49. About the Bet

49

About the Bet

NICOLE LAMB

Two days later, Nicole was standing in the mostly unoccupied corridor door outside Kingston’s office at six-thirty at night, holding her hand-written notes of three possible changes they could make to the Excalibur prototype to both make it compliant with the PGA’s parameters for club design and yet still magic on the golf course.

Chickenscratch writing and equations in blue ballpoint littered the pages.

His door was cracked open, a puff of air-conditioned air wafting through the vertical opening.

Men’s voices, heated with argument, rambled and talked over each other inside.

She pushed the door open just a little bit more with one finger, not wanting to knock and disturb them, but Kingston had told her to print out all the possible ideas the lab had come up with and bring them to his office right away, and it had been almost fifteen minutes.

As the door opened a little more, she recognized Morrissey’s sardonic tone as he and Kingston argued on a video call app.

“Yeah, Skins, you might be able to save that worthless dog of a company if you keep pouring money into it, but you’re not going to win the bet with it. We should have liquidated Sidewinder as soon we realized Flanagan had committed fraud, and you could’ve run Last Chance’s portfolio while the three of us worked on our wagers.”

“Sidewinder still has a shot. I’m telling you, these clubs are magic. They will revolutionize the golfing industry.”

“Nothing revolutionizes the golfing industry. Nothing revolutionizes any industry.”

“These will.”

“Look, you shot your shot with Sidewinder. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t your fault that Flanagan lied about the lien and their product pipeline. Just admit to yourself that you lost the bet, and then we can move on and double-down on our wagers that actually have a chance to win against Gabriel fucking Fish.”

Bet? They’d said something during the union negotiations about a bet.

Nicole eavesdropped harder.

“Just because Sidewinder isn’t going to win the bet doesn’t mean we have to throw it out. It can still turn a profit for Last Chance.”

“Even if Sidewinder had a possibility of turning a profit, your time would be better spent on the rest of our portfolio,” Morrissey snarked. “Nobody thinks any less of you, Kingston. It was part of the strategy.”

“Yeah, I know, but?—”

“Jericho’s safe bet will get us a decent percentage gain with an easy-win institution. Mitchell’s job is to take a left turn with his business and multiply it to be worth several-fold over what it was before. Your job was to shoot for the moon with a high-risk, high-reward bet, and you did. But it was high-risk. It’s not your fault it didn’t work out.”

“And what was your role in the strategy, Morrissey?” Kingston asked.

“I’m a lawyer. I was never going to do as well as you business types, so my job was just not to screw up too badly and make it look like I tried. Just close that time-suck down and get back here to Connecticut, where you can be useful.”

“We signed that union contract. We can’t just bail on Sidewinder.”

“I wrote an escape clause in that contract if profits fell below a certain point. They’ve always been below that point by Jericho’s accounting. Wrap it up, Skins.”

A heavy sigh from Kingston shook Nicole’s world. “I’ll look at the numbers.”

“You’re not banging that California biscuit again, are you? You can’t let a hot lay cloud your judgment. This is business, and the wager is serious business. If we lose, it’s going to ruin us.”

“—it’s going to ruin us,” Kingston chanted along with Morrissey. “I know. I have heard that threat so often that I cannot stand hearing it anymore. If Fish wins the bet, I will sell off anything I have left and be a beach bum in Mexico.”

Nicole wasn’t sure whether she was insulted or complimented at being called a California biscuit and a hot lay in less than a minute.

“You have been in California too long,” Morrissey said. “It’s time to come home to the East Coast where people are serious. Get rid of Sidewinder, and I’ll send the plane to bring you home.”

A mouse clicked, and Kingston swore a blue streak.

Nicole slapped open Kingston’s office door and barged in. “What the heck was that about a bet?”

Kingston looked up from where he was sprawled in his office chair, his eyes looking upward as if a problem had barged into his office. “Close the door, my little engineer. You’re telling everyone in the hallway our business.”

She swung the door closed behind her, and it rattled in its frame. “Did you buy Sidewinder on a bet?”

“It doesn’t matter if I did.”

Her fears were too close to the surface. “You’re going to close the company, aren’t you?”

He toyed with a pen on his desk. “If you were listening long enough to hear about the bet, then you heard me tell him I won’t close Sidewinder.”

She marched across the office at him. “It sounded like Morrissey Sand is your boss.”

Kingston stood, and his desk chair skittered away on its wheels. “We are all equal partners at Last Chance. They can’t make me close Sidewinder if I refuse to.”

She leaned on his desk and stared into his eyes, not looking away because she thought she’d saved Sidewinder, and now he was telling her she hadn’t. “What can they do, then?”

Kingston’s jaw clenched. “If they take a vote, they can cut off funding to Sidewinder.”

“So that’s it.” She flipped her hand at the door, indicating the rest of the building. “People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. I can’t believe you destroyed people’s lives on a bet.”

Kingston skirted the table, grabbed her, and shoved her up against the wall, his hand diving under her skirt and grabbing the side of her panties. “Let’s cut to the end. You’re going to be mad at me for something stupid I did, and then I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember why anymore because I am so obsessed with you that I can’t keep my hands off you, but we never get anything resolved.”

Nicole put her hands on Kingston’s broad chest and shoved him, and he stepped backward, hands splayed at his shoulders. She said, “Then we need to talk instead of— that.”

His blue eyes were the hottest fire, and he was breathing hard through his nose as he stared at her. “I am a fucked-up man. I know that. But I’m doing my best to save Sidewinder for you.”

“Bullhockey. It was for a bet because you decided to take people’s jobs and lives and roll dice with them.”

“That was how it started, but not how it will end.”

Nicole strode over to his desk and grabbed her notes that she’d dropped when he’d grabbed her because she wanted him to, but now she needed her notes.

And she needed him not to have them. “Morrissey said the union contract had an escape clause that you could activate any time because our profits are below an arbitrary line. That contract and those negotiations were not in good faith.”

“The union negotiations didn’t change the fact that Sidewinder is a money pit.”

“But it’s your money pit. If you want these design changes for Excalibur—and there’s one that I know will work and solve our problem with Dali stealing our IP—then I’m scheduling another union negotiation for eight o’clock tomorrow morning. If we can come to an agreement, I’ll give you these plans.”

“And if not?” he growled.

“Then I’m done, and you can tell Morrissey that you shut down Sidewinder just like he wants you to.”

“That’s my intellectual property,” Kingston said, pointing to the papers in her hand. “You’re still employed here by your work-for-hire contract. I don’t have to negotiate for anything.”

To heck with it. The equations and specs were all in her head.

Nicole slapped her papers on his desk. “Then good luck stealing this one because I wrote it by hand in Old English. And if I quit, I’m not obligated to translate it for you. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Conference Room Two, buddy.”

And she walked out.

If she’d thought he wouldn’t show up the next morning, that he’d let Sidewinder fall apart, her heart would have been breaking as she stomped through the cheap-carpeted hallway under the tube lights in the ceiling.

But he wouldn’t.

Kingston Moore was too stubborn to throw Sidewinder into the fire.

She was counting on it.