Alison Kelly - Ryan's Rules

‘K.C., I said to tell me which was yours, not try and crash-tackle the thing yourself.’

The amusement in his tone didn’t do much to lessen her irritation and embarrassment. She refused to look at him as they waited for the bags to reappear.

‘Next time they come around,’ he said tersely, ‘just point at them. I want to get out of here before you’re recognised and we’ve every starry-eyed soap fan in the place stampeding for an autograph.’

‘Ryan, this is Sydney, not Hollywood; I’m hardly going to cause a stampede. Besides, I’m sure you’d protect me to your dying breath—whether I wanted you to or not!’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ he said drily. ‘Now, quit acting like a spoilt brat and tell me which bags are—’

‘That one and that one!’ she snapped, annoyed that he had no difficulty in snaring them as they came past. ‘And don’t blame me if I live down to your low expectations!’

He frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that maybe if you stopped treating me like a petulant child I’d stop acting like one!’

‘Well, that’s one thing we agree on,’ he said.

‘Alleluia! We agree I’m an adult!’

‘No.’ He smirked. ‘We agree you’re petulant.’

K.C.’s expression, before she pivoted and hurried towards the exit, told Ryan that if she’d brought her trademark sense of humour with her from Melbourne it was packed in the bottom of one of the two suitcases he held. Great! K.C. riled up was the last thing he needed.

Had time travel existed, Ryan would have booked a trip back to the day when K.C. had gone from being cute to sexy and stopped it happening. But of course there was no such thing as time travel and, what was more, he couldn’t pinpoint the transformation of Kirrily Claire to any set event.

He suspected that the evolution had been a gradual thing, and it was only irritation at finding himself physically attracted to her which caused him to feel as if she’d actually catapulted from one to the other. Still, it seemed as if one minute he’d been chaperoning her sixteenth birthday party, dressing her down for spiking the punch, and the next he’d been at his parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, mentally undressing her! Not that the clingy creation she’d worn that night had left much to a man’s imagination! Even the tight jeans and polonecked bodysuit she wore now were an improvement on that, though they, too, hugged her subtle young curves to the point of distraction!

Her pursed-lip silence continued all the way to the car and Ryan felt like a heel—not because he’d upset her but because he’d welcomed the opportunity simply to look at her without having to listen to her. Prize bastard that he was, he’d even gone so far as to walk behind her just so that he could study her cute, denim-clad butt! The fact that he’d found himself speculating on what it might look like minus the denim almost choked him with guilt.

She was his late friend’s kid sister, and he knew Steven Cosgrove hadn’t meant this when he’d made his dying request that Ryan ‘keep an eye on little K.C.’! Hell, if Steve had been alive today to witness Ryan lusting after his sister, he’d have knocked his so-called best mate’s teeth down his throat. And fair enough too, Ryan reasoned; he wouldn’t tolerate anyone leering at Jayne the way he had at K.C.!

Get a grip, mate! he told himself. She’s not your type at all. You like ‘em blonde, buxom and classically beautiful, not brunette and boyish with pixie-cute smiles and basketball caps—even if their legs do stretch into tomorrow!

But the way his feelings kept flipping from platonic caring to physical attraction worried the daylights out of Ryan. In the past he’d reasoned that much of the protectiveness and tenderness he felt for K.C. was accounted for by their families’ close bonds and the fact that he was twelve years older than she. So why was it that all of a sudden the gap between thirty-six and twenty-four seemed narrower than the one between sixteen and twenty-eight? It wasn’t-’

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.’