Love Handles (22 page)

She stopped and looked up at him. “You were worried about me?”

Oh, boy. He had a shallow, tight feeling in his chest, probably from the strain of not peeling her wet t-shirt off of her. “I didn’t want to have to sleep on your couch again.” Then the image of him climbing into her bed struck him between the eyes, and he froze.

“Here you go.” Bev extracted herself just enough to tap on the front door. She turned the handle and popped it open. “You’d better go first.”

He didn’t let go. It was insane but he couldn’t, and Bev wasn’t helping. She rotated in his arm and faced him, though not meeting his eyes. The side of one full breast brushed against his chest. And just like that he lost it. He reached past her, pulled the door shut, and backed her up against the side of the house. His heart thrashed in his chest.

Bev held still, eyes dark and blue, her body tense in his arms. He caught a strand of her hair in his fingers and pressed his thighs against hers.

The devil in his brain told him he’d already crossed the line once—the damage had been done; he might as well—

“You’re hurt.” She raised her hand to his mouth. The sight of blood on her fingers shocked him into sense, and he drew back.

“Sorry.” Pressing his hand to his mouth, he broke away from her and went into the house, struggling to clear his head. What the hell was he doing?

“Where’d you go?” Mark barged across the living room with a pack over his shoulder. He pushed past Liam and ran right into Bev standing on the landing. “Oh!” he yelped, jumping back. “Excuse me.”

Liam sighed. “Mark, this is Bev, your neighbor. Her sister just beat me up for no reason.” True to form, Mark panicked at the sight of an unexpected female and blinked his eyes, saying nothing. “Bev, this is Mark, my brother. Show mercy and ignore him until he recovers.”

“Nice to meet you, Mark.” Her voice was unsteady but she waved a greeting. “There was a misunderstanding. My sister just has the wrong idea. Do you have a first-aid kit? I can’t tell how bad it is, because of the blood—”

“Blood?” Mark asked weakly, swaying.

“Now you’ve done it.” Liam grabbed his brother’s arm and pushed him down onto a chair. “Head down. Just don’t think about it.”

Bev followed. “What happened?”

“Faints at the sight of blood,” Liam said.

“Christ, you’re dripping,” Mark gasped.

“I’ll get a washcloth.” Bev ran off into the house.

“Faints at the sight of girls, more like it, you sissy.” Liam said, rubbing Mark’s back. “Chill. Just us menfolk now.”

Mark bent over and put his head between his knees. “Fuck you. Vasovagal syncope has nothing whatsoever to do with my masculinity. Father was the same way.”

Oh, Liam remembered. Years ago, Liam had smacked his head on the starter block climbing out of the pool, and the sight of blood had brought his father to his knees. The humiliation of passing out in a chlorinated puddle of water in front of dozens of strangers—even just during practice—had inspired his father to take away fifteen-year-old Liam’s driver’s permit until he was eighteen. Liam had almost wished he could go back in time to when he was a fat seven-year-old nobody, far beneath his father’s notice.

“Here you go, you poor guy.” Bev rushed in carrying a damp washcloth, but instead of coming to Liam she fell onto her knees at Mark’s feet. “It’s an awful feeling. I know. Just horrible.”

Mark lifted his hand to take the washcloth while his pale cheeks flooded back with splotches of color. “Thanks, uh—”

“Bev. Don’t exert yourself.” She twisted around and looked up at Liam, who was pointedly bleeding down the side of his face. “Liam, go clean yourself up before your brother sees you again.”

Liam stared at her hand resting on his brother’s knee and felt an inexplicable rage bubble inside him. He could probably see right down her shirt from where he sat, the big faker. “Of course.” He didn’t pretend to hide his contempt. “If I faint from blood loss just leave me there. The mice can have my body.”

He heard Bev mutter, “Such a baby” as he walked down the hall to the bathroom. While he waited for the water to run hot, Liam wiped away the congealing blood off his lip and realized he was clenching his teeth and fighting the urge to drive his fist through the mirror.

It was not that he was jealous. Bev was hot, and he wished he could take advantage of it, but Mark was his shy, geeky brother, and the trauma of having an outwardly sweet and stacked girl nursing him back to health was going to be too much for him. Mark was probably already thinking he was in love.

He slammed the medicine cabinet shut and was peeling apart the Band-Aid when it occurred to him that Bev may have been trying to make him jealous. The thought should have made him angrier, given how protective he was of his little brother, but it did not. In fact, he had to wipe the grin off his face to fit the bandage over his split upper lip.

When he got back to the two lovebirds in the living room, his temper and his offending blood were out of sight. “Help me pack up the car, Mark,” he said, “and we can be at the store right when they open.”

“Store?” Mark stared at Bev next to him in a matching armchair.

“REI,” Liam said. “My pack.”

Not looking away from Bev, his darling brother said, “You can have mine. It’s in great shape.”

“Then you won’t have a pack,” Liam said.

“Oh, I’m not going.”

Liam walked over and whacked him on the side of his head. “Fill up the water bottles while I check the tent. The mice only got into my pack, right?” He whacked him again. “Right?”

“Jeez.” Mark got up and headed for the kitchen. “No need to get violent.”

“Tell that to the neighbors. Kind of got me in the mood.”

Bev stood up and came over to him. “How’s the lip?”

“Oh, now you care.”

Eyes bright, she bit back a smile and studied his lip. “Looks like you’ll live.”

He swallowed, feeling his pulse pick up again. Her hair was up in a pony tail, straggly and lopsided, and he had to dig his nails into his palms to stop himself from tearing the rubber band out and combing the long, black strands with his fingers. “Your sister will be disappointed.”

“Nothing new there,” Bev said. He liked the way her eyes could smile without the rest of her face moving.

Mark came back into the room. “How many Nalgene bottles are you bringing, anyway?” He saw Bev standing close to Liam and the slow social calculations on his face were visible from fifteen feet away.

“All of them. The creeks are dry this time of year.”

“That’ll be heavy,” Mark said.

“Better to be tired than dehydrated.”

Mark sighed and went back into the kitchen.

“He’s sweet,” Bev said, and Liam imagined shoving his brother off a cliff, which was all wrong. It was Bev who was trouble.

“Stay away from him.”

“What?” Bev asked, incredulous.

“I mean, please stay away from him. He doesn’t know you’re not as nice as you look. You and your violent relatives.”

She frowned at him, shaking her head. “I think you should rest for a bit before you climb any mountains. Your brains are rattled.”

Agreeing with her, he put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the door, annoyed at how badly he wanted her.

“See you at the office,” he said, and suddenly wished it was Monday.

H
e did see her at the office. Specifically, the office next door to his.

“I’m moving down here,” she said Monday morning, while George and Rinaldo from the warehouse followed behind her with boxes and computer equipment and a rolling rack of samples.

“Whatever the hell for?”

She frowned at him. “That ivory tower wasn’t working out. My grandfather’s frat lounge, not practical.”

“What are you talking about? It was a perfect way to don the mantle of power.”

“Too cut off from the action. And I kept bumping into the foosball table.” She walked past him, tore a paper towel off a roll in her hand, and began wiping off an old desk. “I’ve put the room to a much better use.”

“Do you want the exercise ball chair?” Rachel wriggled past Liam to talk to Bev.

“God, no. You want it, you got it.”

Rachel nodded. “It’ll be awesome for my abs. And if anyone bothers me, I’ll just throw it at them.”

“Just lock the door to your office if people are bothering you.” Bev smiled at her then turned her attention to Liam. “Oh dear, did you forget your sunscreen?”

Liam crossed his arms over his chest, well aware he had a white mask around his eyes. “Problem with the gear.”

Rachel came over to stare at him, too. “It looks cool. Like Kung Fu Panda. Except the reverse.”

“The sunscreen fell in a pit toilet.” He’d never hike with his brother again. Thirty hours of continuous misery. When Mark wasn’t dropping essential gear into latrines or whining about how tired or hot or cold he was, he was asking about Bev:
Is she married? Dating? Sleeping with you?

Wanting to sleep with you?

“It’s kind of cute.” Bev was still staring. “Takes the edge off.”

Liam scowled. “I don’t want any edges off.”

Rachel laughed. “I’d give you some foundation to cover it up, but I don’t have quite that shade of lobster.”

He gave her a cold look down his crimson proboscis then strode back to his own office. Ever since Bev had shown up, he’d found his authority chipping away. Just that morning Carrie at the front desk had actually said hello to him.

Before he could sit down and get some work done, he heard activity in the empty office on the other side of him. “Damn it, Bev,” he muttered, and went out to see Rachel rolling a cart stacked high with binders into the room. She looked up at him and grinned fearlessly.

“She’s going to be our boss in a couple years,” Bev said behind him.

Liam swung around. “You’re taking both my offices?”

“
Your
offices? They were empty.”

“For a reason.”

She rolled her eyes. “For a jock, you’re not much of a team player.”

“For a couch potato, you’re quite a busybody.”

Laughing, she touched his arm. “Why, Liam—I think you’re finally beginning to understand me.”

He gave her his hardest glare, but she just smiled and walked away. With a limp. “You’re injured.”

“Now maybe you’ll believe I’m not like designed like the rest of you. One little walk and I’m broken.”

“Cut that out.” He got ahead of her and grabbed her shoulders, making her face him. “You just dove in too fast.”

She tensed under his grip and looked down at his hand on her shoulder. Suddenly it was like they were in the dressing room again and her body was pressing up against his. He softened his grip on her shoulders, feeling the heat of her body through her dress.

She wriggled free. “I went one block.”

“It was the sprinting to interrupt a homicide that did it,” he said, his voice rough. “If your sister hadn’t assaulted me you would have been fine. Don’t give up. It’s great. Really.”

“I knew you would gloat.”

“This is gloating?” He drew back. “You want gloating, I’ll give you gloating. I knew you couldn’t do it. I knew all your bravado about hating exercise was just a lie. You’re just too conceited.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Conceited?”

“Can’t be the best, won’t do it.” He shrugged and went over to carry Rachel’s computer monitor for her. “You like to be on top of things. That power-thing again.”

“That is not true.”

“Put it off to the left,” Rachel said, coming in and caressing the vast expanse of oak desktop with her palms. “This thing’s bigger than my bed. I have room for two computers.”

Liam looked at the desk with new eyes.
Bed
, he thought then frowned at Bev. There was no reason she should be wearing dresses again. The only people charmed by perfect, oversized breasts were straight men like him, and he was tired of the distraction. “What did you bake today?”

“No time for that. I bought BurnBars.” She strode out. “Maybe that will shut you up.”

The fantasy of her napping on the desk vanished. He hurried after her into her new office. “Who told you?”

She frowned. “Told me what?”

Her confusion stopped him. Smoothing his hand down the front of his shirt, he took a step back. “Never mind—my mother must have told you.”

“Liam, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She gestured at a pile of small boxes on her desk. “If you don’t like BurnBars, don’t eat them. I had a coupon.”

It was just a coincidence. For a moment he had thought Darrin was making trouble, knowing how much he hated any reminders of his father. His overreaction embarrassed him. “Sorry. My dad invented the BurnBar. Back in the early eighties.”

“Your father?”

“Sold it all to Kraft.” So he could devote all his waking and sleeping hours to getting his son to the Olympics. “That’s how we ended up living in a fancy house in the Berkeley Hills next to Ed. Before that we had a duplex in the flats near the freeway.”

Bev glanced over at her new desk, where the cases of BurnBars formed a small pyramid in one corner. “I kind of like them.”

“So does everyone else.” He went over and picked up a box. “I’ll take some to Engineering for you. They’ll love you even more.”

She met his eyes, and they looked at each other for a moment. Then she smiled. “Wait until they see what else I have planned.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Yes, you do. Follow me.”

He didn’t have time. The red light on his phone was blinking, the cell in his pocket vibrated every five minutes with a phone mail reminder, he had a meeting ten minutes ago, and three days of email was still in unopened bold font in his in-box.

And Bev was wearing a dress. “What did you do now?” He sighed, following her into the hall, watching her hips sway, hearing the blood rush in his ears.

“Don’t worry. You’ll like it.”

That’s what I’m afraid of.

B
ev tightened the sash around her waist and tried to reach the elevator without limping. She felt his eyes on her back like radiation.

“Did you ice it?” Liam asked.

“I spent most of yesterday with my foot in a bucket.”