“It’s a pact you make with yourself. To be a complete, healthy human being. Basic maintenance, like brushing your teeth.”
“No, it’s a chore to look good to other people. If you’re not into it—and I will never, ever be into it—you do it for the status. People don’t talk about brushing their teeth like, ‘Oh, sorry I’m late. I was brushing my teeth. I’ve been brushing my teeth so much lately and it’s really wearing me out. I’ve been working with a dentist on how to brush my teeth more effectively.’ And then their friends jump in, ‘Oh, I can totally tell. They’re so white! so strong!’, and, ‘who’s your dentist?’”
He stared at her. Had Ed known this about her when he put her in the will? “You have just inherited a fitnesswear company.”
“No shit. Thank God it’s clothes, because if this was like a gym or something, I might be in trouble.”
Momentarily speechless, Liam led her into a carpeted hallway away from the sounds of the sewing machines. Maybe her aversion to exercise would make it easier to keep her out of the way, which was a good thing.
He lifted the bolt of bad goods in his arms and strode past a short, fuzzy cubicle wall with a strip of two-inch wide gray facing material pinned across the entrance, like the yellow tape of a crime scene warning away intruders. Rachel resented anyone who had a real office.
“You have to get it lower,” Rachel said into the phone. She wore a fitted white t-shirt, black slacks, and silver ballet flats—her typical uniform. Practical, like he was; Liam wished the other assistants would follow her example. “They’re narrow goods. There’s no way we can retail over thirty.”
“Rachel.” Liam shoved the fabric under the tape across the entrance. “Shirley says this stuff is crap. Keeps getting holes.”
Rachel swung around in her chair, her phone to her ear under the angled bob of her reddish-brown hair. She gave Liam an unimpressed eyebrow lift, took the fabric without moving the phone away from her shoulder, and slid her gaze over to Bev. Surprise flickered in her bright blue eyes, then was gone; she threw the fabric down to the ground and swung back to her computer.
Liam gripped Bev’s elbow and guided her down another hallway to the stairwell. “I would introduce you, but she’s obviously busy.” She’d have plenty of opportunities to meet Rachel later, like it or not. He grinned to himself in anticipation.
Bev looked around with a smile on her face, immune to the lip-curling looks of merchandising assistants around the walls of their cubicles, the way they stared at the car wreck of her black clogs and uneven black ponytail. “It’s cool. I didn’t realize the desk people would be right next to all the action.”
When he got her into the stairway Liam stopped walking, eager to relieve her of any glamorous fantasy as soon as possible. “The desk people hate all the action. It’s noisy and full of fumes and they get constantly interrupted.”
“But it’s exciting.” She rubbed her hands together. “People are making things.”
“Making each other insane, usually.”
“You’re just burned-out. When’s the last time you had a vacation?”
“Me, burned-out.” He laughed and shook his head. “Since your aunt quit, I’m the most senior non-exempt or non-union employee in the building. I do not burn out.”
“Having been here for too long is evidence for my case, not against.”
He leaned back on the stair railing and giving her a pointed look. “Careful. You just might convince me to take a really long sabbatical. Now, when you need me the most.”
“Maybe not right now, but as soon as I can learn my way around.” She smiled at him, eyes wide and innocent, adding, “Or once I can hire somebody to back you up.”
“Like a replacement?”
“More of an understudy.” She crossed her arms and studied him down to his feet and back up, a slow, pointed look that made him uncomfortably aware of how her pose propped up her deep cleavage. “You look healthy, but who knows—you might get hit by a bus.”
Surprised, he pulled his gaze back up to her face. A strikingly familiar, hard, blue-eyed beauty stared back at him. But instead of the disgust her aunt’s face usually inspired, he found himself uncomfortably turned on.
The preschool teacher had an edge.
“You aren’t as nice as you pretend.” His low voice reverberated against the concrete walls.
She stopped smirking and frowned. “Of course I’m nice. Too nice, everyone says.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Just because I pick on people my own size—”
He pushed up to his full height. She was tall, but hardly as tall as him. “I think you’re just as mean as anybody. Maybe more. Just spend a lot more effort hiding it.”
For some reason he didn’t understand, she flushed dark pink and started blinking her eyes. Another nerve.
“I am not mean,” she said.
“And you’re hardly Switzerland,” he said. “’Doesn’t like to fight’, my ass. You just smile a lot and hope nobody notices you’re telling them the exact opposite of what they want to hear.”
She looked at the floor. The corner of her mouth curled up. “Child Development 101.”
“Yes, well, I’m not five, so cut it out.”
Her smile fell and she stared at him. He became aware of how dark the stairwell was. The only sound was the distant staccato of machinery. And then he smelled her lemon soap again, or whatever the hell she was bathing in.
She frowned. “Smiling is a good thing. You should try it.” She lifted a finger and wagged it at him. “One of my reasons for coming here at all was to help improve the morale. There are too many miserable people. I don’t care what you or my—what other people say, that’s not good for business. Even my aunt admitted that morale was low.”
“Bragged, more like.” He wondered about Bev, the limits of her niceness or her ability to lie to herself.
Bev gestured down the stairs. “Think we could keep moving, or do you need more rest?”
He took a step down. “I needed a minute to reflect upon the discovery that you and your aunt share more than just your looks.”
She snorted.
“Your grandfather’s floor is the next one. One half of it is storage, though.” He pulled open the fire door—marked AUTHORIZED VISITORS ONLY—and let her walk ahead of him. A long, well-lit hallway with wood floors and buff-colored walls stretched in either direction. Ed’s office was off to the right, through a frosted glass door with CAPTAIN printed on it with gilt block lettering.
“Captain?”
“He thought of Fite as a ship,” Liam said.
“Not very democratic, ships.”
“No.”
She walked towards the glass door. “Don’t tell me there were floggings.”
He stopped and gave her a hard look. “Listen, Bev. You can change a lot of things, but if you get rid of the flogging this place is going to fall apart.”
She came to a halt and stared at him. Then whacked him hard on the arm. “I had to get the comedian.”
He rubbed his stinging arm. “So much for not flogging.”
“Executives deserve it. I just wish the rest of the company could have seen it. Good for morale.” She walked over to the glass door and tried the handle, but Liam had to pull out his keys to let them in.
“At least these still work,” he said under his breath. He had to get her tucked away where she wouldn’t cause any trouble. My God, he’d almost been flirting with her.
More like a frat house lounge than an office, Ed Roche’s private suite stretched along a wall of windows overlooking SOMA San Francisco. Gym equipment scattered around islands of modular furniture like lily pads: an elliptical trainer, a treadmill, a stationary bike, other bulky machines with pulleys and straps. Free weights stacked up with bars in racks along one wall, reflected in the wall-to-ceiling mirrors behind them. A jukebox huddled in the corner, powered-up and glowing.
“Lord,” Bev said, squinting. “Is that an ice hockey
table over there?”
“Vintage.”
“It’s very male, isn’t it?”
Liam sighed in satisfaction. “It’s awesome.”
“Do people hang out in here?”
“Ellen and me and—are probably the only ones in the building today who’ve ever stepped foot in here.” He’d almost said ‘and Rachel’ but that wasn’t for him to say. All kinds of rumors floated around, most false.
“I’m sure they’re grateful,” she said. “I was thinking he made everyone exercise or something. As a condition of employment.”
“They’d be lucky to be able to. Gyms are expensive.”
She walked around the TV throne to a kitchen alcove. New stainless steel appliances, marble countertops. She went through a sliding door to Ed’s bathroom and came out shaking her head.
“He could have lived in here.”
With a grief he didn’t try to hide, Liam said, “I think he did.”
“What about the house in Oakland?”
Liam crossed his arms over his chest, disapproving of the family that left an old, lonely man to fend for himself. “Usually empty.”
“I barely knew him, you know.”
Liam shrugged.
“What about Ellen?”
“Are you kidding?”
“But she loved him. Just not the rest of us. And she has a son, my cousin. Are you angry at him too, or just the females?”
“I’m not angry.”
She gave him an annoyingly knowing look. “Sure you’re not.”
“Your grandfather was a great guy. Flawed, but who isn’t? When I needed him, he was there, and I'm not the type to forget it. That’s all I’m going to say.” He pointed towards a side door. “His office space is back there. You can check it out after I show you Engineering. Purchasing is on second. HR and Finance are on first, back near Richard. Or rather, where Richard was. Then I have to get back to work.”
“Did Ellen really fire Richard because of me?”
He began walking back to the stairs. “Who knows? She probably doesn’t even know herself.”
“But now we need a CFO.”
“Hire him back.”
“I can do that?” She hurried to catch up to him. “Of course I can. Hold on. Quit walking so fast.”
Reluctantly, he slowed.
“My first act as owner is to instruct my executive vice president to rehire the CFO.” She smiled. “It’s your fault he got fired. So fix it.”
He scowled to intimidate her, but she just smiled. “He wasn’t very important. He didn’t have the power his title implied.”
“Not important to you maybe,” she said, “but who knows? Maybe he was the quiet little engine keeping this place running. Dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. Unrecognized hero.”
“He was an accountant. They use numbers, not i’s and t’s.”
Her smile hardened. “Do it.”
After a second he decided this wasn’t a fight he should waste his energies on. “All right.”
She beamed. “Today?”
“Is that your wish, Your Mightiness?”
“Yup.”
“All right. Then we better finish the tour so I can get right on that.”
She nodded. “On with it, then.”
He looked down at her, a sinking feeling in his stomach, and wondered for the first time if Ellen would have been a better alternative to this deceptively cheerful pain in the ass.
No. Bev might have a stubbornly optimistic streak, but it wouldn’t be enough to keep her happy in a business that thrived on misery. He would have to accelerate her inevitable slide into disillusionment and get her back into a preschool where she belonged.
He’d be doing her a favor.
Before the day was out Bev had working keys to her grandfather’s house in Oakland, knew which doors were real and which were water heater closets, and was relieved to be out from under her senior VP’s family roof. Aside from the panoramic view of San Francisco Bay, the house on Alondra Avenue was remarkable only for its total lack of personality. The estate service had packed up most of her grandfather’s things, putting them in storage until Bev’s mother was ready to face it all, which Bev feared would be never.
The next morning, after a choppy night’s sleep in an unfamiliar house, Bev walked through Fite’s front door with a vase in her arms. “I brought in a few flowers to cheer up the place.”
“Oooh, sweet peas!” Carrie popped up. She’d taken out her braids, leaving her hair in a kinky triangle that ended at her shoulders. “I love those!”
“They’d naturalized near my grandfather’s house.” Bev rearranged the long stems in the water. “I’m not sure how long they’ll survive in a vase, but it was worth a shot.”
“I’ll take care of them.” Carrie petted the soft curve of one petal with the tip of her finger. She bent close and sucked in a deep breath. “They smell like candy.”
“More where that came from.” Bev took one last sniff of the sweet flowers before heading for the elevator. Liam had insisted the stairs were the only way to her grandfather’s executive suite, but there had to be some way of getting there via the elevator; the original building designers wouldn’t have skipped a floor.
She stepped inside and frowned at the number plate. Sure enough, one of the middle buttons had been taped over with a square of scrap plastic. Shaking her head, she scraped it off with her fingernail and pushed it, happy to feel the car creak and rise, understanding her. She rolled up the plastic and tape and stuck it in her shoulder bag, feeling powerful as the doors opened into the gleaming wood floored hallway, right in front of the glass door to her grandfather’s lair.
Lair. She needed to think of a name for the place. It was hardly an office, with all those toys in it. She pulled out the set of keys she’d acquired the day before—a fist-sized wad—but the door was already open.
Reclining in a leather recliner with his back to the door, Liam had a phone to his ear, his feet up on the window, and didn’t bother to look over when Bev came in and dropped her bag next to him on the floor.
“Good morning, Liam.”
He didn’t move except to tilt the phone closer to his ear. “That’s shit. We can’t hold production that long.”
Bev waited, knowing it was the first of many attempts to put her in her place. She looked at her watch. Maybe she could go get her coffee, fortify herself, buy some time.
“Tell him to call me before lunch or forget it.” He leaned back and shoved the phone into his pocket. Chewing his lip, he frowned at the city.
“I was just going to get coffee,” Bev said. “Would you like to join me?” Getting out of the building would help diffuse some of his cockiness. Get him off his home turf.
“Venti cappucino. I’ll be in my office.” He got up and walked out the door, Bev staring after him.
Then she laughed. So that’s how he was going to play it.
She would go along for now, see how badly he wanted to fight her. She walked back out of the building to the café on the corner, added a ginger-spiced muffin for him, and returned to his office with a tray balanced in the crook of her arm. The door was closed, so she knocked. Waited, knocked again.
Finally, he shouted, “Come in!” and Bev went in, tray in hand.
There, sitting around the conference table at the far end, a large group of smirking, well-dressed people stared at her, at the dorky owner who had apparently been sent for coffee like an entry-level design flunky.
Only one person didn’t look over. Liam, at the head of the table, was absorbed with an orange track jacket he was holding at arm’s length.
Feeling her face get warm, Bev gripped the tray in her hands and made herself walk across the floor to him. She hadn’t met most of these people yet, these cool-looking young women with perfect makeup and exposed, toned upper arms. Some of them looked away, lips pressed together, while others glued their eyes on Liam to see what he would do next. From the tension in the air, Bev figu
red they all knew who she was.
With each long, awkward step across the room, Bev tried to remember the details of all the mean-girl teen movies she’d seen over the years to decide her best next move. The hostility came in waves off one woman she’d met on the tour—Rachel, with the gray tape across her cubicle opening—and worse, shimmering with her enjoyment of Bev’s situation. Two women at the opposite end gaped at her feet like they’d never seen Danskos before.
One woman began to laugh, barely trying to hide it. The sound of her amusement crawled up Bev’s spine like a sleek, poisonous spider.
Bev wondered what Liam was planning next: the coffee wasn’t right, artificial sweeteners were metabolically damaging, the muffin wasn’t low-carb, there wasn’t an available seat so could you please go get us a few more chairs?
She stopped walking, balanced the tray in one arm, and pulled out her cell phone with a shaking hand. She pretended to study it, pushed a button, then looked up. “Excuse me, everyone, but I’ll have to delay our introduction a little longer,” she said, forced a smile. “Liam, you can catch up with me later.” Then she turned around on her heel and marched out of the room, still carrying the coffee in one hand and pretending to answer the phone in the other.
Instead of the elevator she hurried into the stairwell and ran up the stairs, the cardboard tray listing to one side, and reached her executive suite winded and shaking.
Maybe clogs weren’t going to cut it in this business. She looked down. She was in another black suit, which that morning had felt like firm authority but now felt like suburban dentist. She went over to her desk and set down the tray, picked up her coffee, and gulped it down hot. She would not fight Liam head-on. She would not. There were better ways—quieter, gentler ways—of—of—
Of what? What was she doing?
She sat down. She was taking over the company. Not just playing around, she really wanted to do it. She would do it.
She reached over, picked up Liam’s cappuccino, and sucked that one down too.
Now she could think. With her veins pumping caffeine and her nerves straining like rubber bands, Bev paced the office and worked through her options. First, she would not fire anyone. Secretly she thought that was why her grandfather had chosen her, because she would find a way for everyone to get along. Second, she would learn everything about everybody in the company and choose one of them as her right-hand woman. Or man, though she hadn’t seen many of those. Which brought her to her third point: she would stop thinking about Liam.
Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy) Page 10