Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy)

by Gretchen Galway

  Better off taking it all home and recycling it at the condo. Nobody knew him there, nobody knew Fite or Ed Roche or his damn descendants, and nobody cared.

  Nobody.

  With the edge of the box digging into his ribs, Liam paused near the door and turned around to look around the office, where he’d spent most of his adult life. Right after the Olympics, with Dad finally in his grave and nothing more for Liam to do but maintain a pulse for his mother and brother and sister, Ed had offered him the job at Fite and saved him from God knows what. Law school, probably. He wished he had the brains for engineering, but he didn’t. Other jocks went into broadcasting, but he knew he didn’t have the charm or patience for that bullshit, though his old friends did very nicely every four years when another Olympics rolled around.

  He might have to consider that after all. His salary at Fite had been good, but hardly enough to retire on. To stay in the Bay Area, which was a given, he’d be taking a pay cut—if he could find a company to take him in. He wasn’t a fashion guy, he was a jock—an asset at Fite Fitness, but not at Levi’s or BeBe or any of the other apparel companies in town. And though it was common knowledge he didn’t have an MBA, only Ed had known the worst of it—that he’d never finished his BA, either.

  “Damn.” He dumped the box on the floor where he stood and thought of Rachel, Jennifer, even Darrin. Wayne, George at the back door, Alfred in the grading room. Sure, he was short on options, but any one of the lower staff people would hurt more than him with the sudden loss of a paycheck.

  He bent over and rested his forehead against the door, cursing Ed for leaving him without the tools he needed to get the job done. He remembered the gleam in Ed’s eye, telling him about his granddaughter. Well, the tools he was willing to use, anyway.

  “Damn.” He couldn’t bring himself to walk away. Maybe he wasn’t the warmest boss in the world, and most of the people at Fite probably thought he was a bastard, but he wasn’t going to screw them over the way Ed had screwed him. He had to stick around as long as he could, if just to write stealth recommendations for Ellen’s casualties.

  He banged his head against the door and gazed down at his new Nikes, absently calculating their make and reverse-engineering the midfoot overlay. Just as he was about to bend over and take one off to bring to the shoe merchandiser, he heard a knock.

  If he hadn't been inches from the door, he wouldn't have heard it at all. Just a tap, then a pause, then another tap. A chill tickled down his spine, and he stood up straight, the midfoot overlay forgotten. “Yes?” he barked out, not as irritated as he sounded. Nobody at Fite would knock on his door. Nobody would dare.

  Silence. He thought he heard the sudden exhalation of breath and, impossibly, he imagined the scent of lemon blossoms. Vowing his next job would be for a publicly held corporation with thousands of employees and absolutely no family ties amid staff whatsoever, he flung open the door. “You.”

  Her face, with its impossibly clear complexion, so similar to Ellen’s but without the severity of expensive makeup, peered up at him. “You, yourself.”

  He turned away, shoving aside his curiosity about the woman, wondering how he—even with his acute senses—could have possibly smelled her through the door. She must have doused herself in Lemon Pledge that morning. Yet he couldn’t resist inhaling the scent deep into his lungs before striding over to his desk, surprised she'd come by to see him in person. Ellen had walked over too, of course, but she liked to gloat, and his impression of Bev Lewis had been that she'd avoid conflict.

  Which is why he knew she wouldn't withstand Ellen's final offer.

  “Stop in to say goodbye?” He lounged back in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk.

  She lingered in the doorway, tilted her head, and said nothing. His attention dropped to the cheap suit she wore, the same ugly one from her previous visit with faded black jacket that didn't match the darker black pants. His professional eye took in the poor, baggy fit at the waist that hid whatever body she had underneath—tall but soft and obviously nonathletic. A before picture. The woman off the street.

  Not their customer.

  “You should drop by some of the SOMA showrooms while you're here,” he said. “Pick up some new pieces for your apartment. Your new apartment. Or house, perhaps?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Furniture. Home furnishings. That kind of thing. San Francisco has some cutting-edge designers.”

  She was still frowning. “You think I'm here to go shopping?”

  “Let's not waste each other's time.” He turned to his computer, where he’d been copying over his personal files to a thumb drive. When they'd accidentally loaded Illustrator on his PC, nobody thought he'd actually use it. Nobody but Ed knew he had, or that he'd loaded the custom sketching software too, and flown to Denver for a private tutorial to learn it as well as anyone. Better. “Ellen's new offer was probably a fair one. You obviously needed the money.” He realized now that was what Ed must have intended all along; Ellen learns her lesson, and his lazy but wholesome granddaughter gets the windfall.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” the wholesome granddaughter asked. Her blue eyes flashed down at him over the desk, and he lost his train of thought. Up close, under the fluorescents, they were turquoise. A best-selling color for the summer line, the last delivery before the big fall assortments when the colors went dark and muted and natural again. A bright, happy, energetic color that stood out starkly against her pale cheeks and thick, black lashes.

  Perhaps she wore colored contacts. Nobody really had eyes like that.

  She blinked, growing visibly uneasy with his gaze, but still angry. “You seem to think you know something. But I don’t think you know what you think you know.”

  He broke the spell by looking down at her ugly suit. A less flattering garment could not have been designed for her, but he realized why she’d chosen something so baggy around her waist when he looked at her chest, now at eye-level. She had to be a D cup, at least. Nothing off the rack would fit her well, with breasts like that—

  “Hello.” She waved and sat down. “You can stop making snide comments about me going shopping. I didn’t sell the company.”

  He leaned back and the chair creaked. “Not yet.”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “You just haven’t seen Ellen yet,” he said. “She’s waiting for you.”

  “Yes, I did, and no she’s not, and I wish you would believe me. I’ve refused Ellen’s final offer, and she’s decided to—” She stopped and glanced away. “To wait for me to change my mind.” Then she took a deep breath, nodded, and looked back at him. “We’ll call it a leave of absence.”

  Hope began flopping around in his heart like a Golden Retriever puppy. With years of practice he threw a thick, suffocating blanket over it. “Leave of absence?”

  “She said she quit, but I can’t believe she would do that. I’ll call her tonight. The last thing I wanted was more bad blood.”

  He looked at her. “What exactly did she say?”

  “I’m sure she’ll cool down. She packed up a box and left when I refused to sign, saying she was just going to wait for me to drive Fite into the ground so she can pick up the pieces.”

  The puppy stuck his nose out from under the blanket. Without glancing at his own pile of belongings behind her, he asked, “She packed up a box?”

  “I’m sure she’s waiting for me to call her any second. She expects me to break under the pressure.”

  So did he. He tried not to smile. Reminded himself he’d have to be very, very careful negotiating between the two disasters Ed had dumped on him. Just enough of the granddaughter would keep the aunt away, but not so much that he went insane or the company went under with her clumsy oversight. He reached for his coffee, sipped, met her eyes. Now he understood the hysterical edge lingering there. “Ellen had an exaggerated view of her own importance. Fite is better off without her.”

  “She says th
e same about you.”

  “Sadly for you, that is not true. This place revolves around me.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You have a high opinion of yourself.”

  “I’m the executive vice president. I have a high opinion of the job.”

  “My aunt was a vice president—”

  “Of shopping.” He forced a tight smile. The expense reports for that woman had dwarfed her salary.

  Bev shook her head, but her eyes grew wary. “You said ‘sadly.’ Why ‘sadly?’”

  Biting his lip as though he was trying to hide something, he let his eyes drift away from her and over to the box near the door. Then he inhaled deeply and didn’t meet her gaze.

  She took the bait. Twisting around to look behind her, she asked, “What?”

  He shrugged, pushed himself slowly to his feet. In a panic now, Bev took it all in at once—the stripped shelves, the bare wall racks, the empty desk. She gaped at him with her mouth in an O.

  “I know when I’m not wanted.” He was proud of himself for sounding sincere.

  “You’re leaving?” She shot to her feet. “You, too? Oh, Christ. No. You can’t. You just can’t.”

  He opened his eyes wider and said nothing.

  Gripping her head with two soft-looking hands, she made a pitiful moaning sound in the back of her throat that was disturbingly erotic. “Oh, God,” she said, and he tried not to think of what she would sound like in bed. Because he was pretty sure he’d just heard it.

  He strode over to the door. “You’ve made it clear you don’t want me. As did Ellen. No sense delaying the inevitable.”

  “Wait!”

  He was slow to turn around, careful to look unhappy about it. “Sorry, Beverly. It’s really for the best.”

  “Please.” She was holding a hand out to him, palm up, eyes wide.

  Slowly, very slowly, shaking his head and sighing, he took a few steps back towards his desk and crossed his arms, enjoying the way her gaze raked over his body. He knew he was tall and built and imposing, and maybe this time it was all right to use it to his advantage.

  She was definitely eyeing him in a daze, taking a step back and licking her lips.

  “All right,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Chapter 6

  “I’ll make you a deal.” Liam sat back down behind his desk. “Don’t call your aunt. Let her quit. She’s never done it before, so you should consider the possibility that she’s quite serious about abandoning you here to fail.”

  Bev’s stomach lurched. “I’m not going to let the company fall to pieces.”

  “Of course you’re not. Because you’re going to stay out of my way.”

  She did not like the way he stared at her. How did he always get the upper hand? “From what I hear, Fite is barely floating now. Why should I think you can do anything better than what you have been doing?”

  “Bev.” He shook his head. “Fite’s current problems are not of my making.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “How could they be? You being senior VP and whatnot.”

  “Executive Vice President, please.”

  “’Please’, yourself,” she said, her voice rising. “Make your case. Why should I believe you should be in charge?”

  “You don’t have any choice but to believe me.” He pointed a finger at her. “You may have hidden talents, but unless your preschool had a side business merchandising fitness apparel for the mass market, your lack of experience is going to kill this company and the livelihoods of everyone working here.”

  “All unless I hand over everything to you.”

  “I’m sick of watching nepotism destroy this company. You may be a blood relation—and as you’ve admitted, little else—but you have no genuine claim to tell anyone what to do here. Least of all me.”

  Her head was pounding. Ellen had left. The CFO was gone. How the hell could she let this guy leave too? Her brother was right; she was here on a whim, avoiding her troubles at home, trying to prove she was just as important as any corporate Hollywood type.

  “I thought I could bring my mom and Ellen back together,” she muttered.

  His jaw hardened. “Perhaps a multimillion-dollar apparel manufacturer isn’t the place for family therapy.”

  “Damn.” She ducked her head and stared at her hands, conflicted. Was she being selfish to want to stay? She looked up at him. “Tell me what you do for Fite that’s so special.”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve already proven myself. You’re the one who hasn’t.”

  She gritted her teeth. Stood up. Sat back down. They stared at each other over his empty desk. She was reminded of one of her first days working in the university child center, when a tot still in diapers refused to get off the swing. After three hours on it. He’d filled his pull-ups and desperately needed a change—which was why he kept his death-grip on the swing chains—but nothing Bev said could convince him to get off. Bribes, threats, demands—nothing. Finally the professor strode over, pried him off with impersonal strength, and comforted the boy while he cried.

  Bev was stuck cleaning his diaper. And hosing down the mess.

  Taking a deep breath, she had to admit she wouldn’t be able to overpower Liam Johnson with that kind of approach. He was entirely too big.

  “All right,” she said. “You can continue as you were. I’ll just have to learn on the fly.”

  He nodded. “No meddling.”

  “No. That’s too vague. I can’t promise to do nothing if you’re terrible at your job.”

  He barked out a hard laugh, his eyes not smiling. “Then promise you’ll do nothing if I’m not terrible.”

  “I can’t promise to do nothing. Come on, be reasonable.”

  He strummed his fingers on the desk. A single strand of loose blond hair fell down over his eyes and tossed his head to clear his vision, never breaking his gaze on her. “We’ll approach your time here as an executive trainee,” he said. “Involved, but—declawed.”

  “Is there an executive training program here?”

  He snorted, then recovered. “Sure. We don’t call it that, but sure. Of course.”

  “All right then. We’ll start there, and discuss more later. It is my first day, after all.”

  He shifted in his seat and started working on his computer. “And apparently, not my last. So I need to get back to work.”

  She was dismissed.

  “If I didn’t need this guy so much, I’d kill him,” Bev said to her mother from her cell, sitting in her car outside her grandfather’s empty house in the Oakland Hills. The driveway was half the usual length, under ten feet, allowing room for the squat glass-and-steel building to cling to the steep slope. The June sun was only now setting behind the fogged-in Golden Gate Bridge to the west, a postcard view. A multi-million-dollar postcard. “I had to beg him to stay.”

  “How much?” Her mother, Gail, sounded like she was doing her nightly Pilates. Lots of grunting.

  “For as long as Fite needs him, I guess—”

  “No, Bev. How much money did you give him?”

  “Oh, he didn’t ask for any money. He just wanted me to promise to stay out of his way.”

  “Promise? That’s it?”

  “I refused to sign anything. That’s my one management technique so far. Don’t sign anything. So far it’s working.”

  Gail sighed. “You’re over your head, honey. If he’s survived this long, he’s a snake. Don’t trust him.”

  “It can’t be good business for everyone to be so hateful and miserable and mean to one another.”

  “Daddy made his fortune at it,” Gail said. “And Ellen, of course. If business is bad, it’s probably because he got soft in his old age. That Liam character and the other ladder-climbers probably took advantage of that.”

  That didn’t sound right to Bev, but she needed more time to be sure. “I actually feel guilty about Ellen resigning. I hope she cools off and can come to some kind of
compromise.” She propped her elbow on the steering wheel, rubbed the bridge of her nose, tried to massage away the tension.

  “Don’t be fooled. She always gets what she wants in the end.”

  “She’s your sister. You can’t live the rest of your life hating each other.”

  “Why not?”

  Bev tried to think of a new tactic. “It’s bad for your health.”

  “Oh, health advice from you. That’s priceless.”

  “I like health!”

  “You will some day, when it’s too late,” Gail said. “How’s the house look? I paid a fortune to get it cleaned out. I suppose it’s good one of us is up there to do some quality control.”

  Bev sighed. “I haven’t been inside yet, but it looks fine. Quite a view. It must be worth a fortune.”

  “At least my mother had a heart, though I’m amazed my father didn’t find a way around her will and leave it to Ellen or the Raiders or something. Hateful man.”

  Still waiting for the death to trigger a mellowing of the bitterness her mother had been drowning in for years, Bev popped open the car door. “I’m going in now.”

  “At least you thought to call me. The lawyer said that key I gave you is only for the side entrance, down the hill. The rest of the keys should be on the counter. Think you can handle it?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “If the place is a mess, call the number I gave you and raise a stink. Don’t be a wimp.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. Talk to you soon. It’s been a long day.” Her head pounded and her contacts were dry on her eyeballs.

  “Watch out for Ellen. She’ll probably show up for work tomorrow like nothing happened.”

  “I wish she would.”

  Her mom paused and made deep breathing noises. “Why he didn’t leave it to Kate or Andy, I’ll never understand. It’s like he wanted Fite to go under.”