Love Handles (19 page)

Bev frowned at Liam. “I am?”

Liam gave her a level look. “You needed another day, Bev. To get ready.” To get dressed, at least. Did she think wearing Fite would win them over? And he wasn’t finished designing the boards for her to present.

His telepathy failed him. “No, I don’t,” she said, lifting her eyebrows at Darrin. “Am I the only reason for the delay?”

“So far as I know,” Darrin said.

“And everyone else is ready?” she asked.

“Of course. My team worked through the weekend.”

Liam wanted to smack him. And Bev was buying it, giving Darrin those big sympathetic eyes of hers.

“Then we have to have it today.” She raised her eyebrows at Liam. “At ten, like you said last week.”

“Darrin was just telling me how tired he is. One more day will—”

“I’m fine,” Darrin said slowly, looking at Liam then back at Bev, measuring and calculating, the transparent weasel. “Whatever works for Bev works for me.”

Bev gave him two thumbs up. “Great! See you then.” And disappeared.

Liam picked at a thread on his sleeve, his remorse thickening. He had set her up. This was his idea. But that was last week, before—

Before. He ran his finger down the edge of his desk, remembering the feel of her impossibly soft skin under his palms. Whatever happened now was all his doing, and he’d have to live with it.

Smirking, Darrin got to his feet. “This should be good. I’ll go alert the troops.” He walked out of the office, obviously gleeful at having a new power structure to unbalance.

Liam felt queasy. He ran his hand down over his chest and rubbed his stomach, wondering if people still got ulcers from stress. Last week he hadn’t known Bev was under attack from other forces. Last week he’d been convinced he was doing her a favor in the longterm by making her life at Fite so unpleasant she would go away.

Last week he hadn’t liked her so much.

All Sunday he’d tried to call her but she didn’t answer, and he didn’t want to risk seeing her in person away from the office again. He got up and began clearing off his conference table for the meeting, a job he usually left to one of the assistants, then picked up his ball and began adding more dents to the walls. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

By nine fifty-five he sat at the head of his conference table chewing on his thumbnail. The design team was frantic, chatty, picking on each other and gluing last-minute bodies on the boards.

Bev didn’t know what she was getting into. She didn’t know what they were like. Two designers, each of their assistants, the merchandising coordinator, a couple of sales guys, himself—all gathered around the table to tear off heads and shit down necks.

Darrin sat at the opposite end of the table. “Let's get as much done today as we can. Even with the heiress.”

The table was quiet until an assistant who ran with Liam on occasion during lunch, spoke up in the timid-but-eager voice of an underling looking for points. “I heard she lives in L.A.”

“Has some kind of problem,” another designer muttered. “Drugs or something.”

“Meth, I think,” somebody else said.

Liam sat up straight. “That is not true.”

“Explains the hygiene. And convenient, too—God knows we never sleep around here,” Darrin said, not looking at him. The group around the table laughed. “Do you have my Barney's samples, Rachel?”

“Here.” Rachel lifted up a shopping bag. “But I don't think it 's meth. Nothing like that.”

Liam nodded, relieved somebody in the building had some morals. Flabby though they were. “You shouldn't listen to Ellen,” he said. “You know how she is.”

“Oh, I didn't hear it from Ellen,” Rachel said. “I'm pretty sure this is true. From somebody who would know.”

“Heard what?” the other designer asked.

“How would anybody here know anything about her?” Liam asked, knowing he should keep himself out of it. He couldn’t afford to look chummy with her; that was the point. She had to be the outsider. The satellite. The temp.

“Ellen mentioned she had problems,” Darrin said. “So, Liam. Do an intervention yet?” and the gang laughed.

Liam gave him his coldest stare and everyone around the table stopped laughing, even Darrin. Two years ago, at the request of a young assistant's family, he had participated in an intervention. He'd been discreet, but word got around when she quit to go into rehab. “She's in no need of one. Whatever you've heard, it’s crap. Ellen’s crap.”

Darrin regarded him, eyebrow raised. “Don’t get excited. Some of the old-timers here could have heard about—Bev—over the years.”

Liam dropped his voice to cold steel. “Her name is Beverly Lewis, she's in Ed’s old office, and she is the new owner of this company. I suggest you all shut the hell up.”

The room fell silent as the group stared at him over the table. Then, one by one, their heads dipped to avoid his glare and he was staring at the tops of a dozen expensive haircuts.

Just as Liam drew a breath to lecture them to behave during the meeting—to warn them that anyone who laughed or rolled their eyes would be processing the FedEx packages for a year—he heard the creak of the door swinging open.

“Hello?” said a cheerful voice behind him. “I'm Beverly Lewis. Mind if I come in?”

Liam considered bolting out to pull the fire alarm. He wanted her to be subtly discredited—not die a painful death while he watched.

Darrin struck first. With Bev's question hanging in the air, he turned his back to her and reached inside the Barney's shopping bag on the table. “Looks like she'll need your chair, Rachel,” he said. “And since you'll be up you might as well get our visitor something to drink.”

Snake
, Liam thought. Darrin had managed to insult Bev and make Rachel resentful, with Bev to blame, at the same time. “Divide and conquer” was such an effective strategy at Fite it should have been screen-printed on their t-shirts.

Liam stepped aside and pulled out his chair. “She can have mine,” he said, unavoidably triggering suspicions in the room that he’d already slept with the new owner. Instead of only trying to. “And I'll do a coffee run.”

Rachel paused, mid-rise, giving Darrin a questioning look. Liam could see Darrin was about to override him and insist that Rachel get up when Bev came the rest of the way into the room and put her hand on Rachel's shoulder. “I don't need a chair.” She smiled at everyone. “I just wanted to introduce myself. I brought treats.” She looked over her shoulder to the door, where George—George, the Troll of the Back Door—was hovering with a wide, open box in his arms.

“On the table, Ms. Bev?” George asked, staggering over.

“If that's all right with you guys,” she said to the surprised, speechless group. Unlike an hour ago, she was wearing a fitted pink sweater with dark designer jeans and heels, and looked adorably harmless and perfect and put-together. She caught Liam staring at her, and her smile faltered. “How about over here?” she said to George, gesturing to an uncluttered patch on the table.

George, who seemed to have strawberry jelly on his nose, nodded gratefully and dropped the box on the table. He gave Bev a goofy grin.

“Thanks so much, George. You’re an angel.”

“My pleasure, Ms. Bev,” he said, and Liam felt light-headed. What the hell had she done to George?

Then people began to rise, their bottoms coming out of their chairs to peer inside whatever it was. One by one they broke into smiles.

“I'm sure this is all wrong for a fitness company,” Bev said, “and I probably made too many. But what the hell.”

Liam could smell the unmistakable aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from his side of the table, and saliva pooled in his mouth. One of the designers reached inside the box and froze, frowning. “Are they . . . warm?”

Bev nodded. “The third floor has an oven.”

Every pair of eyes around the table grew wide. “You made them?” Rachel asked, now fully on her feet with her face in the box. “Oh, my God. Snickerdoodles.”

“Hardly an ideal breakfast,” Liam said, but nobody seemed to hear him. They were all on their feet reaching into the box and pulling out cookies and muffins, tubs of cream cheese and jam, plates, napkins, cups, Odwalla juice (several varieties), and miscellaneous paper bags.

An assistant held up a bag. “What are the marshmallows for?”

“There's hot chocolate in the thermos,” Bev said.

“No donuts?” Liam asked.

“In the white box,” she said. “I didn't make those. They're from the place up the street.”

“You got us Gerard's?” Darrin elbowed Rachel out of his way. “Oh, I love you. Their almond croissants are fatal.”

“Which is not a good thing.” Liam slumped back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Have anything with a lower sugar-to-nutrient level?”

Bev gave him a hard sideways look that said
please
, and he pressed his lips together in a hard line. Her dark hair was pulled back into a headband, exposing the shell curve of her ear and her creamy, soft neck, a hint of collarbone, the hollow of her cleavage under the vee of the sweater. Under his gaze, her face flushed as pink as the knit, and she looked away.

“Nice to see you again, Darrin,” Bev said. Darrin was dressed in black cashmere and jeans that, combined with his black hair and pale skin, made him look like a gay, trendy vampire. Bev held out her hand. “I was just hearing about what amazing things you've done with the Kohl's buyer.”

Clutching his almond croissant and the compliment, Darrin took her hand and smiled with genuine pleasure. “You heard about that?”

“Obviously I'm just a newbie,” she said, “but anybody can see you've made the company a lot of money. We'll have to be very careful you don't get stolen away from us.” To that last comment she added a raised eyebrow that froze Darrin mid-bite. As he sank into his chair, his eyes had the fixed, calculating gaze of a man pondering a larger apartment.

Next Bev turned to Jennifer. “I know that—since Ellen left—you’re the designer for all of women’s now. But everyone told me how, back when you were just out of school, you designed the top-selling Fite Foundations bra.” She smiled. “Just this week I met a woman down the street who wanted me to thank you personally. She said it was obvious a woman was in charge of the Fite bras. She won't wear anything else, not even to work. I swear, she was about to hug me when I told her I was connected to the company.”

Jennifer glowed. “It’s the cups. No loaf.”

“Really, she was so grateful for what you make here. I can’t wait to watch you work.” Bev touched her on the shoulder. “Make sure you get one of the treats before they're all gone.”

Liam watched in awe as Jennifer, who in the eight years he'd known her had not once eaten anything other than raw vegetables, organic home-made yogurt, and refrigerated probiotic supplements, reached forward and withdrew a chocolate-glazed donut the size of her face. Not that she ate it, but she set it close to her then licked her fingers.

Bev was already moving on to her next victim, and her next. Liam watched her with growing admiration, amusement, and alarm. She was good. Very, very good. Somehow she knew everyone by name and immediately pinpointed the person’s most valuable contribution to the company. She congratulated Wendi on her recent move to Men’s as though it had been a promotion. She even came up with a compliment for Grace, an associate merchandiser in men's who he could vow had cost the company far more than she’d contributed, but had once stopped fifty dozen units of vertically-striped Fite the Man Tees from being sewn up horizontally, a fact that Bev pointed out as she offered Grace a second chocolate chip cookie.

“It was nothing.” Grace cupped her hands to accept and cherish Bev's offering. “I just noticed the cut sheet was stapled sideways.”

“But that's exactly the kind of unsung heroics the world needs,” Bev said, as though a few hundred vertically-striped t-shirts would have led to global warming, political instability, and low test scores among inner-city youth.

Watch out for Rachel
, Liam thought. Rachel had the brains to appear friendly, but after years of being passed over for promotions while doing all the work, she'd embraced evil as an inevitable tool to survival. It would take more than cookies and milk to warm up her charred soul.

“You work with all the designers?” Bev held on to Rachel's hand longer than she should have. Rachel liked her personal space and drew back as far as her arm would reach. “Is it true you've worked at Fite for over ten years?”

Liam cringed. The last thing Bev should do is remind Rachel she hadn't been promoted past Associate in all those years. He watched Rachel's smile tighten and her arm twitch as she tried to pull away.

“That's true,” Rachel said.

Bev let her go and, unlike with the others, didn't gush with praise and promises. Instead, she just nodded and stepped away. “Come see me later today if you get a chance,” she said. “I'm in my grandfather's old suite.”

Rachel sat down, put the cookie she was holding down onto a napkin and stared at it. “Sure.”

By the time Bev had worked her way around the rest of the table, half the box was empty, and the group was laughing and chatting together. Bev reached over to grab an orange juice for herself and saluted the table with the bottle. “Sorry again for the interruption, everyone.” She walked towards the door. “Just thought I'd better say hi before you got down to business. I know how hard we push everyone, and maybe we don’t remember to say it. So for what it's worth, from your new owner, such as I am, thanks.” Her face split into a warm, genuine smile that made Liam’s heart skip a beat. Then she walked out.

The people around the table stared at each other silently for ten seconds before bursting out in incredulous laughter.

Everyone but Rachel. Licking chocolate off her finger, she met Liam’s gaze and frowned. “I could almost like her.”

I know what you mean,
he thought.

Chapter 12

B
ev closed the door to her office and pressed her back against it. She'd been up since four that morning, cracking eggs and sifting flour, jumping to the bing of the egg timer as each batch came out of the kitchenette oven, then rushing out to collect the rest from local cafés and bakeries.