Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(90)

“You said you felt guilty.”

“No more than I’d feel for any old friend.”

“Then it wouldn’t have anything to do with jealousy? Like, say, if you were feeling insecure about my feelings for Ed’s granddaughter—who, by the way, you’d love to meet. You always said there wasn’t a woman alive who could resist me when I turned on the charm.”

“Only because you hoard it and then use it all at once. Very unfair.”

“Well,” he said, “Bev Lewis managed to deflect it. And me.”

Kimberly laughed. “No kidding.”

Liam had wanted her to be amused, but he himself wasn’t in the slightest. “Aren’t you curious to meet such a woman?”

“I am, actually,” she said, and Liam felt hopeful, but she added, “but I can’t. Zack would bust my ass. You, an old friend, the gold medal and all that, he’d forgive. Ed Roche’s granddaughter—no.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “We’ve busted our asses for you, Kimberley.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just one hour. Give her an hour. You might have something strong enough to pass on to Zack.”

“What do you care? You quit.”

He didn’t want to care, but he couldn’t just let Bev go under like this. No guilt could land on his head. “On principle,” he said. “Most of the designs are mine. I like to know they’re put to use.”

“Funny, you never seemed to get too attached to your ideas when we worked together. That was your strength. You never got personal.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Well. People change.”

“Apparently. You really like this girl.”

“Unfortunately.”

“You really, really like her.”

“Everyone does, whether they want to or not. Even George hand-delivers her packages.”

She paused. “No.”

“Really.”

“What a nightmare.” She laughed softly. “Good thing I’m not at Fite anymore. I would probably hate her.”

“You’d want to, but then she’d bring you a Meyer lemon tart from Gerard’s and you’d be her bitch forever.”

“Oh,” she moaned. “I love those.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. She’d know,” he said. “In fact I’m surprised she hasn’t sent you any yet. Like, Fed Ex or something.”

“If she promised to bring me—” she stopped herself. “No, damn it, no. I called you because I had some weird old guilt, but I’m over it. If you’re ever in the frozen north, give me a ring. Hey, you looking for a job? Because—”

“No.” But he wondered. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. And getting thousands of miles away from Bev had its appeal. “At least, not yet. I’m taking a little time off.”

“Don’t wait too long. People will forget about you.”

Liam had the sick feeling one of the people forgetting him might be Bev. He dropped the phone on his unmade bed, went over to the window and stared out at the Bay Bridge, over the monochromatic grays of water and steel and fog, towards Oakland.

Not now, she wouldn’t. Not if Fite went under because of him.

He scowled at his face reflected back at him in the glass, noticing the streak of paint in his hair. He touched it, trying to wipe it off, and his fingers came away sticky and red.

Not my problem. He turned away from the window and walked across the room to find a clean rag and finish what he’d started.



To Bev’s surprise, Rachel didn’t show for their five o’clock meeting Tuesday evening.

“Nasty UTI,” Rachel said when she called at six, just as Bev was giving up on her. “Sorry I couldn’t call, but it was a bitch. I will totally be there first thing in the morning. The antibiotics should kick in by then.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bev said. “You need your rest.”

But Bev wasn’t happy about Rachel’s defection. She had spent all day trying to resurrect the Target presentation, printing sketches off the design database and mocking up miniature boards out of new, compact foam core, using new swatches she pasted up herself, imitating as best she could. But it didn’t look nearly as good.

They could only do their best, but hers might not be good enough.

Once the building had emptied out, she dragged her cat and her laptop and a stack of financial records upstairs with her, jogging up the stairwell so any stragglers didn’t see her get off the elevator on her grandfather’s old floor.

Locked up in her suite, she settled Ball next to her on the sofa, wrapped both of them up in the thick purple fleece she’d lifted from the sample yardage room and lost herself in the last two year’s financial documents she’d printed out from the databases. Back at UCLA, to satisfy her father, she’d taken a series of business classes. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for but kept turning pages, eventually catching on to Richard’s accounting style.

Being in the Fite building after hours, pouring over sell-through numbers and fluctuating profits and enjoying it, Bev decided she wasn’t angry at Hilda anymore. If she hadn’t been so impossible, Bev would be there instead of here—and as crazy as Fite was, with its dysfunction and gossip, its unpredictable schedules and unreliable profitability and temperamental employees, she had to admit that she rather, sort of, kind of, totally loved it.