Page 33 of Breaking All The Rules
Her brain took a moment to think about the kind of campaign she could create for such a product, which was, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for her—or at least it had been, anyway. She hadn’t realized that shit would be so hard to switch off, but here she was picturing Austin naked—except for his hat—in a half-full bathtub with a few appropriately placed bubbles, in the middle of a field, surveying his land as the sun went down, golden rays falling softly against his body. The caption at the bottom would read…
Bea thought for a moment.
For real men only.
“Where would you like it?”
Oh, lordy. Where wouldn’t she like it?
“Beatriss?”
His soft inquiry yanked her out of her libido spin, and she turned to find him in the middle of the open area that was her living room, looking around for a spare inch of clear space.
“Oh, sorry…” She gave a mental shake to clear her head of hot steam rising off bubbly water as she strode to the coffee table, then cleared away her laptop, hoodie, several used glasses, and two empty beer cans. “Put it down here.”
Austin did as he was told, then stood looking around some more at the apartment, his eyes skimming over the unmade bed and the couch currently being used as a clotheshorse and the kitchen bench cluttered with dishes and the groceries she’d picked up yesterday morning and only half put away. A box of Lucky Charms, a giant jar of peanut butter, several bags of corn chips, packets of microwave popcorn, two six-packs of beer, a supply of Oreos, and three rolls of paper towel.
To be fair, the kitchen bench was quite small, so it didn’t take much to look cluttered.
“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess.” But it was an improvement from a couple of days ago. She’d washed the dishes yesterday, even if she hadn’t put them away yet. And she had picked up half of the discarded clothes on the floor. Bea called that progress.
“This is an…interesting choice of interior decoration. Were you going for a particular style?”
Style? He was such a smart-ass. “Frat-house chic?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been in a couple of those since being on the job. I think you nailed it.”
“You don’t approve?”
He held up his hands in a surrender motion. “Beatriss, honey, I can honestly say I couldn’t give a good goddamn.”
Bea had never been called honey by a guy under about the age of eighty in her life. Frankly, it could be kinda condescending, and she’d have thought that would go a hundred times over for a guy ten years her junior. But…apparently not. The way Austin said honey—all sweet and gentle and silky and clearly a term of affection and endearment—practically had her purring.
“Unless, of course, you’re in violation of some fire code, in which case I’ll have to take you back to the pokey.”
Bea laughed a little too loud at his joke, her body still recovering from the shock of being called honey by a cocky twenty-five-year-old.
“Well, I like it,” she said. “My apartment in LA was always spotlessly clean—nothing was out of place. I had a cleaning service come in once a week for what must have been the easiest job in the world. It always looked like a display home. It never looked lived in because I was hardly ever there to live in it. This”—she threw her arm out—“looks lived in.”
Just articulating her feelings out loud helped crystalize why this level of mess wasn’t bothering Bea. Why she was suddenly craving clutter and disarray when once she’d shunned it. She was turning over a new leaf, learning to live in the moment, and that included the space in which she’d chosen to live.
“Well…” Austin looked around again. “It definitely looks lived in.”
Bea smiled. Yeah, she might have gone too far the other way, but she was confident she’d find a happy medium over the next little while. “Thanks for the fondue pot. I love it.”
“Consider it a welcome-to-Credence gift.”
“You already put me in jail; you didn’t need to get me anything else.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You are such a weirdo.”
Bea grinned, taking it as the compliment Austin had clearly meant it as. She’d take eccentricity over her old status of conformity any day. “Thank you.”
“Maybe you’ll invite me over one night for fondue?”
Gah! The man was impossible to resist. “Maybe I will.”
“In the meantime,” he said, “I thought you might like to come and hang out at Jack’s with me. Meet some people?”
