“Everyone looks perfect.” Preston nodded atthe models and greeted everyone as he walked through the room. “Eli, what doyou think?”
Eli immediately switched gears and stoppedwhispering to Roman. “They're perfect, but I think the clothes would do betterin the spring. They may not want to wait that long, but the whole line seemsvery virginal and like something that should go with weddings. I don’t know whythey wanted to launch it in the winter.”
I saw Preston nodding as I looked away fromthe mirror toward the lights where everything was set up. He was looking at thevarious models and pieces of lingerie that were on the rack, but it was clearhe wasn’t seeing everyone as just a crowd of naked men. He was too professionalfor that and too conscious of making sure everyone was comfortable.
Roman looked frustrated as he spoke withEli. “I agree, let’s take some that have a holiday feel for them just in casethey want to stick with the winter launch, but let’s also take some we can usefor spring as well. At the very least, we can do a campaign in March or Aprilto reinvigorate sales.”
Eli nodded, and the drama queen in himfaded away, replaced by the professional side he didn’t let the world often see.“Yes, we should be prepared for both, but I don’t know what they were thinking.We’ll keep most of them fairly simple and can tweak things later if we need to.Adding in some flowers or a Christmas tree to the background won’t be hard, if itcomes to that.”
Preston shrugged. “I agree. I’ve heardthere was some significant turnover at the company over the last year. The newfashions that have been coming out are beautiful, but the marketing departmentcan’t seem to coordinate with the designers. If they don’t get everythingworked out, I think they’re going to struggle in the long run.”
Roman was setting things up for the nextpart of the shoot, looking like he was ignoring Eli and Preston. Evidently,though, he’d been paying more attention than I’d thought, because he lookedover at them. “Was this the same company that you had problems with last time?”
Nodding, Preston moved toward the rack ofclothes. “Yes, the quality is improving, but it’s odd, I don’t know if they’rejust going through growing pains or if it’s something else.”
I had a feeling it was something else, butit wasn’t my place to say. Casey had told me some things in confidence, buteven though they were vague, I wasn’t going to step in unless it would hurt Leashesand Lace. But Preston and Eli seemed to realize something was up, so I wasn’treally worried.
Eli got a wicked glint in his eyes. “Mightbe time for another lunch date with Casey.”
Preston cleared his throat awkwardly,making the rest of us fight not to smile. “I wouldn’t call it a date. But yes,seeing if he has any more information might be a good idea.”
They were both so funny.
Preston wasn’t sure how to read Casey, andCasey was being so shy about what was going through his head I wasn’t sure theywould ever do more than just havemeetingsanddiscussions. I triedto stay out of it, but as I looked at Preston, I realized it might be time togive Casey a kick in the pants. Not that it would take much. He nearly vibratedwith excitement every time he talked about Preston.
Preston and Eli spoke for a few moremoments before he nodded and turned to leave. Calling out quick comments andgoodbyes, he headed downstairs. Roman cleared his throat and gave us allpointed stares as Preston left. “Time to get back to work, and with theadditional pictures, I think we’re going to end up being here a little longer. Solet me know if anyone has plans that will interfere with that.”
Several months ago, the idea of changingthings around at the last minute would have driven him crazy. The fact that oneof the other models said they wouldn’t be able to stay late would’ve only madeit worse. But now, he just shrugged it off and said he’d work around it. Allthe doubtless dirty things that Eli was whispering in his ear probably helped,however.
Eli seemed to know how to distract Romanand keep him on a more even keel.
Of course, I could have said the same aboutEli. Roman seemed to know when Eli was getting ready to go off his rocker andhe knew just what to do to bring Eli down. If anyone had told me several monthsago they would actually work things out and have a functional relationship, Iwould have laughed.
“All right, Lane, turn this way and kneeldown. I want to see what you were envisioning.” Roman started around the space,adjusting lights and looking through his lines. As I lowered myself to theground, Eli came over and started fidgeting with the nightgown.
While Roman was making last-minuteadjustments, Eli spoke quietly. Thankfully, low enough that it was just for me.“This could be the start of a really fabulous BDSM shoot. It wouldn’t work forthe site, unfortunately. But I think you should at least consider it.”
“Maybe.” But I just couldn’t picture sayingyes.
If I could tell Eli the idea made meuncomfortable, he would lay off the pressure. But then he would start asking mewhy, and that was a discussion I wasn’t ready to have. So with the mixed signalsI was giving off, he wasn’t going to let go of the idea.
Relief flooded through me when Romanfinished before Eli could start in again. As Eli moved away, I knew he waspicturing a different type of shoot altogether, and for a moment, I wished Iwas confident enough to do it.
But fantasies didn’t always transfer intoreality well.
****
Without the afternooncaffeine, I would’ve been yawning as I worked on the last of the reports.Unfortunately, though, the late-in-the-day coffee that gave me the energy forthe shoot and for working on the financial data would also make it hard tosleep.
Wandering around my small apartment late inthe evening was becoming so routine that I’d stopped griping about the factthat he didn’t take his coffee break earlier. Because of the odd hours the shopwas open, it was probably his lunch break, but my body didn’t need caffeine at threeo’clock in the afternoon.
I was one of those people that it kept upall night. But there were only so many times you could order hot chocolate whenyou went into a coffee shop before they thought you were weird. Especially whenyou were there so often.
The only good thing about the late hourswas that my clients liked having the data available first thing in the morninginstead of having to wait until later in the day. Contrary to what my motherthought I did, I didn’t actually run a blog. Well, just the one for Leashes andLace. After college, I’d tried to explain to her what I wanted to do, but she’dthought it sounded ridiculous and impractical—mainly because she couldn’tunderstand it.
I’d worked in the finance industry while Iwas going to college, a combination of part-time jobs and internships. Ithadn’t taken me long to realize that while there was a lot of data available inthe different companies, most of the salespeople didn’t understand what to dowith it.
They had ridiculous amounts of informationavailable in different spreadsheets and Excel documents, but there was a bigdisconnect between the portion of the companies that generated the raw data andthe information that was sent to the salespeople. Just because someone couldsell a product, didn’t mean they’d have the background in statistics tointerpret the data. It hadn’t taken me long to see the business opportunity infront of me.
