Page 19 of Breaking All The Rules
Grabbing the brown packet from the back seat, he handed it over. “I stopped at Annie’s. I don’t know if you’ve tried any of her cream pie yet, but I swear, it’s almost a religious experience.”
Bea didn’t take the packet. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass, thank you. I’ve eaten so much pie these past couple of weeks, I swear I can hear my pancreas sobbing late at night. I’m going to have an ass as wide as the Grand Canyon if I keep this up.”
Austin thought how very, very sad it was that Bea would deprive herself of one of the nicest things a person could put in their mouth because society judged women on the size of their asses. She’d told him two days ago she was going to eat pies more often, and here she was already tempering her appetites. Screw that. If he did nothing else for Bea, he could feed her pie.
Personally, if that’s what she wanted.
The woman looked good in this BMW but nowhere near as good as she looked when she was eating pie and making those appreciative little noises that went straight to his groin. Austin opened the packet to allow the smell to waft out, and he swore she leaned in a little more.
“Are you sure? It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time not eating pie or any kind of carbs. Why not make up for lost time?”
She sighed. “Because I’m thirty-five and I don’t”—her eyes traveled over him, up and down, in a way that probably should have made Austin feel objectified. It did not—“look like you.”
“Hell, Bea.” He stopped abruptly when he realized what he’d said. “Sorry, can I call you Bea?”
“Oh…” She paused for the briefest of moments, but Austin noticed. “Sure.”
And wasn’t that a ringing endorsement? “But…you don’t want me to?”
“No, it’s fine.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “Everyone calls me Bea.”
Yeah. Except Austin didn’t want to be lumped in with everyone. “Beatriss,” he said, dragging out the end syllable a little as he ran with his gut feeling. “Life’s too short not to eat pie. Eat the damn thing. If you want”—he waggled his eyebrows—“I’ll keep an eye on your ass for you.”
Her lips twitched. “You’re an ass man, huh?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t play favorites. I like all the bits.”
It was gratifying to hear the hitch in her breath and watch her throat undulate like it was a little hard to swallow. “Well,” she said, her voice thick, “are we doing this or not?”
“Are you eating that or not?” Austin parried.
Glancing at the packet in his hand like she’d temporarily forgotten it existed, she opened the glove box, took the packet off him, and stashed it inside. “Maybe later.”
It wasn’t quite the same as watching her eat pie, but it wasn’t a no, either, so Austin shelved his disappointment. “Okay,” he said, his finger hovering over the ignition button, hesitating for a beat or two. “Are you sure you want to do this in your very nice car?”
She nodded firmly. “Yup.”
“Beatrice, it’s an eighty-thousand-dollar car. You sure you want to take some rubber off the tires?”
She stared at him for a moment as if trying to compute what he’d said, and then she barked out a laugh. “Oh, Austin. It’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car, and the answer is still yes.”
Christ. Austin whistled. “One hundred big ones? And you…lease it…or…?”
His mama always told him it was impolite to ask about someone’s financial status, but his ass was sitting in some serious money right now.
“I own it.” She grinned. “Outright.”
“Man…so you’re, like…loaded or something?”
Apart from Wade Carter, the only other person he knew with serious money was some guy he’d gone to high school with whose old man had paid seventy-five thousand for some stud Wagyu semen for his herd cows.
But for damn sure, a BMW trumped bull spunk any day.
She grinned. “I do all right. I’ve worked in advertising for fifteen years at a prestigious LA firm. The last seven years I’ve been a junior executive. The salary package was generous, the bonuses even more so, and I’m still making rent on my apartment in California. Suffice to say, I don’t have to run out and get a job anytime soon.”
“So you’re just going to…swan around in your Beamer, being a lady of leisure, huh?”
“For a while.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Intimidated?”
