Love Handles (32 page)

Silence fell over the room. Bev’s mouth went dry. Did he really think she would use him like that? Had other women made him feel like a piece of meat?

It was too ridiculous. Of course he was gorgeous, but the world was full of gorgeous men. None were as brilliant, talented, and funny as he was. Tough but sweet.

Lovable.

“But you’re right,” he went on, “I was wrong to get involved with you. When Ed died, and he hadn’t left Fite to me—not directly—I should have resigned immediately. To stay on and try to manipulate you was an act of sentimentality and fear. I admit it. I fooled around with you because I couldn’t help myself. I can’t. It annoys the hell out of me to think Ed is getting what he’d wanted all along, but I always admired the brilliant bastard, and he did usually get his way.”

“What he wanted all along was for you to sleep with me?”

Liam stared at her, his brown eyes shining.

“I see,” she gasped.
Not directly
. He’d never even met her. She put her hand over her mouth, ashamed of the fantasy of an old man having faith in her, feeling like an idiot.
He wouldn’t have given Fite to the nicest person in the family if he thought she’d actually be crazy enough to keep it
.

“I’ve admitted my weaknesses. How about you?” He pushed the garment rack aside. “Are you ready to admit you just wanted a little fun with the gold medalist? Use him to advance your career? Save your pride? Or are you going to claim to be in love with me—like a really good girl would be?”

Chapter 21

L
iam didn’t think she would answer. But they were on a runaway train and, like it or not, they were going to say worse things than had already been said, tumble off the tracks, burst into flames, and fall apart.

Her eyes were turquoise again. The tears she’d been fighting highlighted the green under the blue. He swam in them, lost and angry, wishing they’d separated for the night hours ago before they got so tired they began telling the truth.

“I could love you, Liam.” Bev crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s the problem.”

Definitely should have gone home hours ago.

He sighed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”

“What?”

“That’s just what you’re telling yourself.”

“You—you have no idea what I’m feeling.”

“I think I do.”

“The first moment I saw you I knew I had to be careful around you. That I’d get all stupid about you.”

“Ah,” he said. “The first moment you
saw
me. Emphasis on seeing. That’s not love.” He gave her a look. “It has a name, but nice girls wouldn’t admit to it. It’s too crude. Too shallow.”

“You think I’m blinded by your good looks?”

“No, I think you’re extremely aware of my good looks.”

“You exaggerate your charms.”

“We’re only talking about how I look. If I believed you wanted the real me, the Liam who never deserved a gold medal or to be a fashion exec, then I’d—” he stopped himself, because the image of a long future with Bev in it flashed before his eyes, and he lost his breath.

“You’d what?”

Bev sleeping. Bev cooking. Bev jumping up and down. Bev laughing. Bev naked. Bev eating. Bev everything.

She frowned at him. “It’s more than your looks,” she said, but he was lost in the silent movie playing in his head, and her voice sounded far away.

It was funny that the first time he discovered he cared more about a woman than she did about him, it would be when he could do nothing about it. She was too smart to believe him. Too cautious—like he was. Used to be.

“What if I told you I wanted us to date, like normal people, and see what happened,” he said slowly. “What would you say?”

Her eyes widened. While he waited, not breathing, a cloud of emotions drifted across her face—then settled on unwary. “But we work together.”

“At the top of a privately held organization. Held by you, as a matter of fact.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Liam, it’s late. We’re both exhausted, we’re under a lot of stress—”

“Is that a no?”

“To dating? You mean, openly? With everyone knowing?”

His temper was warring with his pride. “Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then what, when?”

“When—when we have problems everyone will know,” she said. “It will be harder than it is already to manage people. To get things done.”

A strange feeling came over him, like the nausea before a big meet. He could almost feel his toes curling over the starting block, waiting for the gun to pop, knowing his father was already cursing him out from the stands, that his mother was smiling and trying to rein in his father, that he didn’t have to endure any of it if he had the guts.

If he had the guts he’d refuse to play the game he’d been shoved into. He could make his own rules. Find another way to win.

He looked into her big blue eyes and managed a smile, even though his stomach twisted. “If I didn’t work here would you turn me down?” He stepped closer to her. “Knowing me as you do, with all my faults, would you want to see how far we could go with each other?”

She waved aside his question with a joke. “We’ve gone pretty far already.”

“You know what I mean. You said you could love me, remember.” He managed to keep his voice hard, but he’d never felt so soft in his life.

“It’s more than just us, Liam. More than me. You can’t leave Fite now—you’re—you’re essential.”

“To Fite, or to you?”

She glanced away, then into his face, and smiled. “To me.” Then, while his walls were down, she added, “I never would have survived this long here without you.”

Insult to injury
, he thought, chiding himself for being pathetic, for letting himself sink so deep, for still not being able to tell her off and walk away while he still had his pride.

“So if you had a choice between coming home with me tonight, and tomorrow night, and maybe the night after,” he lifted his hand to her soft, creamy cheek, “versus only seeing me at work . . . you’d choose the latter?”

He thought he could feel her trembling. Her skin was red hot under his palm. She was blinking too much and he could hear each shallow breath pass her lips.

He knew the instant she decided: pity showed in her eyes, and he dropped his hand.

“It would be selfish of us, given the risk, how different we are . . . ” She reached out to him. “I’m sorry—”

He spun away from her, not wanting her to see the pain that must be pathetically obvious on his face.

She was
sorry
.

He blinked, frowning, looking around his office—the only place, apparently, she really wanted him. It was an old, familiar pain, to be loved only in context, under condition, with services rendered, awards received, a performance-based compensation. For the first time he wondered if Ed had left him out of his will as a favor. To give him a choice.

Well, he’d made his choice. Too bad for him.

He swallowed, trying to suppress the violence in his chest.

“Liam?” she asked, touching his shoulder.

He jerked away. “Do you need a walk to BART?” His voice was rough.

“No—I’ve—got my car.”

“So, you don’t need me.”

“Liam?”

“I think it’s time you learned you can handle things by yourself.” He walked over to his desk, pulled open the drawers, looked for anything he might want to keep. Unlike a month ago, he couldn’t see a thing he cared about.

She dropped her face into her hands. “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Sex complicates everything.”

“You are so right.” He felt disgustingly complicated. He slammed the top desk drawer shut, pulled out the middle one, blindly shoved his hand through spare buttons and toggles and swatch cards, photos of line boards, tearsheets from
Lucky
and
WWD
, the first sell-through numbers for the Fite the Man shorts he’d designed. “I think we can both do without any more complications.” He banged the drawer shut, decided not to even bother with the rest of them, and looked around for his jacket and running shoes.

“What are you doing? If you’re threatening to leave again—”

“Not at all.” He met her angry gaze with his own. “I’m informing you of my decision.”

“But the meeting—”

“Is Thursday. I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”

“You don’t mean that. You know I need you—”

“You don’t.” He pulled his lips back into a grimace. “And even if you did, too bad. You can’t have me.”

Her mouth dropped open. The mouth he’d never taste again. “You’re quitting because I can’t date you? Don’t you think that’s a bit childish? Or worse?”

“Worse than childish?” He raised his eyebrow at her. “That’s pretty bad coming from a preschool teacher.” He sneered. “Excuse me. An
ex
-preschool teacher. I’m sure you’ll never settle for that life again.”

“I might have to, if you walk out of here now.”

“So I should stay just for you?”

“For the company. The one you love.”

Love
. Same word, different thing. “I do love this place,” he said. “Problem is, it doesn’t love me back.”

“Well, it needs you. Every day I get emails from Richard about some new horrible red ink that’s going to swallow us up, and the sales guys complain the accounts aren’t getting paid, and the returns are eating away our profits, that we’re lucky if Marshall’s takes our September deliveries for a three-percent markup—”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

“You shouldn’t take out your anger on Fite. Hate me, fine, but if you leave me alone right now, it’s the entire company that’s going to suffer—”

“If you really believe that, why don’t you go home to L.A.? Hire someone qualified?”

That got her. Eyes bright, she took a step back, staring at him. “Maybe I will,” she said through her teeth.

“Great. Awesome. Maybe I’ll apply for a job then, after you’re gone.” And with his running shoes under his arm and his jacket over his shoulder, he left Bev and his office and Fite and walked out into the cold San Francisco summer night.

“W
here’s Liam?” Rachel asked late Tuesday morning. She had a box cutter in one hand and Chinese takeout in the other. “His office is all locked up.”

In the two days since Liam had walked out, Bev had convinced herself she’d done the right thing. She would never have control of the company with that kind of extortion coming from her top employee.
Date me or I’m leaving. Sleep with me or I quit.
Where would it end?
Give me a blow job in the marker room or I won’t ship the second spring delivery to Kohl’s?

He said wanted to date like “normal” people—but they were the two most powerful, visible figures of a fragile organization that revolved around them. She was already having enough trouble winning people’s respect—even her own family doubted her. Sleeping with the handsome, alpha VP would subtly, perhaps permanently, undermine her authority. She’d become the boss’s girlfriend, not the boss.

And, of course, the relationship itself would be doomed from the start. Fighting, screwing, arguing, kissing, hurting—all that drama wasn’t healthy. They’d burn out in a couple months—the breakup painfully visible to everyone in the building. They would be like unhappy parents driving the family into divorce.

No. She’d known if she got stupid about him it would ruin everything. She had already started to care too much—so much she’d almost believed he was devastated by her rejection. But then he left. Just like that.

She’d done the right thing. Thank God, because otherwise she’d be miserable. Sleeping on the couch in an industrial office building over the weekend, crying and angry and heartbroken—that was bad enough, but to think it was unnecessary, that she’d made some kind of mistake—well, that would crush what little hope she had left.

With the thick smell of soy sauce and peanut oil wafting over from where Rachel stood across from her, Bev took a deep breath and slid her keyboard away from her on the desk, knowing she couldn’t put it off forever. She’d have to tell people. Not everyone, and not today, but she had to start somewhere.

“He might not be coming back,” Bev said. “He—he says he has some things to figure out.”

Eyes wide, Rachel dropped into a chair. “Not coming back?”

“Probably not.” She tried to smile.

Rachel’s eyes widened further. “You figured it out, didn’t you? About your grandfather’s sick little plan for you guys?”

A hollow pit gaped open inside Bev’s stomach. “Little plan?” She didn’t want to hear this. Her voice dropped. “What plan?”

“Only one way to keep it in the family and put Liam in charge. He was totally obsessed with keeping it in the family. Not like he could set him up with Ellen—not that she’d mind being with a younger man, but they always hated each other. I bet he would have made it a condition of the will if that had been legal.” Rachel’s mouth curved up on one side.

Bev swallowed over the lump in her throat. Kate and Rachel both thought the same thing—

“I didn’t think Liam would do it, going after you and all, but I guess he really, really loved his job,” Rachel said.

That was too much. Bev stood up. “You should go eat your lunch and get back to work.”

Rachel snapped her mouth shut, looked down at the white and red plastic bag of takeout in her lap. “But what are you going to do?”

Bev smiled tightly. “Do?”

“Without him. How will you keep it together?”

“He wasn’t that indispensable. Nobody is.”

“Liam was. You must be totally freaking out.”

For the first time she wondered if she’d made the right choice in her right-hand woman. “We’ll be fine. Everyone needs to have a little faith—in themselves most of all.” She got to her feet and walked across the office to the door.

Rachel followed. “No, their faith in you is what matters.”

“Then you better start singing my praises.”
Whether you believe them or not.
Rachel might not love her, but at least she did an excellent job helping Bev fake it with everyone else. “Start with Engineering. They’re the source of all the gossip around here. Maybe I can win over the sales guys after the Target deal.”