Even at eight o’clock in the morning, golfers were waiting in line to begin play. He saw three teams chatting each other up from their golf carts, waiting amicably. But it was early yet, he groused internally. And the golfers were all women today, he remembered, it being the women’s golf league’s turn to hog the course. Soon the restaurant and bar would be full of the men they’d temporarily displaced and his day would continue to go downhill.
The back nine holes of the golf course (less charming) were a recent addition and ended with the eighteenth tee across the street from the rear of the complex that housed the golf pro’s shop and the restaurant as well as management offices. He couldn’t see any of it from his office. Although he had reassured Marcia her job was not in jeopardy, he had lied. When the board realized the extent of the mistake they had made, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if they took out their frustration on the people they could fire, innocent or not. And his recent insistence on staffing the Creighton Resort community pro shop and restaurant with at-risk boys from the local school had not endeared him to them, although they’d accepted it.
Ellison felt almost as unhappy as he imagined Marcia did. It had taken him the better part of two years to win the conservative board’s trust; they had only just now allowed that the boys might be a useful addition to Creighton Resort. Unconsciously he ran his hand through his hair, leaving it tousled.
He stared blindly at the scene until his eyes fixed suddenly on a big white cat trotting purposefully out of nowhere and into the flowerbed in the middle of the approach to the first tee.
Its pink collar stood out in shocking relief to its white coat, and as Ellison watched, the cat stopped its approach to the spikes of light blue plumbago and twisted its head around to try to catch the collar in its teeth. What was a damned cat doing on the golf course? Not wanting the flowers torn to shreds or to clean up cat poop, Ellison left his desk and walked to the window where he rapped hard.
Oh, he saw the cat stop with the collar and look at him through the glass all right, but that was all the deterrent he was from inside the office and yards away. Mr. White Cat immediately resumed his tug of war with the pink collar and soon it was a braid of chewed-up elastic on the green while its owner ate the flowers and kicked up dirt with what looked to Ellison like pure glee.
The Cowboy’s Baby, to be continued… Copyright 2010 by Gretchen Rix. Book cover photo by Roxanne Rix.
www.amazon.com/The-Cowboys-Baby-ebook/dp/B003UYUVZC.
What I’ve been watching—Battlestar Galactica Season One. **********Hey, buy my book and then follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GretchenRix