Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(23)

He strode over to the door. “You’ve made it clear you don’t want me. As did Ellen. No sense delaying the inevitable.”

“Wait!”

He was slow to turn around, careful to look unhappy about it. “Sorry, Beverly. It’s really for the best.”

“Please.” She was holding a hand out to him, palm up, eyes wide.

Slowly, very slowly, shaking his head and sighing, he took a few steps back towards his desk and crossed his arms, enjoying the way her gaze raked over his body. He knew he was tall and built and imposing, and maybe this time it was all right to use it to his advantage.

She was definitely eyeing him in a daze, taking a step back and licking her lips.

“All right,” she said. “What do you want?”





Chapter 6

“I’ll make you a deal.” Liam sat back down behind his desk. “Don’t call your aunt. Let her quit. She’s never done it before, so you should consider the possibility that she’s quite serious about abandoning you here to fail.”

Bev’s stomach lurched. “I’m not going to let the company fall to pieces.”

“Of course you’re not. Because you’re going to stay out of my way.”

She did not like the way he stared at her. How did he always get the upper hand? “From what I hear, Fite is barely floating now. Why should I think you can do anything better than what you have been doing?”

“Bev.” He shook his head. “Fite’s current problems are not of my making.”

“Of course not,” she said. “How could they be? You being senior VP and whatnot.”

“Executive Vice President, please.”

“’Please’, yourself,” she said, her voice rising. “Make your case. Why should I believe you should be in charge?”

“You don’t have any choice but to believe me.” He pointed a finger at her. “You may have hidden talents, but unless your preschool had a side business merchandising fitness apparel for the mass market, your lack of experience is going to kill this company and the livelihoods of everyone working here.”

“All unless I hand over everything to you.”

“I’m sick of watching nepotism destroy this company. You may be a blood relation—and as you’ve admitted, little else—but you have no genuine claim to tell anyone what to do here. Least of all me.”

Her head was pounding. Ellen had left. The CFO was gone. How the hell could she let this guy leave too? Her brother was right; she was here on a whim, avoiding her troubles at home, trying to prove she was just as important as any corporate Hollywood type.

“I thought I could bring my mom and Ellen back together,” she muttered.

His jaw hardened. “Perhaps a multimillion-dollar apparel manufacturer isn’t the place for family therapy.”

“Damn.” She ducked her head and stared at her hands, conflicted. Was she being selfish to want to stay? She looked up at him. “Tell me what you do for Fite that’s so special.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve already proven myself. You’re the one who hasn’t.”

She gritted her teeth. Stood up. Sat back down. They stared at each other over his empty desk. She was reminded of one of her first days working in the university child center, when a tot still in diapers refused to get off the swing. After three hours on it. He’d filled his pull-ups and desperately needed a change—which was why he kept his death-grip on the swing chains—but nothing Bev said could convince him to get off. Bribes, threats, demands—nothing. Finally the professor strode over, pried him off with impersonal strength, and comforted the boy while he cried.

Bev was stuck cleaning his diaper. And hosing down the mess.

Taking a deep breath, she had to admit she wouldn’t be able to overpower Liam Johnson with that kind of approach. He was entirely too big.

“All right,” she said. “You can continue as you were. I’ll just have to learn on the fly.”

He nodded. “No meddling.”

“No. That’s too vague. I can’t promise to do nothing if you’re terrible at your job.”

He barked out a hard laugh, his eyes not smiling. “Then promise you’ll do nothing if I’m not terrible.”

“I can’t promise to do nothing. Come on, be reasonable.”

He strummed his fingers on the desk. A single strand of loose blond hair fell down over his eyes and tossed his head to clear his vision, never breaking his gaze on her. “We’ll approach your time here as an executive trainee,” he said. “Involved, but—declawed.”

“Is there an executive training program here?”

He snorted, then recovered. “Sure. We don’t call it that, but sure. Of course.”

“All right then. We’ll start there, and discuss more later. It is my first day, after all.”

He shifted in his seat and started working on his computer. “And apparently, not my last. So I need to get back to work.”

She was dismissed.



“If I didn’t need this guy so much, I’d kill him,” Bev said to her mother from her cell, sitting in her car outside her grandfather’s empty house in the Oakland Hills. The driveway was half the usual length, under ten feet, allowing room for the squat glass-and-steel building to cling to the steep slope. The June sun was only now setting behind the fogged-in Golden Gate Bridge to the west, a postcard view. A multi-million-dollar postcard. “I had to beg him to stay.”