Page 28 of Snow Much Trouble
Lauren drums her fingers on the table, thinking. "We could play a game. Do you think Jolene has board games?"
"Let's find out." Maybe we can segue from games to nakedness. That’s my plan, anyway.
We clear our breakfast dishes and start exploring the cabin more thoroughly. There's a closet in the hallway I hadn't noticed before, and when we open it, we hit the jackpot.
"Jackpot!" Lauren announces, echoing my thoughts. "Scrabble, Monopoly, cards, Yahtzee…"
"Scrabble," I say immediately.
"Final answer?"
"Yes. I'm excellent at it."
Lauren turns to face me, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, you're excellent at it? Those are fighting words."
"Are you saying you're good at Scrabble as well?"
"I'm saying I'm better than you."
I grin. "Prove it."
We set up at the dining table with the Scrabble board between us. I've poured us both more coffee, and Lauren has draped one of the blankets around her shoulders like a cape.
"I should warn you," she says as she arranges her letter tiles. "I like to win."
"Noted, with zero surprise. And I should warn you that I'm competitive about everything."
"Also noted." She glances up at me with a small smirk. "Are we playing dirty or clean?"
"I wasn't aware there were versions."
"Dirty Scrabble allows made-up words as long as you can defend them convincingly. Clean Scrabble is dictionary only."
"Clean," I say. "That’s all too vague. You can’t loophole your way to a win."
"Workarounds," she corrects. "Remember, I'm a workaround girl, not a loophole girl."
“See? That’s my point exactly. Semantics.”
Lauren goes first, laying down the word SNOW vertically to use the center star. "Fifteen points. Beat that."
I study my tiles. I've got a Q, which is both a blessing and a curse this early in the game. "QUIZ," I say, adding it horizontally to use her W. "Twenty-two points."
"Solid start," she admits. "But I'm just getting warmed up."
For the next hour, we trade words. Lauren plays JINGLE, I counter with BOURBON. She plays FROST, I play WHISKEY.
"Are all your words going to be alcohol-related?" she asks.
"Are all yours going to be Christmas-related?"
"Yes," we say simultaneously, then laugh.
The game gets competitive fast. Lauren challenges one of my words (QUAFF, which is absolutely a real word, thank you very much), and I challenge one of hers (ZAZZY, which she swears is in the dictionary but definitely isn't).
"I'm not going to lie," I say as I study the board, trying to figure out where to place my X. "You’re giving me a real run for the money.”
Lauren leans back in her chair, the blanket slipping off one shoulder. "I should print that on my business cards.’ Lauren Scott—I’ll give you a real run for the money.’"
