“My family’s from all over New England, which means Connecticut and Massachusetts, though my parents live in Stamford now.”
Stamford, huh? Must be nice. But there were working-class parts of Stamford, just like there were working-class enclaves of people everywhere. “I have aunts, uncles, and a whole population of cousins here in Newcastle, too.”
“Are they all members of the country club?” he asked.
“Golf club,” she corrected him. Newcastle was a golf club, not a country club, which had sounded too hoity-toity to the founding members and her ears. “And, no, they’re not. My dad learned to golf in the military because a lot of military people golf. Even though he was a Marine, he was a liaison with some of the people who were in the Air Force, and everyone in the Air Force golfs. So to get along with those guys, he learned to golf. By the time I came along, my dad had definite opinions about essential life skills, and we joined NGC with a family membership.”
Inside the clubhouse, Tiffany showed Jericho the dining room and bar area, which was predictably vacant at that time of the afternoon. She introduced Jericho to Mrs. Jorgenson and Mrs. Lincoln, who were having glasses of iced tea and planning the bridge club’s summer meetings.
He asked them, “What are some of the other social opportunities for non-golfing spouses?”
Mrs. Lincoln chuckled. “Oh, a few of us tried to get together a tennis league, but the tennis courts up on the hill by the driving range are in pretty bad shape. We just use the high school tennis courts in the evening instead of playing on the club’s beat-up courts.”
“How about balls and formals?” Jericho tilted his head as he talked to them. “How many events per year does the social committee put on?”
“Social committee! We haven’t had a social committee here for thirty years,” Mrs. Jorgenson laughed and playfully backhanded Mrs. Lincoln on the shoulder. “Can you imagine Gerald stuffed into a tuxedo? He’d look like one of those pugs that some awful owner put dog clothes on.”
Mrs. Lincoln chuckled into her iced tea. “I cannot even imagine, Imogene.”
Jericho tilted his head. “But don’t you have a New Year’s Eve party? Or a summer formal?”
The ladies’ snickers turned to howls. Mrs. Lincoln hooted, “Can you imagine Demelza trying to dance? She’d break a hip!”
Tiffany took pity on Jericho at that point, thanked the ladies, and beckoned him to follow her away.
When they were in the hallway leading to the pro shop, he said to her, “I thought you said the club was a center of Newcastle society?”
“Well, yeah, but I meant that the Girl Scouts set up a cookie table on the patio during cookie season, not that we throw a ball for the queen when she comes to town. NGC is where working-class families can get a membership for some good, wholesome fun. This is where kids can start learning the game in our free summer clinics and then play on their high school teams. Did you know that my high school sent twelve kids to college with full-ride golf scholarships last year?”
Jericho raised his eyebrow again. “Is that a lot?”
“It’s fantastic. Of kids who play high school varsity sports, only 0.6 percent of them will play college sports at all, let alone get a scholarship. Only six out of a thousand high school varsity athletes, not just all students but the varsity athletes, will even play in college. Getting a sports scholarship to college is extremely rare. That we got scholarships for twelve out of twenty graduating seniors was a freaking miracle.”
While they were in the clubhouse, Tiffany showed Jericho the club manager’s office, which was where he would turn in his timecard, and she told him that he could eat in the kitchen for seventy-five percent off on the days he worked a shift. Plus, he got fifty percent off at the pro shop, and he should have gotten two red club shirts as his uniform.
“Right,” Jericho said, looking off over the small pro shop’s merchandise. “Has anyone ever considered enlarging the pro shop?”
Tiffany shrugged. “People don’t buy enough merch as it is. The end-of-season sale is always way too big because members just don’t buy enough stuff, not that they should. Balls are priced twice as much here as they are down at Golf Universe in New London. And the club shirts that Loralinda bought this year, I don’t know where she contracted them from.” She pinched the red fabric of her good staff shirt from a few years before, gesturing with it. “They used to be nice and thick, yarn-dyed fabric with good stitching, but now, well, you can feel—”
For God only knows what reason, she reached out and gathered the fabric of Jericho’s shirt in her fingers.
Through the thin, cheap fabric, four of her fingertips brushed the lower part of one of his firm pectoral muscles, while her thumb grazed the warm lumps of his hard abdominals.
Damn, Jericho Parr was ripped under his clothes. She’d known from his broad shoulders and the way his shirt had clung to his lean waist and long legs when he’d been hitting balls on the driving range that he was muscular, but the hard abs right below his rib cage meant he must be shredded.
Oh, no. No-no-no. She was feeling him up.
Tiffany let go of his shirt and jumped back. “Oh, Lord. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to grab at you like that.”
Jericho hadn’t jumped backward. As a matter of fact, he was leaning forward as Tiffany clutched her offending hand against her chest with her other one as if she’d burned herself. His lips were parted as if he’d been about to say something, but he rocked back on his heels instead. “No offense taken. I’d noticed the shirt was substandard quality.”
“I mean,” she stammered, totally making things worse, “I’m your boss. I shouldn’t ever reach out at you like that. I apologize.”
Jericho chuckled at that, looking down and to the side. “I assure you I’m not offended.” He glanced at her from under his brown lashes, and his voice was lower. “I’m not offended at all.”
“We’re going to be working together.”
“Right,” Jericho said.
“I won’t do anything like that again,” Tiffany assured him. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“Noted, and no, you didn’t.”
“It’s not fair. I’m your boss. That’s an unequal power dynamic, and it’s not appropriate. Again, I apologize.”
“Are you telling me I should make the first move?” Jericho asked, stepping closer and towering over her. His smile had turned sultry.
When Tiffany considered things that might be a bad idea, making out or more with a coworker and jeopardizing her job at NGC was dang near the top of her list.
One of the few things that might be worse than that would be making out or more with the guy who there was no way and under no circumstances would she ever be able to bring home to meet her father. Any relationship with a thirty-year-old bag boy would be entirely impossible to justify to Master Sergeant Sherman Jones, ever.
And yet—
And yet Jericho Parr was six-four, ripped, and one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen in her life. His chiseled cheekbones and jawline were clean-shaven and smooth as marble, and she did not know how he got his blue eyes to turn dark and sexy like that.