Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(18)

“Some cardiologists make less than Gwen does.”

“Point is, if I ever want to buy my own home, quit the summer jobs, upgrade my car, save for my retirement, I’m going to have to figure something out.”

“Figure what out? You’ll get a fortune when you sell Fite.” He paused. “Right?”

She didn’t want to tell him how little she’d agreed to take from Ellen. “I refuse to bankrupt her. She’s family.”

“Not going to—Bev. How much?”

“You don’t understand. None of you understand. Fifty thousand is a fortune to me, and to her, I’m sure—”

“That’s it? For the entire company? Oh, Bev. This is a perfect example of how you’re too damn nice. Really, it’s pathological. Give the phone to Dad. He’s going to tie you up until I get over there. Are you at that taco truck in Santa Ana?”

She gritted her teeth. “Will you listen to me? I am not being nice.” How she hated that word. “And besides, maybe I won’t sell it at all. I have a chance here to do something different.”

“Even if it’s all wrong for you.”

“Exactly,” she said, then closed her eyes while he crowed into the phone.

“Run, baby, run.”

“Oh, be quiet.” She looked up at the hazy platinum sky above the strip mall. Her brother was rich, successful, crafty, and insufferable. “I’m just looking at all my options.”

“I don’t think taking on that company right now would be a good option for anyone, Bev. Except as a tax write-off.”

“You haven’t been there. It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment, but there’s a real history you can feel, people with passion—”

“Grandfather was Fite’s heart and soul. I read that in his obituary in the Times.”

“There are other people there with heart and soul. I felt it.” She heard him snort. “And don’t rag on my feelings, you dork. If it doesn’t work out I’ll just get another teaching job. Any money I get”—earn, she added silently—“from Fite will help me be sure this time. I’ll approach a school as an investor, not as some underling.”

“Find another teaching job now,” he said. “No need to pretend you’re something you’re not.”

“Pretend?” She squeezed the phone. “I’m not pretending. I’m exploring. Grandfather left this company to me, and nobody really knows why. He must have wanted—”

“No offense, but if Grandfather wanted somebody to actually take over, he would have left it to me. Mom says he was just trying to piss off Ellen.”

“No offense? I’m not in first grade anymore, Andy. I didn’t get an MBA, but my GPA and SAT’s kicked your ass. Managing children takes a hell of a lot of quick thinking, guts, and creativity.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Of course you’re smarter than I am, you always were. But you’re too nice. You’re a preschool teacher, not an *. From what everybody says, Grandfather was. Not to brag, but look at me. And Dad. To succeed in business, you have to be. Look what Grandfather built all by himself, from nothing. He wouldn’t have given Fite to the nicest person in the family if he thought she’d actually be crazy enough to keep it.”

Bev looked at her father through the glass as he picked at the black beans on his plate with his fingers. “Nicest person in the family?”

“You’re a chronic do-gooder,” Andy said, laughing. “I can just imagine you in management, going around trying to make everybody feel good about themselves. Nobody would get any work done. They’d walk all over you, Bev.”

She swung away from the restaurant so her father couldn’t see how angry she was. “Maybe Grandfather did leave Fite to me for a reason,” she said in the voice she would use with the most difficult, ignorant, obstinate five-year-old. “Maybe it wasn’t just to teach Ellen a lesson. Maybe he wanted me to get in there and change the whole feel of the place. Me, the stupid nice one. Why is that impossible?”

“Because it contradicts absolutely everything we know about him?”

“They need me.” She took a deep breath. “You know, when I visited, there was a grown woman crying in the bathroom?”

“Better than at her desk,” Andy replied.

“See? That’s why he didn’t leave it to you. What kind of attitude is that?”

“A realistic one,” he said. “You have no idea how hard it is to manage people. Real people, not miniature ones.”

“Do the people who work for you cry in the bathroom?”

“How the hell would I know? So long as they don’t take too long, it’s none of my business.”

“But it is,” she said. “They’ll work better if they’re happy.”

“Oh yeah? You’ve got studies to prove that?”

She glared at a parked SUV. “I bet there are.”

“So you think you’re up for that?” he said. “Completely transform a corporate culture? One devoted to fitness, you crazy person? This from a girl who forged a doctor’s note to get out of P.E. In fifth grade. What, kickball was too hard?”

That was the only time she’d ever been caught. “You try running the six-hundred-yard dash with brand-new C-cup breasts and no bra.”