Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 127991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127991 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
His eyebrows scrunched together. “We do have social media accounts. They’re printed on all of our marketing materials and on our websites.”
I threw up my hands, my restraint burning away. “It’s not about having an account, Thatcher; it’s about having a strategy. What’s your brand about? What’s the story you want to tell? How do you want to make people feel? My dad’s campaign has better branding than you, and he has the worst-run social media platform I’ve ever seen. Hell, Willow Honeycutt—you know, the woman who runs the Artists’ Retreat and Centering Center back in Honeybridge?—has a better strategy than PennCo, and her entire feed is pictures of her doing a very bendy downward dog in front of the same tree, week after week after week. At least I know what her business is about. It’s criminal how wasteful this is. Even if you never had another PR crisis like the Nova incident, you still—”
“Okay,” he said calmly.
“—need to have a basic… wait, what?”
Thatcher shrugged, his cashmere sweater shifting across his wide shoulders with the movement. “If you say we don’t have a social media strategy, I believe you. Come up with one. Pitch it to Layla. She’ll hear you out.”
I wanted to throw the charcuterie tray across the bus like a Frisbee. “If you recall, I brought it up in this morning’s meeting as a potential part of her multipronged approach, and she spoke to me like a child.”
Thatcher lifted one shoulder. “Well, she wasn’t at her best today. She was getting sick, even if she didn’t know it yet, and had a sleepless, stressful night.”
Jealousy came like a sweet, sharp stab to my chest. Sure, it was great that JT believed in me, but what would it be like to have someone like Thatcher believe in you? To have his loyalty and know he’d give you the benefit of the doubt? For damn sure, I’d never know.
“She didn’t hear me out. This wasn’t the first time I pitched her the idea. We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago—Layla, Stephen Price, and me—and I explained everything. A whole slide deck. Layla said, ‘Not yet.’”
Thatcher stroked his stubbled cheek with one blunt fingertip, and my eyes tracked the movement. I wondered why he’d decided to shave his beard and whether it had been a spontaneous thing—
“I’m sure she gave you her reason,” Thatcher prompted.
I startled and quickly looked away. “She says the company’s policy is to let the fashion brands handle social media. I strongly disagree—for all the reasons I mentioned and more besides. First of all, the fashion brands don’t care about creating Elustre brand recognition. Our product isn’t their marketing priority; theirs is. Second—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Show me your pitch tomorrow morning, and I’ll try to find out why the policy is the way it is. Sound fair?”
It… did. In fact, it was so reasonable it took the wind out of my sails. So I nodded and answered without thinking. “Yes, sir.”
Thatcher’s eyes darkened, remembering the last time I’d spoken those words to him, and he drew in a breath so deep his chest visibly expanded.
“I need you to go get some sleep,” he said. His voice was a low, commanding rumble.
When McGee tried to give me orders earlier, I’d gotten angry. But Thatcher’s bossy voice provoked an entirely different reaction. It curled around my balls, sent a shiver up my spine, and stole the moisture from my mouth. I nearly choked on my cracker.
“We’ll be taking on a replacement driver in a few hours,” Thatcher went on, not looking at me now. “And McGee will take one of the spare bunks. Get some rest, and we’ll tackle the rest of this tomorrow.”
I didn’t trust myself to respond without offering the man my ass, so I simply nodded and stood, doing my best to ignore the tightness in my pants and the faint scent of pine trees and woodsmoke as I passed Thatcher on the way to my bunk.
But it was a long, long while before I could calm myself enough to sleep. And when I did, Thatcher’s voice followed me into my dreams.
Chapter Six
Thatcher
I woke up somewhere in Missouri with weak morning light crawling over my face and groaned at the ceiling. We weren’t scheduled to arrive in Kansas City until midday, which meant I’d have to share the small common area of the bus with Reagan for hours.
Hours of sitting across from him at the table in the kitchenette while his aquamarine eyes watched me. Hours of ignoring the way his even teeth sank into his soft lower lip. Hours of learning about the sharp intellect, the passion, and all the many intriguing “Reagans” hiding beneath his smirking, sexy face. Hours of willing myself not to get hard for my employee.