“That’s what I thought,” Ellen said.
“You didn’t tell me,” Gail said.
“You hated my guts.”
Gail looked at her. “You hated mine.”
Ellen raised an eyebrow. “Only because you left. I was fifteen, Gail. You left.”
“Dad kicked me out.”
“You could have written.”
Gail laughed unsteadily. “I could have written,” she said. “You have no idea what I was going through.”
“When you left,” Ellen said, “so did Dad. I didn’t see him for six months.”
“But—where—who stayed with you?”
Ellen’s face was cold. “Mom was dead. You ran away. Dad—” She cleared her throat. “I finally found him here. I don’t know what he did at first, before the kitchen and bathroom were installed, but when I tracked him down he seemed pretty damn happy. Had everything he needed.” She turned around, her back to the room.
Gail was the first to speak. “So you were alone?” She went over to her sister. “But you were—didn’t anyone—”
Ellen shrugged. “At first I had trouble with things like groceries and permission slips and bills, but Dad left the checkbook and kept the account loaded. Once I got good at forging his signature, I was fine. I’m tough. I survived.”
“Oh, Ellen.” Gail’s voice shook. She hesitated then put her hand on Ellen’s shoulder.
“He never did come back,” Ellen said. “And neither did you.”
Gail burst into tears.
Bev felt Liam moving closer to her, and looked at him to see the concern in his eyes. She realized her cheeks were wet.
“Damn,” Kate said, distracted by the scene.
“Get off of me.” Rachel rolled out of range, kicked her, and staggered to her feet. Eyes wild, she looked at Bev. “Tell her to leave me alone.”
Bev was still staring at Ellen’s back. “Tell her yourself.”
Rachel, shaking, held her finger up, pointing at each of them in the room in rotation like the spinner in Chutes’n’Ladders. “All of you, do you hear that? Leave me alone!”
“That will be easier when you actually leave,” Bev said. “And when you stop driving over to Oakland to break things.”
“You will never have his money,” Rachel said. “Not one of you.”
Ellen turned around. “What money?” Her cheeks were splotchy.
“You thought I wanted to be part of the family,” Rachel spat out. “As if that was some kind of fucking prize.”
Ellen’s voice dropped. “What money?”
Bev leaned over to pick up the framed photograph and got to her feet. “She got some money.”
“What money?” Gail stood shoulder to shoulder with Ellen.
“He told me he gave it to charity. Putting a down payment on his immortal soul,” Ellen said. “You didn’t let on a thing.”
“He found out he was dying before Christmas. He wanted to look out for me,” Rachel said.
“And so he did.” Bev tilted the picture up, careful not to tip out the broken glass, and bent the back out to release the photo, which she carried over to Rachel. “It’s time for you to go,” she said, taking Rachel’s arm tightly in her hand.
“But who is she?” Gail asked. “Is she our sister?”
After a moment Ellen laughed. Her voice surprisingly gentle, she said, “I’ll explain everything later.”
Bev forced Rachel out into the hall, and she went easily, probably because Kate was assuming another fighting position. When they were ten feet out of the room in the dim corridor and alone, Bev said, “One year from now, you are welcome to come back here.” She loosened her grip on Rachel’s arm. “We’ll go out for coffee. We’ll talk. I won’t give you a job, but I promise to listen.”
“Sure you’ll be here? Any of you?” Rachel pulled her arm free and rubbed it. “You think it’ll be easy to keep this place running without me? Without my money?”
“Without you breaking windows and ripping up samples?”
She pinched her lips together, looked away. “I wanted to believe you were for real. I did, for a while.”
“I am real.”
“You started screwing Liam. And then, the fit modeling. I really, really hate fit modeling.”
“Noted.” Bev shoved the picture at her. “You’ll never do it again.”
“Nothing works here without me making it work.”
Bev nodded towards the exit behind her. “Maybe nothing will break, either.” She turned and saw Liam watching the exchange from the conference room doorway, back lit and huge and unreadable.
Did he come back for Fite, or for her?
Rachel was still standing there in the semi-darkness. “I hated—what I did to the Target presentation—that just about killed me.” She burst out with a noise that was a laugh or a sob. “All that work. It was horrible.”
“You need a break, Rachel. Book a trip somewhere, bring a friend. Get away from this place for long enough to make a difference.” Bev sighed. “And if anything weird happens around here or at the Oakland house, to Liam or to anyone in my—our—family, I’m calling up your mother in Borrego Springs and telling her everything. She worked here for twenty years, right? I don’t think she’d like to know what you’ve been up to.”
Rachel gasped. “How—”
“Do you understand?”
The hallway went quiet. Bev could see the conference room light reflected in Rachel’s eyes.
“Yes,” Rachel said.
Bev said, “See you when you get back.”
Chapter 25
Standing in the hallway, watching Bev stride back towards the conference room, Liam longed to haul her up into his arms.
Not yet. She still had the rest of her family to deal with.
Eyes locked with his, she stopped a few feet in front of him. The shadowy hallway swallowed up her dark hair, emphasizing her pale face like an actor on stage. He stared back at her.
“Nicely done,” he said finally, smiling.
She gave him a warm, tentative smile that made his throat ache. Then she shrugged a shoulder, laughing off his compliment. “Thanks. It got a little messy.”
“You were great.”
She stared at him, glanced past him into the conference room. “Will you wait for me?”
He reached out and caressed her hair, watching her lips part while he stroked the cool silk. “That’s what I’m doing,” he said softly.
She leaned into him, eyes heavy with desire.
He dropped her hair and cleared his throat. “Go on. Get rid of them. I’ll be right here.” He strode off towards the lobby before he could succumb to temptation and drag her into a quiet corner.
First he wanted to have a few words with Rachel. She was just walking past Carrie’s desk, heading for the street. “Hold up!”
Rachel shot him a look and kept going.
Liam jogged over and stood in front of the front door, more pissed than ever. “You’re going to listen to me.”
“Get out of my way.”
“You’re in no position to demand anything.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Before, I wasn’t. I am now. What are you going to do—fire me?”
“Here’s the deal. You are never coming back into this building.”
“Bev—my niece—thinks differently.”
“Let her. It helps her sleep at night.” He leaned closer. “My needs are different. My needs are to issue a restraining order if I ever see you here again, because as a manager here, I have a responsibility to act on the sixteen documented cases of co-workers complaining about your erratic and violent behavior.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You do not.”
“I accept the inevitability of you popping up every once in a while over the years in Bev’s family’s life,” he said. “Just so you understand, I’ll be there watching, and these touching reunions will never happen anywhere near Fite. Or anywhere we live.”
She choked out a laugh. �
�We?”
“Me and Bev.”
“You cocky bastard,” Rachel said. “She’ll never forgive you for taking off when she was in trouble. Not that she really needed you—she got a teenage slut to fix everything. She won’t even give you your job back.”
He smiled and pushed the door open for her. “Remember what I said.”
“Kiss my ass.” She walked out with the large photo flapping at her side.
We’ll spend the holidays with my family. He locked the door and watched her disappear down the sidewalk.
“Let her have the house, Mom,” Bev was saying when he got back to the conference room. “All she really wants is to have Johnny live nearby, and her future grandbaby, right, Aunt Ellen? And if I let you get involved with Fite—”
“Not me,” Gail said. “Kate.”
“If I let Kate get involved with Fite—”
Gail leaned forward. “Not just involved. A real career.”
“—then you’d be willing to give the house to Johnny?”
Kate threw the t-shirt she was holding onto a chair. “This people stuff isn’t my thing. It would have to be something where I could really get creative.”
Bev shot her an icy look that reminded Liam of her aunt. Both of them. “Help me out here, sis. We can work out your job description later.”
Kate shook her head. “No way. I’m too young to sell out. I need to know I’m signing on to something I can believe in.”
“How about you, Liam?” Ellen asked. “Are you too young to sell out?”
Liam met her gaze. Looked over at Bev, who frowned.
“Leave him out of this,” Bev said.
Ellen put her hand over her heart. “Goodness. How romantic.”
He didn’t care what Ellen thought. It was the wariness in Bev’s eyes that bothered him. “Bev and I need to talk. In private.”
“There’s no reason for you to be here,” Bev said to him. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than worry about me and my family.”
“No, I don’t.”
Distress flickered across her face. “Please. Just go. You wanted out of here, go ahead.”
“I made a mistake.” He caught Ellen’s eye. “And no, I’m not feeling too young.”
“Now you want to sell out?” Bev asked. “Is that what Ellen meant? You’re willing to do anything to have Fite back?”
She wanted to force this here, in front of everyone? Fine. “Quite the opposite.” He walked over to her. “I’m willing to do anything to get you back.”
He saw the shock in her face, the fear, and wished he could relish it after the weeks of his own suffering, but all it did was stab him with more pain. He lifted his hand to her cheek. “I was wrong to leave. I didn’t give you a chance.”
She swallowed. “To call Annabelle?”
“To love me,” he said. “But now I’ve decided I can do all the loving for a while. Until you catch up.”
Bev’s eyes, wide and bright, shifted to turquoise. “Oh,” she whispered. She gazed at him with such open disbelief, such hope, he was able to tamp down his own panic.
“I wish I could say I’d work here without any pressure, that just being around you would be enough,” he said, “but I’d be lying. I’d never be satisfied. I wasn’t before, when it was just your body I wanted. Now—forget it.”
She rested her cheek in his palm. “What parts do you want now?”
He gave her a lopsided grin.
“Don’t believe him,” Ellen said. “It’s just another way of getting on top.”
Bev frowned at her aunt then back at him. A smile crept across her face. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
His body raged with heat. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Would you feel used if I asked you to come back to Fite?”
“Depends how you pay me.”
She slid her hand up his chest. “You won’t sue for sexual harassment?”
“Not if you marry me,” he said, and Gail gasped. But Bev didn’t recoil so he went on. “We can date first if you’d like.”
She flung herself at him so suddenly he fell back against the table. Soft, warm limbs wrapped around him, firm and strong, smelling like her, tasting like her, everything he wanted.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ellen said. “Can’t that wait?”
No. Liam buried his face in Bev’s neck, inhaling her scent, feeling her skin, making her tremble in his arms. “I love you,” he growled.
Her mouth tickled his ear. “I love you too,” she said, and he felt the last of the brick inside him crumble.
Kate kicked a rolling rack with her foot and knocked it into the table. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but the rest of us are still here.”
Liam grabbed the rolling rack, wrenching it away from Kate’s foot, and shoved it across the room. “Nobody’s keeping you.”
“We aren’t leaving until you promise Kate a job,” Gail said.
Kate glared. “I don’t want a job.”
“Apple, meet tree,” Ellen said.
Gail turned on her. “You shut up. No job for Kate, no house for Johnny.”
Ellen shrugged. “So much for family.” She walked to the door.
“No!” Bev cried. “You’ve come so close. You can’t just leave like that after all these years!”
He couldn’t believe what he was about to do, and Ed’s crazed ghost would haunt him in the corridors at night for as long as he lived, but he’d make Kate the CFO if it would get him alone with Bev, warm and naked, right now.
“Two words,” he said loudly, and everyone looked at him. “Fite Dog.”
Kate’s face lit up, but Bev gripped his arm in concern. “You’d do that for her?”
He smiled down at her. “I’d do it for you,” he said, savoring the way she glowed at him.
Kate aimed a finger at him. “You think it would suck, but you’re wrong. It’ll be the biggest money-maker Fite has ever seen.”
“Whatever you say.” He kissed the corner of Bev’s eyebrow, just below a freckle.
Far away he heard Kate say, “You are going to eat your words, buddy. Just you wait.”
“Oh, honey.” Gail scurried over and put an arm around Kate’s waist, bouncing their hips together. “It’s a wonderful idea. If it’s what you want I’ll sacrifice my father’s drafty old mausoleum to a man who can’t even get married without his mommy telling him to do it.”
Ellen got to her feet and held out her hand. “I’ll need the keys.”
Gail looked at Kate under her arm then dragged her over to Bev’s side, pulled her away from Liam and hugged her on the other side. “This is how it should be. Me and my girls.”
Bev hugged her briefly. “Ellen, if you find a way to get along with my mother—and Rachel, actually—not just for a week, but long term, lasting, sincere getting-along, then you can come back to Fite,” she said. “You’d have to put up with me and Liam calling the shots, but Grandfather seemed to like having you around, and this is his company, and if he’d wanted to fire you he would have done it years ago.”
Liam froze. No, not Ellen. After all this. Ellen and Fite Dog?
Ellen was staring at Bev, not moving. “And the house?”
“Yours,” Bev said. “You just have to keep the peace. Each year you two are making progress in your relationship, as determined by me, I’ll—I’ll distribute a share of the profits at Fite.” She glanced at Liam. “Can I do that?”
“How about we pay them all to go away?”
Bev laughed, catching herself just as Ellen was saying, “What if I don’t want to come back to Fite?”
The room fell quiet.
“Don’t you?” Bev asked.
“Not particularly. Not anymore.” She got up and walked over to Gail. “And I don’t need to be paid to talk to my own damn sister.”
The two women stared at each other.
“Oh, Ellen, I am so sorry,” Gail said, and burst into tears.
Face expressionless, Ellen
opened her arms, and the two women embraced.
“This is why I like dogs,” Kate said. “No drama.”
“Really, Kate.” Gail pulled away from Ellen and wiped her eyes. “Let’s leave these two lovebirds.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a keychain. “Here, Ellen. To the house.”
Ellen waved it away. “I can wait. Johnny won’t be out here for months.”
“But you should be able to go in whenever you want,” Gail said. “We are family.”
“Can we go, please? You two had dinner, but I’m starving,” Kate said.
“I’ll need a ride, too,” Ellen said. “Good night, Liam. Bev.”
“Bye.” Liam was staring at the tender inner crease of Bev’s elbows, realizing he’d never kissed them before. She looked up and saw him staring, saw the heat in his face, and turned pink.
“Now, please.” Ellen walked out the door.
Kate followed. “Before they start up again.”
Gail lingered for a moment in the doorway, frowning and wiping her wet cheeks. “Liam,” she said, and he looked up. “Don’t let her sleep here again tonight.”
He met her gaze and nodded while Bev sighed in frustration. “I am right here. Don’t start talking to me through him. I know he’s big and manly and everything—”
“See you later, Liam.” Gail blew him a kiss and left.
Liam ran his hand down his chest to smooth his shirt. “I bet you need a home-cooked meal. I’m making you a home-cooked meal. You never did eat my marinara.”
“That’s a big step.” She pressed her chest up against him, pinning his hand over his heart. “How about sex first?”
His vision went dark. In one swift move he slipped his free hand around the back of her neck and kissed her.
She broke the kiss to nibble on his ear. “Did you know that couch upstairs is a sofa bed?” She arched into him. “Took me a week to figure that out.”
His fingers found the hem of her shirt, slipped underneath, and roamed over her back. “Did you know my condo is five minutes away?”
“What about—” she gasped as he unhooked her bra. “—April?”
He palmed her breasts, his eyes going out of focus. “What’s with you always wanting to invite my sister?” Then he shoved her shirt and bra up to her chin and sucked the tip of her left nipple hard into his mouth.
Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy) Page 30