Table of Contents
“Your trouble is, you worry too much about me.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Kirrily,” Ryan replied.
“I’m no longer a naive sixteen-year-old. You
have to stop regarding me as some kind of bimbo who’s going to fall into the arms of the first smooth-talking male who comes on to her.”
“I don’t wish to encroach on your love life, but I do have strict rules about you bringing men home.”
“Oh, goody, more rules! And they are…?”
ALISON KELLY, a self-confessed sports junkie, plays netball, volleyball and touch football, and lives in Australia’s Hunter Valley. She has three children and the type of husband women tell their daughters doesn’t exist in real life! He’s not only a better cook than Alison, but he also isn’t afraid of vacuum cleaners, washing machines or supermarkets. Which is just as well, otherwise this book would have been written by a starving woman in a pigsty!
Alison Kelly has a warm, witty writing style you’ll love! Bubbly heroines, gorgeous laid-back heroes…romances brimming over with sex appeal!
Look out this month for Boots in the Bedroom! by Alison Kelly in THE AUSTRALIANS.
Books by Alison Kelly
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Ryan’s Rules
Alison Kelly
‘GOT a minute?’
The sound of his sister’s voice drew Ryan’s concentration from the quote he’d been working on all afternoon, while the sight of the two steaming mugs she carried drew his smile.
‘Kid, if you’ve got coffee, I’ve got more than a minute!’ He accepted the cup from her hand. ‘Thanks. This Emmerson project looks like being an even bigger pain in the rear than I expected.’
‘You’ll cope, Ryan. You always do.’
‘Coffee and flattery! You’ve not only got my attention but my curiosity too. What’s up—a delinquent account causing you problems?’
‘Er, no. No, everything is fine in that department, which is why I’ve decided to fly over and join Mum and Dad in Europe.’
Shock removed Ryan’s ability to swallow the mouthful of coffee he’d just taken until the need to question his hearing forced him to gulp it down; he opened and closed his mouth twice before he could even think of a response, let alone voice one. Had Jayne announced she could walk on water, he wouldn’t have been half as stunned.
‘You’re doing what?’
‘You heard me,’ she said, looking as if she wasn’t sure she could repeat the words. ‘I’m thirty-four years old, Ryan; it’s time I got my life together.’ She smiled. ‘At least, that’s what everybody’s been telling me and…well, I decided yesterday they were right.’
On one level Ryan wanted to cheer with joy. On another the suddenness of his sister’s decision worried him. Ever since the death of his best friend, Steven, Jayne’s fiancé, fifteen years ago, he’d wondered if she’d ever put the past behind her; until this minute there’d been no noticeable indication that it would happen. Apprehensive about the suddenness of the decision, he searched her face for an answer.
‘Don’t look at me as if I’m having another breakdown, Ryan.’
‘I wasn’t!’ Yet despite his denial the possibility had drifted through his consciousness. Trying to smile away his guilt, he rounded the desk to take his sister’s hand. It was soft, fragile and