Just One Fake Date: A Contemporary Romance (Flatiron Five Fitness Book 1)

by Deborah Cooke

  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.

  The next image was of Damon. He was lifting weights and Cassie had seen him with such an intense expression a million times. She’d never been the target of it, though. He was wearing a black singlet and his muscles looked like sculpture, with a patina of perspiration on them. His focus and discipline was legendary in the club, but in this shot, he’d glanced up. Maybe he’d just become aware of Shannyn, but his expression was intense and sizzling.

  Seductive.

  Cassie had never thought of Damon as sexy, but her pink bits stood up and saluted.

  Meesha shifted in her chair.

  Shannyn’s next slide changed that image to black and white, cropped it vertically, and placed it beside the one of Kyle. They were stunning images individually but sent a powerful message together.

  The conference room was quiet.

  The next image was of Cassie herself, reaching into a stretch. She remembered the moment it had been taken, when she had been encouraging her aerobic class to give a little more. She’d heard the shutter. She looked similarly intense, glistening with perspiration, as toned as a goddess, stretching for the stars with the confidence that she could pluck a few. She had no idea she looked so good at work.

  Kyle whistled, then licked his finger and pointed it at her, giving a low hiss. “Hot stuff. Cassie.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  The next shot was of Theo, glancing up from a crouch. He looked as if he was poised at the starting line of a race, but had already been running. His gaze was filled with resolve. Again, he looked gorgeous and his skin glistened with perspiration, and the glance he gave the camera was hot enough to start a forest fire.

  The final image was of Ty, in the middle of their basketball game. He was crouched like a panther, waiting for the ball. He looked agile and muscled, ready to fight the person in his sights right to the mat. Cassie couldn’t take a full breath.

  When Shannyn turned that to black and white and the screen was filled with the five shots, silence hung in the room.

  “I. Want. Those. Pictures.” Meesha whispered, her words breaking the mood. “Seriously,” she said. “We would own the internet with a collection of pictures that hot.”

  “We’d melt it down,” Kyle said and they laughed together.

  Shannyn smiled and flushed a little. “These pictures made me realize that you don’t need to hire models, that you have incredible assets right here at the club, and that they’re exclusive to the club. You all could pose for your ads.”

  There was a rustle of interest.

  “After all, none of you are going to pose for anyone else’s ads.”

  “Damn straight,” Theo said.

  “So the images would be exclusive. Plus using images of the partners offers a connection to the club itself,” Shannyn continued. “There’s a much stronger possibility of coming to Flatiron Five Fitness and finding the model in the ad actually here and working out, which adds credibility.”

  “I like how she thinks,” Meesha whispered to Cassie.

  “Because we pretty much live here,” Kyle said. “I like it.”

  “We own the ads, just like the club,” Theo said with a nod.

  “And we wouldn’t be paying fees for models,” Ty said. “Interesting.”

  “How did you get these shots?” Damon asked. “I don’t remember seeing you.”

  Shannyn laughed. “The zoom lens was my friend. It’s what I do.”

  “And you do it brilliantly,” Theo said, to general approval.

  “But that’s just the start of my idea,” Shannyn said, sobering as she looked back at the screen. “I wondered how you could use these images to best advantage. You probably don’t remember that in the 80’s, there was a billboard campaign in Times Square for Calvin Klein.” She showed a photograph of one of the ads.

  “Hot dudes in briefs, thirty stories high,” Cassie agreed with a nod. “We did a case study on it in a marketing class.”

  Shannyn showed the next image. It was an animation, showing the Calvin Klein billboard being replaced with the black and white picture of Kyle, as if the Times building was being skinned with it. The image rolled down the building from roof to street, then snapped into place. The Flatiron Five Fitness logo glowed in red at the bottom.

  “Holy shit,” Kyle whispered.

  “Brilliant,” Theo said. “Talk about visibility.”

  “And brand recognition,” Cassie said, impressed despite herself.

  Shannyn had done five mock-ups of the billboard, one with each shot. The logo ran in a different color on each one. She clicked through them slowly.

  “We would seriously stop traffic,” Damon said.

  Cassie sat down again. “The billboard could stay up for months with the same image,” she noted. “We could change it bimonthly or even quarterly. And I’d love to have that photographic stock as a resource for all of our other materials.”

  “I love it all,” Kyle said.

  “You just want to be first,” Theo sai
d, razzing him a little.

  “Damn straight I do.”

  “We have to know the traffic,” Cassie said. “So we can decide if it’s worth it.”

  “Doesn’t the whole city pass through Times Square?” Kyle asked.

  “And every single tourist,” Damon agreed.

  “Are they our target market?” Theo asked.

  “They could be, if we offered day passes,” Cassie said.

  “Make deals with hotels,” Theo said. “So that their guests can come here.”

  “Just how expensive is that real estate?” Ty asked, the inevitable reality check.

  “Very,” Shannyn ceded. “I love this idea, though, and so I tried to think of a way to make it work. I had a look at some of your competition to see how they’re leveraging their brands and noticed that you could move into the virtual realm more aggressively than you have to date. You have a YouTube channel that you don’t use much, but that and your other social media could be used to market the club to a much broader audience.”

  “I really like her,” Meesha murmured approvingly.

  “You could market to a virtual audience, sharing the expertise and the experience of Flatiron Five Fitness to anyone in the world with a phone or an internet connection.” Shannyn went through a series of slides featuring images of Cassie. The logo was Cardio with Cassie, with an F5F logo in the bottom corner. “Excuse the graphics,” Shannyn said with a smile. “They’re really not my strength. My point is that if you recorded, for example, a thirty-minute aerobics lesson each weekday, by the end of a month, you’d have twenty episodes. At the end of a year, you’d have two hundred and sixty of them.”

  There was a murmur of interest as she moved to another batch of slides, and Cassie saw that all the guys were sitting up straighter. The next slide featured Brooke, one of the nutritionists, and was called Breakfast with Brooke. “I was struck by how attractive and personable many of your instructors are,” Shannyn said. “You could partner with them for podcasts or video sequences highlighting their expertise, building their visibility and status to draw traffic back to the club. What about a fifteen minute daily feature about starting with a healthy breakfast, maybe featuring an ingredient each day?”

  “And you put that in the metadata and search terms,” Meesha said with excitement. “So anyone searching on breakfast smoothies with wheat germ finds us.”

  “And we sell branded blenders and lidded cups for riding the subway in the new F5F online store,” Kyle said.

  “And you advertise those blenders and cups during the broadcast, then subsequently target the people who watched that episode,” Meesha said.

  “You can do that?” Kyle asked.

  Meesha smiled as she cracked her knuckles. “Stand back.”

  “And it doesn’t matter where that person is located,” Shannyn said. “He or she can experience the Flatiron Five Fitness brand and become loyal to it from anywhere in the world.”

  Theo tapped on the table. “Once we have enough programming, we could look at starting a cable channel.”

  “And we would manage who can advertise on our spots,” Cassie said.

  “It’s brilliant,” Damon said and they all nodded agreement.

  “Taking the brand national without moving a thing,” Kyle said with admiration. “No real estate, Ty. The next level with no risk.”

  Ty didn’t respond to that jibe, but was quickly making notes.

  “And anyone who sees that billboard,” Shannyn put up Kyle at Times Square again. “Can experience your brand and add to your bottom line, even if they’re visiting from Paducah, even if they never physically visit this building.” She took a breath. “The thing is that you want to be consistent with your quality to date. I shot this to show you the kind of quality you can get, filming a video on your phone with some minimal set-up.” Shannyn showed a video of herself, holding her camera. “Today, we’re going to talk about getting the most out of your digital camera, specifically in choosing the right setting for light conditions,” she said in the recording.

  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as polished as Cassie might have liked.

  “And this is what happens with the same material when you use a professional, like yours truly.” The second video showed Shannyn again, saying the same thing. It was lit more evenly and more brightly, though, and Shannyn looked more natural. There also was a website url across the bottom, and there was a close-up cut into it, showing the settings and the viewfinder as she gave her explanations. The audio was more consistent and better modulated, too.

  “You’ll not only have better sound and video quality, but you can brand it and add any kind of graphics. For the breakfast smoothies, there could be recipes, for example, or links for special offers. You’ll end up with a more polished product without a very big investment on your end.”

  “Contracts,” Ty said. “If instructors are going to create content that we market, we’ll need contracts to ensure they don’t take any advantages away.”

  “Of course,” Shannyn said to him. “But you don’t have to be jerks about it. You can create partnerships that give your instructors the ability to build their brand elsewhere, maybe that encourage them to direct traffic back to you. In an ideal world, everyone could build success together. You do have this sense of community here that shouldn’t be discarded.”

  “A high tide floats all boats,” Kyle said with satisfaction.

  “We could ask Jax for suggestions,” Damon said. “She knows the expertise of our instructors best.”

  “We could have an inhouse competition,” Theo countered. “Who’s going to host the first five F5F programs?”

  “Who’s got the social media platform to help with visibility?” Meesha said, and then the discussion erupted from all sides, ideas flowing and flying in the way that the partners did best.

  Only Ty was silent.

  Well, Ty and Shannyn. Shannyn stood back, watching the team’s excitement, as if she wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Can you show me that image of Kyle again?” Cassie asked.

  “Can’t get enough of number one,” Kyle teased as she got to her feet.

  “As if,” Cassie said with a shake of her head. “These billboards need slogans.” She went to the screen. “Right here,” She indicated a space before Kyle’s chest. “Get wet at F5F.”

  Theo hooted and Kyle laughed out loud.

  “Oh, yeah. That is kick-ass!” he crowed. He high-fived Theo before Ty cleared his throat.

  “Give us a number.” he said and the others sobered at his tone.

  “I don’t know about the billboard space,” Shannyn admitted. “I only know about the photography.”

  “But you have these images already,” Theo noted.

  Shannyn shook her head. “They’re not good enough for this. To be that large, the images have to be perfect. That’s easily two hundred feet high. You’ll need high quality, high resolution studio shots...”

  “How much?” Ty asked.

  Shannyn met his gaze and said the number out loud. It was less than Cassie had expected. “That would be for each custom shoot and you’d have five of those. Hair, make-up, wind machine, lighting, whatever we need to get it dead perfect. You’d own every image from the shoot and could do whatever you wanted with them. That’s separate from the video and podcast filming, which could be billed at an hourly rate.” She gave that number, too, and Ty wrote it down, his expression giving no evidence of his reaction.

  The room was humming. Cassie knew that as soon as Shannyn left, the partners would erupt with ideas, tests, and plans.

  Ty stood up and offered his hand. “Thanks, Shannyn. It’s a great idea and we appreciate you presenting it to us.” He spoke coolly, as if he wasn’t interested in what she’d said, which made no sense at all. Maybe he didn’t see the potential.

  Cassie had a hard time believing that. Something else was going on.

  “We’ll be in touch if we can use your services,” she added.

/>   “Thanks for the opportunity to present it to you.” Shannyn unplugged her laptop from the projector. She packed up quickly before leaving the office, without one glance at Ty.

  As soon as the door closed, five of them were talking at once, with Ty taking notes. Meesha and Kyle were bouncing ideas off each other at lightning speed and Cassie didn’t know whether to be thrilled or annoyed when Theo said the obvious.

  “We should hire her full time,” he said, his low voice stopping the discussion cold. “It’s got to be cheaper than all this freelance work, and she’s really good.”

  “Oh yeah,” Kyle said. “We’d be idiots to let her get away.”

  “The competition could use her if she’s freelance,” Damon said. “Let’s get Shannyn on the payroll.”

  Only Cassie saw Ty’s small smile of satisfaction before it was gone.

  She wondered what it meant.

  She’d bet it had something to do with that ring.

  Shannyn was brilliant.

  Ty was blown away.

  Her idea would take the club to the next level—if not several more after that—with a minimum of risk and capital investment. It could lay the groundwork for opening other branches in other cities, something Kyle always wanted to do yet a financial obligation that concerned Ty. It would build their brand and their profitability, if managed correctly, and could even augment the sense of community they already had at the club.

  Absolutely brilliant.

  It had been the longest meeting of Ty’s life, because he hadn’t been able to speak up. He’d promised Shannyn that he wouldn’t ensure she got the work and it had nearly killed him to just ask the occasional money question—that was his responsibility, and he’d hoped each time that she had a reply. He’d sat there, dying to shout that she was brilliant and they had to do this thing, but quietly scribbling notes instead.

  He’d nearly kissed Theo for making the suggestion that he thought was obvious and inevitable.

  Ty was itching to get upstairs and crunch the numbers but he was sure that this initiative would make it possible for him to have just one job.