Page 91 of Breaking All The Rules
“Oh yeah? I know somebody just like that.” Austin threw his hat on the bed as he toed off his shoes.
Her gaze dropped to his crotch. “Lucky me.”
Princess, who by now had some uncanny feline intuition when it came to their sexual signals, sat herself up with an irritated meow. Rising to her feet, she walked off the bed, leaving them to it, her paws hitting the floor about the same time as Austin’s belt.
He pulled his shirttails out and started on the buttons. “You sure you want to do this? You have an early start.” And right now, he just wanted to be with Beatrice, even if it was just curled around her while they slept.
In the blink of an eye, she’d whipped off her T-shirt. Her bare breasts, the nipples hardening before his eyes, were as tempting as ever. “What do you think?”
Think? The rush of blood to his dick from his brain left Austin incapable of thinking anything other than boobs. He closed the distance between them with more speed than grace, settling his body on top of hers. Their mouths fused, her arms wound around his neck, her legs wound around his waist as she kissed him deep and hard, and he almost lost his mind. It felt good. It felt perfect. Like everything he’d ever wanted was right here in his arms.
So why did it also feel like goodbye?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bea’s pitch to the team at Greet Cute went better than she’d expected. She’d been anxious to start with, but the nerves soon fell away and she was back in the groove. Like she’d never left. She knew the product inside and out, she’d studied the demographic data Kim had sent, she knew her knock-it-out-of-the-park proposal by heart.
It was like the good old days, except she finally felt like the people around the boardroom table, dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, were interested in what she had to say. She didn’t have to prove herself to them, like she always felt she was doing at Jing-A-Ling—they just accepted that she knew her stuff and were ready and eager to take it on board.
And they all adored the creative. Cranky Bea and Princess were a huge hit, which was, surprisingly for her, the biggest buzz of all.
The Greet Cute team were dynamic and egalitarian. There was no head honcho who everyone deferred to, and it was no executives-only meeting. Everyone was at the table, and they all just jumped in and asked questions and sought clarification without fear of looking foolish or being rebuked. It felt collaborative and wonderful.
The kind of agency she never knew existed. An advertising utopia.
And then, after a day of hashing out and workshopping and looking at the campaign from every angle and tweaking and massaging, everything was approved and given the green light. Which meant there was a ton of other stuff to do now—people to hire and plans to put in place—and doing that all while she was in LA seemed the most logical thing to do.
Sure, she could get it all done over multiple emails and phone calls and Zoom meetings over multiple weeks. Or she could spend a few days here setting it up, then return to Credence with everything ready to go.
After a celebratory dinner with Kim, Nozo—apparently short for Nozomi—and Mal, Bea was back at the hotel the company was paying for by ten and picking up the phone to call Austin to tell him about her change in plans. She was happy. And possibly a little tipsy. Very definitely horny. She wondered how Austin felt about phone sex?
He picked up on the first ring. “Beatriss.”
“Well, hello there,” she said, the smile in her voice morphing into a kind of a purr at the way his voice husked up the end of her name. “You must have been sitting on the phone.” Bea pictured him on his bed in his cabin, buck naked, in front of the big floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the vastness of the ranch.
“I was. I’ve missed you.”
She smiled again. “I missed you, too.”
“How’d the pitch go?”
“Oh, Austin…it was so good. I kicked ass.” Bea laughed then and spent the next ten minutes filling Austin in on all the ins and outs of the day.
When she ran out of steam, Austin said, “Looks like I’m going to have to get you a whole pie as your welcome-back gift tomorrow.”
Bea pressed a hand to her chest—this guy was just too good to be true. But then she remembered she wasn’t going to be home tomorrow. “You’re going to have to hold that pie. I won’t be back in Credence till Thursday now.”
There was a pause on the line. “Oh. Okay.”
The pause and his subdued reply pinged her radar. There was disappointment in his voice and something else she couldn’t place. Her smile fizzled. “It’s just a few more days.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She frowned, hoisting herself into a sitting position as the buzz from the booze evaporated into thin air. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course. I…”
Bea waited for him to elaborate. And waited. “You what?” she prompted.
