had a chance to be something other than lame, then maybe it would be worth the risk. Or if he felt the same way that Erica did, it would make her choice that much easier. But he said nothing else. Instead, he stood and gathered his plate and her grandmother’s.
“I’ll take these into the kitchen.”
“You clear and I’ll clean,” Reilly announced.
“I’ll dry,” Kenny declared in what was a familiar routine.
“You don’t have a dishwasher?” Erica asked in disbelief. “This place is so eighteen hundred.”
“Not so eighteen hundred,” Grams corrected her. “We do have a flat-screen TV. Seamus, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Pop stood and helped his wife maneuver herself to a standing position then brought her walker around for her. The couple left the dining room on their way to their bedroom, which had since been moved from upstairs to a downstairs bedroom off the back of the house.
“You all get a good night sleep,” Grams wished them.
“And behave,” Pop added. It was a subtle reminder to the couple in the house the bedroom doors upstairs were to remain closed throughout the night.
But one person was already trying to figure out how long a wait it would be before the misbehavior got underway.
6
Luke grew hard at the sound of the bedroom doorknob turning. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected her. This was their thing. He was divorced and she was currently between relationships. Still, he hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility since he knew no matter how hard he was, what he was about to do was going to be even harder. He promised himself this time would be different.
Which meant he wasn’t getting laid tonight and that was always a downer.
The door creaked as Reilly slipped inside. From the moonlight spilling into the room, Luke could see she was wearing a pair of cotton pajama bottoms and a tank top. Not seductive evening wear, but as she moved toward the bed with the lithe grace she had always possessed, he found himself stifling a moan as his fists clenched underneath the sheet.
It had been like this the first time, too. Instant heat.
She’d been eighteen and had just graduated from high school. He’d stopped by between tournaments for the festivities. In a way, he’d thought she was as much his little sister as she was Kenny’s. He’d teased her since she was ten. Hassled her for no other reason than because. Embarrassed her in front of her friends at every opportunity. Worse, he had beaten her on the golf course every time they played, holding nothing back despite her age and sex to show her what a little kid she still was and how much more there was to learn.
Everything a big brother was supposed to do. As an only child, Luke had learned this from Kenny. But when he showed up at the house and watched as she came down the stairs in her cap and gown, he’d realized she wasn’t a kid anymore. Lightning hadn’t struck then. There had been no urge to sweep her off her feet and take her on the nearest flat surface. No sense that she was still anything other than Kenny’s little sister. That had come later. But in that moment, he’d recognized she was no longer the girl he once knew. It had made him both sad and proud.
Kenny had promised to pick her up from a graduation party that night, but Tessa had called and he’d left the task to Luke.
Luke remembered seeing her walk toward him as he’d gotten out of the truck to greet her. There had always been a fluidness about the way she moved. No doubt it was the fluidness which made her golf swing so sweet. That night he’d seen it in action for the first time as a woman using it to tempt a man. She’d strolled up to him in her breezy summer dress and high heels with determination. Declaring she was ready to take on the world.
And he’d wanted her. Just like that.
There had been no guilt. No uneasiness about the fact he’d once teased her for wearing a training bra. No fear about what Kenny might say. It was like she’d stepped out of some cocoon and there was this sexual butterfly floating before him. In her face, he could still see the Reilly he knew and the combination was electrifying.
It had been just the two of them despite the raucousness of the party, which had spilled out onto the street. With a fearless expression on her face and a gleam in her eyes, she’d walked right up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him before he’d even had a chance to consider stopping it.
He’d pulled her away from him, lifted her inside the truck and had driven out to a secluded spot not too far from the farm. On a blanket in the back of the truck he’d taken her virginity with a passion and intensity that to this day robbed him of breath when he thought about it.
“You awake?” she whispered, creeping toward the bed. In case he wasn’t, she rattled the mattress.
“We can’t do this,” he muttered as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“Jesus, you haven’t gotten married since dinner have you?”
Luke sat up in the bed, but was careful to keep the blanket over his lap. He pushed the pillows behind him and reached out to take her hand. It was strong and calloused underneath but the skin on top was soft. He pulled it closer to him and rubbed it against his cheek.
She tilted her head and he could see she was confused by the gentleness of his act. When they got together, things tended to get volatile. His dick twitched beneath the sheets just thinking about it and he dropped her hand.
“I meant we can’t do this in your grandparent’s house. It would be disrespectful.”
“But that time behind the barn three years ago...”
“Technically that wasn’t under your grandfather’s roof.”
“So let’s go outside,” Reilly suggested.
“It’s too cold.”
Her smile faded and Luke could see her bottom lip puff out. Reilly hated not to get her way. If it wasn’t for the fact he knew he was going to need a trip to the bathroom for a date with his hand when this was all said and done, Luke might have considered it fun.
“Luke, are you telling me you have a headache?”
“No. I feel fine.”
He smiled and put his hands behind his head. He watched her gaze fall to his chest and enjoyed the feeling of knowing she was hungry for him. It was part of the fun of being with her. Reilly had no shame when it came to sex. She enjoyed him and enjoyed herself. She’d never held anything back, which made each experience unique.
Maybe it would be different if they ever let themselves be together full-time. Maybe if they didn’t come together knowing each encounter was finite they would eventually fall into the same sexual rut other couples did.
Maybe. But he doubted it.
“Then what’s your problem?”
“Don’t you think we’re getting a little old for this?”
“Oh, no. Is this some kind of ‘man problem?’ Because if you need to get a pill or something, I’m totally cool with that.”
Luke reached out and took her hand and slid it under the sheets. He heard her soft moan as her fingers wrapped around his swollen cock. He muffled a groan as he allowed her fingers to play with h
im for a delightful minute. Before he weakened, he pulled her hand out from under the covers, but still held on to it, his fingers linked between hers. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the base of her palm and felt her pulse leap in response.
“This isn’t about sex, Slice. It’s about us. It’s about growing up.”
He saw her confusion but he wasn’t sure what else to tell her. He knew when he came back this time things had to be different. It had been easy for them that first time to enjoy each other, but what had been even more shocking to him was how easy they had both been able to walk away. He’d expected tears when he told her he had to leave to go back on tour. He’d thought she would scream and beg him to take her with him, or at least make some kind of promise to her.
She hadn’t. Instead, she’d gotten dressed, thanked him for a great first time, wished him luck on his next event and asked maybe if he was in the area, if he could visit her at college some time. They could hook up.
He’d visited her at college twice. They’d never talked about anything other than golf and what they’d wanted to do to each other sexually. Maybe back then he would have considered a relationship with her if she’d pressed him, but she never did. In fact, she often spoke about how perfect their non-relationship-relationship was.
Then he'd decided he needed to get serious about his life and so he’d gotten married. To someone else. Within two months of his marriage, just about when he realized he’d made a colossal mistake, Reilly had called to let him know she was engaged.
Reilly sighed. “Are you getting philosophical on me? You know I hate that shit.”
“I’m telling you I’m not sneaking around your grandparents’ house like a sixteen-year-old horny kid. Now go to bed like the good little girl I know you can be.”
She eyed him suspiciously and he could see her playing out all of her options in her head. It was just one more thing that made her frightening as an opponent on the golf course. She was a consummate strategist.
Pulling her hand from his, which he hadn’t even realized he’d still been holding, she allowed it to fall onto his bare chest. Whisper-soft she ran a finger down the center of his body until she reached the edge of the sheet. His eyes must have followed her finger the whole way because when he caught himself and looked up to meet her gaze, he saw a satisfactory smile on her face.
