Intemperance IX - the Inner Circle
Copyright© 2025 by Al Steiner
Chapter 20: Compound Interest
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 20: Compound Interest - The ninth book in the long-running Intemperance series finds Jake Kingsley balancing family, music, and media chaos as his world grows stranger—and more fiercely loyal—by the day. With fame fading and life deepening, the Kingsleys and their inner circle face new challenges in love, trust, and the price of peace.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa BiSexual Fiction
Unincorporated San Luis Obispo County, California
August 23, 2004
It was just past 10:30 AM on this Saturday in central California. Jake pulled the Navigator up the long gravel drive, tires crunching beneath him as a wide stucco house came into view over the rise. It was bigger than he’d imagined—long and sun-faded, with that vaguely smug look only failed luxury could wear. He slowed as the looped driveway curved around a cracked stone fountain choked with dry leaves, then parked near the front steps and shut off the engine.
The house sat on a ridge that caught the sun just right. Even in August, the air was crisp up here—coastal wind threading through the hills and tugging at the dry grass like restless fingers. Jake stepped out, sunglasses on, and took in the view.
“Nice,” he said softly.
Ten acres of quiet, hilltop solitude. And below it all, the city of San Luis Obispo stretched out in miniature—rooftops, church spires, the green dome of the courthouse, the hazy sprawl of Cal Poly to the north, the airport where planes were coming and going. As The Who liked to say: you could see for miles and miles and miles.
Not bad for a foreclosure.
The house and land had a strange tie to KVA. It had once all belonged to Daryl Cross, the primary investor behind the now-defunct Obsidian Zephyr Estate winery. The venture had collapsed—mostly because the wine was terrible and the business administration was worse. KVA Records had swooped in and bought the entire operation: land, buildings, and vineyards, transforming it into The Campus.
After the winery’s implosion, the rest of Cross’s empire toppled like a row of dominoes. No criminal charges were ever filed, but several regulatory agencies began circling, and Cross decided the Philippines made a better place to settle down and enjoy what wealth was left. The bank took this house in the foreclosure and had been trying—and failing—to unload it ever since. It was the whitest of white elephant in the SLO real estate market.
He heard footsteps on tile, and then the screen door opened behind him.
“Welcome to the apocalypse bunker,” Nerdly said.
Jake turned. His friend stood barefoot in cargo shorts and a faded Caltech tee, sipping from a bottle of sparkling apple juice. Behind him, the great expanse of tile floors and echoing rooms waited like a showroom haunted by dust.
Jake gestured vaguely at the house. “This is it?”
“It is,” Nerdly said. “5800 square feet. Eight bedrooms. Six baths. Full basement. Garage wing. Established well and septic. Power intact. The bank mows the lawn once a month so it doesn’t look entirely abandoned.”
Jake walked a few steps toward the edge of the bluff. “Still in Kelvin’s school district?”
“Barely,” Nerdly confirmed. “The border runs about fifty yards past the rear property line.”
Jake turned a slow circle, taking in the surrounding hills, the perimeter fence, the small stand of trees to the west. They were coast live oaks. Good climbing trees, as Caydee would say.
“This is your fifth tour of the place?”
“Third,” Nerdly said. “Sharon’s been here five times. I believe she is trying to psychically will me into signing the paperwork.”
Jake smirked. “Why haven’t you?”
Nerdly sipped. “It’s imperfect.”
Jake waited.
Nerdly continued. “The roofline is uneven. The deck needs resurfacing. One of the upstairs bathrooms has a cracked sink. And the water pressure is inconsistent depending on elevation draw.”
Jake squinted at him. “So ... it’s a house. It’s been sitting empty. You can fix all of those things quite easily.”
“The differing water pressure too?” Nerdly asked cynically.
“Yes,” Jake said simply. “You just need to upgrade your pumps. Cross probably had the cheapest available. You get my well guy out here and he’ll have that pressure so tight you could strip paint with a garden nozzle.”
Nerdly made a face, halfway between agreement and despair. “I was hoping for something more turnkey.”
Jake motioned toward the surrounding space. “You’ve got ten fuckin’ acres, no neighbors, a view that would make an artist cream himself, and the whole thing’s already wired. And unless I missed a memo, the only reason this thing hasn’t sold is because rich people want charm and retirees want cozy. This is neither. But it’s perfect. For you.”
Nerdly looked out at the slope behind the house, where an old vegetable garden sat dry and dormant beneath the sun. It was next to a swimming pool—shaped like an irregular trapezoid with one end too narrow to swim in, the other wide enough to host a cocktail party—that was currently drained and had a thick layer of leaves and fetid green water in it.
Jake went on. “You told me you needed land. You told me you needed topography, buffer space, a structure that could be secured. You wanted room for your family and for Owen. This is all of that.”
“The fencing is inadequate for the kind of security I require,” Nerdly said. “It’s only five feet high. Any competent criminal wishing to do harm could hop it with a simple step ladder.”
“Then you upgrade it,” Jake said, already exasperated. He could see the excuses stacking up—that’s why Sharon had cornered him two days ago and told him to come on this mission. Her stubborn nerd of a husband needed a push.
“That would be expensive,” Nerdly said.
“Yes,” Jake said. “You’re talking about maybe thirty or thirty-five grand for an eight foot wrought iron security fence surrounding the entire top of the hill. And that doesn’t include the cameras and all that shit. But if you bought your own land and built from scratch, you would still have to pay that, right?”
Even Nerdly could not argue with that. He wanted to try, but he couldn’t.
“That’s a good point,” he finally muttered.
“Fuckin’ A,” Jake said.
Nerdly’s gaze didn’t move. “Owen is still in touch with his mother.”
Jake nodded. “I assumed that’s where you’re getting all the information on the judge.”
“She’s been calling him once or twice a week. Always to plead with him to come home, end things with Tif, and return to the path of righteousness.” He glanced toward Jake. “That’s a quote, by the way.”
“Not surprised.”
“She also reports that the judge’s condition has not improved. He’s entirely detached from reality. Paranoid, delusional, incoherent. The doctors now say it wasn’t a sudden break but a long, slow unraveling that finally hit a critical point.”
Jake exhaled softly. “That tracks.”
“I think she still believes Owen will come home if given the right inducement,” Nerdly said. “She doesn’t realize he’s already gone. Even if he did go back physically, emotionally he’s elsewhere. That’s not recoverable.”
“Is she aware that you and Sharon have basically adopted him?”
“We haven’t adopted him,” Nerdly said, a little defensive. “We’ve simply ... accepted a supervisory role in his transitional phase.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “You told him he could stay indefinitely.”
“Yes. But that was more of a verbal commitment to stability than a legal reclassification.”
Jake smirked. “Call it whatever you want, dude. You’re his goddamn nerd-dad now. And Sharon is his nerd-mom.”
Nerdly took a long sip from his bottle and didn’t argue.
They stood quietly for a few seconds before Nerdly said, “He needs something to do.”
Jake turned toward him.
“He needs structure. A routine. Something beyond just ... lingering. He’s young and adrift. I think ... maybe ... we could find him a position at The Campus. Doing anything. Stocking cables. Running errands. Scrubbing floors.”
Jake gave him a thoughtful look.
“I’ll take him under my wing,” Nerdly went on. “Teach him how a studio functions. If he wants to learn more, we’ll guide him. If he just wants to be useful, we’ll give him tasks. But he needs a title. He needs a job. Something real.”
“You realize what it takes to hire someone, right?” Jake asked. “All four of us would need to agree. Me, Celia, you, Pauline. And Jill would flip her fuckin’ lid if we added an unbudgeted employee in Q3.”
“I will pay the salary,” Nerdly said quickly. “We’ll call the position Studio Runner—that’s a legitimate title, and it’ll sound like he’s stepping into a gap we urgently needed to fill. I’ll cover the full compensation package, including benefits. But I don’t want him to know that the job was created for him or that I’m the one funding it.”
Jake blinked. “You’re gonna bankroll a ghost payroll line?”
“Yes. But I don’t want him to know that. I want him to receive a normal direct deposit from KVA Records, like any other employee. If he finds out I created a position just for him, it will damage the sense of legitimacy. I want it ... laundered.”
Jake grinned. “You want to money-launder a paycheck for the kid.”
“For morale purposes,” Nerdly said. “It’s not money laundering. It’s identity insulation.”
Jake shook his head, smiling now. “You’re unbelievable.”
“You agree, though.”
“I do,” Jake said. “I’ll talk to Pauline. She’ll be annoyed, but she’ll do it. We’ll run it through Ops payroll, set up the right wire transfer protocols and all that shit. Owen gets a job. Jill gets an orgasm that we got an employee for free. You get peace of mind. Everyone wins.”
“Precisely,” Nerdly said.
Jake raised his bottle of water like a toast. “To identity insulation.”
Nerdly tapped his bottle against Jake’s. “To dignity through deception.”
They drank in silence for a moment, the wind rustling around them, the empty pool below catching stray leaves like secrets waiting to be skimmed.
“Well, let’s go check this domicile out,” Jake said, deliberately using a Nerdlyism.
“If we must,” Nerdly said.
Jake pulled open the heavy front door, which let out a low groan like it hadn’t been used in months—which, to be fair, it probably hadn’t. The interior greeted them with a blast of stale air and silence. No furniture, no appliances, not even a roll of toilet paper left behind. Just bare tile, high ceilings, and the faint smell of sunbaked drywall.
Nerdly stepped inside and looked around like he was entering a crime scene. “It’s completely unfurnished.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “It’s a foreclosure, Bill. Not a model home.”
Nerdly moved toward the living room and gestured vaguely. “There’s no built-ins. The fireplace is purely decorative. The surround is off-center. And the tile work—look at this grout. It’s uneven.”
Jake didn’t bother to look. “My tile guy will fix that in a day. Two tops. You want it marble, slate, recycled Italian wine bottles—I got a guy.”
They moved into the kitchen. It was a very nice one. Large kitchen island, huge amount of storage space, already vented for a propane stove. The tile needed replacing but that was no big deal. The countertops were solid granite. The cabinets were dark mahogany. Jake was impressed.
Nerdly made a noise somewhere between disgust and despair.
“There are no appliances. None.”
Jake gave him a flat look. “Yeah, Bill. The fridge and the stove did not come with the bankruptcy.”
“The tile is hideous.”
“Easily replaced,” Jake said. “You’re looking at the place as it is now, not as it could be. That’s your basic problem.”
“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “And money.”
“You have a net worth of more than thirty million dollars, Nerdly,” Jake said. “You can afford it. And you won’t be doing the work. You tell someone what you want done, give them some money, and they fuckin’ do it. It’s a great system. You really need to try it.”
“Well ... I guess the cost of empty land and new construction is prohibitive as well,” he said.
And that right there was the nexus of Nerdly’s reluctance. Yes, he wanted his compound. He wanted his family to be safe and secure like the Kingsley family was. But he did not want to buy an existing structure and adapt it. He wanted to start from scratch. Every fiber of his nerdly being wanted to draft blueprints, invent custom floor plans, and bring forth a temple of logic, light, and impenetrability that future archaeologists would worship like the fuckin’ Taj Mahal.
He was looking for a reason to reject the house and land.
Jake was not going to let him find it. There was no way in hell he was going to host a house of Nerdlys and their adopted nymphomaniac children for two or more fucking years.
“You know who would really be helpful with all this? Sean.”
Nerdly blinked. “Sean?”
“Our housekeeper,” Jake said. “He has a degree in interior design.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You’ve never been to Mama and Papa Valdez’s house, have you?”
“No.”
“Well, Sean did it. Whole thing. Furniture, colors, flow, everything. They still talk about it every time we visit. It looks amazing.”
Nerdly squinted. “He’s a housekeeper and an interior designer?”
Jake shrugged. “He’s also gay. So you know he’s gotta be good at it.”
Nerdly opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. “That’s likely not statistically valid, but okay.”
Jake smirked. “I’m just saying—trust the process.”
They walked through the dining room—an echo chamber of ceramic and bare windows—and up the stairs to the second floor. The hallway was long and window-lit, with doors on both sides and a linen closet that still had a single, empty hanger in it like some kind of passive-aggressive threat.
Nerdly opened one of the bedroom doors. “This room is oddly shaped. The angles don’t make architectural sense.”
Jake peered in. “That’s your future studio room. Perfect weird acoustics. Bet it sounds like magic in there.”
“It has a sloped ceiling on only one side.”
“That’s where the synths go.”
Another room. “This window is misaligned with the exterior sightlines.”
“Curtains.”
“This closet has no door.”
“Sean again. He’s gay, remember?”
Nerdly shot him a look. “I don’t understand the reference,” he said.
“Never mind,” Jake said with a grin.
They toured the bathrooms next—one had a cracked sink, one had peeling caulk, and the master had the remains of some truly hideous wallpaper strip still clinging to the drywall behind the toilet.
Nerdly ran a hand down his face. “This is going to be a project.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah. But it’s a project you own. You’re not building from scratch. You’re moving in and upgrading what’s here. There’s good bones, no mold, good roof. And the wiring’s clean. Ask your inspector.”
Nerdly stood in the empty master bedroom and looked out the wide windows at the city in the valley below.
Jake waited.
After a long pause, Nerdly said, “Fine. We’ll go forth with the purchase.”
Jake clapped him on the shoulder. “Atta boy.”
“I reserve the right to complain the entire time.”
“Wouldn’t expect anything less.”
They turned to head back down the stairs, the sun streaming through the dust-speckled windows like a benediction. The echo of their footsteps was the only sound, but in Jake’s mind, he could already hear it: laughter in the kitchen, Sharon on speakerphone arguing about towel colors, Kelvin running circuits in the yard, and Owen—maybe—finally finding a rhythm again.
The house was empty.
But not for long.
Meanwhile, in Oceano proper, Jose Ramirez stood in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of a light blue button-down that he wore every Sunday at church. It felt tight across the shoulders, but it still looked good—clean, pressed, respectable. He’d shaved that morning with a fresh blade, splashed on a little aftershave, and even used the good comb. His Sunday shoes were polished. His belt had no cracks. And still, he felt like a kid trying to fake his way into a job he had no business applying for.
From the kitchen came the smell of chiles and garlic—Juanita had started the prep for dinner early. He could hear the rhythmic sound of a knife on cutting board, steady as a metronome.
“You okay in there?” she called.
He looked at his reflection again. Then stepped out into the hallway.
“I feel like an imposter,” he said.
Juanita didn’t pause her chopping. “You look like a man going to a meeting.”
“Feels like I’m pretending.”
“Then you’re doing it right,” she said. “That’s how everyone feels before something important.”
He leaned against the doorframe and watched her for a moment. The kitchen was spotless, as always. She had her hair tied up in a scarf, her apron dusted with flour from the tortillas she’d started rolling out.
“I almost didn’t call,” he admitted.
“I know,” she said, not unkindly.
“I thought ... why would a man like that want to talk to someone like me?”
Juanita stopped cutting and looked up.
“You mean a man who supervises other men and takes care of a beautiful golf course?”
Jose said nothing.
“That’s what you do, mi amor,” she told him. “You’ve been doing that for years. The only difference is the name on the gate.”
He shifted his weight, uncomfortable.
“I’m going to sound like a fool,” he said. “He’s Scottish. I won’t understand half of what he says, and I’ll get nervous and say something stupid.”
“Then say something stupid,” she said. “But be honest. Talk to him in your best English. Answer what you can. And if you don’t know something—just say ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t make something up. That’s worse.”
Jose looked down at his polished shoes.
Juanita stepped over to him and reached up to smooth his collar. “You have good hands. You work hard. You don’t lie. And you’ve kept a team together on a shoestring budget for ten years without one worker quitting or filing a grievance. That’s not nothing, mi amor.”
He managed a faint smile.
“What’s his name again?” she asked.
“Callum,” Jose said. “Callum McTavish. Head groundskeeper at Casa de Oceano. He sounded...”
“What?”
Jose shrugged. “Efficient. Brief. He said, ‘Saturday, twelve-thirty. We’ll talk. Ask the gate guard for directions to the primary maintenance building. Tell him you’re meeting Callum.’ That was it. Like a drill sergeant.”
“Good,” Juanita said. “You’re not going for coffee. You’re going to work.”
He nodded slowly.
“Now eat something,” she said. “You don’t want to show up with your stomach growling like a dog.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “My stomach is already tying itself in knots.”
She kissed his cheek. “That means you care.”
Jose sat at the small kitchen table, forcing himself to take slow bites of the scrambled eggs and tortillas his wife had set down in front of him. His appetite still hadn’t returned, but she was right—showing up to an interview with a stomach that sounded like a diesel engine wasn’t going to help anything.
Across from him, Juanita was rinsing off the cutting board and wiping down the counter with practiced ease. The radio was on low, playing something soft and Spanish and from a generation older than theirs.
“You going to pick up the niños on your way back?” she asked, not looking up.
He glanced at the clock. “If it’s not too late by the time I finish. Otherwise, I’ll call and let them know.”
She nodded. “Shouldn’t be too long. I doubt this man has time for small talk.”
“No,” Jose said. “He doesn’t strike me as someone who lingers.”
Juanita smiled faintly and dried her hands. “They were excited this morning. Emilia packed a bag like she was going for the weekend.”
Jose chuckled. “Carlos kept asking if there’d be hamburgers.”
“He always asks that.”
There was a short pause, filled by the murmur of the radio and the clink of forks against plates.
“It’s strange,” Jose said after a moment. “Not going with them.”
Juanita nodded. “I thought I’d feel uneasy. But I don’t.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “Feels ... okay.”
“It is okay,” she said. “The Kingsleys are strange, yes. But they’re good people. Honest. They take care of each other.”
“And other people’s kids,” Jose said.
She smiled. “Especially that.”
For the past few months, Saturdays had meant an unspoken ritual—Ramirez family visits to Kingsley Manor. A shared meal, laughter in the backyard, stories over drinks. But ever since the Nerdly family had moved in, the chaos at the Manor had grown to critical levels. The Ramirez parents had gracefully bowed out—temporarily. Too many moving parts. Too much noise. Four extra bodies would’ve tipped the balance from crowded to catastrophe.
But Carlos and Emilia still went. They were friends with the Kingsley children—Caydee, Kelvin, Kira, even little Aurora and Cap. And the adults, despite the madness of their household, had made space for that friendship to continue.
This morning, Juanita had driven them over after breakfast, promising they’d be picked up before dinner. She hadn’t worried. Neither had Jose.
They trusted the Kingsleys.
Even if they were the strangest, most chaotic good people they’d ever met.
Ten minutes later, he was in the family’s battered old Corolla and on his way to Avila Beach. The car rattled a little on the turns and the A/C barely worked, but it got him where he needed to go. He kept both hands on the wheel and tried not to sweat through his shirt.
The coastal highway curved gently through eucalyptus groves and glimpses of ocean, and then—suddenly—it opened.
Casa de Oceano was perched on a bluff above the Pacific, hidden from casual view by tall hedges and old-growth pines. The entrance wasn’t marked by a flashy sign—just a discrete stone pillar with wrought iron lettering and an understated bronze plaque. But the second Jose turned in, he knew he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
The main gate was flanked by twin guardhouses made of quarried limestone, topped with copper-tiled roofs that gleamed in the sun. The road leading in was lined with flowering olive trees, perfectly spaced, perfectly pruned. Beyond them, Jose caught sight of the course itself—rolling emerald fairways draped over the cliffs like ribbon, stitched together with sand traps shaped like calligraphy.
It didn’t look real.
Jose knew golf courses. He knew turf, drainage, soil pH, irrigation maps. He knew how to keep fairways green in drought conditions and how to quiet a broken Toro mower with nothing but duct tape and a curse.
But he had never seen anything like this.
This wasn’t just a course—it was a cathedral.
He pulled up to the guard station, rolled down his window, and tried not to look as nervous as he felt.
“Afternoon,” said the uniformed guard, a young man with mirrored sunglasses and the posture of someone who lifted weights before his shift.
“I’m here to see Callum McTavish,” Jose said. “He told me to meet him at the primary maintenance building.”
The guard gave a single nod, checked a computer screen, then waved him through with practiced ease. “Drive straight, follow the loop left. You’ll see a sign for Maintenance West. Pull around and park in the lot to the side.”
“Gracias,” Jose said automatically.
Jose rolled forward.
The road curved past the main clubhouse, a Mediterranean-style structure with massive archways, stone terraces, and a fountain that actually seemed to be dancing in time with the breeze. Several luxury cars were parked in the shaded circle—Porsches, Bentleys, a white Rolls-Royce with dealer plates.
He didn’t slow down. Just kept following the loop left, as instructed.
The maintenance building came into view two minutes later. It was tucked behind a screen of tall hedges and mature cypress trees, but once you saw it—damn. It was massive. Two stories, red-tiled roof, fresh paint, solar panels on the south-facing wall. The place was bigger than the entire Pismo Beach Golf Clubhouse.
Hell, it might’ve been bigger than his entire apartment complex.
He parked in one of the guest spots—marked “Vendor & Staff Appointments”—and turned off the engine. The car gave a shuddering cough before going quiet.
Jose looked at the building. He then looked out at those pristine fairways, those immaculate greens. Even the sand traps were elegant.
Was he worthy to help groom that kind of beauty?
He didn’t know. But he was here.
Time to find out.
The moment Jose stepped inside the maintenance building, he was hit by a mix of grease, turf, and faint citrus cleaner. The scent of a real operation. The ceiling soared overhead—exposed steel beams, skylights cracked open for ventilation—and the concrete floors bore the faded scuff marks of endless work: cart tires, pallet jacks, tool carts.
To his right, two golf carts were half-dismantled, their battery bays wide open and gutted. A third one idled near the roll-up door, humming quietly while a man crouched beside it, replacing a brake cable with fluid, practiced motion. On the far side of the building, someone was pressure-washing a tractor attachment. The sound echoed like a power drill in a cathedral.
No one looked up when Jose entered.
There was no reception desk. No sign-in sheet. No clock on the wall saying where to go or who to speak to. Just people working—focused, competent, efficient. At least half of them were Mexican, maybe more. Jose could hear the occasional Spanish phrase shouted over the engine noise, but mostly, there was little conversation. The kind of silence that came from people who had a job to do and didn’t need to be told how to do it.
He stepped carefully out of the entrance walkway and stood off to the side for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. No one acknowledged him. No one greeted him.
He could have wandered around. He could have stood there longer, waiting to be noticed. But instead, he approached the nearest man who wasn’t buried in a task—a younger guy rolling up an air hose onto a wall hook.
“Perdón,” Jose said, then quickly switched. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Mr. McTavish.”
The man looked up and gave him a quick once-over. Then he nodded toward a staircase tucked behind a row of tool cabinets and a rack of oil drums.
“Upstairs,” he said. “Last door on the left.”
“Gracias,” Jose said, and the man just nodded and went back to his hose.
Jose moved toward the stairs, careful not to walk through anyone’s work zone. As he passed by the big shop bay, he caught the smell of fresh-cut grass and hydraulic oil—comforting in its way, familiar. But everything around it was different. Polished. Resourced. Clean.
He climbed the steel-framed stairs, his boots quiet on the metal treads, and stopped at the door labeled simply GROUNDS.
He knocked once, firmly.
A voice with an unmistakable brogue called out: “In.”
Jose opened the door and stepped inside.
The office was as stark as the rest of the building—white walls, filing cabinets, turf samples laid out on a workbench near the window. A map of the course dominated one wall, annotated in what looked like multiple colors of dry-erase and a fair amount of artistic profanity. A desk sat near the back, tidy but not fussy. The man behind it looked up.
He was broad-shouldered and ruddy, with gray in his temples and creases around his eyes. His polo shirt was dark green and had the country club’s name and logo on it. His hands were large, clean, and visibly callused even from across the room. His eyes were sharp and deeply amused, like he’d already made half a judgment but was willing to be proven wrong.
“You’d be Mr. Ramirez, then,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Callum McTavish stood up and extended a hand. “Callum will do.”
Jose crossed the room and shook his hand. Firm grip. No theatrics.
The man nodded once and then gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “Have a seat, Mr. Ramirez.”
Jose sat.
Callum didn’t. He walked around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, arms folded, eyeing Jose like he was studying a new brand of fertilizer he didn’t quite trust yet.
“I’ll tell you this before we begin,” he said, his Scottish brogue clipped and deliberate. “You passed the first test already.”
Jose blinked, unsure.
“Walked in, realized you didn’t know where you were going, asked someone who did. Simple. Obvious. You’d be surprised how many men would rather wander around lost for twenty minutes than admit they need directions.” He shook his head. “Any man who doesn’t have the wits to ask for help when he needs it will not clip a single blade of grass on my course.”
Jose gave a small nod. “Yes, sir.”
“Callum,” he reminded.
“Callum,” Jose echoed.
The Scotsman’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in suspicion, but in concentration. He took a moment, then continued.
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