Ryan's Rules

by Alison Kelly

  Don’t tell me you’ve locked the keys inside?’

  K.C.’s impatient tone dragged him from his troubled thoughts; automatically he checked his pockets. ‘No.’

  ‘So why are you standing there scowling at the car? Trying to terrify the doors into opening? Hurry up, will you?’ she urged. ‘I’m dying to talk to Jayne.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time. She’s not flying out until Sunday.’

  ‘That’s if she doesn’t change her mind’

  ‘You think she will?’

  She shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  Kirrily forced herself to slide into the the passenger seat of his car without commenting, but she had to bite her tongue, hard, to maintain her assumed indifference. Ryan’s passion for Jags was no secret and over the years he’d restored more than a few. Now apparently he didn’t need to satisfy himself with second-hand ones; this beauty was the latest in the XJ series and Kirrily knew that it wore a six-figure price tag. The look on Ryan’s face told her he was waiting for her traditional request to be allowed a test drive, so he could give his traditional answer—no. Perversely she bit down even harder. Besting Ryan, even in such a small matter, was worth permanent teeth marks in her tongue!

  Kirrily managed to keep stubbornly silent until Ryan had steered the sleek vehicle into the evening traffic, then she shifted in her seat, smugly satisfied by the puzzled frown marring his forehead. Gotcha! she thought gleefully before speaking.

  ‘This decision of Jayne’s was awfully sudden,’ she said. ‘The first I knew of it was last night.’

  ‘The first I knew of it was a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘You’re kidding. She didn’t sound you out on the idea first?’

  ‘Nope. Just walked into my office this afternoon, told me she was going and you were covering for her at work.’

  The response startled her. Ryan was every bit as pedantic about protecting Jayne as he was Kirrily, but while she’d started bucking ‘Ryan’s Rules’, as she tagged them, at sixteen Jayne’s fragile emotional state had made her more compliant to her brother’s wishes. In fact Kirrily had never known her to make a big decision without ‘running it by Ryan’ first.

  ‘Have you spoken to Jack and Claire?’ he asked, without taking his eyes from the road.

  ‘Yeah, last night. I phoned them straight after Jayne called.’ She smiled. ‘They’re thrilled, of course—like your folks.’

  ‘Mmm.’ The glance he tossed her was too quick to read. ‘And what about you, K.C.?’ he asked. ‘Are you thrilled?’

  ‘Well, sure!’ she said. ‘Of course I am. Who wouldn’t be? It’s about time Jayne started to do normal stuff. Not that I think she hasn’t been normal!’ she amended hastily, knowing how Ryan tended to be sensitive about references to Jayne’s past emotional problems. ‘Just withdrawn. But…well, she’s only thirty-four and an attractive woman. And—’ She broke off in the face of the cynical look Ryan gave her.

  ‘Don’t try and kid me, K.C.; we both know Jayne’s existence has been more than “withdrawn”. It’s been positively ritualistic.’

  ‘I’ll admit it’s been routine—’

  ‘Stop soft-peddling round the facts,’ he muttered. ‘She’s spent the last fifteen years like a mouse on a treadmill: going through the motions of life without living it! Now this comes from right out of the blue.’ He thumped the steering wheel. ‘Wham! Six weeks ago, she was commemorating Steve’s death with her annual pilgrimage to Kiama and today she announces she’s flying to Europe.’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, much as I’d like to be able to relax and feel good about her breaking out of her rut, the truth is, I can’t.’

  Having braked at a red light, he looked across at her, the rhythmic flashing of a nearby neon sign alternately highlighting and disguising the concern in his face. What had started out as an angry outburst ended in weariness. ‘You’re as uncomfortable about this as I am. So don’t sit there telling me what you think I want to hear.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she insisted. ‘I’m really thrilled she’s decided to…to get her act together. Everyone’s been praying she’d do it for years and now, finally, it’s happened. It’s a good thing and we—’ She stopped under his disbelieving glare.

  ‘Oh, OK! OK!’ She sighed. ‘I admit a tiny part of me is worried because, like you said, this came from out of the blue. But there’s a difference between saying you’re going to do something and actually doing it. You’re worried Jayne hasn’t thought things through; I’m worried she might start, that she’ll begin wondering if she’s acted too hastily and back out.’

  His frown prompted her to add, ‘A person who makes up their mind quickly can change it just as fast. If Jayne senses we have doubts about her decision, she’ll have doubts. So I think it’s important we don’t reinforce the negatives in this. The bottom line is that she needs to do this; why she’s decided to shouldn’t be an issue.’

  There were a few seconds of silence as Ryan obviously mulled over what she’d said, then he turned a bemused smile in her direction.

  ‘You know, K.C., you surprise me at times. That’s a very astute observation.’

  The praise had been too patronisingly bestowed for her to accept it graciously. ‘Well, you know what they say—out of the mouths of children…’

  His grin did things to her insides that she both loved and hated. ‘Actually it’s out of the mouths of babes.’

  ‘I know.’ She gave him a sickly sweet smile. ‘But I hate being called a babe. Besides, I’m trying to wean you off the image of me with a teething ring.’

  ‘You could try wearing a muzzle,’ he suggested. ‘You’d not only present an alternative image but I’d stop worrying that you were going to bite my head off every time you misconstrued an innocent remark.’

  ‘You know, Ryan, this will probably be beyond the realms of your imagination…but there are some men who find the idea of me sinking my teeth into them very appealing!’

  A wave of nostalgia swept through K.C. as the car swung into the driveway of the house which had been so much her second home in her teenage years that when people had asked for her phone number she’d given them the Talbots’ as well. However, in the five years since Ryan had bought the house from his parents, when, like hers, they’d retired to Victoria, she’d made only a handful of visits and never stayed more than a few hours. For the next three weeks at least, this would be where she was staying.

  ‘What’s up?’

  She smiled in response to Ryan’s curious stare. ‘Nothing. I was just thinking how everything looks exactly as I remember. I always expected you to do some kind of renovations.’

  ‘Why?’ He frowned. ‘What’s wrong with the house?’ ‘Well, nothing! It’s…it’s just that I’d expect, you having been an architect and having access to building equipment at cost, you’d be tempted to make changes.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, I love the little house I’ve bought, but boy, if I had the money I’d really do something with it! You, however, do have the money.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, stop looking like that,’ she chided him. ‘All I ever hear from Mum is how incredibly successful you are and how you’ve quadrupled the company’s profits since taking over from your father.’

  ‘Claire exaggerates,’ he said.

  ‘Claimed he, sitting behind the wheel of the latestmodel Jaguar,’ she responded drily.

  He grinned. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’

  ‘Not a chance!’ She laughed, letting her fingers caress the dashboard and no longer bothering to hide her appreciation of the vehicle. ‘So…do I get to drive her while I’m here?’

  ‘Like you said…not a chance. I’ve seen you drive, K.C.’

  ‘Huh! You’re the one who taught me.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. Jayne said you can use her car while she’s away.’

  The reference to his sister caused her to glance across to the house. ‘You know, Ryan, maybe now that Jayne’s finally putting Steve
n’s death behind her it’ll let the rest of us do the same.’ She looked back at the man who had been her late brother’s best friend and almost his brother-in-law.

  His gaze narrowed. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning maybe now someone will tell me all the facts surrounding the night he was killed.’

  ‘K.C.—’

  ‘No,’ she said, raising a hand to stop his words. ‘I know the things that happened after he was killed: about Jayne’s phantom pregnancy and her subsequent breakdown. I even think the real reason you’ve never let me drive one of your cars is because Steve was driving yours when he was killed.’

  He tensed noticeably at her words and reached for the doorhandle. ‘Don’t go formulating a lot of half-baked ideas about something that happened when you were nine. Let it go, K.C. It looks like Jayne finally has.’

  ‘Have you?’

  It wasn’t until he wrenched open the driver’s door and activated the car’s interior light that his irritation was visible.

  ‘I don’t know what kind of fantasies exist in that overimaginative mind of yours, but keep them to yourself! I don’t want Jayne upset.’

  ‘Is that the reason why, when your parents wanted to sell this house and Jayne didn’t want to move, you bought it?’ Without answering, Ryan got out of the car and slammed the door shut. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she persisted as she, too, climbed from the car. ‘That’s why you haven’t done any alterations to it, because you didn’t want to do anything that might upset Jayne.’

  His jaw tightened as if he was clenching his teeth. ‘I thought out-of-work actors waited tables and drove taxis. I had no idea they dabbled in psychoanalysis.’

  ‘You know me,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I’ll try anything once. As a matter of fact I’m looking forward to doing the accounts for Talbot’s.’

  Moving to the open boot, he grunted, ‘That makes one of us.’

  ‘Ryan?’ she said, coming around to lean against the boot of the car as he removed her luggage. ‘There’s one thing I’ve never been able to understand…’

  ‘How to quit while you’re ahead?’ he suggested.

  ‘Why you gave up a partnership in one of Sydney’s most prestigious architectural firms to take over running a building-supply business? I mean, all you ever wanted to be was an architect; you graduated top of your class from university—’

  ‘Well, of course you don’t understand that, K.C.!’ He slammed the boot closed. ‘The reason is based in responsibility—family responsibility! Our fathers and Steven worked damned hard to build up the business and I for one had no intention of watching their efforts ruined at the hands of outsiders out to make a quick buck.’

  ‘So you don’t miss architecture?’

  ‘At the moment all I’m missing is the peace and quiet that existed before I picked you up at the airport. Now, will you just shut up and let me get these bags inside so I can go hunt up the Prozac I got last time you were here?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON SUNDAY Kirrily was again at Mascot airport; this time, though, she was in the International terminal watching Jayne’s plane roll down the runway. Fighting to keep her emotions in check, and unsure how much longer rapid blinking would continue to keep tears at bay, she slipped her sunglasses from the top of her head down onto her nose. The action drew the attention of Ryan, standing beside her.

  ‘You want to go?’ he asked.

  ‘No…not unless you do.’

  The hope that he’d missed the slight tremor in her voice evaporated as he deftly removed her sunglasses.

  He swore. ‘Aw, you poor kid. Don’t cry.’

  She jerked away from the touch of his hand on her shoulder and lifted her chin. ‘I’m not crying!’ she insisted as two huge tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Nor am I a kid.’

  ‘Fine. But in that case I think you should know your eyes are melting.’

  She tried hard to muster some anger towards him-she really did—but the wealth of understanding and gentleness shining in his eyes negated her efforts. This was one of those times when kindness was the hardest thing to take.

  ‘Damn it,’ she muttered, a sob rising in her throat. ‘I…I had no intention of crying. It’s stupid. I…I…’

  Kirrily wasn’t sure which she surrendered to first, the flood of her tears or Ryan’s strong, comforting embrace, but it was a relief to give in to both. It was as if the warmth of his body and the sensation of his hands stroking her head and back were releasing all the emotions she’d kept penned up for months. Crying felt good. It mightn’t be constructive, but it felt good!

  ‘Shh, honey,’ he whispered. ‘Jayne’s going to be fine. It’s not as if she’ll be on her own; the folks will be there for her.’

  Though she nodded against Ryan’s chest, Kirrily knew she was reacting to more than just the significance of Jayne’s leaving. With the stress she’d been under in recent weeks and the disappointment of leaving the cast of Hot Heaven she’d been a prime candidate for a serious bout of waterworks.

  She considered telling him about the turmoil she’d been going through during the past few months, but thought better of it. The last thing she wanted to invite was a dose of Ryan Talbot’s brotherly sympathy, which was as suffocating as his over-protectiveness; better to let him think her tears revolved entirely around Jayne’s departure.

  She drew a deep breath with the intention of trying to stop the half-sobs still raking her body, but instead of regulating her respiration it made her dizzy. Not the light-headed dizziness which preceded fainting, but the fuzzy, blurry, aroused kind, caused by inhaling the earthly masculine scent that was uniquely Ryan. She shivered as a shower of electric sparks erupted in her bloodstream. Crazy as it was, she couldn’t stop herself from nuzzling closer. Just a few seconds longer then she’d step away from him…

  Ryan knew he had a problem the moment K.C.’s arms locked around his waist, but when she went limp in his arms and shivered a part of him told him he was in deep trouble. And unfortunately his brain hadn’t been the source of his intuition.

  Placing his hands on her hips, he gently eased her away from the lower half of his body. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass her.

  ‘Er…K.C…?’ he said hesitantly. ‘Are…are you all right?’ Her face remained pressed into his chest, but there was a slight nodding movement of her head. ‘You’re sure?’ he urged, hoping that the more inane he kept the conversation, the quicker his body would settle down. But, given its slow rate of recovery at present, Ryan figured he’d have to start reciting nursery rhymes pretty soon. Another attempt to withdraw further from her had her arms tightening. He sighed, torn between the need to comfort the distraught woman in his arms and the need to save what little dignity he had left; God knew, his self-respect was right out the window!

  Comfort the distraught woman? K.C. wasn’t a woman! Yeah, right, mate! his brain chided. So how come you’re in such bad shape, then, huh?

  OK, so technically and physically Kirrily was a woman, he rationalised, but she was also Steve’s kid sister! Why the hell was he having such a hard time remembering that lately? Why, after more than two decades of thinking of her in a wholesome, brotherly way, was he suddenly being plagued by constant speculation of what it would be like to make love to her—the kind of hot, heavy love which left both participants hungry for more of the same?

  I’m sick! he thought with disgust. I’m really, really sick!

  ‘Yeah, you do look a bit pale.’

  Ryan groaned when Kirrily’s observation made him realise he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. Yet as he looked into her frowning, concerned face he couldn’t help smiling. Even with red-rimmed eyes and her face mottled the tell-tale pink of a crying jag Kirrily Claire Cosgrove was beautiful; he took a perverse sort of comfort in knowing that there was no way he’d be the only man to make a fool of himself because of her.

  A suspicious light came into her green eyes. ‘What are you grinning at?’

  ‘Nothing I want to talk about
. What say we head to the bar?’

  She knew her face reflected confusion, but she couldn’t help it; Ryan usually pushed the teetotaller ideal at her. ‘The bar?’

  ‘You look like you could use a drink and I know I need one.’

  ‘I thought you felt sick.’

  ‘It’s mental not physical,’ he said, taking her arm and steering her towards the lifts as she shot him an impish smile.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK, then! For a minute there I thought it was something unusual.’

  Schooling his face into a look of disappointment, Ryan shook his head. ‘Too predictable to be witty, K.C. I’ve come to expect better from you.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that, unlike yours, the precedents I’ve set are of an exceptional standard.’

  ‘Better!’ he praised her, a slow grin spreading across his face. ‘A load of absolute rubbish, but that, too, is typical of your standard!’

  Despite the elbow she jabbed in his ribs, Kirrily smiled, glad to discover they were back to their familiar banter-and-bicker relationship. It was, she’d decided, the safest way of dealing with her recent feelings towards Ryan. Though the short time spent in his arms had been wonderful, knowing that from his perspective it was purely platonic was murder on her feminine pride. Not being into masochism, Kirrily resolved to cure herself of this latest bout of ‘Ryan fever’ before she ended up making an idiot of herself.

  When they reached the bar Ryan steered Kirrily to a corner table and pulled out a chair for her.

  ‘Scotch straight up, isn’t it?’ he queried.

  ‘Er, yeah…Thanks,’ she said, feeling incredulous when he merely nodded and went to place the order. At his parents’ anniversary he’d been openly disapproving of her drinking spirits, not because he rarely drank anything except the occasional light beer but because he’d assumed she was drunk. And he’d started verbally tearing strips off her without giving her a chance to explain that the reason she’d been stumbling her way around the dance floor had been that Aidan had been so damn full that he’d barely been able to stand, much less dance as he’d insisted! But by the time Ryan had finished admonishing her Kirrily had been too angry with both men to care about offering a defence.