Page 47 of Breaking All The Rules
“You don’t need a barn cat?” More indignant mewling from Princess as Mrs. Jennings tutted and worried her bottom lip. “I’ve asked all around the neighborhood with no luck. Poor Cecil, he’s probably rolling in his grave. I’d hate to have her”—Mrs. Jennings mouthed the next two words—“put down.”
Austin sighed as the old lady turned the screw. But then an idea hit him. “It’s okay, Mrs. Jennings. I know someone who’ll take Princess.”
A big smile beamed back at him. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” Beatrice was in the market for a cat, and one had literally fallen into his lap. And if that wasn’t a sign, then he didn’t know what was.
He’d just have to convince her she needed this ugly, one-eyed, marmalade cat whose ego was writing checks its body could definitely not cash, instead of the cute, fluffy, low-maintenance one she’d imagined.
“What do you say, Princess, want to meet a friend of mine?”
The cat’s tail twitched with interest even if her face was the picture of disdain, which was good enough for Austin. Because Mrs. Jennings was obviously not keeping her here one minute longer, and now he had a legitimate reason to visit Bea.
Win/win. Whether Princess thought so or not.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bea heard the bootsteps coming up the stairs to her apartment, and her heart began to thump in sync. She’d had two visitors this week already—Mia and Winona—but she’d know these footsteps anywhere. It felt like ages since she’d seen Austin, and she couldn’t deny the tiny little trill in her pulse when the knock came, knowing he was standing just outside her door.
She paused The Walking Dead—hello, Team Daryl—and slipped out of bed, where she’d been propped against the wall with multiple pillows, balancing the laptop on her knees. There was a TV she could probably use if she took a couple of minutes to work out the remote and find some local channels, but there was something decadent and…subversive about lying in bed all day and watching episode after episode after episode of whatever the hell she wanted.
Also, it kept her mind off going back to the lake.
It was ridiculous to be so breathless when she opened the door, considering she hadn’t walked more than a dozen steps to get there, but that was what even the thought of seeing Austin did to her. It was utterly pathetic, like a teenager waiting for her first date, but she couldn’t stop the giddiness bubbling like champagne through her blood.
She’d decided she wouldn’t actively seek him out, not even for friendship—she could ring any of her new gal pals for that—but if he came to her, then what was a girl to do?
Bea took a steadying breath, then opened the door.
“Hey,” he said, standing there all tall and broad and sexy in his police-issue cowboy hat and uniform—who knew beige could be so damn hot—with a huge marmalade cat cradled in his arms.
Her breath rushed out on a rough exhale. “Hey.”
And neither of them said anything more or even moved, they just devoured the sight of each other, an electrical charge holding them both captive in the moment. It felt like she hadn’t seen Austin in a year, and her eyes licked him up like he was a piece of Annie’s pie. Despite her usual, unglamorous attire of sweats and a tee, no bra, his gaze ate her up, too, and her body ran riot beneath his intensity. Her nipples hardened, her belly heated, and a hot kind of throb took up residence between her legs.
Until the cat made an indignant meow, killing the current between them more effectively than the flick of a switch, and the mutual eye-fucking came to an abrupt end.
“I…ah”—he cleared his throat—“brought you something.”
Bea swallowed. The man could have arrived with nothing and would still be everything she wanted. “You’d better come in, then.”
She stepped to the side, maybe not far enough to allow him to pass by her without the slightest of brushes, and if he heard the hitch in her breath when his biceps made light contact with the tips of her breasts, he didn’t acknowledge it. As he walked to the center of the room, she noticed he was wearing a backpack she’d never seen on him before.
He glanced at the trash basket half-full of beer cans but didn’t ask. Which saved Bea from explaining she’d decided to start practicing her three-pointer skills. So far, her proficiency at landing cans from her bed to the basket wasn’t great, but she was improving, and she was at least picking them up afterward and not leaving them scattered on the floor.
He turned to face her. “Beatriss—”
She made a kind of desperate noise at the back of her throat that cut Austin off and made his gaze drop to her mouth. It had been four days since he’d said her name like that, and her ovaries, which had clearly been in deprivation mode, were suddenly hemorrhaging estrogen and controlling her vocal cords.
When she didn’t say anything more, he dragged his eyes off her mouth and continued. “Meet your new cat, Princess.”
Bea forced herself to look at the animal properly for the first time, which was what any normal person would have done after opening the door instead of ogling a guy she’d already decided should be firmly in the friend zone. Although, given the…unfortunate looks of the creature in question, perhaps it hadn’t been a bad thing.
Between the gnarly eye, the snaggletooth, the irregular-fur situation, and the old-man ear hair, the cat wasn’t ever going to win best in show. “Wow. Princess, huh? That’s…”
“Unexpected?”
Bea laughed. She was going to say aspirational. “I think something like Lucifer or Beelzebub would have been more fitting.”
