Not liking me wasn’t a good enough reason to fire him. I knew Eli was an acquired taste. But usually, people who were honest about wanting to work at Leashes and Lace were expecting interesting, feisty individuals.
Why in the hell had he even applied?
There had to be other opportunities for a reasonable photographer. Hell, even one of those kiddie places at the mall would be less chaos. I was starting to second-guess my decision not to veto him.
“I don’t like vetoing. It seems wrong.”
“Eli,” Preston sighed. We’d had the conversation before, so I knew what was coming. “It’s your company. That means you get to say who works here and who doesn’t.”
“It’s only my company because you made me take fifty-one percent ownership.” I was simply thankful he didn’t make me actually run most of it. That would have been mind-numbingly boring.
He shook his head. “It’s your company because it was your blog that started it, and you were the one selling panties out of your dorm room. This is your baby. You let me take care of it and do all the practical things, but we both know I wouldn’t have thought of this on my own.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Bullshit. You would have come up with something cool and fabulous. I just pushed you in the kinky direction you were destined to find, anyway.” When I’d been a slightly awkward freshman in college selling the panties I’d shown on my blog out of my dorm room, he’d been living across town finishing up his MBA, not sure what he really wanted to do.
It was fate that we’d met.
He’d gone to a party at my dorm one Friday night, hoping to find a hookup. We’d had all the doors open on my floor and were well on our way to getting wasted. He’d taken one look at my room and had known immediately who I was. He said it was the combination of posters that had made it so memorable. To him, the terrible eighties hairbands that were decorating my walls didnotgo with the panties and lingerie that I’d talked about and sold. He just didn’t have enough imagination to see how they went together perfectly.
I’d panicked a little when I’d realized that he knew, but it quickly became clear he was just as into it as I was. But he didn’t want to wear the panties; he wanted a boyfriend who would. It was also clear, though, that we weren’t meant to be anything other than friends. He was kind of boring, and he said I was insane.
But it made for a good working relationship.
“I’m not going to debate that with you again. But back to Roman; if you really think he’s not a good fit, why didn’t you veto him?”
That was a very good question.
Finally,I waved my hand toward the screen. “Those. He’s good when he’s not taking pictures of boring little old ladies.”
And he was hot. Something about him made my nerves stand on end, and I wanted him to look just at me. It was going to suck if that stick stayed lodged up his ass all the time. “Maybe I should have said no.”
We’d started the whole veto thing when this one photographer back at the beginning had made every internal alarm I had go off. Before we’d worked out a system for hiring people, Preston would just look at portfolios and talk to them. It wasn’t until I’d accidentally walked half-naked into an interview that I’d realized we needed something else.
The guy had given me the creeps. Something about the way he watched me made my skin crawl. Until that point, Preston had complete hiring authority, and I hadn’t interfered at all. Hell, only a handful of people actually knew I was the real owner.
Not sure what to do, I’d thrown myself dramatically into Preston’s lap and kissed him. Then whispered if he hired the creepy guy I was going to help with the accounting again. That threat had been enough to make him realize how serious I was.
The creepy guy had ended up arrested a few months later for posting hidden cameras in changing rooms, so we’d taken a long look at our hiring practices. That was when we finalized the veto procedure and had started making everyone meet at least some of the models in a photo shoot.
People showed their freak flag or their creepy-crawly side very quickly when sexy guys were naked.
In the five years that we’d had it implemented, there hadn’t been any issues. That was, until Roman. “I don’t know. He didn’t do anything to make me think he’s bad-weird or going to end up in jail, but I seriously rub him the wrong way.”
“Should I call him back and say I’ve changed my mind? It’s not my naked ass he’s going to be photographing, and I don’t want you to feel unsafe or uncomfortable, Eli. I’ve said that from the very beginning when you didn’t want to give up the blog and photos.” Preston was clearly torn over how the interview had gone.
Preston had done his best to talk me out of staying in front of the camera. Even though I was careful about my face showing and giving too much personal information, he still thought it was dangerous. I liked it. I loved the freedom it gave me to just be myself and to have fun.
It was really the only part of my day that was basically only for me.
Yeah, it was technically a job, but it was one I’d created. He was right, it was my baby, and I wasn’t ready to walk away from that part. I was probably going to end up a wrinkly eighty-year-old model in panties still trying to shake my ass online, but that was fine with me.
“We’ll give it a few weeks and see how it goes. If it’s only me he doesn’t like, then I’ll just suck it up. I’m more worried about everyone else and how the photos will turn out. Now, if they turn out like those fucking apples, then I’m going to lose my marbles and he’s gone. Deal?”
Preston laughed. “Deal. But if we get his good stuff, we might be stuck with him because those were the best we’d gotten.”
I coughed. “Um, we didn’t get those, remember? He just sent the fucking fruit.”
Sighing, Preston shook his head. “He should have sent the other ones too. This is a fetish and lingerie store, what was he thinking?”
