Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(55)

“Plenty of great people? Here?”

Bev smiled and put her hand on her heart. “If people give you any trouble blame it on me.”

Rachel shrugged. “You’re the boss.” Then she was gone.

Liam stayed, pacing around the treadmill in the middle of the room, glancing at her every other second.

Bev collapsed onto the sofa. “If you’re going to run around like that, you might as well get on the treadmill.” Were they going to talk about what happened? Her body suffused with heat, hoping to continue where they left off so abruptly two days earlier. “I won’t get so dizzy watching you.”

He stopped walking and, arms crossed over his chest, gazed out into the city behind her. Then he cleared his throat. “If you’re going to fire me I’d like to know now. If that’s all right with you.”

“Because of what we did in the store, you mean?”

“What I did.”

“We,” she said. “Let’s be honest.”

He relaxed visibly. “All right. We.”

“If I did fire you, you could sue, I bet.”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“Actually I don’t,” she said. “I don’t know what you’d do to keep Fite.”

“Not that.” He made a disgusted sound. “Jesus. How humiliating.”

Because they started something, or because they didn’t finish? “I’m not going to fire you. Unless it’s work-related. And probably not even then, not that I should tell you that.”

He walked over to the window and stared out. “I’d appreciate that.”

Neither spoke for a long, awkward minute. She waited for him to promise it wouldn’t happen again. Instead, he turned away from the window and sat on the opposite end of the sofa. His white dress shirt was rolled up to the elbows and unbuttoned at the neck, and it was impossible not to imagine touching him.

“It was cute how you charmed everyone,” he said, “but cookies are not going to be enough. Darrin is only one of the people here eager to see you fail.”

Cute. Apparently the worrisome personal chat was over. “Damn. And I’d just gone to Costco for more butter.”

“It’s not funny. They are not nice people.”

“They’re the same as any other people, Liam. Though first I need to bond a little bit.”

“Perhaps if you wait until after dark you could score some smack on Mission Street. Get them really attached to you.”

Bev was disappointed he had such a stick up his butt. “They’re just treats. Like Cookie Monster says, ‘Cookies are a sometimes food.’ Sometimes doesn’t mean never.”

“You’re quoting Cookie Monster?”

Bev stared at him. “Somebody has to.”

His mouth fell open. Then he covered his face with his hands and broke out laughing, and the tension in the room popped like a balloon with a four-year-old.

“I wasn’t kidding,” she said, but he just laughed harder.

When his mirth finally drained out of him, he leaned his head back on the cushions and stared at the ceiling. “Ed left Fite to a couch potato who quotes Cookie Monster.”

He was too close. She could smell his laundry detergent, something clean and faint. Edging her thigh away from his, she focused on the pedals of the elliptical machine so she wouldn’t be tempted to stare at the way his veins snaked gracefully down his arm and over his wrists. “You’re just like my family. Worrying and obsessing all the time about what you eat and don’t eat, counting grams instead of tasting and living—”

“It’s not food—it’s fitness. Fitness is deep. Not the way you talk about it, like it’s all superficial Hollywood bullshit—but in a spiritual, profound way. Listen, I’m not about looks. I’ve never been about looks.” He tilted his head away, an odd flush creeping up his neck to his cheeks. “I wasn’t the best-looking kid in the world, and everyone let me know it. I refuse to give a shit about how I look, but I do care how I feel.”

Bev frowned, remembering the pictures he’s seen of him at his mother’s house. Big and blond, a junior Viking. “I thought you were a cute kid.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, silent for a moment, then said, “You’ve only got one body, Bev—” He turned to face her and ran an intense gaze down her torso, down her legs, then back up to her face. “It’s strong and . . . perfect. You should take care of what you have.”

Heat flared in her belly. She pushed herself up and got to her feet, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t expose how vulnerable she was to what he thought. “You keep making it personal, and I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Caring about physical health is part of your job. And the jobs of everyone here.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I can’t pretend to be a fitness freak or a fashionista like the rest of you, but I can show them I can be liked and trusted. I’m trying to be a leader, and not by force. Flies and honey, you know?”

“Calling them fitness freaks is hardly the way to win them over. But forget it. If you were a jock you might have a reason to stay here.”

Sucking in her breath, she pointed a finger at him. “Admit it. They liked me.”