Breaking All the Rules


 
 
 
 
 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. 
 Copyright © 2023 by Amy Andrews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.Preview of Planes, Trains, and All the Feels copyright © 2023 by Livy Hart.
 Entangled Publishing, LLC
 644 Shrewsbury Commons Ave., STE 181
 Shrewsbury, PA 17361
 [email protected]
 Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
 Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
 Edited by Liz Pelletier and Lydia Sharp
 Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
 Interior design by Toni Kerr
 ISBN 978-1-68281-563-2
 Ebook ISBN 978-1-68281-586-1
 Manufactured in the United States of America
 First Edition January 2023
 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Also by Amy Andrews
 Credence, Colorado Series
 Nothing but Trouble
 The Trouble with Christmas
 Asking For Trouble
 
 
 To bunny slippers and breakfast pie.
 
 
 At Entangled, we want our readers to be well-informed. If you would like to know if this book contains any elements that might be of concern for you, please check the book’s webpage.
 https://entangledpublishing.com/books/breaking-all-the-rules
 
 
 CHAPTER ONE
 Beatrice Archer needed sugar. 
 She didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, or what season of Supernatural she was up to, but she knew she needed sugar.
 Now. In the worst kind of way. 
 Bea didn’t care in what form it was delivered—soda, cookies, cake, candy. Hell, she’d eat it granulated straight from the packet. When it came to getting sugar right now, she wasn’t fussy. And if there’d been a single grain of it left in her apartment, anywhere, she’d have sniffed it out. 
 But there was none to be found.
 Which meant she’d have to venture outside, because there was no such thing as Uber Eats in this little rural pocket of far, far eastern Colorado that she was temporarily calling home. Nope, in Credence, population 2,134, there wasn’t even a taxi service. No way could she do something as fancy as pick up her phone, tap on an app, and have sugar delivered to her in whatever form she wanted.
 Doughnuts. Ice cream. Waffles… 
 Bea’s salivary glands and her stomach both made themselves known simultaneously. God, she’d kill for some waffles right now. With maple syrup and sprinkles. And sliced banana. Because she should probably eat some kind of fruit already.
 Right, so…she needed to get her ass out of bed and go outside. Finally. After two weeks holed away in her new apartment—if one could call a cramped studio over a coffee shop with a Murphy bed and a shower the size of a test tube an apartment—it was time to explore. At least to Annie’s and back, anyway. She’d noticed the diner on the way in, and if the sign on top boasting of the best pies in the county was anywhere near accurate, then the route between her apartment and the diner could become well-worn. 
 But would it be open? Diners usually opened early, right?
 What time is it, anyway? 
 Bea peered at the blinds on the opposite wall, which covered the small window just above the sink that overlooked the main street of Credence. She’d pulled the blinds down the second she’d moved in, and there they’d stayed, keeping everything inside nice and secluded and dark except for the bleed of sunshine around the edges.
 If the sun was up, then Annie’s was open. Now, where the hell was her phone?
 She set aside her laptop and searched, lifting up pillows and looking under her duvet. All she found were a scrunched-up paper towel, an empty soda can, an almost-empty-except-for-a-few-burned-ones-on-the-bottom bag of microwave popcorn, and a couple of gossip magazines. 
 Damn. She really needed to clean some of this up.
 Glancing over the side of the bed, she spied her phone on the floor next to an empty bottle of wine and an empty Cheetos packet. When she snatched it up, the screen came to life—nine thirty a.m. And only 3 percent battery left. Great. The charger was only two inches from where the phone had been all night. When had she ever forgotten to charge her phone? 
 Bea swung her legs out of bed and slid her feet into a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. Why was it still so tits-freezingly cold in Eastern Colorado at the end of March? It was practically bikini weather in Southern California. She swayed a little as she stood, probably from how infrequently she’d actually been upright recently. 
 Maybe from the can of beer she’d consumed when she’d woken earlier.
 Stretching, she groaned a little at the niggles in her neck and back. All this lying around on a mattress with several springs missing was screwing with her lumbar spine. Then she headed for the kitchen, stepping around the coffee table situated in front of the two-seater couch pushed up against the wall, and dodged multiple articles of clothing strewn about as she made her way to the sink.
 She squinted against the light as she got closer, then located the bottle of Tylenol next to the sink full of dirty dishes, cracked the lid open, and shook two into her hand. Grabbing the closest drinking implement—an empty wineglass that must have had some red it in at one point, given the residue in the bottom and the purple ring on the laminate—she shoved it under the faucet, filled it, and swallowed the pills down with the resultant pink water.
 Bea glanced at the sink as she tried to find a place for it, then shoved it back down on the purple ring when she realized there was nowhere to