The Brothers Rule - Carolyn Faulkner Page 0,2

and hawed a bit, then finally came out with it. "So, I've slept with her. Once. Have either of you?"

"Once," they both said.

"And this just keeps getting awkwarder and awkwarder."

Jace was looking pensive, as usual. "Are either of the two brats likely to be home, do you think?" Jace leaned his chair back on two legs and drew a deep breath. The three older brothers were closer in age to each other. There was a gap of three years before Nick was born, and he was closer in age—and thus closer to—Tanner, who was only about a year and a half younger.

But they were all still very tight with each other—and they were a cohesive unit.

If you had trouble with one Rule brother, you had trouble with all of them.

"I dunno. Lemme text them." Unlike his older brothers, Ryan's phone was always out.

"Why do you want to know?" Adam asked.

Their oldest brother leaned forward again, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, a sure sign that he was thinking hard. "Well, I'm kind of thinking that this conversation makes me want to have another shot. Am I alone in that?"

"No!" they chorused eagerly.

"I think we all drove here, so I want to make sure there is someone who could come get us."

"Smart move," Adam complimented graciously, and Jace just grinned at him.

"Stodgy. Staid. Smaht," he teased, in a reasonable—if much lower registered—imitation of their mom's thick Boston accent.

"Well, I don't know about that."

After they'd essentially told the brother who was at home to be ready to come in and get them when they called, they downed the next round and called for another.

Ryan continued his annoying streak of thorny questions. "So, who's going to find out if she knows, and if she doesn't, who's going to tell her?"

Adam chuckled. "Well, I think it should be Mr. 'I've dated her more often than the rest of you', myself."

Ryan didn't look all that happy at that suggestion.

"No, I'll do it."

His brothers regarded him a bit suspiciously, each of them with a raised eyebrow. "Why?" Adam asked outright.

"I just think that—as the oldest—it should come from me if she doesn't already know."

Adam looked at Ryan for confirmation, then they both nodded at the older man. Neither of them really wanted to do it. "Agreed."

"Jesus," Ryan sighed after there was a moment of heavy silence.

"Yeah," his brothers echoed.

"I believe this round is on me, gentlemen."

When it appeared, Jace stopped the others from just bolting it down.

"Since none of us is willing to give her up, I think we need to establish some ground rules here."

The other two rolled their eyes at him, but they kept silent, too.

"No badmouthing each other to her."

"Agreed."

"We are to be gentlemanly to her and to each other—during and after—she decides who she wants to be with, which, I would remind you, might not even be any of us."

The other two slumped. "Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Does anyone know if she's dating anyone else?" Ryan asked, sounding very bummed out.

Adam frowned and cuffed his brother upside the back of his head. "Think, idjit. If we didn't even know she was dating our own other brothers, how would we know about other men?"

Ryan frowned back at him. "Well, I don't know. Maybe she mentioned someone else who isn't one of us to one of you. I was just asking."

"Well, don't ask stupid questions."

Before this got any worse, Jace jumped in again, "We didn't hear about each other, and we haven't heard about anyone else because she doesn't kiss and tell, which I like, despite that it's caused us this bit of awkwardness. That's not her fault." He pinned them with his gaze. "And, just for the record, I don't want to hear you two fighting over her or anything like that."

"Agreed," from both of them.

"But there's nothing wrong with badmouthing other guys, if we find out there are any?"

Jace answered him as he held yet another shot up, "I believe that, Ryan, is what is called 'leveling the playing field'."

One of the things Laurie liked the best about the guys she was currently dating was their manners. She had never been with men who were so consistently impeccable in that way. They were, for men, what she knew some of her friends would consider old fashioned, but she liked a certain amount of that. She wasn't interested in the type who wanted to keep women from achieving everything they could in life and, instead, keep them barefoot