Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(9)

Darrin's smile got tight. “Without me around?”

“You'll be on your way to New York. Remember?”

Now off-balance, Darrin tried to share a snotty grin with Jennifer without losing control of the conversation. “Remind me.”

“Your choice,” Liam said. “You were missing Manhattan so much you decided to accept a transfer to the showroom.”

“The showroom? With the sales guys?”

“It was hard to accept at first,” Liam said, “but then you realized any job was better than none. Especially in this economy.”

“But—but—you can't do that,” Darrin said. “Mr. Roche never would have—I'm a designer—”

“You're a human being, just like everybody else. At least, I'm pretty sure.”

“But you can't.”

“Of course I can, dude,” Liam said. “I'm the executive vice president and I’m your boss. And you're wasting my time.”

He could have just fired the *, but Darrin was a relatively harmless, useful *, the kind with a degree from FIT and a portfolio and old friends working as buyers in New York he could call up any time. He just needed to have a whip cracked every once in a while to remind him to reign in his bad manners.

One of the problems with Darrin and the other regular garmentos everywhere: they looked down on Liam for his non-fashion background. Unlike Darrin, Liam’s oldest friends coached summer swim team and spent every free dime at REI, not MAC. He knew all their important buyers, of course, but he wasn't anyone's shopping buddy. He didn't have a fashion—or any—degree, and now that Ed was gone, the snide comments that he was just the over-promoted adopted son of a lonely old man would grow, and whoever bought Fite out from the family would be looking for any excuse to shove him out.

Ed had promised him it wouldn't happen. He'd been a cranky old man, but he'd never hurt him. At least until the end, when he’d grinned at Liam and told him it was all up to him now, him and his pretty face. Then gave him a picture of his granddaughter, a woman who looked just like Ellen, a woman he despised.

All the years of giving Fite everything he had were coming to an end, and he would have nothing to show for it.

Nothing.

“So, Darrin.” He was eager to get far away from all of them before he made an example of someone who didn’t deserve it as much as Darrin. “If you've changed your mind about the move to New York, ask your guy Wayne in Engineering how to save your job. He's got a great new short body that’s just what we need and you should tell him that, or you'll be telling it to the Bloomingdale's buyer this fall. Jennifer, call up Wendi’s mom and ask her why she doesn't like the fit. Be nice about it. Take her to lunch or something—without commenting on her physique.” Then he got up, shoved his chair under the table, and strode out of the room.

There was only one way he was going to get what he deserved out of this nightmare, and she was playing around with fingerpaint in some Disneyland nursery school.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Liam ran to his office, his phone out of his pocket and his thumb hovering over Ed’s lawyer’s number. He’d stopped Bev once. He could do it again, and not by using his goddamn good looks. With an incentive to hold on to her ownership indefinitely, he could maintain his control. Improve it. From the looks of her—and he tried not to remember how disturbing that had been, to be attracted to an Ellen clone, just like Ed had wanted—she was in serious need of money.

And unlike the sharks he knew were already circling, she would be easy to manage.





Chapter 3

The boy wore a princess tiara and Batman cape.

“Cover your sneeze, please,” Bev told him. “And then what are you going to do?”

“Wash my hands.” He stuck a finger in his nose and galloped into the sandbox.

Cathy, the other teacher working that morning at the preschool, came by with a mug of tea. “Year went by fast, huh?” She handed it to Bev. “How’re you doing?”

Bev smiled. “I’m fine, thanks. I never knew my grandfather.” A boy ran past with a ball of yarn, one end tied to the tree, and she went over to untangle him. “Couldn’t miss today, could I?” The second Tuesday in June, worst day of the year.

“Hilda asked me to check up on you. You always take graduation so hard.”

“She did?” Bev swallowed her irritation. The director of the preschool liked to spy on her through her colleagues. “Well, tell her I’m fine.”

“At least this year you can say it was the death in your family that upset you. You know, extenuating circumstances.”

Bev kept her eyes on the sandbox. The handful of children outside with them were completely occupied with a garden hose, enjoying a school policy of child-directed play and obliviousness to water conservation. Kennedy, a freckled five-year-old girl with curly brown hair, stood off to the side, drawing on a rock with a black marker.

“The worst part is, I won’t miss all of them.”

Cathy smiled. “I know.”

“But some of them, I miss so much—”

“Not now, Bev. I shouldn’t have come over. You were fine before I came over. Hey, did you hear about the afternoon program?”