names to choose from, the odds were stacked against her.
She reached in and let her hand sift through the dozens of names handwritten on small slips of paper, willing her fingers to pull the golden ticket that read Joaquin Mendoza.
When Joaquin’s gorgeous brown gaze connected with hers, it was like a lightning strike and she grabbed a piece of paper, sure it was the right choice.
She held her breath as she pulled it into the daylight and read, “Sissy Hanson.”
Ugh. Sissy from accounting? No! Couldn’t she have a do-over? No disrespect to Sissy. She was nice enough, but she wasn’t Joaquin.
As Sissy came over to stand with her, Zoe did her best not to act disappointed. It would be fine. As long as Steffi-Anne didn’t end up with him.
It took about five minutes before everyone had chosen a partner. Each time Joaquin’s name wasn’t called, putting him one step closer to Steffi-Anne, the tension in Zoe’s chest wound a notch tighter.
Joaquin still hadn’t been paired up by the time there were just two people left: Steffi-Anne and Jill Winski, who was the second-to-last person to draw.
After Jill drew a name, she knit her brows and looked into the bag. “I think we may be short a name. It felt like I pulled the last slip of paper.”
“We should be fine,” Steffi-Anne said a bit too fast.
The only people left standing in Group B were Homer Martin from IT and Joaquin.
Of course.
Zoe was willing to wager that the paper caught between Jill’s forefinger and thumb read Homer Martin.
A slow burn began to simmer in Zoe’s stomach.
Jill started to turn the bag upside down, but Steffi-Anne reached out and snatched it away from her before she could, poking her pointed nose into the sack.
“No, no. Look. Right here. Here it is. There’s still one slip of paper left.”
A vaguely victorious smile curled her lips. “Joaquin, you and I are partners for the scavenger hunt.”
Oh. Well, will you look at that? What a surprise.
Before anyone could challenge the outcome, Steffi-Anne was barking orders about how they would execute the scavenger hunt, how it was important to work as a team and that there would be a nice prize for the team that won: lunch at the Copper Kettle.
As the scavenger hunt played out, Zoe noticed that the vast majority of her female coworkers were playing hard to win.
When Jill and Homer were the first to cross the finish line with their list completed, Zoe’s partner, Sissy, quipped, “You know Jill didn’t work that hard to have lunch with Homer. She did it to keep Steffi-Anne from winning the lunch with Joaquin.”
Keep-away. Was that how this retreat had digressed? It had become one big game of keep-away. Well, in the name of team-building, Zoe intended to do her part.
Pretending not to be a sore loser, Steffi-Anne herded the group right into the next activity: the three-legged race. It would be cozy to have a legit reason to stand that close to Joaquin, arms around each other, their bodies becoming one as they reached climax—er—the finish line.
The finish line.
Good grief! Where had that come from?
Okay, she knew what had inspired the inappropriate thought, but she needed to get her head under control. It said a lot about the state of her love life when a three-legged race inspired thoughts of dancing the horizontal tango.
She risked a glance at Joaquin.
Then again, who wouldn’t be inspired by him?
Heat began at the base of her neck and worked its way up to the tips of her ears. She took a deep breath to cool herself down before anyone noticed.
Yes, she had it bad for Joaquin Mendoza. So was she just going to stand around blushing over the predicament or was she going to do something about it?
“Zoe, would you please start us off again by pulling the name of your partner for the race?”
“You know what, Steffi-Anne? Since Jill and Homer won the last round, it’s only fair that we let her draw first. Since they’re such a power team, we need to make sure they don’t get paired up again. Right?”
Steffi-Anne clapped her hands. “May I please have everyone’s attention? We have just a few more teamwork exercises before we break for lunch and then we will have some free time in the park. Since it takes so long to draw names, why don’t we make this round of pairings permanent partners for the duration of our drills? That will make things easier and give us more free time in the park.”
As the bag made its way clockwise around the circle, Zoe drifted over to a picnic table a few paces behind the action. Keeping her back to the group and her ears open for the names each person announced as they drew, she took a pen out of her wristlet and retrieved the scrap of paper she’d drawn from the previous scavenger hunt round. Since she hadn’t been near a trash can, she’d tucked it into the pocket of her shorts. Now, she was happy she’d done that.
Quickly and discreetly, she folded the paper, creased it and tore off the part with Sissy’s name. She wrote Joaquin Mendoza on the small scrap.
If perchance he was called by one of the last few remaining people, Zoe would admit to herself that she’d been barking up the wrong tree and draw a new name from the bag. But her gut instinct told her this was rigged. She intended to draw right before Steffi-Anne and if her hunch was right, there would only be one slip of paper in that bag—and it wouldn’t have Joaquin’s name on it.
So she stayed back at the picnic table until the bag had made it all the way around the circle—and, oh, how interesting, no one had called Joaquin’s name yet.
Zoe knew she was taking a chance by calling Steffi-Anne’s bluff. But what were the odds that out of fifty names his name was among the last two twice in a row?
Nah, something was definitely rotten in Cowboy Country.
Zoe held the brown bag with her left hand and, careful to hold the doctored slip of paper tight with her thumb against the palm of her right hand, she reached in and pretended to pull a name.
“Joaquin Mendoza,” she said, reading the paper she’d forged. “Come on down.”
“What?” Steffi-Anne pierced her with the look of death, confirming Zoe’s hunch. She hadn’t included Joaquin’s name with the others. Since she’d gone last, she had pretended to pull his name. Did she really believe that no one would think it was odd that she drew Joaquin as a partner every single time? Worse yet, did she not think Joaquin might find it a little creepy that she’d rigged the pairings to throw them together?
It didn’t matter now because Zoe would be the one getting up close and personal with Joaquin in the three-legged race and the remaining team-building exercises.
Now, he was walking toward her.
As Zoe turned to meet him halfway, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Well played, Zoe.” Steffi-Anne’s voice was low and venomous, completely at odds with that sickening smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Well played.”
“What do you mean?” Zoe asked, all sugar with just enough spice mixed in to warn Steffi-Anne that she wasn’t playing.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I know what you did.”
“Oh, are you talking about how the pairings were rigged?”
Before she could answer, Joaquin walked up to them.
“Is everything all right?”
He looked back and forth between them, obviously sensing that something was off. But Steffi-Anne sprang into action.
“Everything