“Should we begin?” I asked.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

His own laptop was open next to him. I hadn’t prepared a presentation, per se, just Power Point slides with keywords to help our brainstorming.

“What spurred the decision for the rebrand?” I asked, hoping for more info than yesterday.

“It’s good to renew a company’s image from time to time,” he said vaguely.

I wasn’t buying it, but fair enough. He didn’t need to explain himself to me, even though it would have helped to know why he wanted to scrap the current one.

“The Christmas branding stays,” he said. “It’s part of the store’s DNA, and customers would feel cheated if we dropped it. But we need something more, a draw all year round to put us ahead of Macy’s and other similar chains.”

“How about something seasonal?” I suggested. “Each season could have a different theme.”

He nodded slowly. “I thought about that too. We’d build up to the new season in the last month of the current one, instead of running sales. That’s one thing we need to change—sales shoppers. It’s a drain on profits. That in turn affects liquidity.”

I pressed my lips together.

“What?”

I’d never been afraid to speak my mind, even if I was wrong. How else was I going to learn? And Winston had always been fair to me in that regard. He might be bossy and demanding but had never put me down for saying the wrong thing.

“Sales shoppers can become regular customers eventually. For years, I could only afford to buy marked-down items, but as soon as my financial situation improved, I bought full-priced items too. It’s a matter of building brand loyalty. If you didn’t have those sales, I would’ve just gone over to Macy’s.”

He tapped his pen on the table, frowning. “We have data on that. Sales shoppers use our fidelity card most. Let’s track how many became regular customers over the years and go from there.”

“I’ll run the stats tomorrow.”

“Great. I like the seasonal plan.”

“Well, winter is going to be split in two, right? We can only play the Christmas theme until the end of the year, at most. Then we can play on Valentine’s Day, although it’s not my favorite holiday.”

I was the type of person who thought while speaking out loud. Sometimes I came upon a solution while talking.

“Why not?”

“It feels like a retail gimmick, honestly. And the single people feel left out.”

“I agree. Let’s take a look at January historically. See what other holiday we can find. Maybe we can make a celebration out of it. And then in February, we can already drum up the new season.”

“Perfect.”

We made a slide for each season, just jotting down ideas and keywords as they came to us.

“How wild can I go?” I asked. Ideas were running amok in my mind.

“Nothing is off limits, Sienna.” His voice was a low rumble, and it sounded dangerously close.

I’d been so focused on the presentation, hunched over the laptop, that I hadn’t noticed he’d drawn his chair nearer. He was right next to me. He smelled like pepper and the ocean, and the scent was overpowering. He was overpowering.

I couldn’t move away. His nearness might have been knee-weakening, but I craved more of it.

“You sure you can handle it?” I asked playfully.

A spark popped in his eyes. “Try me.”

“What if we made a huge bid winter goodbye event running from mid-January to mid-February? We could remodel part of the food court in a festival-type setting. Even add a playground for kids where parents can drop them off while they shop. Add a slide maybe. Come to think of it, we could have that playground all year round.”

Tags: Layla Hagen The Bennett Family Romance
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