Love Handles (4 page)

“To hell with the idea,” Liam said. “People can't afford just an idea anymore. What will we actually give them that they want? The only idea they like right now is not being separated from their money.”

“I think we should rework the fit,” Wendi said, and Jennifer’s lip curled.

“The fit is perfect,” Jennifer said to Liam. “I can’t wear anything else.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. Jennifer looked like she could crush ice between the cheeks of her ass. An undoctored picture of her abs was on the Fite webpage. Her shapely arms could lift Liam over her pretty head and throw him across the San Francisco Bay.

“There have been some complaints—” Wendi began, then drew back when Jennifer snorted. It was good Wendi didn’t work with her anymore.

“From her mother.” Jennifer threw up her hands and shared a smirk with a merchandising assistant. “Wendi’s idea of market research is to take her sixty-year old mom to Target.”

“She's fifty,” Wendi said, “and what's that got to do with anything?”

“She’s not our customer,” Jennifer said.

“She’d like to be.”

Jennifer glanced at the ceiling and sighed. “She’s fat.”

All eyes were on Wendi’s face, now flooded with color and looking dangerously close to saying something fatal in reply. Liam had already saved her job once today; he couldn’t rescue her again without sticking a bull’s-eye on her ass. He held up a hand. “Stop. You’re wasting our time.” He pointed at Darrin. “You’re turn.”

Unusually relaxed, and not just in his typically affected way, Darrin smiled and slowly got to his feet. “Personally, I like ideas. Ed and I were always on the same page on that one.”

Liam didn't let his surprise show on his face. Darrin didn't usually contradict him directly, preferring to skulk about in secret with his many complaints. For him to suddenly claim kinship with the late Ed Roche, whom he loathed with a passion, could only mean one thing.

He thought Liam wasn't worth sucking up to anymore.

“Bring a board, Darrin?” Liam asked. “Or are your ideas too brilliant to actually move into the third dimension?”

“You know what I'm wondering?” Darrin traced his finger along the stack of overlapping boards hanging on the wall. “If Ed wanted Liam to take over, why didn't he go ahead and leave the company to him outright?” And then he smiled at everyone sitting around the table like he was their best friend. A phony, back-stabbing friend with perfect teeth.

The only sound in the room was the rattle of the furnace vent.

Liam cultivated a tired look on his face and crossed his legs. “Didn't finish the board in time again, Darrin?”

Darrin continued to smirk.

“That wasn't a rhetorical question,” Liam said. “Have you got it ready or not?”

Shrugging, Darrin sat down. “You can see it in two hours as planned.”

All eyes darted back and forth between the two of them at either end of the table, waiting to see what Liam would do, which pissed him off more than he was already. He slowly got to his feet. It was past time to make an example of the troublesome prick. And it might make Liam feel better. “Just as well. It'll be easier to look at without you around.”

Darrin's smile got tight. “Without me around?”

“You'll be on your way to New York. Remember?”

Now off-balance, Darrin tried to share a snotty grin with Jennifer without losing control of the conversation. “Remind me.”

“Your choice,” Liam said. “You were missing Manhattan so much you decided to accept a transfer to the showroom.”

“The showroom? With the sales guys?”

“It was hard to accept at first,” Liam said, “but then you realized any job was better than none. Especially in this economy.”

“But—but—you can't do that,” Darrin said. “Mr. Roche never would have—I'm a designer—”

“You're a human being, just like everybody else. At least, I'm pretty sure.”

“But you can't.”

“Of course I can, dude,” Liam said. “I'm the executive vice president and I’m your boss. And you're wasting my time.”

He could have just fired the asshole, but Darrin was a relatively harmless, useful asshole, the kind with a degree from FIT and a portfolio and old friends working as buyers in New York he could call up any time. He just needed to have a whip cracked every once in a while to remind him to reign in his bad manners.

One of the problems with Darrin and the other regular garmentos everywhere: they looked down on Liam for his non-fashion background. Unlike Darrin, Liam’s oldest friends coached summer swim team and spent every free dime at REI, not MAC. He knew all their important buyers, of course, but he wasn't anyone's shopping buddy. He didn't have a fashion—or any—degree, and now that Ed was gone, the snide comments that he was just the over-promoted adopted son of a lonely old man would grow, and whoever bought Fite out from the family would be looking for any excuse to shove him out.

Ed had promised him it wouldn't happen. He'd been a cranky old man, but he'd never hurt him. At least until the end, when he’d grinned at Liam and told him it was all up to him now, him and his pretty face. Then gave him a picture of his granddaughter, a woman who looked just like Ellen, a woman he despised.

All the years of giving Fite everything he had were coming to an end, and he would have nothing to show for it.

Nothing.

“So, Darrin.” He was eager to get far away from all of them before he made an example of someone who didn’t deserve it as much as Darrin. “If you've changed your mind about the move to New York, ask your guy Wayne in Engineering how to save your job. He's got a great new short body that’s just what we need and you should tell him that, or you'll be telling it to the Bloomingdale's buyer this fall. Jennifer, call up Wendi’s mom and ask her why she doesn't like the fit. Be nice about it. Take her to lunch or something—without commenting on her physique.” Then he got up, shoved his chair under the table, and strode out of the room.

There was only one way he was going to get what he deserved out of this nightmare, and she was playing around with fingerpaint in some Disneyland nursery school.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Liam ran to his office, his phone out of his pocket and his thumb hovering over Ed’s lawyer’s number. He’d stopped Bev once. He could do it again, and not by using his goddamn good looks. With an incentive to hold on to her ownership indefinitely, he could maintain his control. Improve it. From the looks of her—and he tried not to remember how disturbing that had been, to be attracted to an Ellen clone, just like Ed had wanted—she was in serious need of money.

And unlike the sharks he knew were already circling, she would be easy to manage.

Chapter 3

T
he boy wore a princess tiara and Batman cape.

“Cover your sneeze, please,” Bev told him. “And then what are you going to do?”

“Wash my hands.” He stuck a finger in his nose and galloped into the sandbox.

Cathy, the other teacher working that morning at the preschool, came by with a mug of tea. “Year went by fast, huh?” She handed it to Bev. “How’re you doing?”

Bev smiled. “I’m fine, thanks. I never knew my grandfather.” A boy ran past with a ball of yarn, one end tied to the tree, and she went over to untangle him. “Couldn’t miss today, could I?” The second Tuesday in June, worst day of the year.

“Hilda asked me to check up on you. You always take graduation so hard.”

“She did?” Bev swallowed her irritation. The director of the preschool liked to spy on her through her colleagues. “Well, tell her I’m fine.”

“At least this year you can say it was the death in your family that upset you. You know, extenuating circumstances.”

Bev kept her eyes on the sandbox. The handful of children outside with them were completely occupied with a garden hose, enjoying a school policy of child-directed play and obliviousness to water conservation. Kennedy, a freckled five-year-old girl with curly brown hair, stood off to the side, drawing on a rock with a black marker.

“The worst part is, I won’t miss all of them.”

Cathy smiled. “I know.”

“But some of them, I miss so much—”

“Not now, Bev. I shouldn’t have come over. You were fine before I came over. Hey, did you hear about the afternoon program?”

Bev looked up at her.

“You did,” Cathy said, lighting up.

“Oh, yeah.” The school’s waiting list had grown to triple digits, and rumor was Hilda needed an experienced teacher to direct an afternoon class in the fall, largely independent of Hilda. Bev was going to make her an even better offer and buy into the school itself, finally giving Hilda the chance to retire in a few years—and gain Bev some independence.

Cathy checked over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “I bet she’ll give it to you.”

Bev bit back a grin. She thought so too. She was the most senior teacher and got along with everyone, kids and adults. “It’s not that I mind working in a team. But I’d love to be in charge of my own program. Hilda is so . . . ”

“Anal?”

They rolled their eyes in unison. Cathy glanced over her shoulder again. “I can’t believe how hard she came down on you for that Valentine’s Day project.”

“The girls begged me. They really, really wanted hearts. I don’t think it’s fair to deny them their fun just because Hallmark gets out of hand.” Hilda was passionately opposed to the commercialization of childhood.

“Maybe if you hadn’t cut the hearts out for them.”

“They begged me! It’s hard for little fingers and round scissors to make that corner, there at the top where the heart dips in the middle. They were crying and pleading, and I mean really, what’s the big deal? It’s not like I shoved them out of the way and took over. I was following their direction.” Bev gulped her tea. “She made it sound like I was trying to be Santa and they were my elves.”

Cathy giggled. “Shhh.”

Bev sucked in a deep breath, set down her tea on a windowsill next to the bubble machine, gazed at her kids. In less than an hour they wouldn’t be hers anymore, and she was too grieved at the thought of never seeing them again to enjoy the anticipated changes she would make.

“Bef?” Kennedy, the rock-drawing girl, tugged on her jeans. Her cheeks were smeared with black marker, freckles, and dried yogurt, and Bev knew if she kneeled down to give her the usual hug she would lose it completely.

“Hey, friend.” Bev rumpled her hair. “What are you up to today?”

“Feeling sad,” Kennedy said. “Very, very sad.”

Validate her feelings.
“You feel sad.”

“I lost Big Blue.” Kennedy didn’t just have pet rocks. She had friend rocks. “In the sandbox.”

“Oh, it’ll turn—” But it was Kennedy’s last day, and if it turned up, she would be gone. Off to kindergarten, where they took away your rocks and gave you worksheets to drill for standardized tests. “I’ll look for it.”

“Don’t bother. It’s gone forever.” Kennedy had an Eeyore streak they’d been working on narrowing, to no effect. She bit her little lip.

“Come on, let’s look.”

“Too late,” Kennedy said. “It’s circle time, see?”

Sure enough, Hilda was ringing the bell. Bev led the group today and couldn’t be late; Hilda had just published an article in
Parenting
about the importance of routine in preschool-aged children’s development.

“I’ll look for it after circle,” Bev said.

“It’s okay.” Kennedy’s eyes filled with tears. “It likes the sandbox. It didn’t want to go to kindergarten.”

“Oh, honey.” Bev dropped to her knees and opened her arms for a hug. “I know you’re sad, and that’s okay, but it will get better. Kindergarten is awesome.”

But Kennedy jumped into her arms and began to cry. Not a temper-tantrum I-want-it cry, but the deep, mournful cry of an old soul staring into the abyss.
Now I’m done for,
Bev thought. She would have been fine with any of the other kids, one who cried every day, one who didn’t name her rocks and give them rides on the tire swing, but not with Kennedy. Kennedy had only cried once, when Ethan had punctured her index finger with a staple right through the nail and then yanked it out with his teeth.

So Bev held on to her and let her sob, and kept most of her own tears from spilling over. Most.

“Kennedy.” Hilda stood over them, wiping paint off her hands with a checkered dish towel. “Circle time!”

Kennedy drew back and looked into Bev’s face with wide, anguished eyes. “Are you coming?”

“Ms. Cathy is doing circle today,” Hilda said. “She needs you to pick out the story. It’s your job today, Kennedy!”

“Okay.” Kennedy wiped her nose on her arm. “Mommy has a job, too.”

“That’s right.” Hilda extracted her from Bev and took her hand. “We all have jobs to do.”

Thanks for not looking at me, Hilda
. Bev turned away and wiped her own face and trotted after. “I’ll do circle. I couldn’t just leave—”

Hilda nudged Kennedy through the door into the classroom and gave Bev a cold look over her shoulder. “Later.” She pulled the door shut between them, leaving Bev outside. Cathy’s voice called for attention above the chatter.

The teacher not doing circle time had potty duty.
Damn it.

She stormed off to the bathroom and grabbed the cleaning supplies, trying to think happy thoughts about Kennedy’s bright future, about her becoming a peppy geologist with lots and lots of friends. Who would never have a boss who was a chronically dissatisfied egotist—

Bev’s gloved fingers holding the non-toxic sanitizer bottle shook over the miniature toilet bowl. She was a nice person, but she hated doing what people told her to do. Especially impossible ones.

She flushed the suds away, snapped off the rubber gloves, and bent down to wash her hands in the tiny sink.
Get over it.
Next year, managing her own class, would be better. Working with Hilda—not
for
her—would be tolerable.

Hilda appeared in the doorway. “Let’s take a minute in my office.”

Bev put a spring in her step and a smile on her face and followed her into the alcove around the corner. “Maybe I should just sit this day out next year.”