Page 129 of Just One Fake Date

Cassie would have bet good money that he was hiding something.

Hmm.

Because Shannyn had applied for the job working for Meesha on the social media imagery, Cassie had asked Meesha to sit in on Shannyn’s presentation. The newest addition to their staff sat beside Cassie, so alert and excited that she was almost vibrating. She’d hit the ground running and had already made great strides in her new job. Cassie was already glad they’d hired her on.

When Shannyn had taken the pictures for the alumni magazine, she’d looked like an artist. It had been hard to tell her gender, which had been just fine by Cassie. On this evening, though, she was wearing a tailored black suit and a bit of make-up. She was surprisingly pretty, at least to Cassie, and clearly very nervous.

“Thanks for listening to my idea,” she began. “As you know, I was here to take pictures for the alumni magazine, but that gave me an idea that I hope you might find interesting. You’ll need a photographer for that idea, if you decide to use it, and I’m officially applying.”

The guys chuckled.

Shannyn cleared her throat a little. “I’m sure there are rules and expectations for presentations like this, and I’m probably going to break most if not all of them.”

Ty lifted a brow at that, and the other guys smiled.

“But I can only explain this to you the way I thought of it, so I’m asking for your patience.” Shannyn turned to the screen when the partners nodded agreement. She clicked through some images of the current advertising for the club. “I’ve always admired your advertising and the images that you choose for them.”

The images were crisp and the slogans short and to the point. Cassie felt a surge of pride at how well their marketing material looked and performed.

If Shannyn meant to change that, she’d have a fight on her hands.

“The black and white or sepia images are really striking, plus they show off the muscle definition of the models. They’re really well curated. They’re elegant and sexy and the slogans are memorable.”

“Thank you,” Cassie said, curious as to where this was headed.

“But I did wonder why you’re licensing stock images,” Shannyn said. “Given the success of the club, exclusive images would make it harder for the competition to mimic your branding.” She showed some ads which were clearly copies of the F5F campaigns. The ones that used the same photographs she showed side by side.

Cassie was annoyed by the copycat ads and also by having attention drawn to them. “They weren’t stock images. They were custom shoots, but the photographer had the right to sell other shots from the session.” She stood up, feeling as if Shannyn was making her look bad. “You can see that there’s a difference in the pose, here, and in the one before, it was the lighting.”

“They still look pretty similar,” Kyle said. “I think Shannyn’s right. It would be better if we were distinctive.”

“But completely custom and exclusive is really expensive,” Cassie said.

“Exactly,” Shannyn agreed to Cassie’s surprise. “The other issue is that some of these models do a lot of work, so even if you pay for all the images from a given shoot, there could be other photographic stock available very cheaply of the same model.” She showed some more images, of the same models in different poses used in ads run by the competition.

“Look how close those are,” Damon murmured.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?” Theo suggested and the partners all shook their heads.

“I’ll guess you have a suggestion to remedy that,” Ty said.

“I do,” Shannyn said, changing the slide again. “These are the images I sent to the magazine. I have no idea which ones they’ll choose, but I think they show the bond between all of you and give an idea of what makes Flatiron Five Fitness special.” She clicked through the images, and they were really good. The partners looked successful and happy, and even though the shots with members of the club were candid shots, they couldn’t have been arranged better.

“She knows her stuff,” Meesha whispered and Cassie nodded.

“You probably all see each other pretty much like this,” Shannyn said, showing four shots of the partners suited up that afternoon for the group photo.

“Those are great,” Kyle said.

“Thanks. My point is that I’m going to guess these images adhere to your ideas of what you look like. But the thing is that we all have many faces and we’re not always aware of the ones that don’t greet us in the mirror every morning.”

Shannyn put up an image of Kyle, fresh out of the pool. He was pumped and casting a look at the photographer. He had one hand extended and a devil-may-care gleam in his eye that made him look like a reckless pirate king. He exuded such sexual hunger that Cassie was startled. She was accustomed to Kyle’s charm and his easy smile but not to him looking so smoking hot.

“Damn,” Meesha whispered and the others just stared.

“I didn’t send these to the magazine,” Shannyn continued. “Although I took them the same day. They don’t have the tone that the magazine wanted, but that doesn’t make them useless. You might not see yourselves this way, but the members of the club do, all the time.” She changed to a filtered version of the shot, in black and white like the club’s existing ads, and cropped it to a vertical bar. Kyle was all lean, hot, desire.

“Double damn,” Cassie whispered under her breath.

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