Page 10 of Breaking All The Rules
“What have I gotten for it?” she demanded. “Nothing, that’s what.” She started to pace again. “More than fifteen years at the same agency and passed over for promotion time and again. That corner office I’ve been coveting ever since I was a junior copy editor, the one that has been promised to me every year for the last five years going to yet another less experienced, better connected man.”
She kinda yelled the last word as she stopped and glared at him, and Austin Cooper, the police officer, held up his hands—still clasped together through the bars—in some kind of surrender.
It would probably be funny if she was viewing this from the outside.
“I haven’t had more than six hours of sleep a night in the last decade. I haven’t had a pet. I haven’t had…a girls’ night.” She gave a laugh that tasted bitter. “Who am I kidding, I don’t have any girlfriends anymore, since all I do is work.”
She paced again, the rage complementing the air of hopelessness in the cold cell to perfection. Reaching the middle, she turned to him again. “I haven’t eaten a carb.” She held up her thumb to count off all her woes. “I haven’t been on a date in forever.” She raised her index finger to indicate woe number two. “I think my boobs are dropping.”
She went to stick up her middle finger but changed her mind, looking down at her chest as she clasped both hands over her breasts, weighing them up for evidence.
Definitely dropping.
“Hell—” Removing her hands, she glared at him again. “I haven’t had sex in more than a year.” A thought hit her. “God…I haven’t had an orgasm delivered by a human being for longer than that.”
“Oh-kay.”
If Bea had been less sad about that sudden realization, she might have been embarrassed to have groped her own breasts and admitted something so deeply personal to not only a virtual stranger but a police officer who’d put her in a cell and turned her to mush with his frequent use of the word panties. But, as with everything since quitting her job, there were no fucks to give.
He didn’t seem to be too perturbed by her frankness, at least. Not that a young, sexy guy could understand the tragedy of going without sexual gratification. She doubted he went a week without seducing some young, perky-boobed woman out of her panties.
Momentarily exhausted of rage and words, Bea headed back to the bench, her eyes landing on the brown paper packet. Oh God yes, shhhugar! She snatched it up, reached in, and pulled out the first piece of pie her fingers touched.
Pie would make it better.
Barely stopping to check out the type, she took a huge bite. Mmmm. Cherry. Plump and gooey. Tart and sweet all at once. With a hint of vanilla and something else she just couldn’t place. Bea moaned as she took another bite, her blood sugar rocketing straight into the danger zone as her eyes practically rolled back in her head.
So. Freaking. Good.
So good, in fact, she turned back to face Austin just so she could share in the marvel. “Oh my God,” she said around her second mouthful, “this pie is ah-mazing.”
He grinned. “I know, right? Annie is a goddess.”
Bea nodded, crossing over to him, because she couldn’t believe that anything could taste this good, and she needed to make sure Austin understood that this pie was a total party for the mouth. Stopping about a foot from where his hands were still clasped together through the bars, she took another mouthful, her eyes shutting involuntarily on a wave of bliss.
Hell, her left nipple hardened.
Swallowing her mouthful down, her eyes blinked open to find him watching her intently. Up this close she noticed his eyes were blue. Not the kind of intense blue of a sapphire or the hot blue of a gas flame, but the temperate kind of blue that said, Come on in, the water’s warm and there are margaritas here. And pie.
Her right nipple hardened.
And a very pleasant sensation twinged between her legs. Any more of this and she could reset the clock on the orgasm thing.
“You should eat pie more often,” he said, his voice a low kind of rumble that wrapped around her waist and urged her closer. “It looks good on you.”
She resisted the pull but let the compliment go to her head, where it mixed with the heady aroma and sweet decadence of cherries, sugar, and pastry. “I intend to.” She took another bite. “They don’t have pies like this in LA,” she said around the mouthful.
He grinned then, his intensity evaporating like a mirage. Perhaps that’s all it had been—one her pie-addled brain had conjured up. “LA, huh?”
Bea ignored him, continuing to devour the pie.
“You’re a long way from home,” he said. “Why Credence?”
Swallowing the last mouthful down, she decided to throw Officer Blue Eyes a bone. “I wanted out of the rat race for a while. I wanted to spend some time in a cute, small, friendly town where nobody knows my name, but they welcome me with open arms anyway.”
“And yet you haven’t come out of your apartment for two weeks.”
“You noticed?” Bea asked, intrigued by Austin’s ninja-level observance.
