3. The New Guy

3

The New Guy

KINGSTON MOORE

At ten o’clock that morning, Kingston drove his rented BMW into the parking lot of Sidewinder Golf, looking for red flags in the business that hadn’t been apparent on the balance sheet.

It almost didn’t matter now because the deal was done, but Kingston wanted to know if he’d bought a lemon. His strategy might change.

If he walked into Sidewinder like, “I’m your new owner, I’m your new boss,” the employees would cobble together a dog-and-pony show to exaggerate Sidewinder’s profits and prospects because they wanted to keep their jobs.

Understandable, but not what Kingston needed.

He needed to know exactly what he’d bought, all the faults and cracks, all the liabilities.

And thus, the ruse.

While Kingston and the previous owner had been haggling, he’d convinced the guy to notify Sidewinder’s HR that a new sales guy had been hired and would be arriving that morning, a tragically comic situation considering the company had just been sold. As the supposed new sales guy, Kingston could figure out how the company stood.

The cubic white and glass building was a standard industrial park rental among the biotech and genAI startups in the other buildings, which meant their R&D was probably onsite.

Good. He’d been counting on the hope that Sidewinder Golf had new products in dev that they weren’t talking about yet. Trade show season had already started, and he’d pulled strings last night to make sure Sidewinder had booths for summer shows and a gigantic display for the PGA Show in December in Las Vegas.

The other Last Chance guys were making smart plays for their golf-related investments.

Jericho had bought a down-on-its-luck private country club with a golf course, but trying to pivot a large investment like that was like trying to flip a U-turn in an aircraft carrier. It would probably increase a decent percentage in value, maybe thirty to fifty percent.

Mitchell had bought a bankrupt tee times app that was a little risky but would surely make a good profit with an infusion of cash for advertising. He could probably increase the value of that company by two or three times.

Morrissey hadn’t found an investment yet, but it didn’t matter.

With Jericho and Mitchell’s solid investments, Kingston could shoot for the moon.

And he would need to because Gabriel Fish had probably had an investment lined up when he’d made the bet, and it was probably a whopper. At least a fifty-fold increase. Maybe a hundred times his money.

So Kingston needed to blow Sidewinder Golf sky-high, and if he needed to use the more common ruthless venture capital tactics to make sure the company increased in value, he would.

Pump and dump, baby. Pump and dump.

Because Last Chance, Inc. wouldn’t survive losing the bet, and his friends would drift away.

A kernel of sheer terror burned deep in Kingston’s gut.

He plastered a salesman’s plastic grin on his face as he walked through the warm California spring morning and into the building, the shift to air conditioning like walking through a sorcerer’s portal into a wintery landscape.

The receptionist glanced up at him and tossed her long hair behind her shoulder as she turned on a bright West Coast smile and tilted forward. “Welcome to Sidewinder Golf. How can I help you?”

He placed one hand on her desk and leaned in, stretching his face into a bigger smile that would never have flown in Connecticut. “Hello! I’m the new guy. Kingston Moore, club fitting and sales. How’re you doing?”

She blinked at him, her lush eyelashes sweeping down. “Hello, Kingston Moore. I’m MEREDITH, front desk, obviously. Well, I’ve got to warn you, it’s been a heck of a morning. You didn’t already move to California, did you?”

Kingston didn’t feel the need to torture anybody. “I’ll be working the Northeast territory, so I’m remote. I didn’t have to move.”

Her shoulders lowered, and she looked down at her desk. “Oh. That’s good, I s’pose, that you won’t be moving to this area when everything is so up in the air.”

“But I’ll be traveling to the office a few times a month,” he told her.

She looked back up at him, her eyes lifting and smile returning. “It’ll be good to see you around the office.”

“So, what happened this morning?” Kingston asked because he wasn’t supposed to know about the deal.

“Oh! A venture capital firm bought Sidewinder in some back room deal, and we are just now learning about it in an email from the new company. Our chicken previous owner didn’t even do a videocall or a town hall or anything.”

Considering the circumstances, that wasn’t surprising even though Kingston had given Joe Flanagan the opportunity to tell his people about the sale. “That’s too bad.”

She nodded, her smooth skin creasing between her brows. “Everybody’s upset. People don’t know whether to go home and update their resumes or prepare for tech transfer to China.”

Getting a company sold out from under you is always traumatic, but Kingston was there to make a profit.

She continued, “If I were you, I wouldn’t make any long-term plans. The situation is fluid, to say the least.”

Kingston had written that last sentence about the situation being fluid in the unsigned email he’d sent from a Last Chance’s company account the night before. “I’m not too worried, and neither should you be. Companies always need good sales personnel and receptionists.”

She looked up and to the side, while her lips lifted in the middle. “That’s true.”

“Is someone around to give me a tour? I’d love to see the product and your set-up before I head back east. Maybe a sneak peek at anything new you have up your sleeves?”

“Oh, sure. I think Bob said Nicole Lamb was going to be around?—”

A woman’s low voice said, “Nicole Lamb is right here.”

In the hallway behind the receptionist’s desk, a curvaceous woman stood, one hand on her hip as she rested her weight on one leg, her other leg extended and toe pointed like a dancer. Her dark brown hair was falling out of the bun on her head and waving in the air conditioner’s breeze like banners calling Kingston to war, and she was looking somewhere behind him like she was distracted.

Kingston skirted the front desk, his hand extended to shake. “Hello! I’m Kingston Moore, the new guy in sales. I heard it’s been quite a morning around here.”

As he moved, she looked him up and down, evaluating. “ Yeah, right. You’re the new guy, Kingston Moore, right. I’m sure you’re absolutely who you say you are. Totally in sales. ”

Her sarcasm was an icy blast to his face.

Had she hacked Last Chance and figured out who Kingston was?

Like most engineers, people in materials science often have a background in computer science. She might have doxxed him.

Nevertheless, just in case, he played his part. “I’ve loved Sidewinder’s golf clubs for years, but I never managed to get off the waiting list. I’m working here so I can qualify for the employee’s discount and finally get my own full bag.”

She stared at him, nodding as if placating an absolute lunatic. “Okay, fine. I’ll play along. Come on, Kingston Moore. I’ll give you a tour of Sidewinder Golf, because sure, you’re totally going to be working here. You’re totally not going to get fired along with the rest of us by the end of the week.”

She turned and led the way into the white corridor behind her.

Nicole Lamb knew something about him.

Kingston trotted a step, but with his long legs, he was beside her in an instant. “I just heard that Sidewinder had changed owners.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s real,” she said. “Sucks to be you, showing up on your first day, and the company just changed hands.”

“It must seem odd that I’m still interested in working here after the acquisition. I admit I took the job for the employee benefit of getting a set of clubs, so it’s worth the risk.”

She stopped in the hallway, planting both her feet on one of the floor tiles.

Kingston strode another few steps before he stopped himself and turned back. “Are we going on the tour?”

“It’s April Fool’s Day,” she ground out, her teeth clenched. “I don’t like being fooled.”

He looked around, expecting a jump-scare, but the corridor was empty except for them. “I don’t get the joke.”

“You’re the joke. There’s no way a new guy just happens to start on April Fool’s Day. Like, I’m going to waste my whole day showing you around but you’ll be dumb as asphalt or something, and everyone will laugh at me.”

“Oh!” He chuffed a laugh. Thank Jesus, he wasn’t found out. “It’s not an April Fool’s prank, just abysmal timing on my part. I am Kingston Moore, the new salesperson for your company that just got sold to a venture capital firm.”

Everything except that part about him being in sales was true.

For a venture capital guy, that was more truth than usual.

“Well, your timing sucks, and I’m sorry you got mixed up in this.” Nicole paused, sucking her lips inside her mouth and staring at the gray-flecked tile under his loafers and her hiking boots. “Are you sure this isn’t an April Fool’s joke?”

“It’s not,” he assured her.

“Because I’m an easy sucker for jokes. I believe everything and go on like it’s real, and then everybody laughs at me, and then I have to laugh, too. But I don’t like practical jokes. They’re mean.”

“Hey.” He ducked his head, trying to catch her eye. He didn’t want to invade her personal space because he didn’t need an HR incident on his first day of owning the company, but he stroked his fingers along the soft skin under her chin and tipped her chin up, raising her eyes to meet his.

Her eyes were dark, shining polished mahogany with a film of tears.

Oh-no flooded him. The urge to stop her crying, to fix, crested. “Don’t be upset. This isn’t a joke. I am who I say I am and will be working with Sidewinder Golf.” He didn’t want to lie to a woman on the verge of tears. “I’m not an April Fool’s joke. No one’s going to laugh at you for believing me.”

She blinked at him, surprise replacing turmoil.

“And if they do laugh,” his voice dropped into his chest, “you tell them to come talk to me about it.”

Her blinks increased, and her elbows tucked in by her body, protecting her ribs.

His fingers were still under her chin, near the smoothness of her throat, just where they’d be if he’d raised her face to kiss her.

Her full lips began to part in the middle.

Kingston dropped his hand and stepped back. “I apologize if I overstepped.”

She looked toward the floor, her head snapping to new positions like she was trying to accommodate a new thought. “I— no, it’s okay.”

“But I assure you, I’m not an April Fool’s Day joke. I’m exactly who I say I am.”

Mostly.

“Okay.” She was still flustered, and without looking at him, she began walking.

Kingston followed her hourglass form swaying in the sterile, white hallway toward the elevators.

He wasn’t altogether composed, so he hung back, checked himself, and then caught up to her. “Are you the head engineer?”

“Yes,” she hissed.

“Because I asked to see the head engineer, and I’ve been pawned off on techs so many times that I can’t keep count anymore.”

“I’m not a tech.”

“As we established.”

“Do you change jobs so often that you have a protocol?” she asked.

Oh, perceptive, this one. “Only when the company gets sold out from under me on my first day, and you’d be surprised how often that happens.”

“Betcha I wouldn’t,” she grumbled and thumb-pointed toward a door they passed. “Anyway, downstairs break room, administration and HR offices, and sales offices are on the other side of the building. We’ll come back that way after we tour upstairs.”

“And what’s upstairs?”

“My domain.”

He grinned at her. “Ominous.”

Her sly glance from the corners of her eyes up at him seemed like she was beginning to relax. “Maybe.”

He was chuckling as the elevator doors slid open.

As they walked inside, Kingston assumed the standard elevator-riding position: facing the doors, feet shoulder-width with weight evenly distributed, hands clasped in front, and silent. If the elevator had been crowded, he would have sorted himself into a staggered row.

The elevator lurched and jiggled, then began laboriously dragging itself upward, hand over hand, swaying as it jerked.

The stairs would’ve been faster.

Nicole leaned against the side wall, facing him. “So, where are you from?”

Unease washed through him, but he was in the West. Even complete strangers lounged in the elevator, looked straight into each other’s eyeballs, and held entire conversations within the enclosed, forced intimate space.

Shocking, really.

Kingston softened his face with a small smile and turned to look at her. “I live in Connecticut now, near Bridgeport.”

“You sound like you’re from England.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time overseas as a child.”

“I was born and raised here in SoCal, in Oceanside,” she said. “I live in an apartment complex just a short drive from work. My landlord is being rude about a few plants I’m growing on my balcony.”

All right, so they were talking in this closed coffin of an elevator.

He softened his stance and angled toward her. “I’m sorry to hear your landlord is being a dick.”

“Yeah, but I pay my rent on time. He can’t do anything about it.”

“That’s good.”

Nicole had stuffed her hands in the front pockets of her jeans, and her lush body bent at the waist as she gazed up at him. The air conditioner blowing even in the elevator brushed the curling tendrils of her hair around her face.

Her face was sweet, Kingston noted. Her cheeks were soft, rounded, and her dark eyes seemed luminous, glowing with the light of a dark sun. Her blinks made him think of shyness.

He could crowd her back against the wall of the elevator, pull that elastic loop thing out of her hair and let it tumble over her shoulders, and kiss the daylights out of her right there.

His lips warmed with the mental image of being pressed against her mouth, her throat.

She asked him, “Where have you lived other than Connecticut?”

He forgot his role as a nondescript salesman. “I attended boarding school in Switzerland from the time I was eleven through high school. I’ve lived in Paris, Zurich, and London, among shorter stints elsewhere.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at him in wonder. “Wow.”

Had he phrased it quite like that just to elicit that response? Did he want to pique her interest in him?

He shouldn’t. He was lying to her about too much. A smart woman with significant computer acumen, which Nicole Lamb most assuredly was, would discover that he was an owner of Last Chance, Inc. far too quickly. His social media profiles weren’t hidden.

“I’ve never been to any of those places,” she said.

I’ll take you, was on the tip of his tongue. I’ll show you the world.

He swiveled back to stare at the elevator doors and watched the number 3 finally light up. “You should go. They’re nice.”

The doors parted, relieving Kingston of being in a cramped space with Nicole Lamb, and he strode out.

She bustled out beside him. “The third floor, which is the top floor, is R&D. We are a soup-to-nuts organization, from the conception of new golf clubs through design to commercialization and production. Actual manufacturing is off-site, of course, but everything else is under this roof.”

“And what’s your purview?” he asked, feeling his vocabulary become more British, practically arch, as he tamped down untoward inclinations toward the pretty, vulnerable Nicole Lamb.

He wasn’t at Sidewinder Golf to hunt for a date. He was here to inspect his acquisition, determine its potential, and discover redundancies in personnel or entire departments that could be outsourced.

Even the delectable little Nicole Lamb wasn’t safe from his cost-cutting scythe.

She said, “My team oversees the pipeline. We brainstorm dev with sales and the executive branches for high-level product ideas and blue-water industry niches. After that, we design products in CAD and IRL modeling, then cast or forge prototypes, and then produce the product for commercialization, and then we put it on the train.”

“A literal train?” Trains were inefficient.

“Metaphorical. It’s just the phrase that means we send the plans to the manufacturing plant to start producing it. If anything, we should say we put it on a slow boat to China.”

“That sounds like an extensive process.”

She shrugged one slim shoulder. “One time, we overhauled a wedge and took it from conception to the first manufacturing shipment in four months. That was the Scimitar Edge fifty-degree wedge, a blockbuster for Sidewinder.”

Nicole Lamb had produced the Scimitar Edge from concept to production in four months? Most golf products took three to five years to hit the shelves.

Kingston’s attention was a blazing spotlight beam on her.

The Scimitar Edge was a powerhouse of a golf club with excellent feel. Kingston had managed to finagle one for his set. It was so good that it felt like cheating.

Every time he’d played golf with his Scimitar Edge, he’d had his hands wrapped around her craftsmanship.

His palms grew sensitive, almost a tingle.

Kingston paused outside the door to her lab. “Four months? That’s astonishing.”

Nicole shrugged both shoulders this time, and her smug smile was cute as heck. “Just doing my job.”

“Why a wedge?”

“Because it’s a golf club, and we make golf clubs.”

“No, I mean, why not a driver? Everyone goes to trade shows looking for the magic driver, not another wedge. Some people already have four in their bag.”

“Your driver determines how high you score. Your wedge and putter determine how low you score.”

Because a miss-hit with a driver meant hacking a ball out in the woods and destroying your score for one hole on that bad luck, but the finesse shots around the green with wedges and putters were where you saved shots on every hole. “Drive for show, putt for dough.”

“Yeah, sure, if you want to put it that way.”

“So we could conceive of a new product as late as early August and have commercial stock on hand for the PGA Show in December.”

“Ugh, shows,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Shows are for sales people, not R&D. You’ll be traveling with Gia Terranova to the shows and stuff. She’ll be your boss.”

Something in Kingston’s chest went thud. “Right, my boss.”

Kingston also needed to remember that he had a boss for as long as this farce lasted.

He hadn’t had a boss in years.

After Kingston had finished his MBA, he’d worked in finance, jetting around Europe’s cities, negotiating and wooing, until Morrissey had one day written in their group chat, We should start a VC.

So they had.

Nearly bankrupting himself to put up the capital to join Last Chance had been the best decision he’d ever made. Every day, he flew around the world, making deals and making money, or he went into the office and hung out with his three best friends, his only real friends, the closest people Kingston had to family, and he had no boss except himself.

“Yeah, Gia is the head of trade shows and does a great job with the booths.”

“You don’t go to them?” he asked her.

“Oh, dear God, no.” A shiver shimmied her clothes. “Never.”

“But you’d pick up valuable information at those shows. Trends. Niches.”

She badged them into the lab area. “Yeah, no. I’d be too busy hiding under the tablecloths to listen to anything. Gia and the other guys give me the scoop after they get back. There are too many people at those trade shows. I don’t like peopling.”

“You don’t like people?” he asked, amused.

“I like people fine, a few at a time. When they gather in herds, they look like they’re about to stampede. I hang out in the lab all day, talking science with my friends. I love my job.”

The door opened to a tiny room with white fabric on the walls, and the scents of hot metal, bug zappers, and icy cold air flowed into the hallway. “This is the antechamber where we garb for the working lab.”

Kingston followed her example and donned hooded white Tyvek coveralls over his suit trousers and white shirt, then covered his face with plastic safety goggles and a surgical mask.

His voice was muffled, and the mask vibrated on his face when he asked, “You work like this every day?”

Papery white protective clothing and a blue square of a mask cocooned her, only her dark eyes visible beneath her plastic glasses. “Absolutely. We’re grinding and smelting heavy metals in here. You don’t want to breathe dust or fumes or get shavings in your eyes. Everything is OSHA-compliant around here. We never get violations. Glove, and then let’s go.”

He followed her into her lab as she pointed out lathes, kilns, and crucibles, feeling like an animated oak tree shambling along after a lithe elf who danced through the wilderness.

She shoved open a glass door and led him into a hallway off the central lab, where she paused to shove her safety glasses up to the top of her head and drag down her surgical mask, then unzip her suit halfway down her chest, a sultry move that Kingston couldn’t quite look away from.

“Our tech break room is down this hallway, so we don’t have to ungarb and go downstairs to get a darn cup of coffee, and here’s my office.” She flipped her hand at an almost-closed doorway as she paced by. “And down past here, that’s where our?—”

The only personal office in the hall did indeed have a nameplate reading Nicole Lamb, PE , but when Kingston pushed the ajar door farther open, it wasn’t so much of an office inside as a medieval armory. “Whoa.”

The swords hanging on her walls shone in the morning sunlight filtering through the slats of the horizontal blinds. Silver-steel glistened. Black leather wrapped the grips, and glass or jewels sparkled on pommels and guards.

The little engineer had a violent streak, or at least a taste for weapons.

“Oh, yeah, those,” Nicole said quickly, walking back toward him. “Come on. We’re doing a tour. Just down this hallway are our golf simulators, where we test prototypes. We’ve got the latest ones from SkyGolf. Playing them is like standing on the eighth tee box at Pebble Beach. You can practically smell the sea breeze in your hair. Come on.”

Kingston pushed her door open farther. “Are all these swords yours?”

“Yeah.”

Her monotone voice signaled disgruntled thoughts.

He turned back. “Do you not want to discuss them?”

Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest. “Depends on how you want to discuss them.”

“Can you give me a tour? Tell me about them?”

Her arms drooped a little, and she turned her head warily as if waiting for a blow. “What do you want to know?”

“About them. Did you make any of them?”

She brightened a little and moved toward him. “Some of them. Just a few, really. Maybe half.”

Ah, yes. This collection was how he’d get her to open up and tell him anything he wanted to know about Sidewinder.

Everyone had a vulnerable spot.

“Tell me about that one,” he said, pointing to a slim, curved specimen halfway up her wall.

“Good eye,” she said, walking back toward him and into her office. The Tyvek coveralls blended out her form, but the loose swing of her arms was more relaxed. “That’s a katana, a two-handed, single-edged sword. This one’s an antique, at least a century old.”

She reached up and took it down from its hooks.

Kingston vaguely wondered if he should fear for his life because some people didn’t take kindly to venture capitalists raking over their employers, even though they remained employees.

Oh, but wait. He was the new sales guy, not their venture capitalist overlord.

He leaned against the door jamb as she reverently held the katana with two hands. She said, “It’s a beautiful specimen. I bought it in Japan a few years ago.”

“So you have traveled?”

She lifted her shoulders again, and each shrug was cuter than the last. “I had the deal all ready to go, and I went with Gia and some of the guys to a trade show. I met the dealer in the hotel lobby and followed Gia and the boys afterward.”

“Traveling with friends is the best.”

She flicked a glance up at him and then away. “Yeah.”

“Which sword is your favorite?” he asked.

Yes, he was interrogating her, but most people like to talk about themselves.

She hung the katana back in its place and lifted another sword from the wall, another curved blade but more delicate. “You picked out my favorite, but this scimitar is a great piece, too.”

“A scimitar? Like the Scimitar wedge?”

She turned it over carefully, gingerly keeping her fingers away from the blade. “Exactly like the wedge. I forged this one a few years ago, working with a master blacksmith who showed me how to carbonize the iron and fold the steel.”

Her elfin grin at him while holding the deadly blade was the first absolutely genuine smile he’d seen from her, an enchanting mix of delight and shy pride, and she took his breath away.

She said, “It’s a wicked blade.”

The steel gleamed in the sunlight from her window, picking up the fine striations on the razor-thin edge. “Is it sharp?”

“Grab a paper from the printer, and I’ll show you.”

Kingston slid a blank page out and held it taut between his hands.

“Nah,” she said. “That’s too easy. Just dangle it from two fingers.”

“You’re not going to cut my fingers off, are you?” he asked as he switched how he held the paper. “That would mess up my golf game.”

Nicole was holding the sword en guard, the tip weaving in the general direction of his eyes. “Maybe you should worry that I’ll run you through.”

He shrugged and held out the paper with two fingers. “Friends of mine would not be surprised that a woman killed me with a sword. They would assume I’d had it coming. Show me what you’ve got.”

With delicate flicks of her wrist, Nicole carved easy slices in the paper, the sword tip so sharp that the steel parted the paper rather than nudging it away.

In seconds, Kingston was holding fringe. “That’s amazing!”

Her smile broadened, genuine mirth showing through. “Learning how to forge it inspired the wedge design.”

“Was it?” Kingston asked, keeping her talking and not looking away. He didn’t think he could blink.

Nicole admired her blade, twisting it in the sunbeams. “Humans have only been casting and forging golf clubs for a little over a century, but the human race has been making weapons of war for millennia. Our institutional knowledge is in weapons, not sporting equipment.”

“That seems like an indictment of humanity, that our effort over thousands of years has directed toward warfare.”

Her sharp smile up at him was a warm caress, an acknowledgment that they were both talking about the same thing. “Sports are warfare. We pick our tribes and scream in triumph or howl in defeat for our chosen champions. Of course, we look to weapons for inspiration for the tools.”

“That’s quite a sociological view, Ms. Lamb.”

The prim press of her lips was a sly agreement, but she turned away and hung the scimitar back on the wall.

“Are you working on any other sword-inspired golf club designs?”

Her glance at the upper corner of the room was an unintended flash of information for Kingston.

She said, “Maybe. We’ll have to see how they pan out. We should probably finish the tour.”

“Yes,” Kingston said, ridiculously rapt at her discussion of swords. “By all means, lead on.”

She walked past him and out of her office.

He spun on his heel and stepped to follow her, but she’d stopped in his path.

He jumped back, saying, “Oops!” He’d almost plowed her over.

“So,” Nicole said, wiggling with nerves. “There’s a meeting after work, just an impromptu gathering to talk about how that VC company bought Sidewinder and what we all think about it. It’s nothing official, but it’s food and drinks at a bar and grill down the street called The Meeting Ran Late. I guess you’re an employee now.” She twisted one leg, digging her toe into the industrial floor tile. “So, if you want to show up, some people will be there at six o’clock.”

Meet Nicole Lamb at a bar for drinks and discussion?

Absolutely.

“Six o’clock? Yeah, I think I can make it,” he said.