Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(81)

“So instead of talking to me about it, you went behind my back.”

She bit her lip again, drawing his eyes. Damn it. “I didn’t want to argue,” she said.

“And you’re pathologically non-confrontational.”

“Fuck off,” she said, grinning. “How was that?”

He smiled back, in spite of himself, and got to his feet. “Great. I’ll meet you in the conference room with the three groups I’m working on and the latest sales figures.”

“I’ve got some sample yardage I’d like you to see.” She beamed. “But I don’t know if it’s a good vendor or not. Plus, it’s narrow goods and might bring up the retail too high.”

“Bring the tag, and we’ll talk about it.” He walked back to his office to gather all his stuff, strangely proud of the nursery school teacher with her hot fashion lingo. He knew he liked her too much, thought about her too much, wanted her too much—but she was doing a pretty good job with his company, had stood up to her family, and spending a Saturday afternoon talking shop with her wouldn’t kill him.

He was hanging up his favorite samples on the conference room walls when she stumbled in, her arms full of binders and magazines and garments, invisible under the pile.

She dropped the armful on the table. “How did they sew up all this stuff so fast? I just asked them a couple days ago, and there’s already a rack in my office—with all of it. I hope Jennifer didn’t hurt anybody.”

“Not physically, anyway.” Liam picked up an armful and began hanging them on the opposite wall. Pants, shorts, crops, jackets, tees, support tanks. Thoughtful, he rearranged them, then moved them around again, then went back for another pile. Bev joined him and added more, saying nothing. When all the samples were up on the walls, each of them stepped back to study them.

“Oh, God,” she said finally. “Say something.”

“I told you. I snuck in during the week and thought it was good.”

“But you haven’t seen these yet.” She walked over and ran her hand over the jacket that had immediately caught his eye—a charcoal gray hoodie with the identical red piping she wore in her hair. And printed onto the sleeve, a new “Fite Gear” logo in metallic silver reached from shoulder seam to wrist in bold block letters four inches tall.

He went over and tested the weight of the material between his thumb and forefinger. “These are the goods Jennifer was talking about.”

She nodded. “If we order enough of it, we can afford it.”

“Meaning, if we can sell enough of what we make out of it.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Liam!” She sat down at the table, dropped her head in her hands, peered up at him through her fingers. “What do you think?”

He had no illusions about himself. He knew he was the type of man to enjoy having power over others, the power to praise or put down, correct or dismiss. Usually, his pleasure in this power wasn’t on display, but Bev’s looked so worried—

“Will you stop smiling at me like that!” she cried. “I can’t tell if you’re gloating because it sucks so bad, or because you think it’s totally fantastic.”

He gained control of his facial features and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s fine,” he said. “Great. How’s the fit?”

She sank down into her chair as the air left her lungs and looked up at the ceiling. “You said ‘great.’”

“How’s the fit? Or did Rachel refuse to—”

“No, she tried everything on. Not this latest stuff, but the core bottoms over there, and they’re awesome. Those patternmakers and sewers are amazing. And Rachel’s butt looked even more fabulous than usual.” She got up and patted the samples. “I figure if we can sell a woman a decent pair of pants and make sure she knows our name, we can sell her another pair next time she comes in for paper towels and shampoo.”

“That’s the idea. But we have to be on spec. Consistently. Luckily that’s one thing we can do. Ed was a stickler for QA. Our problem is that our women’s specs have been consistently bad.”

“But this is a chance to start over. What do you think of the new Fite Gear logo for them? Think Macy’s will complain we’ve gone downmarket?”

“We have no choice.” He turned back to study the rest of the samples, glad his back was to her, because he was impressed. “I like the logo. I like the palette. I like the hippie global warming thing in that group, and the girlie flower thing in that one. It’s good. Solid.”

“But is it enough?”

He leaned back against the wall and shrugged. “How the hell would I know? I’m just a dumb jock.”

She flopped back down into a chair. “Yeah, well, you’re all I’ve got, so answer me anyway. What’s your gut tell you?”

He gave her a long, steady look, and she flushed.

“Other than that!” she said.

Funny, he hadn’t been thinking of sex. While his mind had been admiring the profit potential of a massive deal in the third quarter, his gut had been feeling grateful she hadn’t gone back to Orange County just yet to teach fingerpainting. Which reminded him of a previous, interrupted conversation. “I think we’d nail it with a picture of Annabelle Tucker in that hoodie.”