Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(35)

With all the radioactive energy of two hundred milligrams of caffeine, she got up and went looking for HR. Let him think he could scare her into hiding. She’d quietly learn about the people laboring along at every level and figure out how to win then over. Whether they liked it or not.

Even him.





Chapter 8

Two days later Liam watched Wendi arrange the line into groups on the rolling rack next to his desk. “Did you bring Bev the binders?” he asked.

Wendi nodded and shoved her glasses up her nose. “What’s she going to do with all that old stuff?” she asked, then added like the infant she was, “Some of those lines went back into the nineteen hundreds.”

“She wants to learn as much as she can about the business.” Which should keep her busy for a couple weeks, at least. That and the rolling racks of samples he’d had delivered to her office. “She has no background in apparel and doesn’t want to screw things up with her ignorance.”

“But the binders are just full of spec paperwork and production stuff that’s totally out-of-date now. They’re not even on the new database. And we don’t source in half those countries anymore.”

He continued to rearrange the line samples by delivery date, not interested in explaining himself to an entry-level assistant. Ever since he’d rescued Wendi from Ellen, she’d latched onto him without any of the subservient reserve he’d nurtured in the rest of the team. He missed it.

“And why is she making boards?” Wendi continued. “She asked me for her own glue sticks and foam core.”

Liam turned his head away to hide his grin. “I suggested she sketch out a few ideas of her own. And share with us her first impressions at the line meeting on Monday.”

“On Monday?” Wendi gaped at him. “When Darrin and Jennifer get back?”

“Maybe they’ll find her fresh perspective useful.”

Wendi snapped her mouth shut, her eyebrows flying high on her forehead, and Liam suspected she was imagining the same thing he was.

Bloodbath.

It would be an awkward but necessary experience to convince her she would be happiest owning the company from a distance. Orange County was only about six hundred miles away—an easy flight, once or twice a year. At the most. He’d made sure Wendi had told her all about her experiences as Ellen’s assistant and left a stack of HR paperwork about the dozens of young, talented people who had quit under her thumb—some within a week. Bev wouldn’t be selling to Ellen now, not with her determination to be nice.

But she would tire of being here in person.

In the meantime he’d keep her busy. For the rest of the week he kept her snowed under useless minutiae in the guise of “Training.” She kept to Ed’s suite and the business offices, far away from him and the product development team. By Friday, the staff had accepted his description of her as a temporary technicality and was getting optimistic about Ellen’s lengthening absence.

Friday night he was so optimistic he left before seven, the first time in months, and even made it to the 24-hour Safeway before dark. He parked in his condo’s basement garage, a luxury he never failed to appreciate, and took the elevator up to the twentieth floor, humming and smiling to himself.

But when he got to his door he paused, hand on the doorknob, and felt his mood turn black. The condo, with its expensive one-eighty view of the Bay he seldom got to appreciate, was now distinctly, unhappily occupied.

Though they sounded happy enough. He let the door slam behind him, dropped his keys onto the shelf by the kitchen, went to the fridge for a beer. Not again.

He strode across the carpeted hallway as loudly as he could, closing his eyes when he got to the bedroom door, which was open. “April.”

He heard muffled exclamations and groans, bodies rolling across the mattress, and finally, feet on floor struggling into pants. “Uh,” said a male voice.

“Oh, God,” April groaned, sounding like an exasperated teenager, which she hadn’t been for seven years. “He’s just my brother. You don’t have to go. ”

“Yes, you do,” Liam said. “No bed of your own?”

“You know I—” April began.

“I meant him.” Liam leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed and eyes still closed.

“I should go,” the guy said. “Nice to meet you, uh—”

“Her name’s April,” Liam said.

“He knows my name!” April said, then sighed. “Right?”

Silence. Jeans zipping, one foot hopping on the floor as a shoe was pulled on the other. Hurried breathing, then his throat clearing.

“Right?” Liam asked him.

He skulked past him in the doorway. “Maybe I’ll see you around.” The guy fled down the hall and out the front door.

After a few long seconds, April stalked over to him. “You can open your eyes now.”

“Handsome guy,” Liam said, peeking out at her. “Not too bright though.”

Her face was torn between guilt and anger. “Couldn’t you have waited a few minutes?”

“That’s my bed. Thank God I didn’t.” He glared at her, not kidding anymore. “What’s wrong with the couch? Where you sleep?”

She bit her lip and looked away. “He said he’s got a bad back.”