Chapter 9

Jacob

I WON’T KEEP you on pins and needles — Sierra and I killed it. I’m not sure what came over her, beginner’s luck, although I prefer to think it was my excellent coaching, but all of a sudden, she was quite agile with the golf club, swinging smoothly and putting everyone on the course to shame. Okay, a slight exaggeration, but what can I say? I was proud. We had a stellar game, no question. Charles was whistling and whooping the whole time.

After the ninth hole, it was time to break for lunch — good thing, too, as I’d worked up an appetite in more ways than one. Though, of course, only one could be, er, sated.

Sierra and I high-fived over a game well played, and I tried my best not to let the limited physical contact, or the total lack of angry, pointed stares on her end, go to my head. Her body pivoted towards mine, as though all her focus in the world rested on me. It was a heady feeling.

“Good game,” she remarked, her eyebrows arching. She seemed… actually happy? “We—”

“Dominated.”

She grinned. “To put it mildly.”

Sierra had always been competitive. I knew she wasn’t just glowing from the mid-day sun, but from the sense of victory.

“Shall we celebrate over victory cocktails?” I asked.

“Why, that sounds lovely,” she agreed with a faux snooty tone. “Drinks at the clubhouse.”

I joined in her bit, replying, “Off we go to imbibe the nectar of the gods. It’ll taste so much better without any poor people around.”

The two of us burst out into laughter, and as I recovered from the laughter and the sense of relief that the entire day wasn’t going to be tension filled, I looked around us.

“Oh. Shit.”

Sierra, who’d been trailing a finger under her tear ducts to avoid mascara leakage, looked at me.

“What’s up?” she asked.

I took her by the shoulders and spun her away from me so that she could take in the scene.

“Oh shit,” she murmured.

“Yup,” I replied. “We got ditched.”

While we’d been busy high-fiving and celebrating, the entire company had packed up and cleared out. Even our loyal caddy had apparently hitched a ride somewhere else. No surprise there — in my caddy days, I distinctly recall not giving a fuck about doing my job well, or even doing it at all. We were alone in a secluded section of the golf course.

“Well, at least they left us a cart,” I said, pointing to a tan and white machine stationed beneath a nearby oak.

Sierra exhaled. “Okay, phew. It’ll be some trouble navigating back without any help, but I’m sure we can just find someone on the course. Shouldn’t be too big of a problem.”

I nodded, and together we trotted across a grassy knoll, both of us anxious to reunite with the group — for, as you can imagine, a variety of reasons.

“Okay,” she said, as we came upon the cart. “You know how to work these things. You drive.”

Fair enough. I hopped in the driver’s seat and found the key sitting nearby. I plugged it in, cranked the engine and—

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I gulped. “Uh, Sierra, you’re not gonna like this.”

“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“The engine.”

“And? Fix it!”

I could hear the desperation leaking out of her like a punctured balloon. “I’ll try, but I gotta be honest, engines aren’t my strong suit.”

Perhaps she didn’t know I could hear her when she muttered, “How convenient.”

And I wanted to reply, to say ‘it’s true,’ but I also knew that a part of her was right.

I’d feared being left alone out here with Sierra not because I hated her and worried that, left to our own devices, we’d tear each other’s throats out, but because I feared my attraction to her. Even in the enormous mansion, we hadn’t been completely alone. But now, with most of the golf course on break for lunch and in the middle of nowhere… well, we might as well have been in the Sahara.

As I reckoned privately with our solitude, I always wrestled with my rapidly engorging dick. Me, Sierra, alone in the woods… it was enough to give me some wood of my own. She just looked so sexy in that little golfing get-up, her tan legs going on for miles beneath that white skirt, her tits pert. I knew instinctively that if I so much as rubbed against her breast, her nipple would go hard beneath that thin cotton polo. Keeping this professional wasn’t going to be easy.

I was jolted out of my fantasizing by Sierra’s low and angry grunt. I looked at her expectantly, unable to imagine what could’ve pissed her off more than the golf cart being broken.

“Our phones,” she explained to me, using the tone one would use with a slow dog.

“Crap.”

See, Charles had made us leave our phones in lockers at the clubhouse. This wasn’t so much a billionaire eccentricity as it was an old person thing — he hated cell phones, thought they distracted from ‘team bonding.’ It was in line with his whole ‘everyone in their own rooms’ assertion — stupid, and kind of a violation, but a necessary evil anyways. I briefly wondered what would happen if we didn’t get the deal. Would I throttle that old bastard in his sleep? Maybe. Even just a good slap to his erratic, bearded face would suffice.

“Jacob,” she said, and by her expression I could see it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.

“Sorry, what were you telling me?”

Her hands were fidgeting at her sides. “I was saying, you try to repair the golf cart, I’ll go look for help.”

“Sounds good,” I replied, already knowing this was a lost cause but knowing she needed to exhaust all possible options.

Without further ado, she tromped off in the direction of the nearest hole, and I set to work tinkering with the golf cart. I ruled out the approximately two things I knew to check for on the cart, which were both fine, and then hopped into the cart, sticking my legs up on the dash and crossing my hands behind my head. If I was going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, I was at least going to be comfortable.

“Hard at work, I see,” Sierra called from across a small hill, slowly trudging into my sightline.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Cart’s broken. Figured I might as well get some shade.”

She sighed, and appeared to vacillate before at last giving in to the reality of the situation and marching over to the cart.

“Move,” she said tersely, gesturing for me to make space in the tiny cart.

“Be my guest.” I scooched over, and Sierra climbed in.

We sat in silence for a few moments, Sierra with her arms crossed over her chest. I wanted to move my thigh an inch closer to hers, so that we’d be touching, but I bravely resisted the urge. No point in pushing my luck, even if all I could think about was her body straddling my own.

“So,” I said, trying to make conversation — and maybe distract myself from her long, smooth neck. “How’ve things been? With you, that is.”

She shrugged forcefully. “Fine.”

I leaned back further, frustrated, and said, “If you don’t wanna talk, just say so.”

She hesitated, then replied, “Sorry, I know I’m being a brat. It’s just—”

“I fucked up, broke your heart, ruined your life. I know.”

Sierra raised an eyebrow. “I was gonna say I just didn’t wanna miss lunch and another chance to network… but sure, that too. By the way, you didn’t ruin my life.”

“Oh. Right. Networking.” I grew hot under the collar. I’d shown my hand a bit too much, and she knew it. Ah well — in for a penny, in for a pound. “Are you, er, dating anyone right now?”

She snorted. “If I was, I would’ve brought them on this trip.”

Duh. Stupid question, buddy, my inner monologue opined.

Though I felt just a little less idiotic when she added, “And you’re not either… right?”

I swept my hand around the golf course. “You see any hot babes pinned to my side?”

She stared at me blankly and then said, “Just the one.”

I smiled, but decided not to push my luck, so I continued, “No, I’m not.” I decided it was best not to add the embarrassing truth, which was that I hadn’t dated anyone seriously, not since, well, her. She would’ve taken just a little too much pleasure from that.

“God, it’s hot,” she said, diverting wildly from the subject.

I smiled at her obvious attempt to lighten things up. “Yup, sure is.”

“How do you stand it, working in this heat all day?”

“Don’t have thin skin, like you office folk.”

She sniffed. “I do not have thin skin.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t,” she replied, insistent. “I’m tough. Here, feel my palms. They’re as chapped and rough as any miner’s hands.”

She held out her palms, a pinkish white that stood out starkly against the tan of her arms. A little glancing flicker in her eye told me that perhaps she had another motive for wanting me to touch her hands, but I didn’t dwell on it. I placed my callused hand on hers, brushing her skin.

“Very tough,” I murmured in assent.

“I’ve been grooming the rose bushes outside of my house,” she told me with pride.

“I’m impressed.”

And even though I’d felt her hands, which, incidentally, were as soft as a newborn babe’s, I didn’t remove my own palms. I wanted to linger there for another moment, or another eternity, whichever lasted longer. The zaps of electricity that were passing back and forth between our flesh, the ones that moved at the speed of light and sent shockwaves through the universe, were nearly intoxicating. I wondered if this was what it was like to sit in an electric chair — to feel death on your tongue and not mind because the taste was so sweet.

She breathed in, the sound barely audible, and drew her hand back. So Sierra felt it too, I thought. That’s good to know.

Maybe that was the moment for me to say something, to admit that I wasn’t over her, and didn’t really want to be over her. I opened my mouth, ready to finally speak some goddamn truth to this magnificent woman, when a voice called out.

“You folks need some help?”

We looked up at the same time, subconsciously moving away from one another and from the incriminating positions in which we’d been sitting, heads bent closed, shoulders angled at each other.

It was a man on the hill. He’d pulled his golf cart to a stop and was eyeing us with interest.

“Unless,” he said slowly, with a small smirk, “you’d rather not be interrupted.”

“No, no,” Sierra said hastily. “We’d love help. Our golf cart broke down, and we’re trying to meet our friends back at the clubhouse.”

“Oh, well that’s convenient, I was just head back there myself. Hop on in, I’ll give you a ride.”

Just like that, we were out of our cart and traipsing towards his. I lagged behind Sierra, only a little bit, and thought of what might have been had we stayed in the cart, all by ourselves, for even a minute more. What might I have told her? That said, it gave me a chance to check out her ass as I walked behind. I was in over my head and my heart still ached for her.

I guess we’d never know, because we boarded the stranger’s golf cart and drove away from our special spot beneath the trees.