Page 79 of Breaking All The Rules
He shuffled through the sketches one more time as if looking for one in particular and, when he found it, he placed it on her lap. This bee had its brows beetled together in an irritated little frown, its mouth a foreboding slash, and the buzz coming out from a word bubble near its head was written expletive style—buz@z$zz#zzz!!!
“I think you are.” Tapping the drawing, Austin said, “Looks like a logo to me.”
Bea stared at the cranky little bee. Just like her—Cranky Bea. She smiled, marveling at her subconscious and the power of doodling. “What do you think I should do?”
“It’s not up to me.”
“I know, but…I’d appreciate your take.” Maybe she was wrong, but she didn’t think Austin would be too excited about anything that might shift her focus from Credence, and it would be good to have that perspective strongly represented.
“I…” He shrugged, seemingly reluctant to venture it even if he did have one. “Think you’re an artist, Beatrice. I think maybe you always have been?”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently; he was dead wrong about that. She had an appreciation for art and an eye for design because so much about advertising revolved around that process, but an artist she was not. “This”—she picked up the logo from her lap—“isn’t art.”
“Okay. If you say so.” Clearly, he didn’t believe her declaration. “Whatever it is,” he said, then lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, “I think maybe you’re liking it, so…why not keep doing it? For as long as you’re enjoying it? You didn’t know what you wanted to do when you came here, and yeah, this has kinda fallen into your lap, but maybe that was for a reason? Especially if, as you say, Kim is happy for you to work freelance. Then you get the best of both worlds. Advertising and art while working to your own timetable and staying away from corporate life.”
Bea nodded absently. Austin was, as always, separating things down to their most simple parts. But her deepest worry bubbled to the surface, and she expressed it before she even knew what she was saying. “What if it’s a slippery slope?”
“You mean, what if you start wanting more? If advertising starts to suck you back in?”
She blinked, suddenly not entirely sure that was what she’d meant and she hadn’t just channeled her grandmother’s fears about the perils of surrendering to an artistic temperament, which she knew all too intimately. Bea was an ad woman, not an artist. Art was a part of the process—a means to an end. Not the whole.
That had never been in doubt. Until recently. Until the lake.
“Yeah,” she said huskily, because the other stuff was too big to contemplate.
His hand nudged hers, and he entwined their fingers. “I say, take it one day at a time. If you start feeling like it’s getting to be too much and you don’t want to do it anymore or you want to ease back, then ease back. You left for a reason, Bea, so go back for a reason. Like believing in Kim and Greet Cute. But with your eyes open. And maybe give yourself an out?”
Her heart skipped a beat. This twenty-five-going-on-one-hundred guy was more than she’d ever hoped for, and this thing between them was madness. Sudden, intense, and inexplicable—but also very real.
Bea rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. She had no clue what to say, but she was inordinately pleased that Austin was here with her in this moment.
“Of course,” he said, a smile in his voice, “when all else fails, you can always ask, WWDD?”
And just like that, the intensity of their conversation lifted. Bea laughed. “He wouldn’t laze around in his bed all day, sketching.”
Fucking, maybe, but not something so damn passive.
“True,” Austin agreed. “But he never backs away from a challenge. Or an opportunity. And isn’t that exactly what Greet Cute is?”
Bea nodded. She couldn’t dispute that.
“Look, Beatriss, honey.” He looked down at her the same time she looked up, and their gazes met. There was humor lurking there but also a streak of seriousness. “Whatever you decide to do, just know I’ll keep you supplied with pie and orgasms, okay?”
Bea’s breath got stuck somewhere between her lungs and her throat. How could she resist that offer? “Okay,” she agreed, her voice breathy.
“Good.” He grinned at her wolfishly as he tossed the sketches over the side of the bed and reached for her, dragging her up and over his lap until she was straddling him, the hard ridge in his pants causing that breath she’d only just caught to get stuck again. “So…I’ve taken care of the pie…” And he leaned in and kissed her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Sunday rocked around again, Bea found herself back at the ranch, taking more riding lessons with Austin on a short trail where Buffy ambled along companionably beside Austin’s horse, Star. He pointed out aspects of the ranch as they worked to a bit of a trot and the sun warmed her through. After they returned, she and Austin sat on the rail again and observed Jill working a horse from a nearby ranch.
She was so absorbed that she didn’t even hear Austin’s mom approach until she was hauling herself up the fence and swinging her leg over the top rail. “I could watch her all day,” Margaret said.
“Me too,” Bea agreed.
Which was exactly what they did, at least until Jill finished her set and Margaret invited them up to the big house for some afternoon drinks.
“Thanks for the offer, Mom,” Austin said, “but—”
