Ryan's Rules

by Alison Kelly

  ‘Again? With whom?’ Ryan wished the words hadn’t come out with quite so much irritation. ‘I mean, I thought you’d be looking forward to getting an early night.’

  ‘What I’m looking forward to is the fabulous French meal Trevor promised me.’

  ‘You’re going out with Trevor Nichols? Are you crazy?’

  She stiffened at his tone. ‘Yes, I’m going out with him and no, I’m not crazy. I happen to think he’s a nice guy.’

  ‘Did Mr Nice Guy mention he was married with four kids?’

  ‘Divorced. With three.’

  ‘He’s as old as I am!’

  ‘Actually he’s older: forty next month.’

  ‘K.C., the guy’s way too old for you!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ Kirrily said, determined to keep her rapidly deteriorating temper in check, ‘I’m having dinner with him, not marrying him. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘And what about after dinner?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess we’ll catch a movie or something.’

  ‘Are you really that dense?’ he asked, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. ‘Trevor Nichols probably has moves Rick could only dream about!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So call him and cancel.’

  Fury thickened her blood, until she was certain it had stopped flowing all together. If Ryan Talbot wasn’t the most arrogant, bossy man God had ever put breath into, it wasn’t through lack of trying!

  ‘I’ll do no such thing!’ she said, once she trusted herself to speak. ‘I’ve no intention of sitting home on a Friday night because you tell me to. I am—’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if it’ll make you feel any better I’ll take you out to dinner.’

  He made it sound like the ultimate in noble sacrifices. The rat!

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. As I’ve just explained, I’m having dinner with Trev.’

  ‘And I’ve explained that good old Trev is my age and has the hormones of a lusty eighteen-year-old!’ he said, looking at her as if she were a particularly dull child. ‘Good God, K.C.! Doesn’t that tell you anything?’

  ‘Well, of course it does,’ she said, and produced her best wide-eyed smile. ‘It tells me to stay on my toes if he starts quizzing me on where I was when the king of rock ‘n’ roll died!’

  Ryan’s mood for the next hour was such that even Major gave him a wide berth, but, dammit, the idea of Trevor Nichols hitting on K.C. had his gut tied in knots. Yeah, sure, Nichols had only gone into the office to pay off his account. The guy had had an unsealed credit limit for years!

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like Nichols—in most circumstances he was a decent guy—but Ryan had pretty much grown up with the bloke and knew how his mind ticked when it came to beautiful women. The way he figured it, around K.C. Nichols was going to be a veritable time bomb! And the moment the doorbell chimed Ryan was on his feet…

  ‘I’ll get it, K.C.!’ he yelled.

  ‘G’day, Ryan,’ Trevor greeted him, seemingly immune to Ryan’s ungracious grunt and scathing look. ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Terrific, Nichols,’ Ryan replied, motioning him inside. ‘That account you paid today really turned things around.’

  The other man laughed. ‘You know me, mate—like to stay on top of things.’

  Before he realised that the man’s choice of words had been unintentional Ryan’s fist clenched and it took enormous restraint on his part to uncurl his fingers and lead him through to the living room.

  ‘Kirri was saying Jayne’s gone overseas,’ Nichols said conversationally.

  Ryan nearly gagged. Kirri? Kirri and Trev! ‘Struth! It was enough to make a weaker man spew! Almost enough reason to close down a construction company’s line of credit! Recognising that his thinking was in danger of slipping from that of a part-time idiot to a fulltime lunatic, he managed to limit his reaction to an affirmative grunt. Still, he couldn’t resist saying, ‘Knowing Kirrily, she’ll be ages yet; can I get you a drink while you’re waiting?’

  ‘Wrong, Ryan!’

  Both men turned at the sound of K.C.’s voice, watching, mute, as she swanned into the room wearing a fulllength black woollen cape.

  ‘Hi, Trev,’ she said, giving her escort a dazzling smile. ‘As you can see, contrary to the bad press you’ve been hearing, I’m ready, but feel free to have a drink if you want.’

  It was no surprise to Ryan that Nichols declined. He was so blatantly anxious to get K.C. alone that Ryan figured he’d have passed on the drink even if it had included a complimentary million bucks. Not that Ryan could blame him; K.C. was made up like an eastern princess! She’d done her eyes in a way that turned their innocent, doe-like tilt into a sultry, seductive slant and coloured her lips with something that made them look temptingly wet. Her long curtain of hair was held back on one side by a gold and pearl clip, thus displaying a gold earring that glittered and tinkled with the slightest movement of her head. To say that she was beautiful was the understatement of the century.

  ‘Trev,’ she said, ‘does your car have a heater?’

  ‘Well, er…yeah. Yeah, it does.’

  ‘Great! That means I won’t need this cumbersome coat!’

  She started shrugging out of the garment as she spoke, the end result of the exercise leaving her standing in the shortest, tightest creation that Ryan had ever seen. It clung to her like a second skin although, unlike skin, it gave him serious doubts as to whether a person could possibly sit down in it! Forget that it was long-sleeved and had a polo-neck; if it didn’t fall into the category of indecent then it sure as hell ought to qualify as illegal!

  While Ryan stood immobilised, trying to get a grip on emotions too numerable to list, K.C. fired another hundred-megawatt smile in the direction of her date. ‘Won’t be a sec; I’ll just put this away.’

  Clearly devoid of the ability to speak, the man merely nodded as K.C.’s long, black-nylon-clad legs carried her out of the room.

  Ryan was torn between the desire to follow her and demand she change into something else—preferably sackcloth and ashes—and the need to set the drooling Trev straight on a few ground rules. The knowledge he’d be wasting his breath on K.C. made up his mind.

  ‘Listen, Nichols,’ he said, moving to stand toe to toe with the other man. ‘You so much as think about laying one hand on her and I swear to God what I did to your brother will look like a love pat compared to what I’ll do to you. You got that? You take her out, you feed her and you bring her home. End of story.’

  ‘Kirri may have other ideas—’

  ‘Then make bloody sure you don’t!’

  The look of appreciation which spread across the man’s face as he looked towards the door was all Ryan needed to see to know that K.C. had reappeared. Stepping aside, he forced what he doubted would pass as a smile and muttered an insincere comment about enjoying their meal.

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ K.C. answered, slipping her arm through Nichols’ and smiling up at him. ‘By the way, Ryan,’ she said, arching a perfect eyebrow, ‘will you by any chance be waiting up for me?’

  Gritting his teeth, he looked to the other man. ‘No, K.C., I’m certain you won’t come to any harm with Trevor.’

  ‘OK. So long as I know what to expect when I walk in tonight.’ Ignoring the puzzled looks Nichols was sending both of them, Ryan gave her a saccharine smile.

  ‘I promise that this time the lights will be on and that Major will be your only welcoming committee.’

  ‘So what’s causing the trouble between you and Talbot?’ Trevor Nichols asked Kirrily as they pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘Only a chronic case of overprotectiveness,’ she said, trying to tug her dress down to at least mid-thigh. ‘He considers me a child and so constantly treats me like some kind of wayward kid sister.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘No, really. He’s been like that ever since my brother died; he can’t seem to get it through his thick head that I’m a big girl now.’

&nbs
p; Trevor sent her a sideways glance. ‘You do realise it’s because he loves you, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I know that! But he loves Jayne too and he doesn’t try to run her life the way he does mine.’

  ‘What I mean is that he’s in love with you.’

  For the first time since he’d called to collect her Trevor Nichols had Kirrily’s full and complete attention. ‘You must be crazy if you think that!’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I’m not stupid, Kirri.’ He turned, giving her a wry smile. ‘In future when you ask a bloke out with the intention of using him for bait, at least do him the favour of letting him know you’re fishing for piranha!’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TREVOR NICHOLS might well have been the most charming, entertaining date that Kirrily had ever had, but she’d been so preoccupied with her own thoughts that it was equally possible he had been an obnoxious lout who’d stripped naked and danced on the table between courses.

  ‘What I mean is that he’s in love with you…’ ‘In love with you…’ ‘In love with you…’ ‘In love with you…’

  As they had done all night, Trevor’s words continued to reverberate through Kirrily’s mind into the pre-dawn hours, keeping her from sleep—not because she gave them any credence, but because they were forcing her, for the first time, to analyse her feelings for Ryan. Only, the more she tried to dissect her emotions, the more confused and…more worried she became.

  Was it possible she was in love with Ryan?

  No! she couldn’t be. She didn’t want to be.

  Ryan Talbot was the most patronising, bossy, overprotective man she’d ever known and there was no way she could love such a person. Well, sure…OK, she loved him, but in the same way she loved her folks and Jayne and Bob and Pam Talbot—like family! And while it was true she’d suffered crushes on Ryan over the years so had most of her friends. Heck, he was gorgeous to look at, had a body to die for and a smile that could melt bones at a hundred paces! What normal, redblooded teenage girl wouldn’t have had a crush on him?

  Well and good, her brain agreed, but how do you account for the fact that now you are twenty-four he can still get you all hot and bothered just by looking at you? And why was your heart spinning out of control when he kissed you the other day?

  Hormones! she rationalised. Pure, unadulterated lust. Just because she’d got older it didn’t mean she’d become blind to Ryan’s sex appeal. And if she was more susceptible to it than she’d been at sixteen it was only because she was at an age where she was more attuned to her own sexuality.

  OK, her brain kicked in again, but you’re in a business where sexy, good-looking hunks are as common as ice is to the North Pole. How come you don’t have the same reaction to them?

  Because…well, because I’m already connected to Ryan on an emotional level, she argued with herself. It’s like being sad when an acquaintance dies but devastated when a relative dies—The realisation that she might one day lose Ryan jerked her upright in the bed, heart pounding.

  She’d been nine the night she’d rushed from her bed in reaction to the banshee wails of her mother, only to learn that her brother, Steven, had been killed. For a long time she’d been haunted by the utter sense of loss, helplessness and confusion she’d felt as everyone around her, especially Jayne, fell victim to the venom of unexpected death. Countless times during her teenage years she’d lain awake and forced herself to imagine losing one or both of her parents in similar circumstances, tearfully resolving that never again would the Grim Reaper catch her off guard.

  With the reasoning of youth, she determined that, having experienced her brother’s death and by training herself to expect the worst, when she was again confronted with the mortality of those she loved she would, to some degree at least, be insulated from the pain. And so she’d visualised her life without her parents and grandparents, without Jayne, even without Russia, the family dog…But never, never had she tried to visualise her life without Ryan. Until now.

  ‘No. No,’ she whispered thickly. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like without him.’ But the truth was that she could; it felt as if someone was piercing her heart with a shard of jagged metal.

  The sound of wheels scraping over the ground behind him intruded on the steady rhythm of Ryan’s trainers hitting the pathway; instinctively he veered onto the grass, allowing the rollerblader to breeze past him. He wondered if the skater was a genuine fitness fanatic who thought lying in bed on a cold, damp Saturday morning was a crime or if the guy, like himself, was ignoring the chill and threatening rain in the hope that physical fatigue would grant what his conscience hadn’t during the night—the respite of sleep.

  Even after hearing Kirrily come home at the respectable time of eleven forty-two he hadn’t been able to get to sleep and he’d had to admit that it was a lot more than brotherly concern keeping him awake. It was his libido—dammit! Anger at himself spurred his pace and, glancing down at his feet, he wondered how many kilometres they would run before he got himself back on an even keel.

  It was his own fault, of course; he should never have kissed her. Yeah, that had to qualify as the biggest mistake in mankind’s history, right after the fiasco with the apple in Eden; but hell, he understood how temptation could have overpowered poor old Adam! Even now he only had to run his tongue across his teeth and he could taste her sweetness-Catching himself enacting the thought, Ryan swore and again increased his pace. Had any other woman ever affected him the way K.C. did? Had he ever wanted one as much? He swore again when the answer on both counts was no. Never!

  Yet it wasn’t merely the strength of the physical attraction that K.C. evoked that bothered him, it was the way she’d unbalanced his emotions, as if every feeling he experienced was somehow linked to her. Sure, he’d always cared for K.C. and shared a special bond with her, but now it seemed that the dimensions of that bond had altered, swung more heavily in her favour. Ryan wished for the power magically to make K.C. fifteen again, just long enough for him to get a fix on exactly how she’d made him feel back then.

  ‘Idiot!’ he chided. All the wishful thinking in the world wasn’t going to alter the fact that K.C. was now an incredibly beautiful woman and that his emotional disorientation was created by lust. The more he saw of her, the harder it was to remember her as the little kid who’d trailed around after Steve, Jayne and him, chanting, ‘Take me or I’ll tell Mum and Dad!’

  ‘Take me’! Geez, could his warped mind give those words a whole different slant! And again he picked up the pace of his stride.

  Despite the onset of a persistent drizzle, Ryan continued his physical punishment for another ninety minutes, urged on by frustration and the cowardly hope that by the time he finally went home K.C. might have gone out. At some stage during his solo marathon, he came to the conclusion that his only chance of avoiding further potentially embarrassing scenes with K.C. lay in steering clear of situations where they would be alone together.

  Finally, drenched by both sweat and rain, he turned into his street, grateful that there was only tomorrow and then Monday and the start of five days where, surrounded by work colleagues, he could distract his hormones without having to pump iron or risk running himself to death.

  As for the evenings, well, he’d spent three nights last week deliberately losing at poker with the two geriatric cleaners who came in after hours and if necessary he’d do the same again this week. While the old guys were bound to tell all and sundry how they’d fleeced him for a hefty amount of cash, Ryan would rather be regarded as a pathetically bad gambler than be the cause of any more stress for K.C..

  The sight of the police car parked about a hundred metres up ahead drew a groan from him. Obviously the Dunford kid was in strife, again. It had been a month since Ryan’s elderly neighbour had asked him to have a word with her fourteen-year-old grandson, in the hope that the kid might heed a man when he wouldn’t listen to her. After four trouble-free weeks, Ryan had started thinking that young Sean had meant
what he’d said about channelling his artistic ability into something more productive than painting murals on the walls of the local council chambers.

  Cursing the stupidity of youth, he jogged down his neighbour’s flower-edged drive and around to the back door, where he knocked loudly.

  ‘Mrs Dunford! It’s me, Ryan.’

  Almost immediately, a well-dressed, grey-haired woman opened the door. Wiping water from his face with an equally wet hand, Ryan gave her a rueful smile. ‘What’s he done this time?’

  The look on the old lady’s face indicated that the entire incident was beyond her comprehension. Ryan wanted to rip the kid’s ears off for causing the woman so much grief. ‘Would it help, Mrs Dunford, if I came in and talked to the police?’

  Her wrinkled brow squashed up even more. ‘Ryan, the police aren’t here,’ she said. ‘They went into your place.’

  ‘My place?’

  ‘Yes. They—’

  Without waiting to hear more Ryan dashed across the soggy yard and, using Mrs Dunford’s barbecue as a springboard, vaulted the eight-foot fence dividing their properties. He only just managed to keep his footing as he landed, but with scant regard for the slick pavement surrounding the pool he sprinted to the back patio and wrenched open the kitchen door.

  ‘K.C.!’ he bellowed, not caring that Major scooted out as he entered. ‘K.C., where are you?’

  Kirrily didn’t even have time to answer before Ryan’s wet, dripping bulk was filling the entrance of the sun room. He became statue-still as his eyes locked on the two grim-faced police officers present, and she knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling; she’d felt the same way when she’d opened the door and seen the uniforms.

  ‘They’re OK, Ryan,’ she said quickly, almost able to taste his dread. ‘Nothing’s happened to them.’

  It seemed to take a second for her words to register with him, then the extent of his relief was evident in the way he slumped against the doorframe. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered