Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(91)

Or could have. She missed Liam. Fite wasn’t the same without him.

I could have loved him.

She was an idiot. She already loved him. He’d wanted her and she’d chosen Fite and now she’d have neither.

Ball rose up in a stretch and padded up into her lap, a gesture of affection that had Bev fighting tears.

You’re just tired. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. Exhausted and lonely, of course she would start doubting herself, getting emotional, wanting the impossible.

She would never, ever let Liam have the chance to come and work at Fite again because he had given up and run.

Maybe you’ll apply for a job when I’m gone, my ass, she thought, falling asleep where she lay with Ball in her arms, purple fleece between them and the cold night.

Just as the sun was coming up through the haze of fog Wednesday morning, her cell phone chirped and vibrated under the couch cushion, waking her from a fitful dream about dancing clothes—like Fantasia with supermodels. Ball meowed and resettled herself facing the other direction, tail under Bev’s nose.

Bev wriggled to a sitting position, unearthed her phone, squinted at the unfamiliar area code before answering with a yawn, “This is Bev.”

“Oh, shoot—I woke you,” a woman said. “I swore I’d never do that when I moved back east, but I didn’t get a chance to call you yesterday and didn’t want to put it off any longer.”

Something about the woman’s voice cut through Bev’s sleep-dulled brain. She sat up straighter. “Who is this?”

The woman sighed. “I’m Kimberly Jaeger, from Target. I’m afraid I have to cancel the little meeting Liam may have mentioned.”

Bev’s throat went dry. “What?”

“It was never an official thing anyway, but as a courtesy I wanted to inform you and your staff of the changes needed due to the circumstances. I’m sure you understand.”

“The circumstances—”

“With Liam no longer an employee.”

“But—the designs are the same—you have to—”

“It would be a waste of our mutual resources,” Kimberly said.

“Hey, don’t worry about my end. They’re already wasted. Might as well—”

“No. But I hope we get the chance to meet some day.” She sounded like she meant it. “Best of luck to you.”

“Just a few minutes—”

The phone clicked, decapitating her hope.

Her hand sunk down to her lap, thumb over the power button on her phone. She wasn’t sleepy anymore.

Could Liam have called his old girlfriend out of spite—

No, she couldn’t believe he would do that. Not without telling Bev first, to rub her nose in it and teach her a lesson.

No, not even then.

Ball was still sleeping on the edge of the sofa. Bev ran her hand down her back, savoring her warmth, grateful she wasn’t entirely alone. “Go ahead and sleep in, lazy butt.” Bev tucked the fleece sample yardage around her. “I’ve got to take a shower and have a nervous breakdown.”

She went out for a bagel before facing the tragedy in her office. She didn’t know what was worse—that she’d recreated the best designs and somehow managed to display them on foam core in a semi-professional way and it was all for nothing, or that she was relieved she didn’t have to show her efforts to anyone else. For all her work and pride at how far she had come, it probably wasn’t good enough to land a big deal.

And now she didn’t have to tell Rachel that the original presentation was sabotaged. She’d just hide it all away in a closet and tell her the meeting was canceled, and they’d find another source of capital—from somewhere—until the standard accounts signed their orders and money was flowing again.

Everything will be fine.

After leaving Rachel a message on her voice mail, she made her way across town to her car in the discount lot and drove west until Geary Street ended at the Pacific and the sky was a blinding white panorama of fog.

Parked in front of the Cliff House, squinting at the sea lions and the gulls squatting on the rocks, Bev sucked in an enormous breath and dialed her father’s number.

“I was wondering if you’d call,” he said.

“Hi, Dad. How are you?”

“Save your breath. What do you need?”

That got her. She pushed open the car door and stepped outside into the cold, gasping as the hard wind blew her hair sideways across her face. “A little emotional support, first of all. Is that too much to ask?”

“I hear your mother’s up there. Pushed all your buttons again, didn’t she?”

She squeezed the phone in her hand, tempted to throw it over the concrete retaining wall to the rocky shore below. “I need to ask you a favor.”

He chuckled. “Here we go. Lay it on me, sweetheart.”

“Fite is having a short-term cash-flow problem—”

“Oh, Bev.”

“Don’t say it!” She picked up a pebble from the wall along the sidewalk and hurled it as hard as she could into the ocean. It was too small to see where it landed, if it even reached the water. “I’m hanging by a thread here. I’m so close. The last thing I need is another person who claims to love me putting me down and doubting my abilities.”