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about light beer, low cal, fruity beer…that’s not gonna go well.”
“It has to be focused on quality and taste.”
Levi sat back in his chair, not sure how this was going. It almost seemed like Scott didn’t want to work with him. Or maybe he just felt he had something to prove… “So let’s talk about men,” Levi said.
“Huh?”
“As opposed to women who don’t want beer to be fluffy and feminine, we men like manly things.” Levi printed the word “manly” on his pad. “We’re childish and immature. Witness the shenanigans that have occurred here over the last two days.”
“Heh.”
“Also we like women and we like to be flattered. Told how great we are.” He knew this to be true, because, hey, he was a guy. Nothing he liked more than beautiful women who stroked his ego. “We also like a challenge.”
“And to win.”
“Word.”
“And we don’t like to have our masculinity questioned. Is there anything unmasculine about drinking beer? If there is, we need to address that.”
Again, Levi knew better than to dismiss the obvious. Beer was obviously a man’s drink. He tipped his figurative hat to the most interesting man in the world. And those fucking “legends”. Goddammit!
A surge of adrenaline flashed through his veins thinking of those amazingly successful campaigns. He wanted that. He wanted to do better than that. He fucking would do better than that.
“Competitive,” he muttered, reflecting back on this whole discussion.
“Huh?”
“Men are competitive. As for anything unmasculine…the guys who drink spirits…sophisticated, tuxedo-wearing, shaken-not-stirred spirits…they make us beer drinkers look like rednecks.”
Scott rubbed his chin.
“So how do we want to see ourselves?”
“Sexy.”
Levi lifted an eyebrow.
“Chick magnet,” Scott elaborated. “Like you.” He rolled his eyes.
Levi frowned.
“Did or did not that waitress slip you her phone number yesterday?” Scott demanded.
“She did.”
“There you go.”
“Sophisticated?”
Scott considered that. “Maybe.”
“So sexy, sophisticated, masculine, competent, the best at what we do.”
“We want our egos stroked.”
“Yeah, dammit.” He paused. “Dominant.”
Scott’s eyebrows flew up.
Levi shrugged. His thoughts spiraled. He scribbled more notes. Things needed to percolate—or maybe that was ferment, ha—in his brain for a while.
“Time for lunch,” he said.
He was on his way back to his office, when he ran into Sloane. “Hey,” he said. “Listen, about earlier—”
“In my office,” she snapped. “Now.”
“Uh…okay, but did Mason talk to you?”
“About what? I haven’t seen him.”
Shit. Levi followed her into his office feeling like a truant schoolboy about to get spanked by the principal. Not that he was in any way opposed to spanking, but he preferred it to be done in the bedroom and liked to be the one delivering the spanking, preferably to a sweet little female ass.
Imagining Sloane naked and stretched over his lap with that round little ass right there immediately made things heat up down south and he clenched his jaw. Goddamn his inability to not think about sex.
She shut the door herself this time and leaned against it, arms crossed. Again, she looked amazing. Today’s dress was pale gray with pink and blue flowers, cap sleeves and a deep V-neck, draped and fitted to her curves. The shoes were gray suede platforms with a killer heel. “Look,” she said. “We give you guys lots of flexibility and freedom to do your job. We don’t have lockdowns on our Internet access like some companies do. Facebook? Fine. Twitter? Part of the job. Do all the research you need to do. But watching porn during office hours? Not acceptable.”
He tilted his head and pursed his lips. “Watching it outside of office hours is okay, though?”
Her eyes widened.
Fuck his smart-ass mouth. He sighed. “Sorry. I was making a joke. I wasn’t watching porn earlier. Mason said he’d talk to you about it.”
“What the hell were you doing? It’s going to take a lot to convince me that was research!”
He swallowed a laugh. “The guys set me up. It was a practical joke. They had a wireless mouse and they jacked my computer from outside my office.”
Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
After a brief pause, she snapped, “I am going to kick their asses.”
“No!” He held up a hand. “Christ, I don’t want to get them in trouble. It was…kind of funny.”
“It was juvenile and immature and unprofessional. This kind of behavior cannot continue.”
Now his own eyes widened. “It was a joke,” he said slowly. “No harm done.”
She made a sound that almost was a growl, which oddly, made his dick stir again. She was fucking gorgeous with flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. She pushed away from the door. His eyes dropped