Sailing at Sunset - Cindi Madsen Page 0,56

the table in front of her. “Maybe if we tape a bunch of toothpicks together, it’d be enough to hold the sail?”

Josh happened to come down the cabin stairs as she’d posed her question. “Sounds like a puny mast.”

Over breakfast, when she’d announced they were going to stray from her reworked itinerary to put one of the original team-building activities back in, everyone else on the boat had gaped at her.

“What?” she’d said. “I can be flexible. I figured we could use this time to do the ‘Use what you have’ challenge before our big meeting. It entails grabbing items we can find onboard to build our own sailboats. The only hard rules are that they have to have a sail, and they have to float. Oh, and naturally you can’t use actual parts of the ship, because we’d like to keep ourselves afloat, too.”

No one had uttered a word, and she’d been so sure the moment was going to go differently that she began rethinking her rethinking all over again. “But if everyone wants to have a meeting instead, I guess I’ll grab my notebook and—”

“The challenge,” her coworkers had yelled, practically in unison.

From there, they’d split into two groups—boys versus girls—and the ticking timer on the table signaled that Danae and her team only had four minutes left. Not enough time to banter with Josh right now, regardless of his being correct about the toothpicks being too puny.

Technically, she was still working out how talk to him, since last night she’d decided she should refrain from any activities that might lead to falling for him. Fun conversations were fine, but anything close to flirty was a no-go.

“Are you spying on us for the boys?” Paige asked, blocking Josh’s view of their sailboat. Currently, their crafted-together vessel resembled something that would sink if someone looked at it the wrong way. “How’s their boat coming along?”

Josh lifted his hands in the air. “I only came to grab a bottle of water. Since I’m the judge, I’m remaining nice and impartial.”

Danae roused her competitive side, focusing on her desire to win until all cylinders were firing. “Come on, ladies. Surely we can find something that’d be sturdy enough to hold up a sail. Just remember, it has to float, or it won’t count.”

The bottom had been fashioned out of paper plates since, sadly, they’d used all of the paper bowls for cereal this morning. At least they were the sturdier kind, so they had a shot at it floating for a while before it got too soggy.

“Best of luck,” Josh said, saluting them with two fingers before heading up to the deck.

“Where’s the cork from the wine bottle?” Paige asked, and she began shuffling through the items in the kitchen. Then she held it up with a battle cry.

“Genius,” Vanessa said, and if they hadn’t been in a rush, Danae would have doled out stickers. So far, the two of them had been working together rather well, and a thrill went through her belly at all the camaraderie.

My plan is working! It was why she’d thrown out the “boys versus girls” suggestion, casual in tone but a deliberate stratagem she’d developed in advance. It left her to referee Paige and Vanessa while they worked together. Better yet, she hadn’t even had to pull out her metaphorical whistle.

Paige cut the cork into fourths and glued one to each corner of their square ship.

For the mast, they used a plastic spoon, and for the sail, they chose foil. Danae found her summertime fun-pack of stickers and decorated the sail with rainbows, smiling suns, and sandcastles. The timer rang, so unfortunately, they didn’t have a chance to test it in the sink as they’d hoped to do.

“Time,” Mark yelled down. “Bring up the boat so we can see you’re not still working on it.”

“You think it’ll float?” Vanessa asked.

Paige carefully lifted it, balancing it in her palm. “There’s only one way to find out.”

As they got ready to “sail” their boats, Josh couldn’t stop glancing at Danae. Last night had been amazing, and after walking her to the doorway of her cabin, he hadn’t wanted to say goodnight.

While he rarely slept well on his chartered trips, too much occupying his thoughts, he’d slept like a rock last night, Danae’s smile the last image on his mind.

Water sloshed over the sides of the cooler as Mark maneuvered it to the center of the deck for their contest, a puddle forming underneath the blue plastic.

Danae’s gaze