Faking with Benefits : A Friends to Lovers Romance(44)

There’s been a problem with my Butterfly line release. We’re less than five months out from release date, and we’re in the final phase of production. I hire a team of London seamstresses to make my clothes; this morning, while I was cuddled up with the guys, I got a call that they’re missing a shipment of lace from one of my fabric suppliers. I called up the company, but they’re swearing blind that I never made the order in the first place.

This lace isn’t easy to get your hands on; there’s no way I can find something as well-priced and ethical at short notice. If they don’t give it to me, I’m screwed.

“It’s the high-gloss ‘thundercloud grey’ insertion lace,” I say into the phone, trying to keep my temper. “I ordered it last September.”

“We have no record of purchase from you,” the woman says, as if I am very slow.

“No? Because the money is missing from my bank account. So unless I’m getting scammed by one of those foreign princes that keeps emailing me, I’m pretty sure that I paid you for it.”

“We have no record of your invoice or order, Miss Thompson,” she says, sounding bored. “If you don’t have any other queries, I have other clients who need my attention.”

I frown. “No, wait—”

A beep sounds down the line. I stare at my phone, wide-eyed. She hung up on me.

No. Screw this. I know I made that order. Pushing my laptop across my desk, I drop to my knees and pull out my big box of receipts, yanking off the lid and scooping through the papers. My stomach sinks when I realise that the papers are mixed up. I thought I’d organised them properly, but apparently not.

Heat flushes through me as I start flipping through them faster. Crap. I can’t find it. I’ve screwed up.

If I didn’t make the order, I can’t demand that the company sources it in time. And if I don’t get the fabric in time, the launch won’t happen. Which means that all of the promotion and marketing that I had to schedule months in advance will need to be cancelled. And I’ll have to pay off all of the deposits without any income, which will put me at a deficit. And for all I know, by the time I do get the fabric, the design will be out of trend anyway. Which means I’ll have wasted tens of thousands of pounds.

Crap.

Above my head, my laptop dings from the desk again. And again. And again. It’s been pinging steadily for the last hour, but I’ve been ignoring it to talk to the supplier. Trying to steady my breathing, I straighten and click on my email app, opening up the inbox. I have over twenty new emails. I scan down the subject lines.

Where is my coupon code??



Your website doesn’t work



hello, I need code please



Just a heads-up - don’t advertise something if you’re not going to deliver.





My mouth goes dry. I have a sign-up bonus on my website — if people agree to receive emails about new deals, they get a fifteen-percent-off coupon. But clearly, something is screwing up. I open my email campaign manager and scan through the list of email addresses. It looks like the coupon codes are getting sent, but for some reason, people aren’t getting them.

For God’s sake.

Leaving the stack of receipts for now, I settle down in my desk chair and open my search engine. I need to work this out right now.





After four hours of running tests and checking filters and a bunch of other stuff I don’t really understand, I finally come to the conclusion that my IP is on a ton of blacklists because someone using it is sending spam.

I don’t know what the Hell to do about that. I’m not even really sure what an IP address is. Irritation boils in my stomach. I don’t have time for this. My eyes flick to the clock at the bottom of my laptop screen. I need to find the invoice before my fabric supplier closes for the night.

Another email comes in.

Subject: I one-starred you on Google. You need to treat your customers better than this.





Swearing, I grab my phone and stab Zack’s contact. He picks up on the second ring.

“Hey, baby. I was—”

“What’s your email campaign rate?” I demand.

“What?”

“What are your click and open rates?”

“As your fake boyfriend, I have to say, this isn’t really turning me on. You wanna know a secret? Men love when you say ‘hello’ to them, instead of barking questions at them like you’re trying to use Siri. We’re sensitive like that.”

“Zack.”

He sighs. “I dunno. Me and Josh are both at a printing press. Hang on, he’s a nerd like you, he probably has them memorized. Let me check.”

“What?” I frown. “Why are you at a press?”

“We’re testing merch quality. All of these t-shirts look great on me. If you were wondering. Hang on, I’ll send a pic.”

I rub my eyes. It’s all so easy for them. They can record and edit a podcast, and film behind-the-scenes footage, and do bonus episodes, and update their website and social media every day, and stay on top of emails, and make new advertisements, and put out new merch every month — and I’m struggling to send a bloody email.

“He says fifty percent open, and eighteen percent click,” Zack says eventually. “Dunno if that’s good or not.”