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Most sets of eyes turned toward Kevin’s date, pleading.
She smiled. "I’m good for anything."
“She should be on my team.” Kevin put his arm around her.
“Absolutely,” Erin agreed immediately. “Umm, as hostess, I have already picked teams for everyone.”
She read off her list of names, having done her best to prevent any relationship conflicts. Her team had water, and it included her, Theo, Luna, Glenn, Bianca, and Aiden.
Team Flour was Williams, Vanessa, Kevin, Nikki, Solari, and Timmons. It seemed most fair to split the newbies and officers evenly and separate the roommate sets of Vanessa-Luna and Kevin-Aiden. Furthermore, on the personnel management side, Luna didn’t get along well with Williams, and keeping Vanessa and Aiden apart was a given.
She and Theo were overall pleased with their HR skills, though there was one relatively unknown factor.
As the group stripped down to their bathing suits, Erin and Theo used the excuse of handing out the bags of flour and bottles of water to address Nikki.
“Has Kevin ever told you how competitive we are?” Erin asked, noticing Nikki was in a skimpy black thong bikini.
“Constantly, and I’ve kicked Nessa’s ass more than once at Scrabble.” She re-tied the top of her bikini.
“She did not,” Vanessa said, her famous Ms. Universe chest displayed in a significantly less scant red bikini, and took her bag of flour.
“You two almost got into a fistfight over how to spell discreet,” Aiden added, walking in the direction of where Erin’s team was forming. “Monopoly was even worse.”
Erin made a ‘time-out’ sign with his hands. “You guys are playing couples board games?”
“For hours on our nights off,” Kevin said.
Erin raised her eyebrows at Kevin. Was this seriously his tactic to try to prevent Aiden and Vanessa from sleeping together? Because he and Nikki weren’t exactly giving up true love besotted couple’s energy. Kevin hadn’t even put his arm around his new girlfriend in her mostly naked bathing suit. “Board games?”
“Nikki and I are in a battle to the death against Nessa and Aiden in Pandemic Legacy.”
“Pandemic Legacy?” Erin remembered hearing about this popular game that took a few days to play.
Nikki screwed up her face at Vanessa, who had abandoned the conversation to talk to Williams. “Somebody’s gotta save the world from the killer virus. Us and not her.”
Vanessa didn’t notice because she was gesturing like she was building a strategy with the captain.
It was possible in theory that Nikki possessed cutthroat competitive instincts to match Vanessa’s. If anything held Vanessa’s attention, it was the need to win.
Which made her a less than an ideal match for Aiden, Vanessa being a member of their shift notwithstanding. Erin would have preferred someone less single-minded for Aiden, whose natural empathy had made him a trauma magnet. She couldn’t view Vanessa as a candidate for Aiden’s wife, so their inevitable supernova’s fallout would almost certainly crush Aiden completely.
“Once we master Pandemic Legacy, we can start Campaign for North Africa,” Kevin said.
Theo came to a hard stop next to Erin. “Campaign for North Africa? Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” Kevin grinned, taking his and Nikki’s bags of flour.
Erin whispered to Theo. “What?”
“Campaign for North Africa is this World War 2 game. It takes five years to play.”
“Actual five years or it’s so boring it feels like five years?” Erin eyed Nikki’s back suspiciously.
“Actual five years. Supposedly 1500 hours, which for three hours a day is about five years.”
“How do you know this?”
“Since June, Kevin has been watching the Big Bang Theory on DVD at night with Aidan at the firehouse when he can’t sleep. They had an episode about it. Don’t ask.”
