Love Handles (20 page)

And though crashing the design cabal's meeting was stressful, it was nothing compared to the high anxiety of feeling Liam's hot gaze on her backside as she handed out cookies. What had he thought of her efforts to win people over? Were they laughing at her now, the goofy preschool teacher with the transparent bribes?

Was
he
laughing at her?

She marched over to her desk and sat down behind the stack of HR files she had stolen and been studying all weekend, even with her sister around. Memorizing. With the help of a couple of production patternmakers—a treasure house of gossip—Bev had worked up an unconventional org chart of the people at Fite in an effort to follow the first rule of back to school:
know their names.

Liam’s file sat on top of the others—a thin, old file that had nothing but his tax forms and benefit paperwork, a one-page hand-written note offering him the job years earlier and a newspaper clipping from the
Stanford Daily
heralding his gold medal win. Bev flipped open the file and took out the old newspaper, glancing at the door before she took plenty of time to gaze with admiration at the young Liam posing at the edge of the university pool, shirtless and dripping wet, a grinning, virile, triumphant specimen of masculine perfection.

Somebody tapped on the door. Slapping the file shut, she swept them all into the box under her desk and shoved it out of sight. “Come in!”

The door slid open, revealing Rachel's serious face. “You asked to see me.”

Bev got to her feet and walked towards her, relieved it was only her. She wasn’t quite sure how to face Liam yet. “Great. Let’s talk here.” She gestured to the seating behind the exercise equipment. Rachel, clearly uncomfortable, sat on the couch closest to the door with her back straight.

One thing that had been obvious from looking at the files was that Rachel had been compensated well beyond her pay grade. However, unlike the other assistants, she had no performance reviews to justify it. In fact her file had been as empty as Liam's, except without the newspaper clipping about gold medals. She'd chatted with the patternmakers and assistants and memorized the highlights for her introductions this morning. In the interests of diplomacy she'd omitted the less flattering stories (such as the time Jennifer had apparently dropped a bolt of fuchsia Performance Blend out the fourth-floor window when it bled onto the white support lining during quality testing,) aiming instead to charm the group with compliments and bribes.

But Rachel was a mystery, and Bev had decided to talk to her privately. Universally liked—and pitied—Rachel had a reputation among the support staff as a workhorse, an ally, a cynic, a martyr, and a favorite drinking buddy. So when Bev looked through her file, she was confused to see no record of her climb up the ladder over her years at the company. Just the note of her salary, going up and up and up at six-month intervals.

And after seeing her in the meeting, Bev realized they had met once before, weeks earlier—in the bathroom. It was hard to reconcile the tough woman from that morning with the sobbing creature she’d tried to help on her first visit to Fite, but it was her. She had a low, distinctive voice, the same short manicure.

Bev leaned back in the couch and smiled at her. “Thanks for coming to see me.”

“Did I have a choice?”

“You could have put it off. Said you were busy.”

“Not my style,” Rachel said, holding her eyes.

Bev smiled. “It would be mine.” She looked down at the hands in her lap. She might as well get to the point. “So, Rachel, what was the deal between you and my grandfather?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bev saw Rachel’s face jump with alarm, and the long thigh next to Bev’s on the couch stiffened and pulled away. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve got the files,” Bev said. “You were treated differently. Is there something I should know?”

Rachel drew back until there wasn’t another inch on the couch she could have escaped into. “What are you implying?”

“Rachel. You make more money than your boss. You have four weeks of vacation time—”

“Which I never get to take.”

“—and yet you were never officially promoted. And from what I’ve heard, you should have been years ago. I’d just like to know why.”

“Got some special theory you want to share?”

Bev looked into her intelligent brown eyes and saw the fear hiding there. “I hear he seemed omniscient. Maybe that got harder as he got older. I can imagine how much he would appreciate having an insider—”

Rachel stared at her. “Insider?”

“You know, somebody he could talk to. About what was going on,” Bev said, but saw immediately that was the wrong thing to say by the horrified amusement on Rachel’s face.

“You think I was spying for him.” She laughed bitterly and stood up.

“Wait—I don’t think anything. I’m just asking.”

“Nobody works as hard as I do,” Rachel said. “Ask anyone.”

“I have. That’s why I want to promote you,” Bev patted the seat next to her. “That’s why I need to know if there’s some reason I shouldn’t.”

That stopped her. “You want to promote me?”

“For reasons of my own.”

“You just met me.”

“Exactly,” Bev said. “So, is there a reason you want to keep a job title that’s beneath you?”

Rachel sank back down on the couch. “Not now.”

“Will you tell me why there was before?”

Rachel hesitated. Then she shook her head no.

“Do you think you might tell me, some day?”

Shrugging, Rachel said, “Maybe.”

That was as much as she could expect on the first try. Bev got up and went over to the kitchenette, where plates of extra cookies were piled up from that morning. “Help me eat some of these.” She reached for the coffee pot. “Then we’ll carry the rest down to the lunch room.”

Rachel came over and propped a knee on a stool. “You really baked those yourself.”

“I’m big on bribes.” Bev handed over a snickerdoodle.

Rachel took it. “Me too. It’s the only way I can get my stuff done on time.”

Bev poured her a cup of coffee and placed it in front of her, watching her chew and relax. Bev was just about ready to go in for the kill when—

“Rachel!” Liam stood at the door. “There you are.”

Rachel jumped to her feet and abandoned the cookie. “I better get back to work.”

Liam strode over. “How’re you doing, Rachel?”

“We’re still talking,” Bev said, annoyed that Rachel was edging to the door. “Wait—at least finish your cookie.”

Liam scowled at the counter. “Cookies again? How many of your preschoolers made it to kindergarten? Without diabetes?”

“Liam,” Bev said. “Rachel and I hadn’t finished.”

“She doesn’t have time.” He slid a plate of the cookies out of the way to prop an elbow on the counter. “You don’t realize how this place shuts down without her.”

Bev bit into a cookie. “I was just offering her a promotion.”

“A what?”

“Why is that such a surprise?” Bev asked. “You just told me the place shuts down without her.”

“You just met her,” Liam said. Rachel, who lingered in the doorway, nodded. “This is like what you did in the meeting this morning, isn’t it? Just trying to get people to like you.”

Bev saw Rachel’s annoyance at the subtle insult. “Maybe I should give her your job,” Bev said to him. “You can take over George’s seat at the back door.”

“I’d love it. When do I start?”

Bev turned to Rachel. “The promotion I’m offering might not be what you want.”

“I don’t mind a title change.”

“Nothing like putting ‘Creative Director’ on your email sig,” Liam said.

Rachel grinned. “I do it anyway, with outside vendors and contractors. Nobody would have listened to me otherwise.”

“I was thinking about making a whole new position for you,” Bev said. “I need an assistant—”

Rachel’s smile fell. “Assistant?”

“The way a vice president is an assistant.” Bev paused for that to sink in. “To be more than a figurehead around here I’ll need help. I need someone with your experience, Rachel. And popularity. Not many people around here are as well-respected as you are.”

“They’re just sucking up,” Rachel said. But she was almost smiling.

“Darrin will hate it,” Liam said. “Darrin will hate you.”

“Can you do that?” Rachel asked. “Just hire me away like that?”

Liam’s stare was making Bev uncomfortable. She remembered him sitting on the edge of her bed holding a sweet, frothy drink up to her lips. Staring at her in the dressing room. Sliding her pants down.

“Of course she can,” Liam said expressionlessly. “She’s the owner.”

She swallowed and looked at Rachel. “What can I do to make it up to Darrin after I steal you away?”

“You can’t think that way,” Liam said. “You’re the boss. If you apologize or give in to his demands you’ll lose what little authority you have.”

“You could move him to Women’s.” Rachel came back over to the counter and picked up her unfinished cookie. “Ellen’s couture stuff really bites. I know he hated it, too.”

“Couture?” Bev asked.

“That’s how we got asymmetrical armholes in the spring delivery,” Rachel said.

Bev frowned. “Is there such a thing as couture fitness?”

“Only at Fite,” Liam said. “Making ugly stuff nobody gets is our niche.”

“And my grandfather didn’t object?”

Rachel turned her back to her and began fussing with the plate of cookies, and Bev gave Liam a questioning look. He shrugged. “He would yell and throw things every once in a while—”

“The peekaboo tank,” Rachel said.

“—when things got a little extra creative, but for the most part he left the design decisions up to Ellen. He knew we had to find some way to break out of basics,” he said. “And the overall profits were good.”

“Thanks to Men’s Fite the Man line,” Rachel said. “All Liam’s ideas.”

“Really,” Bev said.

Liam shook his head. “She’s just sucking up. Darrin’s good.”

Interesting. She had no idea Liam was involved that deeply in design. “What was the ‘peekaboo tank’?”

Rachel bit back a smile and looked at Liam, who was staring at Bev with more heat than was comfortable. His gaze flicked down to her chest then back up to her face. “I guess you could call it ‘Jogbra meets Frederick’s of Hollywood,’” he said.

He couldn’t be serious. Bev looked at Rachel. “Just how ‘peekaboo’ are we talking?”

“There were no actual cut-outs,” Liam said. “Technically, there was total coverage.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “The cups were a semi-metallic, elasticized, open-weave mesh. More gross than sexy. Made your nips look like little pink pancakes pushed against a screen door.”

“Lovely,” Bev said. “And whose idea was that? Ellen’s?”

“She saw it in Paris,” Rachel said. “Thought we could ‘translate’ it.”

“Unfortunately the French have more words for that sort of thing than we do,” Liam said. “Here in America it means ‘trashy ho under arrest.’”

Rachel laughed, and Bev smiled weakly and leaned against the stool. The one goal she was becoming attached to as owner of the company was improving the women’s line. How she could possibly tell experienced designers how to do their job?

“I didn’t make enough cookies.” She pressed her fingers into her temple. “So Darrin would be a better designer for Women’s?”

“No,” Liam said. “He may be a prick, but he’s helped bring the men’s line to the top of the heap. Whatever else you do, leave him in Men’s.”

“All right,” Bev said, happy to let Liam deal with him. “But he’ll need a new assistant. Or two.”

“Who did you have in mind?” Rachel asked Bev, taking another bite. “I am kind of indispensable, you know. Went out of my way to get that way. Didn’t realize it would also screw up my chances of getting promoted.”

“Sorry about that,” Liam said.

Rachel shrugged. “Ed made it up to me.” She crammed the rest of the cookie in her mouth and glanced at her watch. “I really have to get back to my desk.”

Running through potential candidates in her head, Bev led her to the door. “As soon as I line up a couple new people you’ll come work for me. How about next Monday?”

“You won’t find anyone by then, and I’ll have to break them in. There’s a lot. Two weeks, at least.”

“We have plenty of great people here. How about next week you’ll be half time with me, half in your old job.”

“Plenty of great people? Here?”

Bev smiled and put her hand on her heart. “If people give you any trouble blame it on me.”

Rachel shrugged. “You’re the boss.” Then she was gone.

Liam stayed, pacing around the treadmill in the middle of the room, glancing at her every other second.

Bev collapsed onto the sofa. “If you’re going to run around like that, you might as well get on the treadmill.” Were they going to talk about what happened? Her body suffused with heat, hoping to continue where they left off so abruptly two days earlier. “I won’t get so dizzy watching you.”

He stopped walking and, arms crossed over his chest, gazed out into the city behind her. Then he cleared his throat. “If you’re going to fire me I’d like to know now. If that’s all right with you.”

“Because of what we did in the store, you mean?”

“What I did.”

“We,” she said. “Let’s be honest.”

He relaxed visibly. “All right. We.”

“If I did fire you, you could sue, I bet.”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“Actually I don’t,” she said. “I don’t know what you’d do to keep Fite.”

“Not that.” He made a disgusted sound. “Jesus. How humiliating.”

Because they started something, or because they didn’t finish? “I’m not going to fire you. Unless it’s work-related. And probably not even then, not that I should tell you that.”

He walked over to the window and stared out. “I’d appreciate that.”

Neither spoke for a long, awkward minute. She waited for him to promise it wouldn’t happen again. Instead, he turned away from the window and sat on the opposite end of the sofa. His white dress shirt was rolled up to the elbows and unbuttoned at the neck, and it was impossible not to imagine touching him.

“It was cute how you charmed everyone,” he said, “but cookies are not going to be enough. Darrin is only one of the people here eager to see you fail.”