Page 92 of Breaking All The Rules
“Nothing. Everything’s fine. I’ll just…miss you, is all.”
And Bea would miss him. But it felt like there was more to it than that. “It’s going to be so much easier to manage the campaign if I stay on these few days and get things in place.”
“Of course.”
The fact that his of course lacked enthusiasm suddenly grated. “It’s my job, Austin.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s fine for you to stay.”
Bea blinked. What the what now? So much for phone sex. “I don’t need your permission.”
Had she been so swept up in this thing between them that she’d failed to realize that Austin was the kind of guy who thought women needed permission from their man to do stuff? Surely not?
There was a long sigh from his end. “Of course not. I didn’t mean… I just… Look, I’m sorry, okay? Of course it’s your job and you need to stay in LA to get it done. That’s great. I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back home.”
Home. Bea turned it over and over in her head. Credence, her little apartment above Déjà Brew, Austin…she hadn’t set out to make them her home, but they were nonetheless.
Wow—that had happened fast.
Mollified, she said, “Okay then.” Which was followed by an awkward kind of silence, and she hated that there was this weirdness between them now when all she wanted was to talk with this guy who’d become a scarily big part of her life. Just…listen to his voice. “How’s Princess?” she asked.
He started to talk then, his voice softening again, and Bea fell back against the mattress and got lost in the low rumble.
…
By Wednesday morning, it was evident that Bea was going to need to extend her trip by another day to get a bunch of interviews done on Thursday, and she rebooked her ticket yet again for midday Friday out of LAX. With everything running to plan, she should be driving into Credence around six o’clock. It would be a long day, but Austin would be at the end of it and she couldn’t wait.
It felt like forever since she’d seen him, and she’d missed him. After that awkward conversation on Monday night, things had gone back to normal—including a very sexy session on FaceTime—and when she’d called to tell him she was extending her trip by another day, he’d taken it in stride and simply asked her if she preferred to have peach cobbler or cherry pie smeared all over her body.
Her relief at his reply had been palpable. Keeping their physical attraction front and center, she could deal with—weirdness over a change of plans due to her job, she could not. All that did was shine a huge spotlight on the reasons she’d been reluctant to get involved with Austin in the first place…
…
Kim poked her head in the office at the end of Thursday. “You must be exhausted,” she said.
Bea nodded. “Yep.” But it was a good exhausted. The kind of weariness that came with accomplishment at having achieved all the things she’d set out to achieve. She’d spend a few hours tomorrow morning at the office, checking off some minor, last-minute things before she had to get to the airport, but otherwise she was done.
“You were a machine today,” Kim teased as she entered and sat on the chair on the other side of Bea’s desk.
Well, it wasn’t her desk—it had been loaned to her for the week—but wow, what a desk. They’d given her the empty corner office with its third-story view over tree-lined boulevards and the vibrant street art of downtown LA. Sure, it wasn’t the kind of corner office she’d once craved in the glass high-rise belonging to Jing-A-Ling, but it was spacious and airy, with huge windows and modern art and a pervasive feeling of potential.
Jing-A-Ling’s offices were claustrophobic by comparison, and the only things that pervaded the air there were tradition and patriarchy.
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” Bea quipped as she shut down all three screens of her state-of-the-art computer console.
“And that,” Kim said as she crossed her legs, “is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” Bea quirked an eyebrow. “This would be a bad time to tell me you can’t afford to pay me,” she joked.
“On the contrary. I’m here to offer you more money.”
Bea laughed. “Really?”
“Yep. We want to expand and build our name for all our products, and for that we need major advertising. Rather than outsource it, we want to do it all in-house. We want to give it to you. We want you to take on advertising for the entire company.” Kim paused. Bea wasn’t sure if it was for dramatic effect, but she needn’t have bothered—her mind was already kinda blown. “Come back to LA, Bea. Join us on the board. Executive in charge of advertising. Let’s make this office”—Kim glanced around the high walls and the large windows—“yours. Permanently.”
To say Bea was speechless was an understatement. She’d just been offered an executive position and a corner office—something she hadn’t been able to achieve at Jing-A-Ling in fifteen years—within a couple of months of being involved with Greet Cute.
She was stunned.
