The Brothers Rule - Carolyn Faulkner Page 0,65

one of them!" she snorted with derision. "He is gone, baby, gone!"

It was a great night with Lita. The only one of them they saw again was Jace, who padded through at one point before he went to bed, a few hours later than usual, and Laurie knew that was because he wanted to check on them before he did.

It had been a more raucous evening earlier, during which he hadn't said a peep, although he could probably have heard their antics in his study. When he appeared next to her to drop a kiss on her cheek, they were glued to the tube, watching The Crown.

"Haven't you seen this a-zillion times before, babygirl?" he asked, already heading for the kitchen.

"Yes, but shhh! Be quiet! It's the scene where Dr. Who has to tell Neil Armstrong's wife that her father has died!"

He wasn't used to having her shush him or tell him to be quiet, but then he realized when he turned back to correct her and saw her bleary gaze, she was more than half in the bag, and he just grinned to himself.

Jace knew that Laurie didn't often allow herself to get drunk—never in public, she'd told him once—and only very rarely even around them. He loved the fact that she felt safe enough, comfortable enough, to do so here, in their home.

Then she negated yelling at him in the first place, anyway, by yelling to him, "We're done with the Chinese if you want some, and you can actually have at anything that's left over."

"Any Napoleons left?" he asked, scouring the kitchen counter for the familiar bakery box.

"Hell no!" they both answered vehemently.

"You gotta learn how to make those, Laurie."

She snorted drunkenly. "Only if you're cool with me weighing a thousand pounds."

He'd grabbed one last beer and a half a carton of what looked like Chicken Lo Mien, tossing out with calculated casualness as he headed down the hall to his bedroom, "Oh, I can think of several ways to prevent that from happening."

"Jace!" she peeped in feigned outrage, but Lita just giggle-snorted.

"Good night, ladies!"

"Good night, Jace!" they yelled back at him.

The next morning, they were bright eyed and bushy tailed relatively early in the morning, just in time to catch Jace going off to work.

He gave them both amazed looks. "How were you two utterly snockered at one in the morning but you're perfectly fine now, only six hours later?"

"Water," Lita saluted him with another glass she was just about to down. "Lots and lots of water."

"Yeah. We're fine. We know how to drink and not have hangovers." She grabbed her keys.

"Where're you two off to?"

Laurie didn't mind that he was asking in the least—in fact she knew it was just another way of him showing that he cared about her. He wasn't trying to be intrusive or snoop on her at all. She'd never gotten that feeling from any of them, because she knew that whatever they said or did came from a basis of love for her.

And Lita was just wishing that her husband would ever bother to ask her where she was going.

"Breakfast, of course, prolly at the Back Home Café," she said, naming a bohemian little hole in the wall that served amazing—and enormous—breakfasts, "then maybe some shopping or something."

Laurie leaned up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on him, grinning when he blushed.

"Have fun, but drive carefully, lead foot." He patted her bottom a bit more firmly than he needed to, making Lita giggle again. "It was nice to meet you, Lita! And I meant what I said—don't be a stranger!"

"You, too, Jace, and I won't!"

It was three weeks before she made her decision and actually left the bank. Ryan had picked her up on her last day, going up with her to her desk on the fifth floor to help her carry crap down, but there really wasn't that much to take, since she'd been slowly bringing it home over the past two weeks.

So, he did what any red blooded American man would do in that situation. He picked her up, bridal style—to the sounds of hearty cheers behind them—and stalked out of there with her in his arms, holding her that way in the elevator, too, and all the way out to the car.

And when she got home, everyone was there to greet her. They'd made—brought home—dinner for her so that she didn't have to make it, and had even bought a small cake that said, "Congratulations, Ex-Banker!"

It

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