The tail end of the navy fabric flipped into his face.
My hands tightened around the knot, shoving it right up under his Adam’s apple. “That’s better. Well, as good as we’re going to get.”
Kathleen wore a tartan neckerchief with glasses tugged down her nose. Her gaze narrowed when she spotted us. Dammit, so much for keeping ourselves inconspicuous.
I grabbed my bag and the papers. Leo gathered up our presentation materials. He dropped his hand to my waist, guiding me toward the room. I jumped, glared at him over my shoulder and gritted my teeth.
He wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring into the room we were walking into like there would be an iron maiden and other torture devices. His hand brushing against my waist seemed completely automatic, not done to screw with me. At least I wasn’t freaking out alone. But every team needed one person to keep a cool head—shit, that meant it was me.
We followed Kathleen into the room under the careful gaze of our opponents.
Dread and doom clouded my vision and blood rushed in my ears, drowning out everything else anyone said.
The stapled packets Leo set down in front of everyone around the conference room table paled in comparison to the slick trifold printed brochures everyone had in front of them from the previous presentations. We were the freaking Bad News Bears of event planning.
I unzipped the portfolio and the foam proposal boards we’d put together fell out of the bands holding them inside, hitting the floor with a thunk. Leo’s fingers gripped the edge of his chair, probably trying not to facepalm. My ribs would be bruised by the time we left with how hard my heart pounded. How could it be in my throat and trying to burst through my chest at the same time?
He crouched at the same time I bent to pick them up. We almost clunked heads gathering everything up and setting it up on the easels sitting in front of the room.
“Shit.” My voice was laced with misery and embarrassment.
Could I black out now? Wake up on the other side of this without the heart attack? So much of this prep had been meant to beat down the nerves, but now an about-to-puke feeling hit me. It happened whenever I needed to stand up in front of groups to speak.
Leo picked up the last foam board, keeping his back to the group.
I tried not to cringe. They looked like crappy fifth grade science presentations. We should’ve done digital—at least appeared modern. Why had I kept this to physical boards? This was my fault. I’d wanted them to feel the fabrics and not have all the colors screwed by the temperamental printer in my office. If we’d gone digital, I couldn’t have forgotten the boards and I wouldn’t be so hot and sweaty right now.
Leo leaned in close, resting his hand on my shoulder. He smelled clean and fresh. “Take a breath. We’ve got this.”
Get it together, Zara. Mine and Tyler’s futures hung in the balance.
“I’ve got this.” I grabbed the last board and set it beside the other easels.
Standing in this bright, sunlit conference room, next to eight people at a table staring at me, I wanted to explode through the door to safety.
“Has anyone here been to summer camp?”
Our presentation was a balance of the old and the new. Leo’d had to fight for every idea and I’d been tempted to rip them off the board on the taxi ride over, but we had a deal and if I was going to get any help from him in pulling this off, I needed his buy-in. But standing here walking them through the day we’d planned felt like a massive mistake. It was getting harder to breathe and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Sorry, what was that, Kathleen?” Focus, Zara. I snapped to attention and leaned in, trying to keep my panic spiral from dragging this whole thing down.
Kathleen’s glasses slide even lower on her nose. “A paint balloon fight? I do hate being disappointed and dealing with people who aren’t even trying.” She set down her pen and crossed her arms over her chest.
Everyone else in the room shifted back, similarly. Panic rose in my throat. We’re losing them.
My gaze cut to Leo’s and my fists tightened at my side for a flash.
Leo jumped in. “All the paint is non-toxic and non-staining. There’ll be coveralls for anyone who doesn’t want to get it on their clothes. It’s a new take on capture the flag, and nowhere near as painful as paintball, but with the healthy living ethos and reputation of Winthorpe, I—we felt it would be an adventurous addition outside the norm.”
Kathleen leaned back with the corners of her lips turned down.
I stepped forward. “And there will also be stations for people who want to opt out of the activity itself. Beauty treatments and express massages. Head, neck, and back massages for participants after the paint battle as well.” Every second under their exacting gazes threatened to melt me into the floor.
“We had a massage set-up at our retreat a year ago. There were a lot of long lines.” Kathleen tapped her pen on her notepad.
Leo held up his phone and directed everyone to the spot on the handouts we’d given them. “They’re express massages, and the company has an app to let people book a spot only a few minutes before, so no wait times. And they can change their appointments depending on what else they wanted to do that day.”
Kathleen’s mouth tightened and she jotted down a note.
She hated it. She hated everything we’d presented today. Gasoline was pouring out of the wreck of this presentation headed straight toward a lit match on the ground. It was too different. Too out there for a more traditional company. If I could’ve fit my hands around Leo’s neck I’d have strangled him.
No worries, I could always use his tie.
“We’ll have a campfire for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows?”
“For eighty people? How do you propose to make that work?” Kathleen rolled her chair closer to the table, tenting her fingers together.
The sun came out from behind the clouds, lighting up the room even more. Like a stage hand shining a spotlight on us to watch me bake in my failure. I swallowed against the anxiety-induced lump in my throat. Why the hell had I been thinking I could do this? Bill was definitely going to fire me for not only tanking this, but making us look like idiots. Where would I go? I’d get evicted. My credit would be ruined. Tyler would have to leave his boarding school he loved to live in a cardboard box on the side of the road, or worse—with our parents.
Their scrutinizing gazes zeroed in on every gap of our plan.
I cleared my throat, stepped forward. “We would also have full catering, of course. But for people who wanted to fully lean into the camp experience, we have another option.” I pointed to the campfire pictures.
The room was bathed in a cascade of rainbow colors from Stella’s rock on my finger. Before I could drop my hand and cover the ring, I nearly blinded Kathleen. She shielded her eyes and locked onto my hand. Her face softened and the corners of her mouth shot up. Looking from me to Leo, her lips parted and the smile widened.
The ring. She loved the ring. And after our tie tying fight out in the hallway, she now thought Leo and I were together. No, not just together. Engaged. And that made her happy. Giddily happy. Her pen was down and she’d rolled her seat forward even farther, taking her steepled hands to the side of her face like she was looking at two lovebirds.
An idea ricocheted through my brain.