Page 92 of The Game

When I arrive, Susie greets me with a big smile. Well, no actually, she greets Pepper with a big smile and fusses over her and then goes off to find a dog treat.

“Don’t give her those! I’m training her to do things for them.”

“Like what?”

I take the bag of treats from her hand, and Pepper sits on her little butt and gazes up at me, ears cocked, wagging her tail.

“Roll over,” I say, moving my hand to the side.

She lies down then collapses sideways on the floor without quite performing the required roll.

“Yeah, we haven’t quite mastered that one yet.” Still, I hold out her reward.

“That was awesome, though. Can we video you doing some of that with her later?” Susie says. “Speaking of which, that was an excellent post this morning, boss. Look at you rocking the influencer lifestyle.”

I shake my head at her.

“I particularly like the comment about the slackers!” Keith shouts from his desk in the corner.

“Get back to work, you layabout!” I shout back, and Susie giggles.

“They reposted it.”

“Anna’s marketing team?”

“Yeah. Everyone loves it.”

I hold up my hand. “Don’t tell me.”

The very idea that people are invested … But once I’m in my office and Pepper is happily occupied on a dog bed that Susie has produced from somewhere, I can’t resist a peek.

Oh, Jesus! the comments.

She needs to put a ring on that guy!

I don’t know who’s cuter, him or Pepper!

Adam Miller, I have a dog and I will marry you.

They’ve even created a hashtag for us:#Adanna.

“Susie! Do Anna and I have a hashtag?”

She snorts and appears in my doorway. “I knew you’d look at those messages. You’ve had theAdannahashtag for ages.”

“Oh, fuck.”

She grins. “Figures are looking really good this month by the way. All the little kits are selling like hotcakes.”

“Yeah,” Sean shouts from his corner. “We can’t keep up with the orders!”

“Slacker!” I shout out, to laughter. “Now that’s something I never thought I’d hear in this business. ‘We can’t keep up with the orders.’”

Sean bounces into my office. “Want to see the new designs?” he says.

Susie steps forward and lays a set of drawings out across my desk. I gape at the pair of them. “What are these?”

“Susie came up with the idea we could turn some of the electronic kits into cartoon characters, so she drew some cartoons for the existing kits …” Sean shuffles the images to show me the dog ones and the cat we’ve just launched. “She also came up with a whole bunch of other characters, and Keith and I are seeing whether we can make them into kits.”

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