She advanced on Jericho, her heels striking the carpet in irritation, and he forgot how to speak.
“I asked you,” she indeed did ask him, “are you the new bag boy? Mrs. Lombardi wants her clubs, and she shouldn’t be kept waiting all day. With her osteoporosis, she can’t muscle her clubs in and out of the trunk of her car. So she needs to be able to store them here and to have them retrieved in a timely manner.”
Oh, Jericho liked this woman very much, and not merely due to the lush swells of her breasts and hips and the velvety scarlet lipstick on her plush lips. She knew the club’s members, she knew what they needed as club members, and she was advocating for them. She held exactly the kind of information he was looking for.
That analysis shook his brain loose from the testosterone it had been mired in.
He walked toward her, his hand extended to shake. “Hello, yes, I’m Jericho Parr. And you are?”
“Tiffany Jones, assistant golf pro and PGA-certified golf instructor, and that makes me your boss. You look a little old to be a bag boy. Or way too young. One way or the other. Which is it?”
He reached her, his hand still outstretched. “And why is that?”
Tiffany glared at his hand waving in the open space between them, rolled her eyes, and shook his hand.
Her palm was soft and warmed from the sun, and a jolt through his body to his groin was an impulse to pull her against his chest.
What the hell was wrong with him? Jericho had seen beautiful women before. Hundreds of them, in fact. He wasn’t a dork around women.
But this woman was hot.
Jericho was acutely aware that he wasn’t wearing his boxer-briefs as his dick got heavy and extended past his hip and into his pants leg. He would be sporting a boner like a teenager if he didn’t calm down.
Tiffany dropped his hand, and she squinted up at him. Her eyes were tilted up at the corners, almost fairy-like. “The bag room staff who work here are either teenagers fresh out of high school or retired guys who work a few hours in exchange for free golf. You’re not either one of those. How old are you?”
“I turned thirty last month.”
“Yeah, that’s weird. Why are you a bag boy, Jericho Parr?”
The way her lips pressed together when she said the plosive of his last name and then purred the rest was absolutely fascinating—Parr—and he wanted to hear her say it again.
And maybe again after that.
The New Bag Boy
Tiffany
Tiffany Jones glared up at the Jericho Parr guy. She was glaring far, far up at his bright blue eyes and strong, tanned cheekbones and the hard right angle of his jaw, at his dark blond hair that had a wave in it, and his imposing height and easy posture. “Yeah, that’s weird. Why are you a bag boy, Jericho Parr?”
She hit his name a little hard, but jeez. If Jericho Parr didn’t have his life together by the time he was thirty, he should consider joining the military to whip himself into shape like Tiffany’s father had done. Being a bag boy was not a solid career choice, and it spoke volumes about him.
“This is Plan B,” Jericho said, his deep voice smoother than most New Englanders whose voices shaded toward either New York or Boston, depending on what football team they were fans of.
“What was Plan A?” she asked, kind of hoping for something solid. A guy like that—ridiculously tall, broad-shouldered, freaking gorgeous, with a mischievous sparkle in his bright blue eyes and what seemed to be a genuine smile—shouldn’t be brought down by an utter and total lack of ambition and responsibility, right?
A small part of her brain was chanting Damn, he fine, over and over again, and she was close to toppling over because she was leaning forward on her toes toward him. Was she imagining his smile becoming warmer? Why did she keep having flashes of that hand that had wrapped around hers, tilting her chin as he leaned down to kiss her, or those magnificent, muscular arms bracing around her head as he moved on top of her and between her legs?
He blinked, and he smiled a little more. “Venture capital.”
Oh, yeah. His Plan A was venture capital.
Venture capital was what rich trust fund babies said they did for a living when they were out snorting daddy’s money all their lives, until that money ran out. “And what do you think venture capital is supposed to be?”
“A venture capital firm invests wealth in businesses or buys them outright and optimizes their operations. After that, the businesses are sold at a profit or retained in the portfolio as an investment. Warren Buffett, the billionaire in Nebraska, is a venture capitalist.”
Oh, Jericho Parr was one of those guys who thought he was the genius investor, the Oracle of Omaha. Ugh, if there was anything worse than a slacker, it was a guy who thought so highly of himself that he wasn’t willing to work his way up. “Yeah, okay. Nice work if you can get it. Good thing you’ve moved on to Plan B, Jericho Parr. Maybe this one will work out for you. Now, get Mrs. Lombardi’s golf clubs and strap them on her cart for her.”
Tiffany stalked out of the bag room and back into the bright April sunshine. Her left knee ached as it always did, but with the strong brace strapped around her leg under her golf slacks, at least sharp pain wasn’t running from her knee through the muscles and tendons, as it would in a few hours. She stopped outside the bag room and took a deep breath, willing the muscles to relax and concentrating on the tulips budding around the hedges to externalize her attention.
The pain subsided somewhat. Tiffany was tough. Her knee didn’t stop her from doing anything she wanted to.
Except that it had.
But it wasn’t going to stop her from making sure Mrs. Lombardi got her clubs.
A group of elderly ladies stood over by the flock of carts, chatting and swiveling their heads impatiently. Their long-billed golf hats made them look like apprehensive ducks.
She called over to them. “Mrs. Lombardi? Our new bag boy, Jericho, will get your clubs for you. He’s getting them for you right now. I guarantee it.”
Jericho did indeed hustle out the door right behind Tiffany, bearing clubs. He strapped them onto Mrs. Lombardi’s cart with practiced ease as they quacked over him, looking at each other like the lecherous old ladies they were. Some of the older guys at the club eyed Tiffany a little too much, but those ladies shamelessly flocked around every guy under fifty and Mr. Kowalski, too.
The ladies waved at Tiffany as she struck out on the narrow path cut into the meadow toward the driving range.
The golf course had managed to open three weeks earlier this year than it usually did due to a stretch of fair weather. Up in Connecticut, golf courses often couldn’t open until the end of April or even into May, but they’d had a mild winter that year, other than a huge snow dump the day before New Year’s Eve.
Newcastle Golf Club spread out around Tiffany as she walked past the chipping practice area to the driving range. Oak and elm trees towered over the course’s perimeter, most of which were probably older than the United States. The driving range was longer than three football fields of neatly cut emerald grass with seven flags jabbed into the turf as targets. She’d spray-painted white targets around each flag at six o’clock that morning, using a clothesline looped around the flagsticks to make perfect circles.