In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance by Sandy Nathan

step on the green between anybody’s ball and the hole. That’s a no-no.”
     
    Leroy kept going, his balls soaring past the others’. “Yeah, I’m kinda getting the hang of this.” Another fantastic swing and the ball shot through the air like a Winchester 223 Super Short Magnum, the fastest bullet in the world. Leroy loped ahead of the group from hole to hole, eschewing the carts.
    “Oh, yeah, this one’s hard. You got to be very careful here. I can see that. William, would you get me that one with the flat edge.” He called his caddy by his first name. The Lords twitched every time he did it.
    “Boy, this grass sure is short. I wonder how they get it this short.” Leroy squatted on the green of the fourteenth hole and studied the distance between his ball and the hole. Someone pulled the flag out of the hole. “That’s a good idea. Easier to get the ball in.” He gave it the tiniest little tap, and the ball scooted into the hole.
    “Good lord, you’re on par,” Lord Ballentyne. “The fourteenth hole is the hardest on the course. It has a stroke index of one!”
    Leroy scored seventy-eight, probably the lowest of any first time player in history, on that course, certainly. The only place he didn’t score was the 19th hole.
    They went to a dark-paneled and very posh bar at the end of the course. Everyone ordered with gusto. Except Leroy.
    “You don’t imbibe?” one of the Lords asked. Maybe Lord Martingale.
    “I don’t drink. It’s against my religion.”
    Drinking wasn’t against their religion; the Lords drank freely, Scotch, mostly. They were very interested in his beliefs and spiritual life. He had to explain about shamans, spirit warriors, and his grandfather.
    “Your grandfather is a shaman?”
    “Was. He died a little while ago.”
    “Did he have supernatural powers?”
    “Yes, he did. He could heal anything. Broken souls, mostly. And do all sorts of other things. Even blow things up.”
    Leroy could see it happen: with one mind, the Lords recalled the sensational reports of a bull that exploded at a Las Vegas rodeo not so long before. A very tall, African American cowboy had been implicated. Their collective eyes continued to widen as the coverage of a recent and horrific spiritual retreat led by a Native American shaman in New Mexico returned to their minds full force.
     
    This was exactly what he and Doug had realized would happen as they watched the news the night before. Everyone—including the noblemen they were meeting the next day—knew about the massacre and the general descriptions of the parties involved. Will had been there: all the major networks had interviewed him. He was trying to do damage control for Grandfather. The Lords knew that Will employed Doug and that Leroy was connected to him. Was Leroy’s grandfather the leader of a cult and a mass murderer? Was Leroy himself?
    “This is your first big test,” Doug had said after he turned off the news. “You have to convince them that you’re a good guy, your Grandfather’s a good guy, and neither of you were in on the massacre. If you don’t convince them completely tomorrow, you won’t have a future in England or anywhere. If they buy you and your story, they’ll tell their friends and the upper classes will open to you. You’ll never hear about it again. If they don’t accept you, you might as well go home.”
    “How will I know if they’ve accepted me?”
    “They’ll invite you to their country houses.”
     
    “You were at the massacre?” Lord Ballentyne’s features stiffened. Leroy learned that the British stiff upper lip included the whole body. “Did you see it? And what about the rodeo and the exploding bull?”
    “I didn’t blow up the bull. I don’t know how he blew up,” Leroy spoke carefully, using all the spiritual power he could muster. “The FBI said a crazy agent made up the story about the bull so he could get a promotion. President Clinton agreed. I got to the Meeting when it was