Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(5)

The woman blew her nose. “The candy, right? Not drugs or something?”

Bev bit down a laugh. “Candy.” She tore the wrapper apart in a spiral. “Wintergreen.”

A long, delicate hand with chipped red fingernails appeared over the top of the stall. “You must be visiting.”

Bev handed her the entire package in case she didn’t want Bev’s skin touching the candy itself. Some of her preschoolers would turn down a cupcake if they couldn’t pluck it out of the plastic box themselves. “Yes. Just visiting.”

She snorted. “Thought so. Nobody here would give a shit.” Her hand appeared over the door to return the package, and she muttered thanks again before falling silent. When it was obvious she could do nothing more, Bev went back out into the cluttered storage area.

Liam leaned against the wall, long legs crossed at the ankles. He pointed to a glass doorway past a drinking fountain. “The finance guys are through there. Think you can find Richard yourself?”

She was surprised he was letting her go. “Sure.”

“I’ve got to get upstairs for a meeting.”

“Of course.”

He stood there, more relaxed than he’d been, then drew a card out of his pocket. “Here. If you need to reach me.”

She just stared at him, disturbed by the faint smile growing in the corner of his mouth, the smile of a German shepherd.

“I won’t—” she started to say, but he tucked it into her jacket pocket himself and strode away. “Hey!”

He was gone. Something about him disturbed her more than the cup of caffeinated sludge he’d given her. She reached into her pocket to feel the card but didn’t take it out. It didn’t matter how he made her feel. She wouldn’t be back.

She walked through a swinging door into a carpeted, air-conditioned corridor, past the row of cubicles to the large glass-walled office at the end with the CFO’s gold nameplate on the door.

It was dark. Closed. Empty. And affixed at eye-level, a folded-over yellow Post-It note with her name in all caps. She peeled it off and unfolded it.

Richard the CFO had left for the airport after waiting until one-thirty and wouldn’t be back until Friday.

Bev frowned at it, confused, then groaned.

Liam.

She wrote an apologetic note to Richard on the Post-It and stuck it back on the door. Then she took Liam’s business card out of her pocket, crumpled it in her fist, and threw it into the blue recycling bin near the copy machine.

She’d have to come back, just like he wanted. And worse for her, she’d have to delay it past Friday, since she couldn’t call in sick at her job like corporate people. She’d already used up all her limited personal time on the funeral, helping her mother cope, visiting the lawyer. The next available time she would have was over a week away when the school was closed for the summer.

Liam Johnson thought she’d be easy to push around, just like her mother, her aunt, infant receptionists—everyone.

I will take the money, Bev thought, striding through the dark corridors, past Liam’s empty office, out to the lobby.

She would call Ellen, reassure her the deal was still on. She’d convince her mother to reconcile with her sister now, the best chance in decades to get talking again. And she’d use that fifty grand to jump-start her career at the school.

One thing she wouldn’t do was let one grouchy, sweaty jock get in her way.





Chapter 2

“Sign it.” Liam slipped a single sheet of paper onto Ellen’s desk. “You made your point. HR won’t let us keep Wendi on unless you revise this stupid performance review.”

Ellen didn’t look away from her computer. “I gave her the scores she deserved.”

“You put down negative numbers. It’s on a scale of one to five. It’s not a thermometer. You’re not allowed to go below zero.”

Ellen glanced over without moving her head. “Not allowed?”

Tactical error. Liam shrugged and sat down. “Why the blood lust?”

“She totaled my Lexus.”

“That’s it? She scratched the bumper driving it to get your dry cleaning,” he said. “You got off lucky. Wendi doesn’t even have a license. She could have sued the company for pressuring her.”

“What kind of loser doesn’t know how to drive?”

“She grew up in the city. She takes MUNI everywhere.”

Ellen, whose idea of public transportation was Southwest Airlines, scowled at him. “She’s a loser.”

“Sign it. This will get HR off your back. And me.”

She gave him a disgusted look. “She’s the worst assistant I ever had.”

“You say that about all of them.”

“And always true. A downward spiral.”

He leaned forward and picked up her pen. “Well, now she works for Darrin. Not your problem.”

“Everything here is my problem.” But she took the pen, made a face at the column of three’s he’d typed up under Wendi’s name, and signed her ornate signature with its E filling half the page before shoving it back to him. “Tell her not to get too comfortable. The new people might have higher standards.”

He forced himself to give her threat a lazy, unconcerned smile. The new people. So she did intend to sell. “I hear your niece wasn’t able to sign those papers the other day.”