Page 16 of Deception and New Direction (Ranger Shield Security #3)

RUTHIE

We were at Vince’s loft for family game night. By family, I meant work family. I had mentioned to Archer that we should consider doing some kind of team bonding thing since we had so many new employees now.

Back when I worked at the hair salon in Vegas , our managers were always trying to do fun things to build up the relationships among the staff since we often had pretty high turnover.

Diego had chimed in with the suggestion of a game night. He came from a large family, and game night was a big bonding activity for them. So we set it up at Vince’s loft since his living room was huge and we could all spread out.

We ordered a bunch of appetizers, pizzas, snacks, beer, soft drinks, and more and had it on a Friday night so no one had to come in to work the next day.

Everyone from Ranger Shield was here— Vince , Wade , Jack , Diego , Archer , Dane , Axel , Delia , and myself. Cat was also here—not just because she lived here, but because she also worked out of our office space regularly, so it counted.

I had brought Dash along since he had come to work with me that day.

Initially I was worried because Cat and Vince had a hairless cat named Harry —yes, that was his real name.

I didn’t know how Dash would do around cats since I had never really seen him interact with them, but Cat said her sister Val had come by earlier to collect Harry so we wouldn’t have to worry about them.

Dash, of course, could tell the moment we arrived that another animal lived here because his nose was on the hunt instantly. He investigated every single room in search of the animal he would never find.

We started the night off easy with a game of Heads Up . Holding a cell phone up to one player’s forehead, everyone around them had to give them clues so they could figure out what word was showing on the phone.

We broke up into teams of two since the male egos in the room couldn’t stand having this not be a real competition.

The three females teamed up, plus Jack , who for some reason announced he wanted to be on my team. Axel also joined us, stating that “women are scientifically smarter than men,” so he wanted be on our team.

Axel was up first, and he picked animals as his category, which I had a feeling would be funny since some things got lost in translation with him, given he was originally from Sweden and English was not his native language.

His first word was ladybug. We began shouting hints about the color red, black spots, and it could fly before he finally shouted his answer out.

“Girlbug!”

We all laughed and decided to give it to him since he was close enough.

He flipped the phone forward to pull up the next word.

He flipped the phone again to try another word since we told him that one was too difficult.

“Ohh, it has stripes,” Delia yelled out.

“Say-bruh, or is it zeh-brah,” Axel guessed. “ Something like that.”

“No, not a zebra,” I told him.

“It smells really bad if you scare it,” Jack added.

“Oh! The skoonk!” Axel yelled out.

We all cheered yes while also laughing.

He tried a few more times before time ran out. In the end, he only got two right, but honestly, given it was Axel , it was great, not to mention hilarious.

The other team was up, and Archer picked sports.

They ended up getting five correct, so I needed to get at least that or more.

Back to our team for the next round, so I offered myself as the next player. I picked movies as my category. Once the timer was set, I began.

“You watched this for the eye candy,” Jack shouted out first.

“Oooh… Fast and the Furious !” I called out.

I flipped the phone to get the next word.

“Your favorite princess is in it,” Jack blurted out.

“ Beauty and the Beast ,” I yelled.

Flip the phone.

“Oooh I’ve seen this one,” Axel commented, not really providing a clue.

“I haven’t, so I can’t help,” Delia added.

“It’s my favorite war movie with Tom Hanks ,” Jack said, and I instantly knew which one he meant, even though I’d never seen it.

“ Saving Private Ryan !”

“Dang, you two don’t even need us,” Cat said.

Phone flip.

“Marvel comic movie we watched together,” Jack called out.

“ Captain America !” I practically shrieked.

I got the next two very quickly with Jack’s help, and we finished with six—beating the others by one.

I gave Jack a high-five before turning to high-five the others.

Delia just laughed. “ You didn’t need us at all, so I’m not sure why you’re high-fiving me.”

“Yeah, I’ve never felt so invisible in my life,” Cat commented while smiling at me.

Thinking back, I guessed Jack and I had done that round all by ourselves. As if he heard my inner thoughts, Jack pulled me into his side for a hug and told the whole group we made a great team of two. He then looked down at me and winked.

Crap. He was totally going to use this against me.

We played a few more rounds before breaking to get some more food.

“Uh, Ruthie ,” Diego called from the kitchen. “ How much pizza is too much pizza for a dog?”

Oh no.

I immediately jumped from my seat and sped into the kitchen, at least as fast as my crutches would let me. “ Did he get a piece?”

“Judging by the sauce on his face and the empty box in front of me, I’m guessing he stole more than one piece,” Diego answered.

Ugh.

“Dash,” I reprimanded him, but he just stared up at me as though he had done nothing wrong.

I hoped this didn’t come back to haunt me later with him having digestive issues at three in the morning.

The next game was Pictionary , and before I could even get a word out, Jack selected me as his partner.

Everyone else paired up in teams of two, and we began to take turns having players draw words from a card within one minute.

Without using letters, numbers, or speaking to give clues, their teammate tries to guess the word.

I learned one very valuable lesson from this game tonight—none of the men could draw anything recognizable. At all.

Archer’s supposed flamingo looked like a dog. Vince’s tree was essentially a stick with a circle on top. And , even now, I still had no idea what Wade’s version of Australia looked like—certainly nothing even remotely close to the actual depiction of Australia .

Cat was by far the best artist—which made sense since she did a lot of graphic design with her website business.

This also gave her and Delia an unfair advantage, but I wasn’t going to say anything because I wanted the three of us—women—to outshine the men in any way we could since we were already outnumbered.

Jack and I weren’t great artists either, but for some reason we synced and seemed to get more answers than most of the other teams did, so at least there was that.

Two hours later, we were all gamed out. Everyone took some leftovers and made their way to their respective homes.

“Do you think everyone had fun tonight?” I asked Jack as we got into the car to head back to his place.

“Yeah,” he replied. “ Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. You should feel good about putting this together.”

“Well, it wasn’t entirely my idea,” I told him.

“I get that Diego offered up game night, but you put it all together and made it happen,” he countered. “ A lot of great ideas remain just ideas because no one puts in the effort to make them happen.”

I hadn’t really thought of it like that.

“I also noticed that we make a great team,” he added.

“We did do pretty well at the games, didn’t we?” I remarked.

“Yeah, though I imagine we’d be a great team in other ways too.” I made the mistake of looking up at him after his comment to see him grinning at me with one half of his lips turned up and wiggling his eyebrows.

I knew what he was implying, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet—maybe ever. I didn’t share people, and he literally just went on a date not that long ago.

“I don’t think your girlfriend would appreciate that,” I mumbled.

He must have heard me though, because his eyebrows lifted high as if to question me.

“I’m referring to the woman you went on your mystery date with the other night,” I explained, hating how jealous I felt.

He smiled his stupid smug smile at me and my jealousy immediately turned to annoyance.

“I wasn’t on a date, Ruthie . I was meeting with a man to get background info.”

At that piece of information, I internally breathed a sigh of relief. Still , not one to ever give in too easily or show my cards, I decided to take that piece of joyful information he gave me and just walk away.

“I think we should just stick with being game night partners,” I informed him.

He shook his head at me and mumbled something as I walked away. “ I seem to be into beautiful, smart-ass, perpetually stubborn women who enjoy driving me up a wall.”

He may not have intended for me to hear them, but I did, nonetheless. Much to my chagrin, my heart gave a happy squeeze at his words.