CHAPTER NINE

Bea was old enough to know that big changes could be achieved in a few hours. A baby could be born, a new advertising account could be won or lost, a friendship could start. But she’d never thought a few hours alone could bring about such change in her.

Sure. She was still the same person. Still the same height, still the same square-shaped face, green eyes, and pointy chin. Still bigger in the hips than she was in the boobs. The almost permanent little V etched between her brows was still in situ. But when she looked in the mirror—which she couldn’t stop doing—she was transformed.

A vibrant corona of fire-engine-red hair floated around her head, taking her face from pleasant-but-nothing-to-write-home-about to, well… If she’d been looking at someone else, Bea would have said stylishly attractive.

The way Marley had kept the length but cut choppy layers in around her head so it was able to swing on multiple levels and gave the impression of fullness was genius. Bea had always feared layers getting away from her, but she could see how they created an optical illusion of volume. And the color…well. The color was spectacular, highlighting her green eyes and giving her a vibe that was both sassy and ass-kicky.

She might not feel either of those things, but this color reminded her she could be.

Marley had told her to pop in every day if she wanted to have a quick wash and a blowout. It seemed like a preposterous thing to do. She’d never had the time to go to a hair salon every day to have a blowout. But she did now, and she certainly had the means, and if this was the result, then Bea was totally on board with the idea.

Bea lifted her hand to push back her long bangs that fell full and sexily across her face, tucking them behind her ear, increasing the sass. Her fingernails flashed a pearly pink in the mirror—the same color as her toenails—as she ran a finger along first one and then the other eyebrow. They were both now twin arches of perfection and joy.

They were the McDonald’s of eyebrows.

She had to wonder, if this was the magic Molly could weave on eyebrows, what sort of miracle could she perform on more…delicate areas of Bea’s body? Maybe next time she’d put herself in Molly’s hands and let her create a garden of wonder from the bracken down under.

A sudden and unexpected knock at the door interrupted Bea’s musings, and she blinked. She’d been here for almost three weeks and nobody had knocked on her door. Dragging herself reluctantly away from her narcissistic staring in the mirror, Bea took the two steps out of the bathroom and another dozen to the front door.

She knew it could only be one person. Well, actually, theoretically it could be anyone, but in her bones, Bea knew who was knocking. Austin Cooper. A bolt of nervousness knotted her belly as she reached for the doorknob. What would he think of her new look?

Pulling the door open, her suspicions were immediately confirmed. Austin was on her doorstep in jeans and a navy-and-red-checkered button-down and a bulky fleece-lined jacket. He looked seriously hot, especially in comparison to her usual baggy sweats, tee without a bra, and bunny slippers.

He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped and stared at her, his gaze roving over her hair. “Wow.” He whistled. “You look…ah-mazing.”

Given what she was wearing, Bea told herself not to get too carried away at his genuine compliment and the unbridled interest in his gaze. It was obviously just about the hair. Considering her hair had barely been brushed the few other times they’d seen each other, she was coming off a fairly low bar. Seeing it all newly washed and colored and bouncy was bound to cause a double take.

Still, she touched her hair self-consciously. “You like it?”

“Hell yeah I do.” He grinned. “When you said you wanted to dye your hair, I figured you’d probably go blond. But red…” His gaze roved over her head again. “That’s a bold statement. I like it.”

Bea laughed. “I don’t know about bold statement. I just put myself in Marley’s hands and, hey presto, she went all fairy godmother on my ass.”

“They’ve been making a lot of Credence customers happy since they set up shop.”

“There are worse things you can do in life.” Like sell age serum to twenty-year-olds. Or useless gadgets to people who couldn’t afford them. Or expensive water in plastic bottles when the planet was dying.

“I brought you something.”

Bea gave herself a mental shake as the realization Austin was carrying something filtered through. “Is that a—”

“Yup.” He lifted it so she could inspect his prize. “It’s an electric fondue pot belonging to my parents, but they don’t use it anymore. It’s forty years old but still works like a charm.”

The pot was a decent size, with a very retro feel to its design. A squat bowl with squat black legs. “It’s…”

“I hope you’re not going to go with a cheese pun, because I’ve suffered through more than my fair share over lunch, thanks to my father.”

“Your father is a pun man?”

“My father is a pun tragic.”

Given advertising often exploited puns, Bea was quite fond of them. But they weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. “No puns, I promise. I was going to say, it’s gorgeous.” She could almost taste the hot, melted goodness of cheese dripping from a fat crouton.

“And it’s red,” he pointed out. “You’re making bold statements everywhere.”

The teasing in his voice caused a hitch in Bea’s breath and a lurch in her belly. “Oh yes, that’s me. A dye job and a fondue set. Is there no end to my subversiveness?”

He laughed. “May I bring it in for you and set it down somewhere?”

Bea was perfectly capable of taking the damn pot, and being alone in her apartment with him probably wasn’t the wisest move, but it’d been a whole twenty-four hours plus since she’d seen him, and she’d been having trouble saying no from the second she’d met this man.

And besides, Austin was good for her ego.

She stood aside. “Entrez-vous.”

“Mmm. French,” he murmured as he brushed by her. “Ooh la-la.”

With a second tummy lurch, Bea gripped the knob for a moment before closing the door, his cologne adding to the dizzying effect of his presence. She wasn’t sure what he was wearing—she’d known some advertising people with better noses than a perfumer—but it was rich and earthy. Hay and leather. Rain and dust. Sunshine and sweat.

Cowboy in a bottle.

Her brain took a moment to think about the kind of campaign she could create for such a product, which was, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for her—or at least it had been, anyway. She hadn’t realized that shit would be so hard to switch off, but here she was picturing Austin naked—except for his hat—in a half-full bathtub with a few appropriately placed bubbles, in the middle of a field, surveying his land as the sun went down, golden rays falling softly against his body. The caption at the bottom would read…

Bea thought for a moment.

For real men only.

“Where would you like it?”

Oh, lordy. Where wouldn’t she like it?

“Beatriss?”

His soft inquiry yanked her out of her libido spin, and she turned to find him in the middle of the open area that was her living room, looking around for a spare inch of clear space.

“Oh, sorry…” She gave a mental shake to clear her head of hot steam rising off bubbly water as she strode to the coffee table, then cleared away her laptop, hoodie, several used glasses, and two empty beer cans. “Put it down here.”

Austin did as he was told, then stood looking around some more at the apartment, his eyes skimming over the unmade bed and the couch currently being used as a clotheshorse and the kitchen bench cluttered with dishes and the groceries she’d picked up yesterday morning and only half put away. A box of Lucky Charms, a giant jar of peanut butter, several bags of corn chips, packets of microwave popcorn, two six-packs of beer, a supply of Oreos, and three rolls of paper towel.

To be fair, the kitchen bench was quite small, so it didn’t take much to look cluttered.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess.” But it was an improvement from a couple of days ago. She’d washed the dishes yesterday, even if she hadn’t put them away yet. And she had picked up half of the discarded clothes on the floor. Bea called that progress.

“This is an…interesting choice of interior decoration. Were you going for a particular style?”

Style? He was such a smart-ass. “Frat-house chic?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been in a couple of those since being on the job. I think you nailed it.”

“You don’t approve?”

He held up his hands in a surrender motion. “Beatriss, honey, I can honestly say I couldn’t give a good goddamn.”

Bea had never been called honey by a guy under about the age of eighty in her life. Frankly, it could be kinda condescending, and she’d have thought that would go a hundred times over for a guy ten years her junior. But…apparently not. The way Austin said honey—all sweet and gentle and silky and clearly a term of affection and endearment—practically had her purring.

“Unless, of course, you’re in violation of some fire code, in which case I’ll have to take you back to the pokey.”

Bea laughed a little too loud at his joke, her body still recovering from the shock of being called honey by a cocky twenty-five-year-old.

“Well, I like it,” she said. “My apartment in LA was always spotlessly clean—nothing was out of place. I had a cleaning service come in once a week for what must have been the easiest job in the world. It always looked like a display home. It never looked lived in because I was hardly ever there to live in it. This”—she threw her arm out—“looks lived in.”

Just articulating her feelings out loud helped crystalize why this level of mess wasn’t bothering Bea. Why she was suddenly craving clutter and disarray when once she’d shunned it. She was turning over a new leaf, learning to live in the moment, and that included the space in which she’d chosen to live.

“Well…” Austin looked around again. “It definitely looks lived in.”

Bea smiled. Yeah, she might have gone too far the other way, but she was confident she’d find a happy medium over the next little while. “Thanks for the fondue pot. I love it.”

“Consider it a welcome-to-Credence gift.”

“You already put me in jail; you didn’t need to get me anything else.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You are such a weirdo.”

Bea grinned, taking it as the compliment Austin had clearly meant it as. She’d take eccentricity over her old status of conformity any day. “Thank you.”

“Maybe you’ll invite me over one night for fondue?”

Gah! The man was impossible to resist. “Maybe I will.”

“In the meantime,” he said, “I thought you might like to come and hang out at Jack’s with me. Meet some people?”

“That’s The Lumberjack? Where they do the line dancing?”

He grimaced the same way he had at Annie’s that morning when she’d mentioned the L-word. Clearly the thought of line dancing gave him heartburn. “Yep,” he said. “The finest bar in all of Eastern Colorado.”

Bea didn’t need to be asked twice. She suspected the people she’d met around town today were probably different from the people who went out to a bar on a Saturday night. “Sure. I’ll just…” She glanced down at her clothes. “Change my outfit.”

He shrugged. “Don’t do it on my behalf. You look great.”

Bea blinked. Well…bless his heart. But with all the rose-colored glasses in the world, great was stretching it. Sure, her hair was ah-mazing, but the rest was a catastrophic mix of laissez-faire and what-the-hell. Austin was good for her ego, but she was starting to doubt his powers of observation…

“Thanks, but I think, like my hair, it’s time for a change. Bars are not the place for sweatpants.” It could, of course, be argued that sweats should be worn nowhere in public other than on people who were competing in some kind of sporting event or physical fitness activity, but Bea was having a good time making up her own rules as she went along.

“Okay.” He pointed to the door. “I’ll wait downstairs for you.”

She nodded. “I’ll be ready in ten.”

He cocked an eyebrow, his face indulgently amused. “Okay.”

Bea just smiled as he walked out the door, then made it downstairs with a minute to spare.