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—”
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.
And every time, she thought if she died, she died, but what a way to go.
His rough fingers dragging over the skin of her clit from her opening to the top of her folds spiraled her faster and faster, and it felt like every time he pounded into her, his cock went deeper.
She was racing toward release. Every scrub of his fingers across her clit and savage slam into her from behind forced her body to clench, and she became a knot yanked at both ends as she tightened. Until with one hard pinch of his fingertips on her clit, she broke apart and unraveled, waves of ecstasy roaring through her. She was the nothingness between the frayed ends as she clung to the tree and Jericho dug his fingers into her hips once again, growling against her back as he trembled with his last thrusts.
He gasped, his voice holding that desperate rasp that Tiffany had come to think of as him returning from unthinking instinct to being himself.
Jericho grabbed her with both of his arms and held her as they both leaned against the tree. His breath was ragged as he pressed his lips to her temple and rumbled, his body hot against hers, “You just made every one of my fantasies come true.”
“Not yet,” she said, still gulping air, too. “Let’s go finish that round of golf. I’m ahead by five strokes.”
He groaned against her temple. “God, could you be any more perfect?”
She played the rest of the round with damp panties and a sore pussy, and she beat Jericho by six strokes. He was two over, and she was four under par.
Yeah, she’d been under Parr, all right.
And she’d liked it.
Only three more days until June started, though.
But she wouldn’t have traded being Miss May for the world.
Jericho grabbed her hand while the caddies were cleaning their golf clubs, and they were indeed white, college-age guys. “I’m starving. Let’s have lunch in the clubhouse. The lobster rolls here are great.”
“Are they the mayonnaise kind?” There must be other items on the menu though. She could eat a salad.
He shrugged. “I suppose they could make you a Maine roll if you wanted one, but the ones on our menu are Connecticut lobster rolls, warm buns with melted butter poured over them and cayenne pepper if you want it.”
“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “I like the cayenne.”
He grinned at her and grabbed her hand. “Homemade rolls, too. Come on.”
He led her up the steps and into the long clubhouse, a sturdy New England construction flying nautical flags and notices from their sister club, the Narragansett Yacht Club, just down the street at the harbor.
“There’s a yacht club, too?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” Jericho said, squinting at the flyers on the corkboard. “My parents have a boat. I’m more into golf than boats.”
Wow, golf and yachts. Yeah, Jericho came from money.
Inside the glass double doors, which Jericho held open for Tiffany, the interior of the clubhouse opened up into a wide seating area with a fieldstone fireplace and a dining area with twenty or so square tables scattered around the space. The ice-white tablecloths sparkled against the navy blue-upholstered chairs and bright yellow napkins. Chandeliers hung from the polished wood beams on the ceiling as if they were on an opulent yacht.
People were sitting around five of the tables. Two all-male foursomes had obviously come in from golf or were at the turn, and one all-women foursome appeared to be the same, with their collared golf shirts and matching skirts. Two mixed-gender couples each sat at other tables.
Everyone turned and looked at Tiffany as she came in. Sunshine sparkling off the Atlantic Ocean and glowing through the high windows beamed on each one of the white faces, which was like standing on the surface of Jupiter and gazing up at a dozen and a half moons in the sky.
Tiffany smiled gently, looking non-threatening and like she was supposed to be there. She delicately ripped open the Velcro on the back of her golf glove on her left hand and tugged at her fingertips to remove it, showing them she was a golfer, too.
Jericho caught up to her, and his face rearranged itself into a rictus of a smile. “Uh-oh.”
“It’s okay, hon. I’m used to it,” Tiffany murmured to him.
Jericho was still staring at the people on the other side of the room when he raised his hand in greeting. “The couple in the middle of the room are my parents.”
Tiffany turned her head and tried not to let her lips move. “We can make a run for it.”
Jericho’s smile was perfectly frozen, and his Adam’s apple barely bobbed as he said, “Too late. They’ve already seen us. Are you okay with this?”
“I’m okay if you’re okay. Did you used to do ventriloquism or something?”
He kept doing it, and his voice was precise even though his lips and jaw did not move. “I went to boarding school most of my life. I am devious in ways you would not believe. I apologize in advance for whatever they say.”
Jericho didn’t hold her hand as they crossed the wide expanse of the clubhouse.
Tiffany steeled herself to be fine with whatever Jericho said to introduce her. It wasn’t like they’d been dating for six months or a year. It wasn’t like she was anything other than Miss May.
When they got over to the table, Jericho’s parents were sitting across the square table from each other, not beside each other.
Tiffany was going to have to sit between his parents.
Jericho’s mother was a thin woman who sat very straight in her chair, with finely wrinkled skin a few shades lighter than her pale gray eyes that darted as she looked from Tiffany to her son and back again. His father looked about as tall as Jericho was, with a full head of dark iron hair and a calculating harshness in his blue eyes.
Jericho slid a chair out from the table and stood behind it, gesturing to Tiffany to indicate she should sit.
Okay, but Tiffany wasn’t going to read anything into Jericho holding a chair for her, not even when he said, “Tiffany, I’d like to introduce you to my parents, Boyd and Lillian Parr. Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet Ms. Tiffany Jones.”
Just her name. No equivocation that she was a woman who worked at one of his golf courses or a person he just happened to be golfing with. Just her name.
Tiffany’s hands felt quivery like she’d played thirty-six holes of golf in one day. She drew a deep breath and put on her very best code-switched non-accent. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Parr.”
She sounded like every Connectikite upper-middle-class girl she’d known in high school.
The Look passed between Jericho’s parents, and Tiffany glanced down at her plate to let them have their eyeball-conversation, Oh my God, she’s Black, without her watching them. It didn’t matter if she saw it or not. She’d know the results soon enough.
A waiter glided over to their table, delivering glasses of water for Tiffany and Jericho and salads for his parents. Jericho confirmed with Tiffany that she wanted the Connecticut-style lobster roll and ordered for the two of them.
His father ordered another bottle of wine for the table.
Once the waiter was gone, Lillian Parr asked, “So, where are you from, Tiffany?”
“Newcastle,” Tiffany said, adjusting her silverware and plate to be even with the edge of the table.
“Newcastle, England, or Newcastle, here?” his mother asked.
“Newcastle, here,” Tiffany clarified.
“No, I mean, where are you from originally?” his mother asked, nodding helpfully.
Tiffany smiled faintly, trying to give Jericho’s parents the full benefit of the doubt. “My mom is from Newcastle. Her family has been here for generations. The Marines stationed my father at the Navy base in Groton. He went up to Newcastle to go to church, and they met at church.”
“Oh,” Lillian said, delicately stabbing the lettuce on her plate with her fork. “Jericho usually associates with people he met at that boarding school in Switzerland we sent him to. I thought, perhaps, you were from Le Rosey.”
That was a pretty good reason for his mom to doubt where she was from, so Tiffany chalked it up to Jericho’s prior dating habits. “No, we met here. Meaning, in Connecticut.”
A different waiter brought over the bottle of wine, and Boyd poured glasses for Tiffany and Jericho.
Lillian encouraged Tiffany to drink up, so she sipped the wine to be sociable. Tiffany was eating a meal and was a tall woman. She could metabolize a glass of wine with food in an hour and be all right to drive, though it was freaking her out a little.
“And how do you two know each other,” his father stated. Even though Boyd had phrased it grammatically as a question, the growl in his tone didn’t make it sound like a question.
Just as Tiffany was phrasing an answer, Jericho cut in. “Tiffany is a PGA-certified golf instructor at the golf course I recently bought, Newcastle Golf Club.”
Boyd’s iron-gray eyebrows twitched. “Did she beat you on the golf course today, Jericho.”
Again, the structure of Boyd Parr’s verbiage was a question, but it didn’t sound like it was. Tiffany waited to see how Jericho was going to answer that.
“Absolutely,” Jericho said. “By six strokes.”
“Six strokes? What happened to all those golf lessons I paid for down at the Croon Academy at the Greens of Grass course when you came home for the summers?”
“I shot four over,” Jericho told his father, “which would win the Member-Member Tournament here most years. Tiffany shot two under par. She was having an off day. Her handicap is negative three.”
Boyd Parr set down his fork and looked back at Tiffany, appraising her with a more critical eye. “Yeah, she looks like she’d be strong.”
The waiter was at Tiffany’s shoulder holding a salad plate, so she concentrated on allowing the waiter to place her salad in front of her rather than the strong comment.
But she was strong. Nothing wrong with being healthy. Except for her leg.
Tiffany sipped her wine. A little liquid calm might be helpful.
“Tiffany is an amazing golfer,” Jericho told his parents. “She would have gone to Q school and tried out for the LPGA tour, except that she had a leg injury. She’d probably beat your foursome by twenty strokes each.”
“Yeah, we could shoot closer to scratch if we played from the red tees.” His father punctuated the snark by poking a forkful of salad into his mouth.
“Tiffany doesn’t play from the red tee box. She plays from the tips. So she’d tee up two tee boxes behind where your senior foursome plays from, and she’d still beat you.”
His father glowered at his salad, so Tiffany went for the compliment to smooth things over. “I think the best thing about golf is how it brings people together. Really, every golfer plays against themselves, not against each other.”
Boyd Parr huffed, “That explains why I always lose. The only person who could beat me is myself.”
Tiffany laughed at Boyd’s quip, making sure her laugh was an amused, girlish chuckle rather than a raucous expression of genuine joy like when she was at home or with her cousins. She raised her wine glass to him, and he did the same. She sipped again.
When she looked up, Jericho was smiling at her like she’d done something brilliant instead of just flattering an old guy. Again, she was a Black woman employed in the golf industry. She knew how to flatter old white men to calm them down.
Lillian laid her hand on the tablecloth between their two salad plates, an aborted attempt to touch Tiffany. “So, you work at Jericho’s new business venture with Last Chance?”
“Yes, I’ve been working there for a few years, ever since I graduated from college. It was quite a surprise to us when Jericho bought NGC a few weeks ago.”
“It was quite a surprise to us when Jericho made that wager such that he had to buy it,” Boyd said. “It’s quite upended his venture capital company’s finances.”
Wager? “What wager?” Tiffany asked Jericho.
He waved his hand in the air. “It’s nothing.”
Lillian asked, “Is that why you two are golfing here today? Are you getting ideas for how you’re going to improve his golf course in Newcastle?”
“I’m hoping he doesn’t change it too much,” Tiffany said. “NGC is an important part of the community in Newcastle.”
“But that’s why you’re golfing with him, right? To get ideas for the other golf course.”
Ah, Tiffany knew what she was asking. “Yes, of course. That’s all.”
Jericho leaned in and spoke directly to his mother. “No, it’s not just about Newcastle Golf Club. Tiffany and I are here together.”
“Together?” His mother’s face twitched in a thousand different places, from lip movement quirks around her mouth to flaring nostrils to one eye blinking rapidly in a tic.
Tiffany hoped she wasn’t obviously staring at Lillian’s facial features flickering through a thousand different micro-expressions, but she was. A face shouldn’t be able to do that. Lillian looked like a speeded-up video or a case of demonic possession.
“Together?” Lillian asked again. “You mean you’re . . . dating?”
Tiffany hadn’t thought she was going to get the whole Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner treatment when she’d agreed to eat a lobster roll with Jericho in the clubhouse, but evidently, there they were.
Jericho settled back in his chair, becoming more solemn.
Tiffany managed to catch his eye for a moment, and she shook her head a little bit and raised one palm at him, trying to let him know that it was okay if he didn’t want to go down this road with his parents.
After all, Tiffany was just Miss May.
And June was on the horizon.
She looked down and stared at her half-eaten salad with her palm still up, while Jericho’s parents stared at him.
Jericho took a breath—and she knew it was him taking a breath because he’d inhaled air through his lips into his muscular body beside her ear so many times—and he said, “We’re dating.”
The salad plate was whisked away from under Tiffany’s nose, and a fresh roll piled high with steaming lobster meat drizzled with melted butter inserted itself under her face.
“You’re dating?” his mother asked again.
There was a gorgeous lobster roll under Tiffany’s face, and she resolved not to let it go to waste. Tiffany picked up the oven-warm bread, turned it sideways, and took a healthy bite. She did not, however, look at the three other people at the table.
“Dating.” The descending tone of Jericho’s voice sounded like he was trying to end the conversation.
Tiffany took another bite of the lobster roll. Fresh butter coated her tongue, and the tender lobster flesh was infused with it.
Jericho’s father grumbled, “Well, it was nice that we had to find out this way, but let’s not give the other country club members anything else to gossip about.” Sarcasm permeated his words like springtime fog rolling through the air above a wet fairway.
Conversation during the rest of the meal was minimal, though Lillian asked a few closed-ended questions about where Tiffany had gone to college and what else she liked to do besides golf.
Tiffany smiled politely and did her best to answer. Jericho hopped in to praise Tiffany whenever there was an opening, and his father methodically chomped his lobster roll in sullen silence.
At one point, Jericho’s phone chimed, and he excused himself to peek at it and text back.
“What was so important,” Boyd stated and asked Jericho, breaking his self-imposed silence.
Tiffany’s phone played a guitar riff that indicated she had received a text, as Jericho told his father, “Gabriel Fish texted me. He wants to play a round on the golf course I bought and offer advice. I put him off.”
Boyd scowled. “I wouldn’t take any advice he’ll give you. The Shark is the kind of guy who would sucker punch you when you aren’t looking in order to win the bet. His father was like that, too.”
Tiffany sneaked a glance at her phone screen, hoping her cousins had not tracked her phone to Narragansett so she would have to answer questions.
Instead, Jericho had texted her, They’re freaking out because they’ve never met anyone I was dating before.
A chill swept through Tiffany, and her fingers and forearms felt weak again.
But it was just an accident. They hadn’t had a chance to flee before his parents had seen them.
After they’d finished eating, Tiffany needed to get the heck out of that dining room. She couldn’t handle not only being the Black girl that their son was dating, but also being the only girl their son had ever dated as far as they knew.
She stood. “I’ll go check on our golf clubs.”
Jericho tucked his crumpled napkin beside his plate. “I’ll go with you.”
His mother hissed at him, “Stay a moment.”
Tiffany said to his parents, “It was wonderful meeting you both. Thank you for a lovely lunch,” so no one could say she was rude, and she strode out of the dining room.
Outside, the air was sultry with the late-May New England summer sunshine, and she sucked in a deep breath of the salt breeze from the ocean just beyond the rolling golf course.
Over by the caddie shack, her golf bag and Jericho’s stood where the caddies had cleaned their clubs and even wiped down their leather bags. The caddies must’ve changed shifts at noon, because two new guys stood next to their bags.
Summery afternoon sunshine clung to Tiffany’s hair as she walked across the cobblestone courtyard. “Hey, guys, we’re done. I’ll take my clubs now.”
One of the caddies, a mid-twenties, tall guy stepped between her and her golf bag. He squinted at her, his sunburnt skin gathering in tan and ivory lines around his eyes. “You’re not a member here.”
“I know I’m not a member here, but that’s my bag right behind you. I’m leaving, and I want my clubs.”
The guy put his hands on his hips, making himself even bigger. “I don’t think so.”
From behind the big caddie, the other guy asked, “Royce?”
Royce said to the other guy without taking his eyes off of Tiffany, “I’ll handle it, Mark.” And then to her, “We know these golf bags aren’t yours. Move along and we won’t call the police, but I need you to leave the property.”
Practiced coldness settled over Tiffany. She was as chill and solid as ice. Her parents had taught her that. Marines never lost their temper, and her mother was even calmer and colder than that.
Tiffany pointed at her bag. “That golf bag, right there, the one with the driver headcover of Aristocat the Tiger, the mascot of Tennessee State University, that one is my bag.” Her legs trembled, and her knee brace might have been the only thing holding her up. “My name, Tiffany Jones, is on the bag tags, the one for the Tennessee State University golf team, and the one for the National Collegiate Finals, and the one for the Women’s Amateur US Open, among others.”
Royce shook his head. “I said you need to leave the property.”
Jericho’s voice projected across the patio as he marched toward them. “Is there a problem?”
Tiffany continued glaring up at the caddie, who was looking over her head at Jericho. The guy said, “Mr. Parr, sir, this woman was asking about your bag.”
“Didn’t you read the tee sheet for this morning? I registered a guest, Ms. Tiffany Jones. And here she is. And that is her bag.”
“It didn’t look like her bag,” the guy said, fumbling over his words.
Something directly behind her and above her head growled.
Tiffany didn’t turn. The growl sounded like Jericho, but it might have been a great white shark who’d jumped out of the sea at the end of the fairway. That would explain why Royce’s eyes kept getting bigger and why he was stammering out his answers.
Jericho’s voice was lower. “Didn’t Richard and Bob tell you when they went off duty that my guest and I were eating lunch in the clubhouse and would need our bags soon after?”
Royce glanced back at the other guy and said, “Bob said something about you having a guest before he left.”
Even though Royce the caddie was tall, he was staring upward at Jericho above her head by several inches, maybe six or more. “Get Ms. Jones’s and my bags and put them in my car immediately.”
“I just didn’t think that nice of a bag looked like it could be hers.”
More growling. And then, “Clean out your locker in the staff room and get out.”
“You can’t—”
“Bet me.”
“Only the general manager can—”
“The Parrs are founding members of the Narragansett Club. We still hold the deed to half the land in trust. The general manager will say, yes sir, Mr. Parr, to whatever I tell him to do. I said, clean out your locker and get the hell off my property.”
Tiffany stood with her spine ramrod straight and her chin up.
Royce tried to stare Jericho down for three seconds, and then he blinked, turned, and walked toward the clubhouse, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
Jericho said, “Mark, put both our bags in my car.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Parr.” He grabbed a clean towel out of the rack, wet it, and began wiping down the heads of their clubs even though they appeared shiny like they’d already been cleaned.
Jericho offered Tiffany his arm as if they were living a century before. “Ms. Jones?”
She slid her hand through his arm.
As they were strolling around the clubhouse and out to the parking lot, Tiffany’s legs started trembling harder. That guy not listening to her when she’d identified her bag and then the threat of the police welled up inside her chest. The shakes moved up to her hands, and her eyes grew hot and began to leak. She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand.
Jericho touched her elbow and stopped her. “Hey, hey. Don’t cry, Tiff. He’s just some asshole.”
“I’m fine.”
He stepped toward her, his arms spread. “Are you okay?”
Tiffany scooted backward, ducking from under his arms. “I’m fine. I’m fine! I just don’t want to deal with this right now. Sometimes, it’s even more exhausting than other times. So I’m just going to go home. I’ll see you later, Jericho.”
“Let me drive you home,” he said.
“I said I was fine.”
“I know, but let me drive you home.”
“I don’t need you to drive me home.”
“Look, you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset. You want to see me upset?”
Jericho flipped one hand in a helpless gesture. “I’m afraid you’ll speed a little or not see a stop sign or take a corner too fast, and you’ll get pulled over for it. Or even if you don’t do any of those things, you had a glass and a half of wine with lunch, which you don’t normally do. I don’t want to worry all night that maybe you didn’t get home.”
Tiffany stopped walking. “You can’t drive me around all the time. That’s what my life is like. Every time I drive myself anywhere, somebody is worrying about me, whether it’s my parents or my cousins or whomever. That’s what my life is like.”
Mark the caddie trotted past the two of them with both their bags slung over his shoulders. “Where?”
Jericho pointed to his Jaguar, and the trunk popped up. “Put both of them in my Jag.”
“You don’t have to—” Tiffany insisted.
Jericho sighed. “If you’re adamant about it, I’ll back off, but this seems like one of those times where I should take care of you. You have surgery scheduled in a few days. If any little thing happens, it’ll delay the surgery, and it might be months before Dr. Cooper has another opening in his schedule. I pulled some strings to get you in there. I can at least make sure you get home safely today.”
Being coddled felt alien. With the Marine for a father and a mother who could have been a drill sergeant, it’d never happened before in Tiffany’s life. Surely, someone should be standing over her right now, telling her in a stern voice that this was an opportunity for growth.
When she didn’t speak, Jericho reached out and took her hand. “In this case, I’m just going to assume that silence means yes. Come on, I’ll bring you back to get your car tomorrow, or we’ll send a couple of the bag boys to drive it back. Newcastle Golf Club does not take enough advantage of their lackeys.”
She let him lead her to his car, open the passenger-side door for her, and settle her inside.
While he was walking around the car, Tiffany had an urge to jump out and get in her own car to drive herself home, but Jericho had her clubs in his trunk. She wouldn’t have left Narragansett Country Club without her bag one way or another, so she guessed she was stuck in his car.
It seemed like enough of a reason to stay.
Jericho folded his massive body into the driver’s seat and drove them out of the parking lot and onto the long, winding roads that hugged the shoreline.
Seagrass grew through the beach sand and waved in the sea breeze that had kept them cool on the golf course despite the summer sunshine. Families played on the beaches, and people rode boogie boards on the waves.
Jericho asked, “Better?”
She nodded. “I never noticed there were so many beaches. I mean, of course, we live on the shoreline of the Sound, but the ocean is so vast like a solid steel-blue shell. I guess I’m pretty much always driving, so I never looked at the beaches. That’s why I was looking at the forest so much when you were driving me home from the doctor’s appointment. I never noticed all the trees and hills along the sides of I-95.”
Jericho turned over his hand again near the gearshift, and Tiffany slid her fingers into his. He asked, “Speaking of Dr. Cooper, do you need a ride to the hospital Tuesday? Or someone to take care of you after the surgery?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to stay with my parents for a few weeks. My mom took three days off of work to take me in for the surgery and baby me afterward.” As much as Tiffany’s mother ever babied anybody. She was probably going to post Tiffany’s PT schedule on the wall and blow a whistle when it was time to do her therapy.
“Will you be okay? Do you need someone to hang around and watch TV with you or bring you take-out?”
“My cousins signed up for shifts. Even my brother took an afternoon, and he never takes part in anything. I don’t even think I’m going to get any rest.”
“Huh.”
When Tiffany glanced at Jericho, he was squinting at the road a little as he drove, looking pensive. “Huh, what?”
“When I had my shoulder done a few years ago, I hired a nurse and a personal chef to take care of me. My buddies stopped by to offer condolences and watch sports, but I can’t imagine asking one of them to change the dressings on my shoulder or anything.”
“Didn’t your mom take care of you?”
Jericho huffed a laugh. “I think that’s one of the reasons they sent me off to boarding school. When I was little, if I got sick, she hired a nurse to take care of me. She described taking care of sick children once as, and I quote, ‘Ew.’”
Tiffany gripped his hand a little more tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m glad your mom’s going to be taking care of you. If you need anything, anything at all, just text. I can bring you a pizza, or fill a prescription, or bring over a new tube of Neosporin if you need it. Anything you need, just shoot me a text.”
“Okay. I will.”
“And have somebody send me a text when you’re out of surgery, okay?”
“I’ll text you as soon as they let me have my phone,” she said, which was not what he’d asked for, but her parents hadn’t caught them together and demanded an explanation over a meal.
Yet.
Jericho nodded. “Okay.”