Page 24 of Tempting Levi
She frowned at him and his eyes sparkled, as though he was enjoying this.
She gave the putter to the caddy and bent her knees again, getting into position with the driver. Her form wasn’t terrible, exactly; she simply couldn’t hit the ball straight to save her life.
She gave it a light half swing and straightened. “All good.”
“Excellent,” Wes said, and looked around. “Everyone here?”
Levi scanned the large group and nodded. “We’d better go out if we want to take advantage of the course while it’s empty.”
Wes called out the groups, placing Emily with Levi in the first group to tee off, along with the CEO of Shin Electronics and another Shin employee.
She approached the CEO and smiled.“Tee-shot har Joonbee Dae-syeoss-seub-nee-ka?”
The man nodded and walked toward the first tee box. He took a couple of practice swings.
Levi came up behind her and leaned down, his mouth near her ear. “How did you learn to speak Korean so well?”
“A year in Korea, remember?” He stared at her, and she wagged her head. “And I took lessons in graduate school. I thought it might come in handy in the hospitality business.”
“Do you always plan things so thoroughly?”
“Yes.”
He watched the other Shin employee tee off. “Interesting.”
“Is it? I would think my planning skills would come in handy for you.”
“Maybe I don’t want everything planned out.”
She stared at the side of his face. “That’s not what I remember. You’d had your entire future planned with my sister at one time.”
He shot her a strange glance. “And look how well that turned out.”
Was he trying to say he’d made a mistake?
While Emily tried to figure out his cryptic response, Levi moved toward the tee and took a practice swing. He had excellent form. Very athletic. All the Cade brothers were.
He lined up his driver behind the ball, then pulled the club straight back until it was horizontal above his right shoulder. He swung downward, nailing the ball with a loud crack. The ball went flying—out, out—so far Emily couldn’t see it anymore. But Levi could, and so could the businessmen, who all seemed impressed.
And then it was Emily’s turn.
Perfect. She had to follow the guy who hit it straight and with so much strength the ball flew into Timbuktu.
Time to get serious and not make an ass of herself. Emily wrapped her hair into a low pony with a band she’d tucked into her shorts.
She grabbed the driver her caddy held out and stepped up to the women’s tee. After taking a quick practice swing, she approached the ball. And that was when things fell apart.
Oh, she swung like everyone else. Had the right form, the right grip. But at the last second, she pulled her left arm too hard, or maybe she opened the face of her club? In any case, the ball smacked off the toe of her driver, made a sharp right turn, and ricocheted off a Tahoe pine. The other players instinctively ducked. That would have been embarrassing enough, but the ball wasn’t finished. It shot to the opposite side of the fairway, parallel to them, and landed in two feet of rough.
Emily sighed and blindly handed her club to the caddy so she couldn’t do any more damage. No one said anything, but she didn’t dare look either.
Emily, Levi, and their two guests moved on while the next group lined up behind them.
She pulled out a fresh ball—no need digging in the rough for the last one—and dropped it on the fairway approximately where her original ball had taken a trip into no-man’s land. Levi strode past her, way the hell down the fairway to where his ball had landed a hundred yards ahead of anyone else’s. And that was about how the first half of the round went.
By the ninth hole, Emily decided she needed to say something to Levi. Not because of her crappy play—but because of his performance.
She pulled out a spare ball and tucked it into her shorts pocket. The one she’d teed off with was another goner. Sidling up to Levi, she casually said, “You might want to ease up on the power swings there, buddy.”
