Page 9 of Breaking All The Rules
“You’re quite good-looking, aren’t you?”
Shaking his head, he laughed some more. “Do you always say whatever’s on your mind?”
“No.” Bea sighed, the thought horribly sobering. “I never say what’s on my mind.” She just kept everything crammed inside until she was ready to explode in a fit of shrill female hormonosity.
Yeah, not a word, but that hadn’t mattered to that asshole Charlie Hammersmith.
“That’s not the impression you’ve given me so far.”
She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them and tucking them under her chin. “I’m turning over a new leaf. From now on, I’m just going to say whatever crosses my mind.”
“Lucky me.” They smiled at each other, and his lack of foreboding was charming as all heck. “It’s Wednesday.”
Bea, a little more befuddled by that smile than a woman of her age and experience should be, scrunched her brow. “Your name is Wednesday?”
“No.” He grinned. “The day of the week. My name is Austin.”
“Of course it is.” God…even his name sounded young.
“Oh yeah?” He turned his head to the side—his smile deadly even in profile—then back again. “I look like an Austin to you?”
Bea wondered if there was a city ordinance she was breaking right now by imagining how scruffy whiskers belonging to an officer of the law would feel rubbing in unmentionable places. Unauthorized fantasizing over a county official, maybe?
Or mental undressing of a police officer on duty?
“More than you look like a Wednesday,” she quipped.
He hooted out another laugh, and the fact that he seemed to be enjoying himself during this verbal ping-pong was a curious delight to Bea.
“I have a suggestion, if I may,” he said after he’d sobered, “to do with keeping track of what day it is. It’s probably highly”—he glanced up at the camera in the corner—“inappropriate. But…why not, especially given your possession of designer day-of-the-week panties?”
Oh lordy… She could listen to him say panties all day long.
“Just correlate the days with the underwear. Like, tomorrow is Thursday, right? So…if you wear your Thursday panties tomorrow, then hey, presto. You’re back on track.”
Thursday panties.
God, she loved her Thursday panties more than all the others already. Hell, she might even go home and get into them immediately. Or after she’d washed them, anyway. Bea mentally apologized to the other six days of the week, then wondered if it was possible to orgasm from a man rolling the word panties off his tongue with such dedication and frequency.
Oh…for heaven’s sake. Pull your shit together, Bea!
She dropped her legs, returning her feet to the floor as she sat a little straighter. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible,” she said, trying to channel Cranky Bea from outside Annie’s.
He eyed her speculatively for a beat or two. “Let me guess. Because you’re a rule breaker now?”
Bea tucked in her chin. “Damn straight I am.”
“Okay…I’ll bite. Why are you a rule breaker?”
Even the question got Bea’s motor running. The rage and impotence from a month ago, when she’d walked out of her cushy advertising role in LA after being screwed over for a promotion yet again by a boardroom full of men, returned. As did the injustice of her father’s scathing condemnation. A corporate ad man himself, he’d called her actions harebrained and impulsive—just like your mom.
When she’d tried so damn hard all her life to be the exact opposite.
Officer Austin Cooper McCutie and his panties were temporarily forgotten as the visceral double gut punch of that day was revisited. She pushed off the bench and started to prowl back and forth across the width of the cell. Six paces to the wall opposite and six paces back.
“What good did following the rules get me?” she asked finally, whipping around to face him from the middle of the cell.
Being a good girl as per her grandmother’s constant refrain.
