“No.” I lifted my head enough to give him a you’re-insane look. “I start tuning you out after about twenty minutes in those budget meetings.”
Sighing, he shook his head. “Eli.”
“You know better than to complain about that.” I was doing a lot better than I had when we’d first started the company.
He chuckled. “It was in the same conversation where I made you start taking your salary.”
“Oh.” It was starting to ring a bell now. “Yeah, okay. Didn’t we say we needed the new IT position set up a few months ago, then? You set a new goal and said that once we met it that it was a priority. Right?”
“Yes, we just never did it.” Preston propped his feet up on his desk and leaned back. “It’s one of the to-do list things that kept getting pushed back because we got such terrible people applying.”
“Ohhh, that’s right.” Preston had handled the initial interviews a few months back, but then had decided to pull the position. “You said none of them would work.”
That was code that they were all too boring to tolerate us for long.
We were a colorful bunch, and even Preston with his conservative look and business clothes didn’t want to change it. He might look boring on the outside, but inside, he was just as interesting as the rest of us. He’d always said that it was to give a professional look to the company since I’d made him say he was the owner, but I’d always thought it was some kind of armor for him.
“I’m going to start looking again. Hopefully, we’ll have a few people to interview by next week.” Preston didn’t seem any more excited by the prospect than I was. He was the king of staying cool under pressure, and if he’d gotten frustrated with the IT guys, it had to have been bad.
Which was why I tried to stay out of the hiring process until he’d found someone he thought was halfway decent.
“If they could work off-site it would be easier, but they have to fit in, or it’s just going to be weird.” Occasionally, we’d hired people who hadn’t fit.
Most of the time, it had been easy to see before they were actually hired, but a few had slipped through. They usually started to panic and quit after the first day or two, which was why we didn’t really go easy on newbies, because I wanted to know right off the bat if they were going to bail.
“I agree, but we have to get someone in here. At the rate we’re growing, I think we’re going to have problems on the site in a few months with the amount of traffic that’s coming through it. And Merrick was serious about the upgrades.” Preston stretched and then looked at me, and I could see the conversation building in his head.
“What?” Might as well make him say it so we could move on.
“He’s not nice to you.” Preston winced. “Okay, that sounded like we’re in kindergarten again. Let me rephrase that. He’s polite to everyone but you. With you, he loses his marbles. We’d never let anyone talk to one of our employees this way. Why are you putting up with it?”
That was a damned good question. One I didn’t have the answer to.
Shrugging, I went back to leaning against the chair. “No fuckin’ clue.”
Something about the asshole just made me want to needle him to death. To flirt and tease until his head exploded. Roman was so easy to rile up, and it was like a bad TV show that I couldn’t stop watching. “The photos are good?”
“That’s not a good enough reason…although yeah…they’re fabulous.” Preston sighed, and I knew he was giving me one of those looks where he was trying to figure something out…it was usually me.
“I rub people the wrong way sometimes—it’s a special talent.” I sat up and gave him a teasing look, refusing to seem pathetic.
Preston lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not sure your brand of special should be called a talent.”
I laughed. He was probably right. “It will be fine.”
We’d either explode the building, or I was going to kill him, but giving him the satisfaction of saying he’d been fired…not a chance.
“We’ll give it a little while longer.” Preston seemed ready to switch gears, because he grabbed some papers off his desk. “What did you think about the new clothes?”
So we were pretending the screaming match about hookers hadn’t happened? I was okay with that.
Mentally shrugging and throwing off the stress of the shoot, I tried to shove my brain back in business mode. “Overall, I like the quality and the fit seems good. I want to see what some of the other guys think, though. The stockings are fun, but I don’t know how practical they’d be for most men, and I’m not sure about the sales potential; something that delicate doesn’t always hold up under jeans and men’s outerwear.”
I liked sexy things that were fun to wear for someone as much as the next guy, but I wanted clothing on the site that guys could wear all the time. Not just items that were for special occasions. It was too easy to put them away and never actually wear them if they weren’t for using all the time.
“I agree. But we’ll see how everyone else feels. I told the company that we’re liking things so far, but something about Roman’s comments on the colors has me thinking. Run them through the laundry in the next day or two. I’m going to have several people do the same thing so we see how the colors hold up.” Preston gave me a questioning look.
“Yeah, it’s probably a good idea. Normally, their things wear well, but I think they must have new manufacturing facilities because their new ‘lower prices and new lines’ came with really varied quality. I don’t want our name associated with something that’s just going to fade or fall apart.” We’d spent the last couple of years building the company into something that was not only sexy and fun, but also had quality merchandise.
