No Kissing Allowed (No Kissing Allowed #1)(8)

Chapter Five


“Welcome to the team, Cameron.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I started to place mine in his, though every part of me wanted to back away, to disappear—to run. But this was adulthood. No running allowed.

I placed my hand in his, our eyes locked, and for a moment, we were back there. At the bar, laughing, fingers interlaced, electricity moving between us. The man before me wasn’t UT Guy, yet somewhere in his gaze I saw the guy I’d met, felt the spark, understood why he’d made it back to my apartment.

My father used to say only a few people would ever fully connect with you. See you for who you are and stay there anyway. He said you knew it when you met them, felt the change in the air, the calm in your belly. The person could be a friend, a relative—a lover. But forever, that person would be a match. Years could pass and conversation would still feel easy, like no time had passed at all.

Since I was little, I would watch for these people. Listen to their voices, hear their stories, look into their eyes. And yet after thousands of occurrences and introductions, I’d felt that match with only two people—my stepdad, Eric, which always made me feel a tiny bit guilty, and Lauren. I loved Grace, but Grace was an acquired taste, like beer or wine or coffee. You grew to appreciate her the more time you spent around her, but our connection wasn’t instantaneous. Not like Eric. Or Lauren.

Or Aidan.

The realization that I’d met a third connection and that he was my boss was enough to unnerve me even more than the fact that we’d hooked up. Sex complicated things, but this was different—more.

I smiled a little at the memory of our time at the bar, the easy conversation, and he smiled back, the expression soft, before we remembered that all eyes were on us, and he cleared his throat and took the seat at the end of the table. The seat directly beside me. Clearly the gods viewed this day as one of the great tests of my lifetime. Here you go, Cammie, survive this and you’ll earn a random act of kindness. Congratulations!

Taking my seat, I concentrated on the notepad in front of me, jotting down today’s date in the top right corner like I always did. Somehow I still preferred to take notes on paper, like the page pulled out my thoughts better than one of my devices. I set my pen down beside the notepad, vertical as always, and accidentally marked the page. It took every ounce of my control not to flip the sheet and begin again.

Aidan settled in his seat, and then as though someone flipped a switch, he was all business, not at all the same carefree man from the bar. He eyed each of us. “Okay, where are we? Gayle, go.” It was as though he had two personalities. Or maybe I’d just been that drunk.

“Right,” she said, launching into the details of the campaign while the rest of us took notes, some on the notepads, others in their phones or iPads. Aidan simply listened, but something in the way his eyes had transformed from that hint of humor before to complete seriousness now told me he was retaining and processing more than the rest of us ever could.

Blast Water wanted a campaign focused on college football, in an effort to sway some of the teams from Gatorade. They wanted to speak to the fans of the schools, push that their product could help teams succeed. In short, there couldn’t be a better campaign for me to work on. I knew college football. I’d been around it my whole life.

“Okay,” Aidan said after Gayle had finished. “Am I safe in assuming that everyone in this room has attended a college football game?” The table went quiet.

He placed his elbows on the table and locked his hands together in front of him. “Seriously?”

“I have,” Brody said. “I went to Notre Dame. There’s no program like Notre Dame’s.”

I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. “Right.”

Aidan’s gaze snapped over to me. “Did you want to add something, Cameron?”

I focused on the table. God. Keep your mouth shut, Cameron. There was no reason to get into this. Let the fight go. And then before I could help it, my know-it-all mouth was speaking too fast for my brain to keep up. “Nothing. It’s just Alabama would crush them. In fact, most SEC schools would crush them.”

I folded my hands in front of me, completely mortified at my outburst, but I couldn’t help it. Though I’d chosen NYU, my roots were still in Birmingham, where I grew up, and as loyal as ever to the University of Alabama, where my parents went to college. My gaze drifted up to Aidan, curious if he would agree with me. After all, UT was also in the SEC, but he didn’t meet my stare.

Instead, amusement spread across his face again, and I wondered if he viewed me as some circus act. Check out the new entertainment for Sanderson-Lowe. He glanced over at Brody, who was clearly fuming, but refused to argue with me in front of Aidan. “Okay, then. So we have a few who know the game. Great. Now, think about the rush of the first home game. The intensity of the crowd. The excitement on the field. How can we convey that in a short thirty-or sixty-second ad?”

Everyone spoke at once, throwing out ideas and arguing and generally making no sense at all. I wondered if every meeting ran this way. Finally Aidan’s gaze fell back on me, the new kid, and I knew I was about to be placed on the spot.

“What about you?”

My eyes shot to Gayle and she nodded reassuringly. “Well,” I said, “I was thinking we should focus on an IMC approach, which takes a look at the whole marketing picture instead of a single piece. I.e. television. I was thinking—” Laughter erupted around the table before I could continue. “What?” I asked, my voice much smaller than before.