Off she strutted, leaving Piper and Zach alone in the hallway, with only the muffled din of the distant party and the scent of the honey of her shampoo.
“I had no idea this event was a cooking contest, I swear.” He stepped closer. “But you did.”
“Like I said earlier, every potluck is a contest. They’re advertised as friendly, but the word ‘competition’ always follows that word silently.” She interlaced her fingers through his, and they left the main area and headed down a dim hallway, lit only by sconces. “All I can say is I’m glad your boss likes spicy food because I didn’t skimp on the jalapeños.”
“Or the butter.”
“Butter is the secret to life.”
“Is it now?” Zach tugged her up against him. “Are there other secrets to life?”
She looked up at him with her wide, green eyes. He fingered the ring on her finger, the ring that told the world she belonged to him, whether it was thoroughly true or not, and backed her up against the hallway wall.
“Maybe, but I probably need to learn them from you.” She blinked a couple of times, slowly, and he stared into their depths.
“I need to thank you. Can I give you a thank-you kiss?” He didn’t wait for an answer but placed a soft caress on her lips with his own.
“Maybe I should give you a you’re-welcome kiss in return.” Piper’s eyes drifted shut, and she came up on tiptoe to kiss him back. “It’s only ‘business communication,’ of course.”
“Of course.” But it was effective. Highly.
A snort from the end of the hallway interrupted those lines of communication, and Zach looked over to see Eisenhower sneering at him, with Sylvia at his side.
“We’re onto your game. You know that.”
Zach hated their hypocrisy here.
“Dude. You’re playing that game yourself.”
“You bet we are.” Eisenhower strutted away. “We’ll just see who plays it better.”
“Did I hear the word game?” Crockett floated through. That guy was everywhere. “Because that’s a great idea. We should start up the couples’ quiz right now.”
Which Piper and Zach had failed to cram for.
∞∞∞
“Let’s see, now,” a jolly woman holding a microphone announced once she had everyone’s attention. All the couples from Zach’s office had gathered in the room with the fireplace so huge it could have served well in a medieval castle in Europe. Piper couldn’t help glancing around for stray Irish wolfhounds or strolling minstrels. “We’ve got to choose this potluck’s two lucky couples. They seem pretty obvious, don’t they?”
A catcalling-type cry rose up from the group and all eyes fell on her and Zach, or else on Eisenhower and his wife. Piper blazed as hot as a fajita skillet. Yes, Zach had sacrificed for her, but this was a pretty big concession on her part. Being in front of a crowd was not her thing; hence, the chef job, not a maître d’ job. Even having that billboard up to advertise Du Jour killed her a little bit.
“That’s right, the Eisenhower-Nakamura power couple and Mr. and Mrs. Zach Travis are the double dynamic duos who have tied the knot since our last get-together. Rumor has it, they got married the same day. How about that?” The emcee woman clapped, triggering applause from the rest of the crowd, who were still finding seats. “Come on up, couples.”
“That’s my boss’s wife,” he whispered, taking her hand to lead her to the front. Piper took a second look.
“Mrs. Crockett?” she asked. He nodded and they made their way to where she waited, grinning. Mrs. Crockett had a broad grin and short-bobbed black hair. While she looked sweet, so did a lot of predatory animals.
Piper followed him to the front of the room where things were set up like one of those old game shows her parents had watched on TV Land. Piper and Mrs. Eisenhower sat on one side of a stretched curtain, and their husbands sat on the other. A minion of sorts came and brought Piper three pieces of blue cardstock and a large-tipped black marker. From that moment, she knew the format: the emcee would ask a question, one they should both ostensibly know about each other; Piper would write her answer on the paper, and Zach would have to make his best guess as to what Piper wrote down.
Knowing a guy for two weeks left her in the dark.
If only they had spent more time getting to know each other’s past, likes, and dislikes…instead of kissing.
Hindsight.
“Okay, ladies. Vamos a empezar. Google told me that’s how to say ‘let’s begin’ in Español.” She kind of giggled, which surprised Piper. “These first two are about you. Then we’ll switch. You’re competing against each other as couples. Winner, well, I’ll let my husband announce that.”
Up to where Mrs. Crockett stood walked Zach’s boss, Mr. Crockett. Piper saw the jaunty-smug look on his face. He was going to spring something bad on them—on Zach. Her heart strung out to him, as if on a reel, and ached to embrace him, tell him she’d do her best and no matter what it was going to be okay.
“Heh-heh,” came the mischief-laden laugh of the boss. “I think we ought to make this interesting, don’t you people?” To which the crowd responded with hearty yeahs. “Good. You’re all more than aware that these two men are vying for the partnership opening. Tonight’s winner won’t be guaranteed that job, but let’s just say that when the time comes that the partners confer, this victory will not be forgotten.”
Piper’s shoulders sank. She straightened them quickly and pasted on a grin, but she knew it had to look pained. She didn’t know this man at all, and her knowing him well might determine his future.
This could go so wrong.
“Question number one.” Mrs. Crockett reclaimed ownership of the microphone. “Regardless of where you spent your honeymoon, even if it was on a Kon Tiki raft from Chile to Easter Island, where will your husband say he wanted to spend it?”
Sylvia spoke up. “So this is a question about his bucket list, places he wants to travel?”
“I guess so, yes,” the emcee said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Piper saw Sylvia’s confidence. “Easy,” she murmured and began writing on her card stock, the pen squealing with each stroke. Finished, Sylvia sat back and folded her arms over her chest, sending a haughty look at Piper. The word read Bermuda.
Piper would like to send these people to the Bermuda Triangle, no problem. She didn’t like the way they’d been treating Zach or her tonight, as if they knew something was rigged.
However, Piper couldn’t get too proud. She had no idea where Zach would like to travel. All she knew was she didn’t want to get sent to New Zealand herself. Where would he say? She wrote Mazatlan on the card, hoping he could read her mind, since she couldn’t read his. Everyone wanted to go to Mazatlan, right?
“Husbands?”
The Eisenhowers got it right. The Travises got it wrong. Zach had said Puerto Rico. Of course. Piper could slap her forehead for her stupidity.
After that ominous beginning, she proceeded to guess wrong about the last book Zach had read, his favorite U.S. president, and what person living or dead Zach would most like to eat dinner with.
“Gandhi?” Piper offered weakly, defeat saturating her soul.
“Oh, sorry,” he responded. “I said Piper Travis.” The sweetness of his answer did little to comfort her, knowing how badly she was botching this for him, especially since Sylvia hadn’t missed a single answer yet. If the Newlywed Quiz had been a baseball game, the score would be a shutout.
Piper had to get the next one right. Please just let me get one right.
“What will your husband say as a kid he wanted to be when he grew up?”
Oh, geez. A lump grew in Piper’s throat, one she couldn’t swallow down. How was she supposed to know what his dreams had been as a little child?
With a trembling hand she scribbled law partner on the card stock, hating herself for being such a know-nothing for a wife. If she didn’t know at least this small detail, she seemed like she didn’t care about him
at all.
∞∞∞
The question from Mrs. Crockett took him aback. He’d wanted to be a fireman as a little kid. And if he’d gone into that instead of law, he might have been able to go out to the Double Bar T and save it that night, instead of putting out figurative fires in the legal world instead.
However, this was a conversation he and Piper had never had. The quiz would prompt it later, but too late. He had to try to think what Piper would write down.
“Rancher,” he said finally.
Wrong. But her guess was really cute, and the audience of his CBH colleagues laughed. Piper’s answers were cute, and she won the hearts of the crowd, but they didn’t get him any points.
Zach kept it together, a smile pasted on, but inside he was hyperventilating. He should have synched with Piper on at least one of those answers. Piper’s responses had been great guesses, and if they’d been correct, it would have meant Zach was a good person, but that was not going to cut it for a win of this game.
He totally embarrassed himself, and worse, his stupidity may have even outed their marriage as a fake, cobbled together just for an occasion like this.
Eisenhower and Sylvia Nakamura, on the other hand, hadn’t tanked.
Zach glanced over, and Eisenhower had a gleam in his eye, one of a hungry tiger ready to pounce on a wounded antelope.
Wait, did tigers and antelopes exist in the same ecosystem? Well, not for long, they didn’t. The tigers ate them and picked their teeth with the prongs of the horns. Zach felt like he was being sized up for lunch.
“Okay, next question. This should be a gimme.”
So far, there had been no gimmes, at least not for Zach and Piper. He aimed a little prayer heavenward that he and Piper get at least one right. Please.
“Wives, what will your husbands say was your full given name at birth?”
Zach exhaled. No problem. For once, their recent nuptials should give them a chance to get one right, since her full name had sunk right into his mind during the ceremony.
“Piper Meredith Quinn.” Zach almost did a victory dance as he answered. Finally, a happy ding of the bell for their correct answer.
“Sylvia Nakamura,” Eisenhower beamed, equally pleased, blaze him. “But not for long.”
Zach resisted the urge to ask whether Eisenhower had finally convinced his so-called wife to take his name.
“Women, hold up your cards.” The crowd clapped. “Well done, both correct. But now, let’s switch it. Can this little victory work in reverse? Dun-dun-dun.” So much drama. “Wives, what will your husbands say about their full given names at birth?”
Hearing this, Zach caught his breath. Would she recall his middle name? Would she remember that his first name was Zachary, not Zach? He didn’t know. The miles-wide and –deep chasm of ignorance about each other gaped its maw at him. There was so much about Piper he didn’t know, and vice versa. But I want to. I want to know it all.
“Zachary Miles Travis,” she said. They got it right! A second question. Maybe this signaled the changing of the tides.
Now it was Eisenhower’s turn. The smugness rolling off him for the past ten minutes nearly choked Zach.
“Sylvia? Your response?”
“Actually, Mrs. Crockett, this will probably surprise everyone, but Fuller’s first name isn’t just the initial S., like he’s told everyone. And Eisenhower was his stepfather’s name, which he took at age five when his widowed mother remarried, after his dad Fannin Austin died suddenly of pneumonia.”
“Nice, but your answer is?”
“Fuller’s full given name at birth was Stephen Fuller Austin.”
Boom. The words fell like dropped bombs on Zach. All this time, he’d been lulled into carnal security with the thought that the CBH elite would give him, Zachary Travis, a little nudge in the race for partner based on the fact he had a last name connected to the Alamo and Texas history.
“I should let you know, too,” Eisenhower said, lifting his blue piece of paper with the identical words written on it to his wife’s, “that while Sylvia and I have had a few long discussions about how she’s going to be known now that she’s married, once she learned my birth name, we were able to decide quickly: Mr. & Mrs. Austin.”
The crowd gave a long aw of sympathetic approval, and then polite clapping followed. Zach could have swallowed his tongue. No figure in Texas history, not even a member of the final soldier stand at the Alamo, stood equal in importance to Stephen F. Austin. Heck, he was the Father of Texas. Whether or not it was a true story about Eisenhower’s birth name, the couple’s mutual decision to make the name change would stand Eisenhower far ahead of him in the running, particularly with the poor showing Zach had made on this quiz.
Crockett, Bowie, Houston, and Austin. It sounded be too good for these people to pass up, especially if that was one of the big criteria they were basing their partnership decision on. It boggled the mind that they could be so stupid and shallow. Zach’s hackles rose again at their apparent bizarre criteria for partner promotion.
The only thing that remained to comfort him in the race against Eisenhower’s underhanded ascent to power was the fact that he, Zach, had eclipsed Eisenhower in what money he brought into the coffers through trials and settlements and plain hard work. While Eisenhower toiled over the one, fruitless Bingham v. Kempton case, that could never be won or lost, the long hours Zach had worked on every case that came across his desk left him sitting pretty atop a pile of gold he could point to when he went in for his interview—which was coming up in two days. Would Crockett cancel Zach’s interview after tonight’s disastrous showing at the quiz?
Then again, Piper’s jalapeno corn had won the night, so maybe that would cancel it out.
“One final question.”
The audience groaned with disappointment, the schadenfreude being strong with them. Zach hated this game. Part of the reason was because they’d strung a curtain between him and Piper, and he couldn’t see her reactions to any of this. She might be writhing and he couldn’t go to her and calm her down.
“For ten points. Husbands, what is your wife’s proudest moment of you?”
“Easy,” he heard Sylvia say through the curtain. “We’ll go second.”
Zach hadn’t the faintest idea how Piper would answer. “I…I don’t know.” Ten points would tie the two couples, if he got this right and Eisenhower and Sylvia flailed.
It was Zach’s only hope. His throat constricted.
“Just give us an answer, Travis,” Eisenhower said, a sneer exulting in his tone. “You’ve lost, so own it and get it over with.”
He hated that Eisenhower was right.
“When I…” What would Piper like most? Suddenly he knew. “When…I turned the car around.”
From across the curtain, he heard the rattling of cardstock, and a cheer from the audience told him he was right. He ignored the rules and jumped from his chair. He ran over and picked up Piper, swinging her around. “We did it. We got three right.”
Piper beamed up at him, her eyes sparkling with joy and relief. Man, she was pretty. He totally lucked out. She pressed a warm kiss to his cheek, and the audience reacted with a chorus of aw and some catcalling. Nice, CBH. Keeping it classy.
“After a weak showing at the beginning,” Mrs. Crockett said, “you came back and redeemed yourselves. Sort of. Now, calm down, Travises. We’ve got one more answer to hear.”
Eisenhower and his wife had to get this wrong. Unless Sylvia said, There have been no proud moments, Zach would know she was lying. The woman held zero affection for her husband, at least Zach couldn’t see a glimmer of a spark anywhere between them.
Sylvia cleared her throat. Zach hated how confident she sounded and the way she shot a gloating eye at Piper, like she was trying to intimidate. He gripped her hand, but she didn’t seem to be as nervous about it as Zach was. Zach’s stomach crawled like he’d swallowed a thousand worms.
“My proudest moment of my husband came, in fact
, today. When he won Bingham v. Kempton.” When the crowd gasped in unison and broke into cheers, Sylvia patted out their noise. “After all his labor on behalf of Mr. Crockett’s cousin, Mrs. Bingham, the case has at last been settled out of court. Yes, I’d call the sum shocking that the insurance company for Kempton will have to pay. Of course, Fuller will skim a healthy cream off the top of that.”
“Shocking, as in…?” Crockett asked. Tact was apparently overrated for bosses.
Eisenhower held up his winning match answer and then named a sum. Zach considered it more of a kick in his own gut than any kind of shock. In all his years here, Zach had never brought in that much on a single case. In fact, the amount made Zach’s last three years of work combined look like chump change.
Beside Zach, Piper stood up tall, pressing herself against him, as if to hold him up. He couldn’t help it; he leaned hard against her, his left knee buckling.
Mrs. Crockett removed the curtain, ending the game, and handed Eisenhower and Sylvia—the Austins now, apparently—a brass cup, which the two winners jointly held aloft to the clapping of the crowd.
Piper’s phone vibrated in her purse, and she excused herself to go take the call, leaving Zach alone with his nemesis.
Eisenhower bared his teeth as soon as the onlookers filtered away and said in a low voice for only Zach to hear, “It’s all but over Travis. Give up now before I expose you and your so-called wife for the frauds you are.”
“You know I could do the same to you, Eisenhower.”
“That’s Austin to you now.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re not going to do that, though. No one will believe you. Sylvia and I have worked together for over ten years. Our romance was a slow burn, one that went from colleague, to friendship to marriage. We kept it on the down-low because we’d never want our budding relationship to interfere with our work.”
“And it never has.” Zach frowned. “Do the two of you even live together? It’s so obvious you’re not in love that I don’t know why Mrs. Crockett didn’t call you on it during the quiz. Please.”
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