Page 4 of Breaking All The Rules
Austin blinked. That wasn’t exactly an offense. “When you say loitering, what exactly do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Eadie demanded. “She’s standing outside Annie’s, eating two ice-cream cones. At once. In fifty degrees.”
He stifled a smile at Eadie’s scandalized tone. “Okay?”
“She’s not just eating them, Officer…she’s savoring them. Making a total spectacle of herself. It’s practically…pornographic.”
A stranger—a woman, at that—eating ice cream in a pornographic manner? Austin stood. Never could it be said that he let down a Credence citizen of good standing in her hour of need. “Okay, ma’am, I’ll go and check it out now.”
“Thank you, young man. You can never be too careful about public safety.”
“No, ma’am,” Austin agreed with a smile. Who knew the kind of public disorder this could incite? One day pornographic ice cream consumption, the next mass street orgies.
Yep…never a dull moment.
…
Austin pulled up outside Annie’s to find a woman, just as Eadie had indicated, with an ice-cream cone in each hand, licking from one to the other in the most hedonistic display of ice-cream consumption he’d ever witnessed. Her square face was turned to the sun, her eyes shut as she licked with the kind of long, slow licks that made him hear bow chicka bow wow music in his head—and in other parts of his anatomy.
So this was the woman who’d been holed up in the apartment above Déjà Brew. Given he knew everybody in town except her, it couldn’t be anyone else.
Ice cream was smeared on her lips as she got down to the cones, and he watched her devour them in great, crunchy mouthfuls, sighing as she fed the tip of the last one into her mouth before licking her fingers.
Austin actually went a little dizzy.
It was probably wrong to be salivating—not ice-cream related—and staring, right?
Say something, dumbass. Don’t just sit there and watch her…fellate two ice-cream cones in public.
But he was momentarily struck speechless by her level of enjoyment, despite the wild hair, the baggy sweats, the stained T-shirt, and the…bunny slippers?
Maybe Eadie had been right about the scandalous pajama thing.
Austin jumped into action, getting out of his vehicle and stepping up onto the sidewalk. “Morning, ma’am,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
Her fingers slid from her mouth as she gradually lowered her head, until she was looking straight at him, pinning him with startling green eyes that reminded him of fancy glass and even fancier opals. A flare of annoyance ignited a rich vein of sparks in her eyes and puckered the space between her brows.
It was not the look he’d been expecting.
From the way she’d demolished her ice cream, he’d expected a slumberous kind of ecstasy. The sort he enjoyed seeing on a woman’s face, especially if he’d put it there. Not a frown and a glare. And then, as her gaze traveled over his uniform, her eyes widened slightly. “Is there a problem, Officer?”
Her tone was somewhere between irritated and wary, but there was also a directness to it that told him, while the uniform had surprised her, she wasn’t intimidated by it. Her pointy chin jutted defensively.
He cut to the chase. “Everything okay, ma’am?”
Sexy eating of ice cream aside, maybe this woman with the wild hair and the bunny slippers had deeper issues. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head and was wandering around in an altered neurological state due to pressure or bleeding on her brain?
She blinked, her frown of annoyance turning to one of genuine puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? I was eating ice cream.”
“Two, to be precise.”
“I couldn’t decide on a flavor.” There was a definite note of duh in her voice. “Also”—she held up the brown paper bag that had been stashed under her arm—“I have pie.”
Austin hadn’t noticed the bag until now, although he knew Annie’s brown paper bags quite well. The diner had been here since before he was born. “Are you hurt? Or…lost?”
She dropped her arm back to her side. “No.”
So she always left her place looking like she’d been pulled through a hedge backward? “Do you know you’re wearing…pajamas?”
