Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(52)
“It was nothing.” Grace cupped her hands to accept and cherish Bev's offering. “I just noticed the cut sheet was stapled sideways.”
“But that's exactly the kind of unsung heroics the world needs,” Bev said, as though a few hundred vertically-striped t-shirts would have led to global warming, political instability, and low test scores among inner-city youth.
Watch out for Rachel, Liam thought. Rachel had the brains to appear friendly, but after years of being passed over for promotions while doing all the work, she'd embraced evil as an inevitable tool to survival. It would take more than cookies and milk to warm up her charred soul.
“You work with all the designers?” Bev held on to Rachel's hand longer than she should have. Rachel liked her personal space and drew back as far as her arm would reach. “Is it true you've worked at Fite for over ten years?”
Liam cringed. The last thing Bev should do is remind Rachel she hadn't been promoted past Associate in all those years. He watched Rachel's smile tighten and her arm twitch as she tried to pull away.
“That's true,” Rachel said.
Bev let her go and, unlike with the others, didn't gush with praise and promises. Instead, she just nodded and stepped away. “Come see me later today if you get a chance,” she said. “I'm in my grandfather's old suite.”
Rachel sat down, put the cookie she was holding down onto a napkin and stared at it. “Sure.”
By the time Bev had worked her way around the rest of the table, half the box was empty, and the group was laughing and chatting together. Bev reached over to grab an orange juice for herself and saluted the table with the bottle. “Sorry again for the interruption, everyone.” She walked towards the door. “Just thought I'd better say hi before you got down to business. I know how hard we push everyone, and maybe we don’t remember to say it. So for what it's worth, from your new owner, such as I am, thanks.” Her face split into a warm, genuine smile that made Liam’s heart skip a beat. Then she walked out.
The people around the table stared at each other silently for ten seconds before bursting out in incredulous laughter.
Everyone but Rachel. Licking chocolate off her finger, she met Liam’s gaze and frowned. “I could almost like her.”
I know what you mean, he thought.
Chapter 12
Bev closed the door to her office and pressed her back against it. She'd been up since four that morning, cracking eggs and sifting flour, jumping to the bing of the egg timer as each batch came out of the kitchenette oven, then rushing out to collect the rest from local cafés and bakeries.
And though crashing the design cabal's meeting was stressful, it was nothing compared to the high anxiety of feeling Liam's hot gaze on her backside as she handed out cookies. What had he thought of her efforts to win people over? Were they laughing at her now, the goofy preschool teacher with the transparent bribes?
Was he laughing at her?
She marched over to her desk and sat down behind the stack of HR files she had stolen and been studying all weekend, even with her sister around. Memorizing. With the help of a couple of production patternmakers—a treasure house of gossip—Bev had worked up an unconventional org chart of the people at Fite in an effort to follow the first rule of back to school: know their names.
Liam’s file sat on top of the others—a thin, old file that had nothing but his tax forms and benefit paperwork, a one-page hand-written note offering him the job years earlier and a newspaper clipping from the Stanford Daily heralding his gold medal win. Bev flipped open the file and took out the old newspaper, glancing at the door before she took plenty of time to gaze with admiration at the young Liam posing at the edge of the university pool, shirtless and dripping wet, a grinning, virile, triumphant specimen of masculine perfection.
Somebody tapped on the door. Slapping the file shut, she swept them all into the box under her desk and shoved it out of sight. “Come in!”
The door slid open, revealing Rachel's serious face. “You asked to see me.”
Bev got to her feet and walked towards her, relieved it was only her. She wasn’t quite sure how to face Liam yet. “Great. Let’s talk here.” She gestured to the seating behind the exercise equipment. Rachel, clearly uncomfortable, sat on the couch closest to the door with her back straight.
One thing that had been obvious from looking at the files was that Rachel had been compensated well beyond her pay grade. However, unlike the other assistants, she had no performance reviews to justify it. In fact her file had been as empty as Liam's, except without the newspaper clipping about gold medals. She'd chatted with the patternmakers and assistants and memorized the highlights for her introductions this morning. In the interests of diplomacy she'd omitted the less flattering stories (such as the time Jennifer had apparently dropped a bolt of fuchsia Performance Blend out the fourth-floor window when it bled onto the white support lining during quality testing,) aiming instead to charm the group with compliments and bribes.
But Rachel was a mystery, and Bev had decided to talk to her privately. Universally liked—and pitied—Rachel had a reputation among the support staff as a workhorse, an ally, a cynic, a martyr, and a favorite drinking buddy. So when Bev looked through her file, she was confused to see no record of her climb up the ladder over her years at the company. Just the note of her salary, going up and up and up at six-month intervals.