Page 81 of The One That Got Away

I was glad we’d had that talk this morning, before either of usstarted catching feelings. At this stage, it was easier to nip any emotions in the bud.

We’d be fine.

I walked to the other end of the patio and slid open the bedroom doors. I spotted Max in the hallway.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hey.’

‘What you up to?’

‘Just finished some work stuff. Was thinking about going for a walk on the beach. Wanna come with me?’

I would very much like to come with you.

‘Okay,’ I said, warning my mind to get out of the gutter. ‘Can you give me ten minutes?’

‘Course.’

Once I was dressed, we dropped off our memory book photo selection choices to reception then headed down to the sea.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I slipped off my flip-flops so I could feel the sand beneath my feet. It was quickly becoming one of my favourite things to do.

‘It really is. Gonna be so hard to go back to reality after this.’

‘What sort of stuff do you do at your company?’

‘The short answer isa lot. I kind of oversee everything, product development, marketing, looking at different markets to expand into, meetings. It’s endless.’

‘Don’t you have staff to help?’

‘Yeah, but I like to be hands-on, y’know?’

‘Well, not really. I’ve never run a business before so…’ I shrugged.

‘I know you mentioned before that you do design but what kind of clients do you work for?’

‘At the moment, I work for my mum.’

‘Oh yeah? So we’re both involved in family businesses, that’s cool! What’s her company?’

‘You promise not to laugh?’

‘Laugh? Why?’

‘She makes sexy underwear.’

‘Really?’ Max’s eyes widened. ‘I remember she used to work at a factory before making underwear, but that was vanilla stuff, right?’

‘Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, we do still sell normal knickers, but our bestsellers are the personalised ones.’

‘Tell me more about these personalised knickers,’ Max smirked.

I explained and Max asked lots of questions. Not just about the kinky requests, but the business too. He seemed genuinely interested.

‘So yeah, I handle all the orders and admin. When I first started, I redesigned the website and marketing materials but now that’s done, there’s not much need for design work, apart from the odd promotion or creating visuals for social media stuff.’

‘Do you think you’ll ever branch out and do stuff for other clients?’

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