51. The PGA Show in Vegas

51

The PGA Show in Vegas

NICOLE LAMB

The Sidewinder Golf booth at the early December PGA Golf Show in Vegas was a mini-castle cut from dark blue canvas.

One giant simulator in the middle, the size of a two-car garage, displayed the fifth hole at Pebble Beach, and smaller simulators on the sides held windows to other parts of that golf course.

Meghan and Morgan stood at the entrance, blonder and bubblier than all the showgirls in Vegas, instantly analyzing and sorting golfers as to whether they should be shown the more economical Rattler line of clubs, available for order at a slight discount compared to Golf Universe or Cox Sports, or whether they were high rollers who should be given access to prototypes from the exclusive Legendary line and then evaluated as to whether or not they deserved a space on the pre-order list.

Although “pre-order” was only a marketing term, now. Excalibur drivers and Vorpal iron sets had started delivering a week before Thanksgiving, on budget and ahead of schedule.

Rattler sales in retail stores were exceeding expectations.

Sidewinder was profitable.

Nicole walked among the golfers in the Sidewinder booth, as anonymous as a country club waiter, watching how people responded to the Excalibur and Vorpal irons.

Their shocked exclamations were gratifying. She’d made the right choice.

The one gross slob of a billionaire tried to neg her clubs to Kingston, saying that he had played with better clubs and his new brand of golf clubs was going to be the best in the world, and thus he was refused a spot on the coveted waiting list and shown the door, sputtering the whole time.

His swing was awful, anyway. He probably cheated his friends at golf.

Kingston was still playing sales guy, which became funnier every time Nicole saw him do it.

How had she ever thought that this man who was obviously wearing a custom-tailored ten-thousand-dollar suit and, when he wasn’t playing a role, had the reserved manners of royalty was a newbie hawker of sporting equipment?

Last Chance’s jet had picked Nicole up that morning for the half-hour hop to Las Vegas, so in the afternoon, Kingston took her to a suite at the Four Seasons, a serene oasis away from the jangling slot machines and thick cigarette smoke of the Strip.

When they walked in, Nicole had noticed the distinct lack of a casino and smoke. “I can’t believe they don’t just have a few slot machines around here.”

He’d raised an eyebrow at her as he opened their door via an app. “Would you rather stay somewhere with slot machines?”

“Oh heckers, no. This is lovely.”

Kingston had booked them into the Stadium View Panoramic Suite, a descriptive name rather than an obscure one named after authoritarian figures, which also overlooked the red rocks desert, afire with the last of the winter’s scarlet sunset.

Nicole turned to Kingston. “This is great.”

“You deserve it after working like hell the last couple of months. I still can’t believe I found you sleeping under your desk.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I love my job. And it was just like in engineering school. I slept under my table at the library and on the couches in the design labs more times than I can remember, waiting for pieces to be fabbed so I could start the next step of the process.”

His fond smile tickled her. “Nevertheless, it was above and beyond, and it worked.”

“Says the guy who sold more golf clubs than the rest of the sales staff put together.”

It was Kingston’s turn to shrug. “It’s not hard when the clubs sell themselves.”

“Really, how did you do it?”

His sly side glance made her start laughing even before his confession. “I went to a billionaire’s boarding school for high school. I called my friends and told them I had a magic golf club. The anciens Roséens were climbing over each other to pre-order for the full amount.”

Nicole cracked up. “Connections, again.”

“It wouldn’t have worked unless the clubs were that good, so you can stop laughing. Also, I ordered supper in.”

Nicole trailed off laughing at him and grabbed her chest in relief. “After all the peopling today, room service sounds fantastic.”

He smiled. “I thought you might find it so.”

Supper arrived on silver-covered carts and was served in the suite’s dining room.

Las Vegas sparkled in the darkness outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The long table was set for eight.

Nicole sat at one end, and Kingston sat beside her, at her right hand.

When the waiters removed the silver domes from their dinner, revealing what Kingston had ordered, Nicole looked up from the steak and thick fries on their plates. “You didn’t.”

“Kobe steaks,” Kingston replied. “And this time, I get to enjoy it, too.”

With her first bite of the tender meat that practically melted on her tongue, she knew it was as good as at the Baccarat Hotel in New York City. “Phenomenal.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he murmured.

She pointed to the steak with her knife. “My dad would love it, but he would try to throw it on the grill out on the back deck.”

Kingston’s smile held a genuine joy in it. “While it is not traditional, I would bring Kobe steaks to see how they would taste grilled over hardwood like your dad makes, but only if your mother makes the au gratin potatoes.”

“You know they’re from a box, right?”

He shook his head. “She does something to them.”

“Yeah, she stirs in some sour cream, but they’re from a box.”

“I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, your mother’s au gratin potatoes are the pinnacle of potato.”

“I will be sure to tell her you said so.”

“Oh, I think she knows. When we were there for Thanksgiving, she sneaked a frozen casserole dish of them to me as we were leaving. I ate them every night for a week.”

Nicole dropped her jaw in mock outrage. “You didn’t share?”

“You ate those potatoes every week of your life growing up. Yes, I hoarded them like a desert rat defending his grain.”

“I guess that’s true,” she conceded. “You were deprived of box-mix au gratin potatoes your whole life, going to your fancy Swiss boarding school.”

He nodded. “Le Rosey did not serve box-mix au gratin potatoes. The dorm mothers would’ve swooned at the lack of Emmental cheese.”

This was it. This was the opening. He’d met her parents a dozen times and never said anything about her going to meet his family anywhere. “So how did a kid from Pennsylvania end up at a billionaire boarding school, anyway? Are your parents rich?”

Kingston paused, sawing off another bite of steak and then resumed. His studied movements seemed deceptively casual. “My parents and my older brother Stephen died in a car accident when I was ten.”

The urge to grab and comfort him flashed through Nicole’s brain, but his lack of reaction to what he said slowed her down. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Jeez, Kingston. I’m still so sorry.”

Kingston stared at his food, but his knife and fork had stopped moving. “I didn’t have much extended family. My mother had an older brother, a confirmed bachelor in the old-time sense of the word, a lawyer who’d done very well for himself. He wasn’t interested in raising a kid, even a ten-year-old who literally had no one else, but he didn’t let me go into the foster system, either. That definitely would’ve been a worse life.”

Nicole reached over, took his knife out of his hand, and folded her fingers around his.

“I think he sent me to Le Rosey because it was on another continent and they had school-vacation residency packages. I didn’t return to the States until after graduating high school. He died while I was in college and left me a significant amount of money, some of which is still in trust until I turn thirty-five.”

And that was the trust fund remark from their first date at the four seasons in San Diego.

His fingers tightened around hers. “And that’s my whole life. I met the three Last Chance guys at Le Rosey. They’ve been the closest thing I have to family ever since. They come from more money than I do. To put up the money to start Last Chance with them, I liquidated almost everything I had and borrowed against the trust fund for the buy-in.”

No wonder he was flailing so hard to win the bet. “Oh, wow.”

“It’s been a good investment. Last Chance has been the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like me. We were making money hand over fist until one stupid night when we got drunk or were roofied. It was probably drunk, though. We all learned to hold our liquor very well at boarding school, and we might have an inflated sense of what it is humanly possible for a liver to do.”

“And so this one bet—” she said.

“And so this one bet could destroy all of us. I was not kidding about leaving it all behind to be a beach bum in Mexico, except that I know that I would get bored in about six months and want to rebuild. That’s been the whole theme of my life: everything is taken away from you, and then you rebuild. As long as I am alive, I will rebuild.”

Nicole wrapped her other hand around his, too. “If everything falls apart, I’ll be there with you.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’re set for a great life. You have a fantastic family, and no matter what happens with the damn bet, I know you will change the golfing industry, either with Sidewinder or its employee-owned successor.”

She rolled her eyes, but she kept her hands tightly around his. “I don’t want to talk business right now.”

“Remember when you were going to allow your union and your friends to buy Sidewinder as is, and I told you it was a bad bet and you should run?”

“For someone who believes that it’s just business, you kind of screwed yourself on that one,” she said.

“Well, I’m going to do it again. I am a bad bet. Even with Sidewinder’s moonshot paying off, I would lay money?—”

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t make any more bets.”

“—I would lay money that Gabriel Fish has something truly nefarious up his sleeve. I believe there is a seventy-five percent chance that no matter what kind of numbers we throw down, Gabriel Fish already had a million-fold business opportunity and suckered us all just for the fun of it. I am about to lose every bit of money I have ever earned and go bankrupt.”

Nicole started patting his hand, the despondent direction this conversation was taking made her nervous. “Oh, don’t talk like that. It’ll be fine. We’ll figure out something, and we’ll make it fine. Like you said, you always rebuild.”

Kingston slid off his chair and kneeled beside her, still holding her hand. “And that’s why I am warning you that marrying me is a terrible idea. Financially, it would be the worst decision you could make. You are a beautiful, brilliant woman, my little engineer, and any man would be the luckiest man in the world to have you. If I really wanted to prove my love for you, I would introduce you to my billionaire and royal friends and let one of them marry you, but I’m selfish.”

Shock was slamming into Nicole’s frontal lobe so hard she could barely breathe and far too hard for her to say anything.

“I love you more than I could ever tell you. You are life and hope and love and already more family than I have felt since I was ten years old. Even though it’s a terrible idea and I’m advising you to say no and find someone worthy of yourself, I’m asking you to marry me.”

He pulled a black velvet jewelry box from his pocket and flipped the lid open, revealing a hunk of crystallized carbon bigger than anything Nicole had ever seen. “Oh my God, Kingston!”

“It’s all right to think about it. Every time there was a huge conundrum at Sidewinder, you came up with a solution better than anyone could have ever expected because you took the time to mull it over. Maybe we need to return to California so you can sharpen your swords and think about it.”

Nicole reached into the box, plucked the diamond ring out, and stuck it on her own finger. “Yes!”

Kingston raised an eyebrow at her. “That quick?”

Nicole grabbed his hands because he was still kneeling on the thick carpeting beside her chair. “With you, I’ve always known it was right. When you said you loved me on that trip to New York, I was ready to say it back right then, and I still don’t know why you didn’t want to hear it.”

His slow blink wasn’t an answer.

She kept talking. “I don’t have to think it over. I don’t have to write out the equations and do the math. Every time you touch me, it feels right. You’re right, and I know it. So, yes, Kingston. I want to marry you because I love you.”

Kingston was on his feet, lifting her in his arms and cradling her against his chest. “I love you, my little engineer,” and strode for the bedroom.

She laughed and slung her arms around his neck. “Supper?”

His growl was fierce. “It can wait.”

He tossed her on the bed, shucked his suit jacket and shirts, and crawled on top of her, his body warm and overwhelming.

“Kingston, we can have supper?—”

“Can’t wait,” he said, methodically stripping her clothes from her body. “You’re mine now, and I must have you.”

She was plucking at his waist, trying to unbuckle his belt because hands on her skin and his mouth on her throat fogged her mind with rabid desire. “Okay, fine. If you insist.”

His hands—so big, so rough—caressed her body. Her breasts and nipples, he led to his mouth, sucking and then raking his teeth over, and he squeezed her bottom and legs in his grip.

His ring was heavy on her hand, a new weight to get used to.

Nicole was limp in his grip, swallowing sensations as he gave them to her. Her skin was a canvas for his hands pinching and massaging and for his mouth on her.

Kingston crawled backward, his mouth trailing down her stomach, and she grabbed at his shoulders. “Where are you going?”

But he’d already parted her legs and, with a devilish glance up at her from between her knees, kissed the inside of her thigh, then higher, then higher.

He licked within her folds, spiraling his tongue over her clit, a pleasure so intense that Nicole was already gasping. “Kingston?—”

“Lay back and take it,” he growled between swipes of his tongue. “Quickies in the office against the copy machine or on your desk aren’t nearly as fun as a long,” lick, “luxurious,” lick, “love-making where I can take my time and do whatever I want to you.”

She reached down, trying to drag his shoulders up and his body over her. “Please.”

“Not yet, little engineer.”

He sucked on her, his mouth dragging pleasure through her body until tension spun lower, compressing, squeezing. “Kingston!”

Deeper inside her, filling her but not enough, and a press inside to lift her within, harder against his tongue.

Ecstasy ripped through her, a blinding rush of heady pleasure that left her gasping.

When the world stopped whirling, her fists clenched the sheets, her feet cramping from the strain. “Oh my God.”

Kingston hovered above her, his knees bracing her apart, his face inches from hers. “We’re just getting started.”

He pressed inside her even though she was still quivering, and he bit his lip. “God, you’re so wet. So tight.”

His invasion was sensory overload, the orgasm still reverberating in her bones as he moved slowly, his slow presses against her clit at the top of his strokes a spark that sent the energy surging through her body again, and again, and again.

She was keening, begging him to keep going, crying for relief, but he kept her at those peaks, an unrelenting, drowning rapture.

“I love you, my little engineer, my Nicole,” he whispered, the words falling into the waves surging through her.

Hours later, maybe months, he stroked faster, urgent, crashing into Nicole as she clung to him, and still, he wrung surges of mindless bliss from her spent body.

Kingston curled around her, his naked body warm and strong, and Nicole gasped as she held onto him, still floating and spinning.

His lips pressed her forehead, her temples. “You’re everything to me. You’re my whole world.”

She clung to him. “You’re mine, too. I will be your little doll in a house and fill it with babies if that’s what you want. Just—this— wow.”

His voice was quiet near her ear in the dark. “My parents and Stephan told me they loved me before they got in the car. I stayed home alone while they went to church, because I had a cold and didn’t want to go.”

Nicole slithered her arms up and around his neck, holding him. “I love you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I didn’t know why they didn’t come home. The next morning, I went over to a friend’s house. His mother fed me breakfast and learned what had happened from the police. I stayed with them until they found my uncle, who picked me up the next weekend. Two weeks later, I was at Le Rosey.”

She tightened her arms, trying to make up for his whole life. “Oh, Kingston.”

His arms wrapped around her, tucking her head under his chin. “That was the last time someone told me they loved me.”

“Oh, Kingston,” she said, trying to love and hold him hard enough.

“I barely remember them,” he said. “I keep going over memories—my mom holding me when I had strep throat one time, my dad and Stephen throwing a football with me—trying to keep them, but even those are fading like they’re just memories of the real memories.”

Nicole entwined her legs with him. “I’m your family now. We all are. We’ll make new memories, and I love you.”

His arms seized her more tightly, holding her, and she held him back, never letting go.

He whispered, “We’re in Las Vegas. Marry me now. Right now.”

She pulled back to look at him, finger-combing his hair away from his face. “You’re a part of my family now, and my parents would be so mad if we eloped. Nope, we’re getting married for real, with our family and my friends and your friends and my cousins and everyone around us, not some Vegas quickie wedding with no one else around.”

Nicole started straight into his blue eyes. “You have a family now. Get used to it.”