CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bea woke to a hot, sweaty scalp and the rumble of what sounded like a 747 engine but could possibly be her stomach. Or a cat, as it turned out, from the irate meow Princess bestowed on her when she sat up abruptly. The cat sent her a reproachful one-eyed glare from her position on Bea’s pillow, where she must have been curled around Bea’s head like one of those Russian fur hats.
“Oh, sorry, Your Highness,” Bea crooned with a smile, petting the sparse, tufty fur before picking Princess up, then lying back down with her, the mammoth animal sprawling on her chest as she stroked the cat some more. The rumbling resumed, the loud purr vibrating through her hand and the thick duvet right through to the wall of her chest.
Bea sighed. What a simply wonderful noise. She could get used to this.
Waking late to the purring of a cat—her cat—snuggling in bed for as long as she wanted. No breakfast meetings. No deadlines to make. No agenda, full stop.
And Austin all night.
Bea’s cheeks heated as she remembered last night in all its Technicolor glory. Austin kissing her and touching her, Austin hard and good inside her, making her pant and gasp and see freaking rainbows as she came. The perfection of Austin’s body and the deep vibration of his groan as he shuddered his release. The way he’d gathered her close as they’d fallen asleep—all three times.
But more than that. How they’d laughed and eaten popcorn and drank beer and watched zombies being killed as well as sitcom blooper reels on YouTube and clips of animals behaving badly. She’d never spent a night like that with a guy before. Not their first night together, anyway. In fact, she didn’t know if she’d ever achieved such a level of easy intimacy with any guy. And work had always been the oil that lubricated her relationships with men.
Hugging Princess, Bea rolled on her side and smiled. Maybe from now on she should make all her life decisions based on the throw of a dart, because this one, so far, was working out freaking great.
Princess protested the tight hold, and Bea loosened her grasp a little. “Sorry, kitty,” she murmured, kissing the patchy fur at her neck, shutting her eyes in sheer delight.
Too soon, though, nature called, and she stumbled out of bed, shoving her feet in her bunny slippers. Entering the bathroom, she did her business, then stared at herself in the vanity as she washed up. Bea liked what she saw very much. A copper-haired vixen who looked as if she’d been thoroughly ravaged, with a slight hickey just near one of her nipples and some stubble rash on her neck.
She was such a badass.
Bea smiled at herself, loving how her eyes seemed to sparkle more and how the fine lines on her brow seemed to have disappeared and how her boobs seemed perkier. She thrust her chest out and shimmied a little. Yep, definitely perkier.
Who needed implants when there was rebellion? And Austin.
She left the bathroom and crossed to the end of the bed where she’d stripped her shirt off last night, then picked it up and threw it over her head before hunting through her drawers for her Thursday panties. Not because it just happened to be Thursday, but because she loved them best.
When she crossed to the sink for a glass of water, Bea noticed that Austin must have fed Princess before he’d left. She leaned her elbows on the edge of the sink and filled her glass under the faucet, watching the slow pace of Credence tick by down on the street. A big clunker of a car that looked decades old pulled up against the curb opposite her building, followed closely by a police cruiser pulling up in front. Ooh. Bea perked up. Was that Austin’s car?
An elderly man got out and stood by the vehicle, waiting for the police officer to join him, and—bingo—it was Austin, striding in that long, lazy way of his, touching the brim of his hat as he greeted the man. Bea grinned, thinking about wearing that hat as she’d ridden him like a cowgirl last night.
The old guy beamed at Austin, giving him a friendly kind of pat on the forearm, and Bea watched with fascination as the two chatted all friendly and cordial. Austin’s body language was one of deference as they spoke, but there was obviously a problem with the man’s tires, since Austin pointed several times to the left front one. He smiled and nodded a lot but also kept pointing like he had all the time in the world to explain the problem and was perfectly happy to do so.
Suddenly, mid-conversation, his gaze flicked up directly to her window, and although it took him about a second, he smiled as he realized she was standing there. The grin was slow but got bigger and bigger and, even from across the street, her girlie bits hummed in response to the obvious message.
I know what you look like naked.
The older man, who was talking now, cut off mid-sentence, frowning as he looked in the direction of Austin’s gaze, obviously realizing he didn’t have the police officer’s full attention. He squinted as he looked up, which drew his impressive eyebrows together. They were more unruly than even Bea’s had been—they had to be if she could see them from across the street—and she wondered if he knew about Mirror Mirror.
She didn’t know what the old man said next, but there was a big smile on his face now as well, and he turned to Austin, giving him one of those elbow nudges. Austin laughed, totally unabashed as his gaze stayed fixed on hers, and Bea swore she could read his mind. And it was very, very dirty.
The old man, however, was clearly intent on continuing the conversation as he pointed at the tire again and made his case. Or whatever the hell he was doing. Bea didn’t know and for damn sure she didn’t care as Austin’s eyes stayed on her, and a naughty spark of inspiration struck.
Her conversation with him at Annie’s the other day came back to her, and before she could second-guess herself, Bea straightened and whipped her T-shirt off over her head. The old guy was oblivious as he continued to talk Austin’s ear off, but Austin’s face was an absolute picture. It went from shock to disbelief to blatant ogling all within seconds.
From holy fuck to Jesus Christ to how you doin’ in the space of a few heartbeats.
She smiled triumphantly, her boobs feeling sixteen again as she wiggled her fingers at him in a cheeky kind of wave, then blew him a kiss. He shook his head and narrowed his eyes, but she’d have felt more chastised had that secretive smile not been tugging at his mouth.
Still grinning, Bea stepped back from the window—just in the nick of time, as the old guy turned his head again, obviously realizing he still didn’t have Austin’s full attention. She threw her shirt back on as she made her way back to the bed, a glow in her belly and a lift in her step.
Lack of feminine modesty for the win. Sorry, Grandmother. Except, not sorry.
She grabbed her laptop and phone off the floor beside the bed and sat half propped against the wall, her knees bent slightly to accommodate the laptop, the covers pulled up to her waist. Princess joined her, turning around three times before flopping down on top of the duvet beside Bea at about hand level. Princess may have not been favored in the looks department, but she was no dummy, as Bea’s hand automatically reached out and started to pat.
Her phone vibrated and she smiled to herself, knowing who it was even before she glanced at the screen. Austin. He’d put his number in her phone last night and vice versa.
Bea laughed as she read the text. He was so full of shit. She texted back.
His response was swift.
Yeah, well, he definitely had her there. But he wasn’t going to have this all his own way. She added an eggplant emoji.
Three p.m. seemed like a million years away now, but Bea was sure she and Princess would survive until then. She tapped out another text.
Another fast response.
Bea grinned.
A licking-lips emoji appeared on her screen.
Smiling to herself, Bea dropped the phone as she snuggled down beneath the covers a little lower. “Let’s see what’s happening in the world, big kitty,” she said as she opened her laptop. She’d taken to perusing the headlines for five minutes every morning before switching to whatever show she was binge-watching.
It was almost ten when she logged in to CNN and immediately wished she hadn’t. What she saw there sucked away all her happy.
“The brilliant and talented young LA advertising executive Kevin Colton, who was recently promoted to the board of Jing-A-Ling, one of the top ad agencies in the country, was arrested this morning for fraud and misappropriating company funds.”
Bea sat bolt upright, staring at the screen, a slow mushroom cloud of what the fuck rising in her chest as the details of the arrest and the extent of the allegations were revealed.
Kevin Colton? Kevin freaking Colton?
The less talented and not at all freaking brilliant guy who had been promoted over her? The guy who’d been given the much-coveted keys to the kingdom?
The guy who was sitting in her corner office?
Rage—the same rage that had burned through her like a California wildfire the day of her dismissal—flared anew. She’d told them Kevin could talk the talk but was not capable of walking the walk. Having worked with him for three years, picking up his slack and covering for his lazy ass, she knew that as surely as she knew that putting a Labrador puppy in an ad was the best way to sell…basically anything.
And now, less than two months into the job, she was watching live pictures of him being hauled out of the building she’d practically lived in for fifteen years. Bringing disrepute and God-only-knew-what financial shitstorm down on a company that had been a huge part of her existence. She’d lived and breathed and bled for Jing-A-Ling, and Kevin dipshit Colton had taken a wrecking ball to it in less than two lousy months?
She checked her phone—all her social media notifications were in triple digits. With a very familiar burn in her gut, she opened her Twitter app, determined to figure out what in the hell had gone so wrong so quickly.
…
Three hours later, she was about as worked up as she was the day she’d told the CEO to take this job and shove it, and, having lived through that, Bea had thought nothing worse could possibly ever happen to her in a professional capacity, but she’d been wrong. She was so damn stressed and angry, every muscle in her body was wound tight. Even Princess had moved away from Bea’s increasingly exaggerated patting.
She’d scoured every social media platform, googled everything she thought would unearth information, and spoken to about a dozen people from her old life.
And all the time she was thinking, why? If they’d promoted her instead of scumbag Kevin, they could have avoided all of this. That hurt most of all. Knowing they’d thrown her over for an asshole who had robbed them blind.
Her phone rang suddenly, and Bea stared at it for a beat or two as the name Charlie Hammersmith flashed on the screen.
What the…? Was he kidding? He had brought this on himself through his own bigotry and shortsightedness, and he wanted to call and…what? Make nice with her now? Because he had to be shitting himself big-time, and knowing Charlie as she did, he was probably in the midst of some kind of knee-jerk, super-panicked damage-control exercise.
And she didn’t have to answer to know he wanted her back to help fix the mess. Well, screw that and screw him. She wouldn’t trade what she had now for that mess in a million years.
Although the temptation to answer and tell him I told you so and suck shit was strong, her fear that she might actually cry again—because goddamn it, she’d cared deeply about Jing-A-Ling and what happened to it—had her throwing the phone on the bed.
She’d left that all behind. It wasn’t her concern anymore.
Distracting herself from whatever message her ex-boss was probably leaving on her cell right now and from the urge to scream and/or cry, Bea checked her emails. She hadn’t checked them since she’d stopped working, because what would have been the point in leaving if she was still a slave to her inbox?
But maybe there was something in there about what had happened…
There were about a hundred emails waiting for her. It was nothing compared to the normal volume when she’d still been working, which had been more like a hundred a day, but since she wasn’t in the Jing-A-Ling address book anymore, that was hardly surprising.
The emails were pretty much the same assortment she usually received, minus work stuff. A bunch of spam trying to sell her everything from solar power to shoes, a couple of invoices, correspondence from her bank and BMW about her next service, and a couple of emails from head hunters who’d heard about her unceremonious parting with Jing-A-Ling and wanted to offer her a job.
During her time at the agency, she’d had frequent offers to leave the firm for more money and better perks, but she’d never been tempted—idiot that she was—and had always deleted them. She was even less tempted now that she was done with the corporate rat race.
Could she drink beer for breakfast and go sans bra and elliptical back in LA? No, she could not. So she deleted these emails, too.
Only one of them grabbed her attention. It had been sent two days ago from Kim Howard. Bea and Kim had worked together at Jing-A-Ling for a couple of years, back in those early art-department days. The subject line said “Greet Cute.” Bea was tempted to delete it, thinking it was either a sales pitch for a pyramid scheme, a sales pitch for the latest corporate guru workshop, or a sales pitch for some kind of new dating app.
But still, curiosity won out, and Bea opened it instead of hitting the trash icon.
The first couple of paragraphs were general chitchat about what Kim had been up to since she’d left Jing-A-Ling and offering her commiserations on Bea’s departure. Apparently, the rumors surrounding the circumstances were rife in LA advertising circles.
Well, not anymore, thanks to Kevin freaking Colton…
Then came the sales pitch. She and two others had started a greeting card company, and Kim remembered how Bea had always done hand-drawn cards for work occasions and how cute and funny they’d been, and had Bea ever considered putting her art skills to use, because they were looking for creatives who might be interested in joining their team.
Creatives? Bea blinked at the screen several times, then read that line again. Okay, sure, Kim was a lovely person and they’d always gotten along, and yes, Bea could draw, but she wasn’t a professional artist. She wasn’t a creative. Just because she’d done one lousy sketch, and had been tempted every damn day to do more, didn’t mean anything.
Plus, given the Kevin Colton news just now, the last thing she wanted was to be headhunted by corporate-landia. And she sure as shit was not in the mood for the cutesy, schmaltzy, rot-your-teeth sentimentality that had been the catalyst for Bea always making her own cards.
The email ended with, I do hope you’ll think about being part of the Greet Cute team. I know it won’t be long before some other agency snaps you up (if they haven’t already), but we’d love a fresh new voice, and your particular brand of funny will, I think, work well for us. We’d certainly be keen to see anything you had on offer. Any consideration you could give to us would be much appreciated.
Won’t be long before another agency snaps you up?
Bea’s blood pressure spiked into the danger zone, the beat of her heart washing loudly through her ears. Did people not think she was capable of doing something else—anything else—with her time other than genuflecting to corporate America? Just because her father was an ad man, as his father had been before him, didn’t mean she couldn’t do something else. Sure, Kim was only being complimentary, but after almost a month dropping out in Credence, it felt like an affront.
Like even the idea that she might choose a different lifestyle was inconceivable.
Super annoyed at these assumptions—yeah, she was in a real mood now—Bea clicked on the hyperlink in Kim’s signature line, and Greet Cute’s website opened in a new window. She clicked on the About Us tab, and three happy faces grinned back at her. Kim, looking regal and kickass with her full Afro and large hoop earrings. Nozo, sporting a nose ring and wearing dramatic sparkly eye shadow and a pair of funky green-framed glasses. And a dude called Mal with a hipster beard and a man bun.
They were relaxed and smiling, arms around one another, standing outside a funky-looking triple-floor warehouse in what Bea was fairly certain was downtown LA. The next picture was their work space, which was massive—the entire top floor, apparently—with four corner offices and a huge glass-walled boardroom on the street-facing wall.
The creative areas were all centralized in an open floorplan—very Google—with color and light dominating the space. There was a lot of beautifully displayed tech as well as all kinds of funky chairs and beanbags, not to mention the giant potted plants and vibrant wall art.
Reading their story, Bea discovered the trio were old college friends who’d started their own home business after they’d all been let go from their jobs a couple of years back. Eighteen months later, the business had grown exponentially and become so successful, they’d hired another five full-time content creators as well as establishing a small production facility with a staff of fifteen that saw to everything from paper production to printing and distribution. The eco-friendly cards were made from recycled materials, and every part of the final product was biodegradable.
Bea did some more googling to see what the Internet said—not just their own PR machine—and she was impressed. It appeared that with their small start-up mentality, they’d been able to stay smart and nimble in the face of fickle market forces, pivoting quickly from things that hadn’t worked and using social media to their advantage. They had almost 200,000 Instagram followers and more than 300,000 TikTok followers. Obviously all this had helped them find their niche and was starting to attract the attention of some big market players.
Well done, Kim!
Switching back to their site, she checked out their product on their online shop. And that’s where the love affair ended. Greet Cute all right. Bea could feel a toothache coming on just looking at the offerings. There was a large variety of cards, from the more traditional to the sickeningly cutesy, but nothing appealed to Bea.
Each to their own but…no.
She wasn’t really in the corny greeting card demographic—never had been. But right now, today, the sentimental messages of good wishes and cheer and a perfect world where an expensive piece of folded cardboard was some kind of panacea to the world’s ills really grated on her nerves.
Nerves that felt stretched thin and exposed.
Kim thought she’d be into this…this…sappy crap? When, today of all days, she wanted to burn everything down?
To be fair to Kim, she had no idea that Bea would open her email right after the Kevin news, but she would like to think that, even on a day when she wasn’t contemplating lethal world destruction, she’d never have been a good match for schmaltzy, feel-good fakeness.
And she was pissed enough right now to prove it.
She headed to the couch and snatched up the sketch pad, then yanked her suitcase out from under the bed and grabbed the adult coloring book she’d bought at a rest stop on the way to Credence. It had appealed to her in the moment as something she might fill her time with, but then she’d discovered Supernatural. Included in the packaging, however, was a large pack of pencils and a sharpener, and that’s what she was hunting.
Returning to bed next to an exceedingly disinterested Princess, Bea’s fingers flew over the page, anger peaking and falling and peaking again with every line, every curve she drew, not really even registering that she’d tapped into that same place she’d tapped into at the lake. She hadn’t had a clue what she was going to draw when she started, but pictures formed quickly in her brain, and within an hour she’d done three anti-sap sketches that pretty much summed up her not Hallmark mood.
All three of them were done mostly in black pencil with occasional color added for emphasis, and they featured her. The her she’d been out on the street that day meeting Austin for the first time, still pissed at the world and taking it out on pie and ice cream. Wild, mousy hair in a messy, fall-down knot at the back of her head, baggy sweats, no bra, and floppy-eared bunny slippers. Glaring and clearly cranky.
At her feet was Princess in all her face-for-radio grandeur. Huge body, tufty marmalade fur, shriveled eye socket, exaggerated ear hair, exposed fang, staring straight ahead like she was a freaking queen. Bea added the tiara just in case people missed it.
They made a great pair. Ragey, pissed, seen-better-days.
The first one she’d captioned: Oh, I’m sorry, were you after a Disney princess? The second: Look at all the fucks I give. The third: They say crazy cat lady like it’s a bad thing.
She stopped and admired them for a moment, feeling a little out of breath at the mental effort they’d taken but weirdly proud of them. They were the antithesis of what was on offer at Greet Cute, which made them just about perfect in her eyes, and before she could think about it twice, she picked up her phone and called the café downstairs.
“Hi, Jenny, it’s Bea. Was just wondering if you could tell me where I would go in Credence if I needed something scanned?”
“The library has a scanner,” Jenny offered.
Bea smiled. “Excellent! Thank you.”
She hurriedly donned some new sweats and put on a bra—that’s how pissed she was. If Princess minded Bea’s abrupt departure, she didn’t vocalize it or even feign interest in her leaving, and indeed, when Bea returned half an hour later, Princess hadn’t moved from her spot on the bed.
After inserting the USB stick with the scanned images into her laptop, Bea made a few clicks and attached the images to the reply email she was sending. It was polite, thanking Kim for thinking of her but explaining that she was more Cranky Bea than Hallmark Bea these days, as she could probably see from the attached images. Then she wished Kim every success. Because she did. Bea loved that Kim was kicking corporate ass.
The email had just made that nice little whooshing noise signaling it had been sent when she heard footsteps on the stairs outside her door—Austin’s—and Bea realized she’d passed almost an entire day fueled by rage and an all-too-familiar low-level anxiety that had evaporated all her lovely happy feels from last night and her daring little X-rated flash. Not only that, but she was also rethinking everything to do with this new…thing with Austin.
What the hell was she doing? Was this really the way she wanted to start her new life? Getting herself tangled up with a younger man, something that really couldn’t go anywhere.
Why had she gone there with Austin?
Because he’d felt less reckless than giving in to her artistic tendencies and that slippery slope? Ugh. Bea wasn’t sure she wanted to explore that too deeply right now. Which only left…because it felt good?
Jesus, seriously? She wasn’t a child. She couldn’t run her life on what felt good alone. That was her mother’s style—not Bea’s. Sure, she could sleep in every day and ditch her bra and her elliptical and watch reruns of Supernatural until the cows came home. But Austin was a human being and that wasn’t fair to him. He deserved better than being an expression of her…midlife crisis.
Or whatever it was called at thirty-five. He wasn’t a shiny sports car. He was a man.
The knock at the door felt like the knock of doom, and for a moment, Bea contemplated not opening it. Pretending she was out. But…that was cowardly and she wouldn’t be that person. Best to get this over with before it went on and on and feelings—Austin’s feelings—became involved.