Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(33)

Liam sighed in satisfaction. “It’s awesome.”

“Do people hang out in here?”

“Ellen and me and—are probably the only ones in the building today who’ve ever stepped foot in here.” He’d almost said ‘and Rachel’ but that wasn’t for him to say. All kinds of rumors floated around, most false.

“I’m sure they’re grateful,” she said. “I was thinking he made everyone exercise or something. As a condition of employment.”

“They’d be lucky to be able to. Gyms are expensive.”

She walked around the TV throne to a kitchen alcove. New stainless steel appliances, marble countertops. She went through a sliding door to Ed’s bathroom and came out shaking her head.

“He could have lived in here.”

With a grief he didn’t try to hide, Liam said, “I think he did.”

“What about the house in Oakland?”

Liam crossed his arms over his chest, disapproving of the family that left an old, lonely man to fend for himself. “Usually empty.”

“I barely knew him, you know.”

Liam shrugged.

“What about Ellen?”

“Are you kidding?”

“But she loved him. Just not the rest of us. And she has a son, my cousin. Are you angry at him too, or just the females?”

“I’m not angry.”

She gave him an annoyingly knowing look. “Sure you’re not.”

“Your grandfather was a great guy. Flawed, but who isn’t? When I needed him, he was there, and I'm not the type to forget it. That’s all I’m going to say.” He pointed towards a side door. “His office space is back there. You can check it out after I show you Engineering. Purchasing is on second. HR and Finance are on first, back near Richard. Or rather, where Richard was. Then I have to get back to work.”

“Did Ellen really fire Richard because of me?”

He began walking back to the stairs. “Who knows? She probably doesn’t even know herself.”

“But now we need a CFO.”

“Hire him back.”

“I can do that?” She hurried to catch up to him. “Of course I can. Hold on. Quit walking so fast.”

Reluctantly, he slowed.

“My first act as owner is to instruct my executive vice president to rehire the CFO.” She smiled. “It’s your fault he got fired. So fix it.”

He scowled to intimidate her, but she just smiled. “He wasn’t very important. He didn’t have the power his title implied.”

“Not important to you maybe,” she said, “but who knows? Maybe he was the quiet little engine keeping this place running. Dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. Unrecognized hero.”

“He was an accountant. They use numbers, not i’s and t’s.”

Her smile hardened. “Do it.”

After a second he decided this wasn’t a fight he should waste his energies on. “All right.”

She beamed. “Today?”

“Is that your wish, Your Mightiness?”

“Yup.”

“All right. Then we better finish the tour so I can get right on that.”

She nodded. “On with it, then.”

He looked down at her, a sinking feeling in his stomach, and wondered for the first time if Ellen would have been a better alternative to this deceptively cheerful pain in the ass.

No. Bev might have a stubbornly optimistic streak, but it wouldn’t be enough to keep her happy in a business that thrived on misery. He would have to accelerate her inevitable slide into disillusionment and get her back into a preschool where she belonged.

He’d be doing her a favor.



Before the day was out Bev had working keys to her grandfather’s house in Oakland, knew which doors were real and which were water heater closets, and was relieved to be out from under her senior VP’s family roof. Aside from the panoramic view of San Francisco Bay, the house on Alondra Avenue was remarkable only for its total lack of personality. The estate service had packed up most of her grandfather’s things, putting them in storage until Bev’s mother was ready to face it all, which Bev feared would be never.

The next morning, after a choppy night’s sleep in an unfamiliar house, Bev walked through Fite’s front door with a vase in her arms. “I brought in a few flowers to cheer up the place.”

“Oooh, sweet peas!” Carrie popped up. She’d taken out her braids, leaving her hair in a kinky triangle that ended at her shoulders. “I love those!”

“They’d naturalized near my grandfather’s house.” Bev rearranged the long stems in the water. “I’m not sure how long they’ll survive in a vase, but it was worth a shot.”

“I’ll take care of them.” Carrie petted the soft curve of one petal with the tip of her finger. She bent close and sucked in a deep breath. “They smell like candy.”

“More where that came from.” Bev took one last sniff of the sweet flowers before heading for the elevator. Liam had insisted the stairs were the only way to her grandfather’s executive suite, but there had to be some way of getting there via the elevator; the original building designers wouldn’t have skipped a floor.