16. The Centurian Card

16

The Centurian Card

NICOLE LAMB

The next morning, the doors unlocked with a click, and scores of employees walked into Sidewinder Golf to find their uptight head engineer and that nosy new guy sacked out on the couches in the front lobby.

Nicole sat up and rubbed her eyes in the glaring morning sunshine streaming through the glass walls.

Across the coffee table on the other couch, Kingston rolled up and glared at the people crowded around them. “Show’s over. Back to work.”

Everyone laughed.

Nicole demanded of the crowd, “What are you guys looking at?”

“You got locked in the building last night, didn’t you?” Arvind asked, his thick eyebrows rising.

“Yeah, what about it?”

He spun and addressed the crowd. “Who had this week?”

Morgan was swiping on her phone. “I’ve got the spreadsheet. It’s Caitlin Moffett. Caitlin! You won!”

Nicole watched in disbelief as her very own lab tech jumped around like she was on springs and ‘shrooms. “I won! I won! How much was the pool?”

Morgan told her, “Six hundred. Congratulations!”

“What the hell was the bet?” Nicole yelled at them.

They all started laughing again at her, and she started figuring out ways to fire each and every one of them.

Arvind explained, “You’re always working late and the last person to leave, and you cut it close at least twice a week. Heck, you said you’d heard the lock-down buzzer go off on Monday while you were in the parking lot. You were obviously going to get locked in here eventually. We just had a pool for how long it would take.”

Kind of like the betting pool she’d put fifty bucks in, but that was for when Arvind was going to get locked in the copy room because he’d left his ID in his desk again and wouldn’t be able to badge his way out.

Or the twenty-dollar-ante pool for whether Morgan or Meagan would hook up with either Ben or Andy. At least two of that double set of matched pairs on the sales team were going to couple up at some point.

There was a lot of wagering going on at Sidewinder. Nicole’s inability to maintain a work-life balance was probably fair game. “Okay, back to work, you slackers!”

Caitlin, who should’ve been counting her winnings instead of sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong, ignored her and asked, “How’d the new guy get locked in here, too?”

Because they’d been flirting in Nicole’s office instead of watching the clock.

“Hi, again. Caitlin, isn’t it?” Kingston interrupted them. “After your demonstration of fiberglass content in golf shafts, Nicole told me about other golf club manufacturing specifications, and I lost track of time. My fault. However, I made a deal with Nicole for the lab tour and lectures, so I’m on the hook to buy pizza for lunch for the research lab today.”

Nicole watched her lab techs shuffle back and forth with excitement at the prospect of free pizza for lunch. Indeed, recent college grads were always looking for free pizza.

Kingston poked around in his wallet and pulled out a credit card. “Who wants to make sure that the pizza lunch happens? I’m going back to my hotel to shower. Nicole?”

She stretched her arms overhead, a jiggle going through her body. “Sure, I’ll probably be back in the lab by ten. I can deal with getting lunch for these guys.”

Kingston tossed his credit card on the coffee table between the couches. He must’ve moved over to that other sofa sometime during the night, probably because Nicole had explicitly told him that she didn’t want those guys sneaking up on them in the morning and finding them sleeping in flagrante.

She picked up the plastic card from the table and turned it over, looking at it to see if she could discern any sort of information about him from the personal expression of his credit card.

Weirdly, it wasn’t the green or metallic version of an American Express like all the other ones she’d seen. It looked like he’d dipped a perfectly good card in ink, dark gray and onyx covering the plastic, maybe like it had been made out of black-hued tungsten instead of silver or gold.

She checked her thumb to see if the ink had come off, but it hadn’t. “Huh, I’ve never seen an American Express that’s dark like this. Are you sure this is a real credit card, not some promo thing?”

Kingston stood up, stretching his arms over his head and throwing his head back. “It should work fine.”

The image of Kingston throwing his head back while sitting on the couch upstairs whisked through Nicole’s mind, and she blinked to get rid of it before she blushed. “Okay.”

The crowd began to disperse, turning their backs on Nicole and Kingston as they made their way to the hallway behind the hostess’s desk and then toward the elevators and stairwells.

Nicole risked a glance at Kingston.

He was smiling at her. “Don’t forget I have to buy you dinner tonight, too. That was part of the deal for the expanded tour of the lab.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

“Think about dinner? You have to eat.”

“Yeah, but—this is fast. I need to think about it. I’ll get back to you.”

Nicole fled.

Actually, she tried to flee.

She grabbed her backpack on the floor, swung its laptop-heavy weight around her back to her shoulder, and trotted for the door.

Kingston beat her there with his long legs and easy gait and stood just marginally in the way. “You promised to go out to dinner with me.”

“No, I extorted dinner from you for a lab tour. There’s a difference.”

“Then let me pay off my debt. Most blackmailers are particular about being paid promptly.”

“I— um —how about tomorrow night?” Nicole asked him. She could think and cancel if she needed to. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”

That she didn’t want to stay out all night on a work night is what she didn’t want to say.

Kingston nodded solemnly. “Ah, yes. Tomorrow works better with my schedule, too.”

A quiver raced along her nerves. “Great.”