The Brothers Rule - Carolyn Faulkner Page 0,32

it.

Case in point, Adam had brought home about ten pizzas for dinner Monday night. And, worse than that, as far as she was concerned, he had not allowed her to kick in for them, either. Although he'd taken his brothers' money happily enough. Hell, he'd demanded it.

"That's not right!" she crowed, trying to hand him a twenty-dollar bill. "Adam, please take my money! I want to contribute!"

Everyone was home, even Jace and Ryan, and she got quintuple "the" looks.

She felt as if her bottom was on fire, and the hand that was holding the money fell to her side.

"Put it back, Laur," Adam said quietly.

And she did so, but not without a put-upon sigh.

"Thank you for dinner," she whispered to him, having gone to him immediately after he'd gotten the money from the rest of them.

Adam wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. "You're welcome. How'd work go?"

Laurie snorted, and he got the gist. She was still unhappy with her job.

Everyone sat around the table and ate and talked—loudly, and with a lot of razzing and laughter—about their day. She was offered first pick from the pizza, and she just took two slices of the pepperoni version, which was almost too much for her.

When dinner was adjourned, Jace headed for his study, and she trailed him there deliberately.

"Jace?"

"Yes, love?" he asked, turning back to her.

"Can I come in and talk to you?"

"Of course!" He smiled, stepping aside to let her enter before him. He put a leg up on the edge of his desk and asked, "What's up, buttercup?"

She smiled shyly at that. "Well, I don't know how long I'm going to be here for—"

"As long as you need or want to," he supplied smoothly.

That brought out a blush. "Thank you. I'll never be able to thank any of you enough for taking me in, really."

He smiled. "It's not a hardship in any way, believe me. At the very least, you improve the scenery around here a million percent!"

"Yeah, well, I want to do something more than be decorative, which I don't think I am anyway—"

His tone was low and scolding. "That sounds very much like you insulting yourself." He leaned a bit closer to where she was standing, whispering in a terribly sexy tone, "And you know what happens when you do that, don't you?"

Jace watched her squirm at that, which had been his intention, and the tightness in his pants made him wish he was wearing sweats.

"Jace!" She was full on blushing now. "Stop that! I wasn't insulting myself; I was telling the truth."

He raised an eyebrow at her and lowered his chin, and she knew he didn't agree, and she worried that she might be in for it, but she wanted to say what she wanted to say.

"That's beside the point. I want to help out around here, and since you guys seemed to like my cooking, I thought that was what I could probably do best."

His eyebrows rose. "Well, that would be great if you think you want to, although you certainly don't have to. You might have noticed that cooking and getting groceries are way down on everyone's list around here."

Laurie rolled her eyes. "No shit."

That got her another look, so she hurried on.

"But, there's a problem."

"What?" He frowned.

"You don't have any actual food!"

That got him laughing as he stood, taking out his wallet and handing her a credit card.

It said, "Rule Brothers" on it and had what she recognized as the Ranch's logo. It was a white card, with a wooden-looking ruler, with each of the twelve red letters evenly spaced out along it.

"What's this?"

"It's the ranch's credit card. Here." He gave her a key off the fob he had in his pocket, too.

She stared down at it as if it was going to bite her. "And this?"

"The key to the station wagon we brought you here in. It's the ranch's, too. Take it to work tomorrow and get enough groceries after work to last till the end of the week. We'll go in to Sam's or Costco on the weekend and really get you set up."

"I can take my own car and use my own credit card."

His uncompromising look said that he wasn't about to let her do either of those. "If you're going to do ranch business, then use ranch equipment and money, not your own."

Laurie sighed. She just wanted to cook for them, but now it seemed like it was a lot more than that—moneywise. She didn't