Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(83)

The grief vanished, and her face broke into a wide, goofy grin that hit him across the table, grabbed his heart in a fist and squeezed.

“Good.” She glowed at him.

He tried to swallow over the tension in his chest. Voice rough, he grumbled, “If you’re so grateful, you can be the one to get the coffee.”





Chapter 20

The potstickers were cold but she ate them anyway, poking her plastic fork into the bottom of the waxy white box without looking away from Liam’s sketches on the table. She blinked, trying to keep the black and white lines from going out of focus.

His fingers wrapped around her wrist.

“Hey, hands off.” She pulled free. “If you wanted potstickers you should have ordered them for yourself, Mr. Broccoli Tofu.”

“Bev.”

She sighed and dropped the fork. “All right, go ahead. I’m too tired to eat.” She looked up into his eyes and saw amusement and something else she didn’t dare define as affection.

“Time to go home,” he said. “You’re delirious.”

She yawned, slapped a hand over her mouth, yawned again. “We can’t. We’re not done.” And besides, I am home. She’d already dragged her suitcase up to her grandfather’s old suite. Thank God she’d never opened up the frat lounge to the rest of the company. Once the company was solvent again she could take a bigger salary, get her own apartment, make up with her mother at her own pace.

“Close enough.” He got to his feet and gathered the papers and binders on the table. “We can finish up Monday. We’re both too tired to do anything else productive today.”

She looked at her watch. “Tonight, you mean. It’s past eight.” A sense of well-being overtook her. All day they had worked together, side by side, putting the groups together and sharing their opinions like equals. Less formal than co-workers—more like . . . friends. Even though he had to explain why they couldn’t manufacture what she wanted because their customer would never spend two hundred dollars on a t-shirt, he was never mean about it, and more than once had to educate her on the unavoidable realities of garment sourcing and manufacturing with a calm, sad smile.

“Damn, that’s all?” He got to his feet and stretched is arms over his head, sighing. “I’m getting old.”

Bev watched his t-shirt lift above the waistband of his jeans, exposing an Olympic stomach and the line of dark blond hair pointing south. “Do you miss swimming?” she asked dreamily, imagining him wet, slicing through the water.

She could see he recognized the admiration in her gaze, but instead of holding the pose for effect, he dropped his arms and tugged the shirt down, frowning, as though he didn’t like her looking at his body. “No.” He turned around and moved the garments from the wall to a rolling rack.

“Does your shoulder still hurt?” she asked, watching him carry the clothes in large armfuls. “I mean, when you do other things?”

He glanced over at her, a faint, suggestive smile in the corner of his mouth. “What kind of things?”

“What if you just swim slowly? Or focus on kicking or something. Is there anything you can do?”

“It’s not like my skin has become water soluble. I just can’t do laps.” He grimaced. “Thank God.”

“Really?” She smiled. “You wouldn’t want to do laps anymore?”

“No sane human being ever born on this earth wants to do laps. Granted, I knew lots of guys who did, which I submit as evidence of my theory since they were all crazy-ass bastards, much as I loved ‘em.”

“That’s pretty ironic. Swimming is the one thing I do like. Even laps. Very relaxing.”

He looked at her with interest. “Then you should do it more often. I might even reconsider my vow of lifetime lap-swimming abstinence if I get to see you in a bikini. Working on your strokes.” He raised an eyebrow, eyes sparkling.

“You never liked to do laps?”

He met her incredulous gaze, sighed, and shook his head. “No.”

“Then—” she hesitated, seeing his reluctance to talk, but too curious to stop. “Then why did you do it? It must have been years and years of training. The hours you must have spent in the pool—”

“You have no idea.”

“And you didn’t like it.”

“Hated every minute.” He shrugged. “Well, not all of it. I liked warming down in the hot tub. I liked my friends, traveling around the state, then the world.” His mouth quirked. “The partying.”

She knew she shouldn’t laugh but couldn’t help it. “I sure pegged you wrong,” she said, slapping her hands together with delight. “What else are you hiding? Do you spend the weekends on the couch? Have a bag-a-day Cheetos habit?”

His eyebrows came together in the middle, but his lips fought a smile. “Don’t dis Cheetos.”

“So part of you can understand why I find—say, cardio machines—unbearable.”

“Sure,” he said. “So do I.”

Surprise, surprise. “You do?”

“Yup. Never use them unless I’m desperate.”

“Never?” She narrowed her eyes. “Define ‘desperate.’”

“Raining, travel, injury—”