Ryan's Rules

by Alison Kelly

  His words, too, were identical to hers when she had learned that her worst fears—that something had happened to her family—were unfounded. But the relief of knowing that her parents were safe, which had initially insulated her from the shock of learning the real reason for the police visit, now seemed to be wearing off. Though she read the request for an explanation in Ryan’s eyes she was devoid of the ability to know where to begin. It didn’t make sense! It was crazy!

  Although Ryan’s pulse-rate had slowed somewhat, K.C.’s pale, shell-shocked expression and the presence of two cops in his house was enough to keep it above its regular tempo.

  ‘OK,’ he said, moving further into the room. ‘Someone want to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Sir, I’m Sergeant Stuart.’ The smaller of the two men spoke. ‘And this is Constable Ellard.’

  ‘Ryan Talbot. What’s the problem, Sergeant?’

  ‘The Victoria police requested we contact Ms Cosgrove on their behalf.’

  Ryan tensed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Sir, the—’

  ‘There’s been a fire,’ K.C. cut in. Eyes wide with disbelief, she hugged herself tightly. ‘My house h…has been burned.’

  Ryan swore. Though he’d never seen the house, he knew how damn much it meant to her, how proud she was of it.

  ‘Ah, hell, honey, I’m sorry.’ Grimacing at the inadequacy of the words, he took a step towards her with the intention of pulling her into his arms, but she eluded him.

  ‘How could someone set fire to my house?’ she asked, looking lost as she wandered in a small, tight circle by the window. ‘How could a person do that? Why me? What have I done to deserve this…this hate?’

  The fear and terror he saw in her face made his heart ache, and this time he gave her no chance to evade him. One stride brought him close enough to still her agitated body and, ignoring the fact he was drenched, he wrapped an arm around her, drawing her to him.

  ‘Honey,’ he said, tilting her chin until her too shiny eyes met his and gently slipping a strand of hair behind her left ear, ‘listen to me. A fire isn’t personal; it didn’t start because of anything you have or haven’t done. These things happen. It might have been an electrical fault or something, but it…’ He paused, catching sight of the sergeant’s slowly shaking head. A chill snaked down his spine at the copper’s expression; instinctively he tightened his hold of K.C..

  ‘It wasn’t an electrical fault, Mr. Talbot.’ Ryan read the cop’s pause as a silent warning of what was to come.

  ‘As I’ve told Ms Cosgrove, according to the fire inspector, the blaze was deliberately lit.’

  ‘Delib—Who the hell by?’ Ryan demanded.

  ‘Presumably by the stalker who’s been harassing Ms Cosgrove the last few months.’

  ‘What?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ONCE K.C. began recounting the events of her last few months in Melbourne, Ryan’s anger swelled with such intensity that he thought it would choke him. Hell, it was only the presence of the police which kept him from leaping from his seat and choking K.C.!

  She’d been the victim of hate mail, death threats and a car bombing and had kept it to herself! Cripes, she hadn’t even had the common sense to get the hell out of Melbourne! Now her house had been fire-bombed, and had it not been for her loyalty to Jayne she’d probably be dead. How could she have treated these events in such a blasé manner? What had she been thinking?

  Nothing, obviously! If stupidity were rewarded in the afterlife, Ryan figured that God was already preparing quite a reception for Kirrily Cosgrove!

  Even now, an hour later, fury was still searing through Ryan’s body, and in the absence of the police it was taking every bit of self-control he possessed to keep it checked. The urge to wrench her from her seat at the table and shake her until she admitted to her idiocy was overwhelming. Damn, she’d been in serious danger and not done a bloody thing about it, not even told him about it!

  Yet the recriminations which rose to his tongue remained there unspoken. Letting fly with a tirade of abuse might make him feel better, but it was clearly the last thing K.C. needed. Her wan expression and detached, overly composed behaviour warned him to tread warily.

  Since the police had left she’d retreated further behind a faade of calm normality more suited to a robot than a flesh-and-blood person, and completely alien to the vivaciousness which personified Kirrily Cosgrove.

  Ryan had never seen her look so emotionally fragile and for that reason he was determined to bite his tongue rather than be the trigger which sent her over the edge. But then again…perhaps it might be better to prod her temper, to get her stirred up enough so she released the feelings she was so obviously trying to hold in. Yeah, he thought. Maybe that was the way to deal with this.

  Aw, damn it, Talbot! he chided himself silently. Admit you don’t have a bloody clue about how to handle things, that the only other time you felt so freaking useless was when you watched her brother die!

  His insides iced at the reminder of how easily K.C. could have been killed in the fire. Looking across at her slumped shoulders and bent head, he clenched his fists, wanting nothing more than five minutes alone with the bastard who was doing this to her, to make the creep pray for the luxury of a slow and painful death.

  ‘I’ll have to get the first available flight to Melbourne.’

  K.C.’s statement jerked him from his bloodthirsty thoughts, disbelief propelling him from the sink to the kitchen table.

  ‘What?’ he demanded, but she gave no indication that she was even aware of his presence, much less his angry incredulousness. He moved until he was standing directly in front of her, but her gaze remained focused on the cup of coffee she’d nursed for nearly forty minutes without once lifting it to her mouth.

  Reminding himself to stay calm, he dragged back a chair, turning it so that he could straddle it. ‘K.C., look at me,’ he urged gently, then gritted his teeth when she still refused to acknowledge him. ‘Honey, you’ve had a shock and you’re not thinking clearly. There’s no reason for you to go to Melbourne—’

  ‘There is.’ Her head lifted and she stared at him with vague green eyes. ‘I’ve a million things to take care of down there. I think I should deal with the insurance angle first, though…’

  Her soft voice, so devoid of emotion, scared the hell out of him. The K.C. he knew should have been screaming her desire for revenge on top note, not accepting events with limp docility.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that first,’ she continued calmly, once again addressing the cup, ‘call the insurance comp—No. I can’t; it’s Saturday. I’ll…I’ll do it…not tomorrow…the next day. I guess I could call Carole…I haven’t talked to her for a week. She might have some work for me. A script to look at or—’

  She stopped when he prised the cup from her hands. The coldness of her fingers made him trap them in his in the hope of warming them.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go lie down for a while? Get some rest and—’

  ‘I don’t have time to just lie around, Ryan!’ Wrenching herself free of his grasp as if scalded, she glared at him. ‘In case you don’t get the picture here, some lunatic has destroyed my home and I’ve got to go back to Melbourne!’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, with a patience he was far from feeling.

  ‘Because I…’ She faltered as if she wasn’t sure herself, before hurriedly shoving her chair from the table and standing. ‘Because I need to see the extent of the damage, talk to the police, see if Cathy and Paul are OK—’

  ‘K.C.!’

  Realising he’d raised his voice, he stopped and drew a long, steadying breath. ‘The police already told you-the house has been totalled. Cathy and Paul were both away and are perfectly safe. Look,’ he said, ‘you can talk to the cops, the fire department and any other devil you want by phone but you can’t go—’

  ‘I can and will do anything I like, Ryan! Nobody controls me! Not you, not anyone! So quit playing big brother and bossing me
around like you’ve got a right to!’

  ‘I’m not playing at anything, K.C.! I’m trying to protect you.’

  ‘Well, don’t!’ she screamed at him. ‘I don’t want your bloody protection! I—’

  The sight of her battling tears made Ryan’s chest cramp. ‘Ah, sheesh, honey! C’mere…’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ She backed to the door, an arm outstretched to ward him off. ‘I mean it, Ryan. Ju-just let me be.’

  ‘K.C., please…I only want to help y—’

  ‘Fine. Then call the airport and get me on…a f-fflight. I’m going to pack!’

  She pivoted round and raced into the hallway, and within seconds her bedroom door slammed.

  Standing in the damp chill of Melbourne’s dwindling winter twilight, Kirrily felt as if she was existing in some sort of warped dream or playing a role in a far-fetched television drama. Grasping the cool wrought-iron of her front gate, she stared at what remained of her recently painted weatherboard home, trying to accept what its charred remains represented, trying to comprehend that another human being wanted to kill her.

  Her stomach rolled and lurched and there was nothing she could do to stop its contents from emptying at the base of the nearby rose bush. Spots danced before her eyes as she recalled how she’d started tending the bush, eagerly awaiting the spring to discover what colour its flowers would be, imagining how their scent would drift up to her veranda on the gentle evening breeze and how pleasant it would be to sit there studying her lines—

  The futility of such thoughts now brought on another wave of nausea. Though the plant was untouched by the devastation which had taken place twenty metres away, there was no longer a veranda for her to sit on. The bullnosed iron awning lay with ugly deformity across the pathway leading from the front gate—a pathway which now led to nothing more than the charred skeleton of her house and her dream. Come spring, the rose bush would bloom on a vacant block of land. She retched again, but her stomach had nothing left to surrender.

  ‘C’mon, honey, let’s go—’

  She jerked away from the hand which gently touched her shoulder, gentleness didn’t belong in this scene. Pulling a handful of tissues from her coat pocket, she blotted her mouth then straightened, gulping in air still carrying the stench of smoke.

  Why was it that her life always seemed more screwed up than anyone else’s? Why was it that one complication cropped up after another? Ryan always claimed that as a teenager she’d gone out of her way to look for trouble; perhaps she had, but ironically it seemed that trouble now followed her around.

  She found herself fighting to hold back laughter at the accuracy of that thought—these days Ryan Talbot had become trouble personified and he’d damn well insisted on shadowing her all the way from Sydney! Yet she had only to look at the destruction in front of her to realise that the physical and emotional threat Ryan Talbot presented to her was aeons away from the danger represented by the nameless, faceless person who’d done this.

  Again irony slapped her in the face as she studied the two remaining exterior walls of what had been her home; some bizarre twist of fate was giving her almost the exact opposite of what she craved. She was obsessed with Ryan, a builder and architect, yet she had become the obsession of some maniac who’d ultimately destroyed her house.

  Oh, Kirrily, she thought, feeling a sick desire to laugh, if your life gets weirder they’ll commission Dean Koontz to write your life story!

  She pushed at the gate and it swung silently open, testament to the copious amounts of oil she’d fed it to stop it squealing like a stuck pig. But her memories of the smiling real-estate agent quickly dismissing the noise as ‘easily curable’ and steering her along the path that day she’d first inspected the house were banished by the discouraging hand clamping down on her shoulder.

  ‘No, K.C.! It’s not safe. The whole place could come down in a second.’

  Heedless of both the words and the fire department signs endorsing them, Kirrily shrugged free. No one would tell her what to do in her own home. No one! She was an adult. An intelligent, hard-working, independent adult who’d proved that she could stand on her own two feet, even living hundreds of miles from her family and everything she’d grown up with, and survive. On her own and in her own home.

  ‘Honey, stop. You can’t go any further.’

  This time the tone and grip accompanying the command were stronger, prompting her to lash out verbally and physically.

  ‘I can!’ she screamed. ‘I can do anything I damn well please, Ryan Talbot! Damn it—let go of me!’

  Ryan was quick enough to pull his head out of the way of her left hook so that it did little more than graze his ear, but its sting was enough to tell him that she hadn’t pulled her punch. That K.C. never did sent relief washing through him even as her booted foot connected with his shin; thank God she was starting to react normally! Despite his relief, though, Ryan’s instincts for self-preservation kicked in and his superior height enabled him to wrap a leg around K.C.’s in time to inhibit a second direct hit.

  ‘Settle down, hon; it’s OK. Everything’s going to be OK.’

  She told him what she thought of that with one succinct word. ‘Nothing’s ever OK!’ she raged. ‘Life is a bitch! A rotten, stinking screwed up—’

  ‘Yeah, honey, I know. I know—’

  ‘You think you know everything, Ryan Talbot!’ she screeched, squirming to get free. ‘Well, you don’t!’

  Ryan could not only feel her anger but he could see it, banking higher and higher in her bright green eyes, and he refused to release her. He prayed her fury would quickly give way to the tears she’d been fighting all day; she needed the emotional release of a good cry.

  ‘Let it go, K.C.,’ he urged gently. ‘You need to get it ou—’

  ‘Damn it, don’t tell me wha—’ Her words choked off as her face contorted and she fought to swallow the sob Ryan heard in her voice. He made no attempt to stop the short, sharp punches she rained on his chest.

  ‘Hey, mate! You want I should keep hangin’ round here? The meter’s still tickin’.’

  Ryan glanced across at the cab they’d taken direct from the airport. He was reluctant to drag K.C. kicking and screaming through a hotel lobby, thus making her the next cover story for every celebrity tabloid in the country; on the other hand it was now dark, and getting colder by the second.

  ‘A few minutes, mate!’ he told the driver, readjusting his hold on K.C. who, although still fighting him, was at least focusing her verbal abuse on whoever had set fire to her home.

  ‘Kill the bastard! How dare he do this…to my house? It’s not fair…It’s not one stinking bit fair!’ she sobbed, pounding her fist into his shoulder. ‘I loved that house! It was my independence.’ She flayed at his body. ‘I bought that house…all by myself, without consulting Dad or Mum or…or without one bit of your…your precious advice or protection…or…or anything.’

  She punched him again and again, but the intensity of the blows lessened in direct ratio to the increased strength of her crying. ‘I…I…loved that house, Ryan. I d-did; I really, really did…’

  ‘Shh, sweetheart, I know,’ he crooned. ‘I know.’

  Finally even her voice was drowned in her tears. Strangely, though, while her physical assault on him had been heartfelt on her part, for Ryan it had carried no real sting; yet as his body absorbed the distressed shudders of her tiny, fragile frame it felt as if his heart and guts were being ripped out piece by tiny piece.

  The intensity of what he was feeling stunned him, for it went beyond any physical pain he’d ever experienced, ever imagined. He understood that sympathy for another could run deep, but this was different. More different than he could comprehend.

  It was as if he was hurting with K.C. not for her, as if her personal pain belonged equally to him. And it burned more cruelly than any he’d ever known, even more than what he’d felt when his best friend had died in his arms.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

&nb
sp; KIRRILY took one glimpse at herself in the bathroom mirror and turned away, groaning; she looked like hell on a bad day and felt worse.

  Opening the one, hastily packed piece of luggage she’d brought, she pulled out an old, faded green sweatsuit. The outfit had never flattered her, but Kirrily figured that there wasn’t a designer alive who could minimise the effects of what she’d gone through today. Stepping into the sweatpants, she directed mumbled obscenities at the mongrel who’d burned her home, but it wasn’t until she was pulling the sweatshirt over her head that the enormity of what she’d lost hit her full force. She froze, reality not just biting but ravishing her right through to her bones.

  The house and its contents were insured and could be replaced, with new, probably nicer versions, but what of her truly personal possessions: her school records, her grandmother’s jewellery, the photographs of her and her brother—the items that had radiated love and cherished memories? Those things were gone for ever, as irreplaceable as Steven himself. Too numb even to cry, she stood motionless, trying to make sense of everything.

  In in the last few weeks her marginally less than mundane life had begun resembling the lead role in a fulllength Hollywood horror flick. And yet even now, despite all evidence to the contrary, she couldn’t entirely accept that someone was trying to kill her.

  It didn’t make sense.

  ‘No!’ There had to be another explanation. ‘Someone might want to scare me, make my life a misery or just plain tick me off, but no one—no one—could have a valid reason for wanting to kill me!’

  She was unaware she’d shouted the denial until Ryan burst into her bedroom.

  ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ he demanded, rushing across the room to grasp her arms.

  ‘N-n-nothing. I was just thinking aloud. I’m OK.’

  The fear tensing the muscles in his gut eased immediately, but those in his chest tightened at the confusion and fatigue etched in her face. Though she’d slept for the better part of five hours her eyes remained slightly puffy and red from crying. Gently he lifted the long strand of wet hair clinging to her cheek and hooked it behind her ear. ‘You don’t look it. Feeling a bit better?’