Page 70 of 13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex

I stroll into the office, and Julian looks at me, goes back to his papers, then fixes his eyes on me again.

“Why are you so happy?” he demands with a squint, as though he’s examining me. “It’s unsettling.”

My cheeks heat, and I drag my fingers through my hair while I attempt to formulate an answer.

“Ewww. Never mind,” he groans. “You’ve said enough already.”

He hands me a coffee from the Other Bean, still hot, and I take a seat at my desk while he glares at me.

“And make sure you wash your bloody paws before you touch anything. I just cleaned.” He pushes a bottle of hand sanitizer toward my side of our desk, and I can’t help but hoot with laughter.

Hours later, that Kait-induced smile has gone the way of the dodo bird.

I blame Lachlan, of all people. My brother is in town for some doctor-related thing, so we meet for lunch at his favorite Irish pub so he can indulge his potato addiction with a dose of colcannon, and I can get some sticky toffee pudding. He’s the most reserved of the seven of us. Wells isn’t talkative, but it’s usually because he’s mumbling something scathing under his breath, where Lachlan silently takes everything in, collates it like he’s creating a file on each of us, and lies in wait to say something insightful and entertaining.

He’s standing on the sidewalk when I walk up and gives me a big squeeze. We’re a hugging family. While Sky and Killian are identical, Lachlan and I look close enough to be asked if we’re twins regularly. He’s got three years and two inches on me, but we’re the only green-eyed Sterlings of the bunch, number five and six in the Sterling lineup.

We settle into a booth and order, and he gives me the update on life near our very small hometown in rural Illinois.

“West Cornville is great if you love having every person over sixty-five heavily invested in your personal life,” Lach says with a big sigh. He plays with his ring. “I’m pretty sure this engagement ring happened to keep the attempts to set me up on dates with every woman in town to a dull roar. I didn’t even know men got engagement rings, but apparently, we do if one of us wants to put a visual claim on the other.” He chuckles. “It’s better than being peed on.”

He radiates happiness, thumbing the ring as he speaks. There’s no question—he’s thrilled to be getting married.

“I thought you were living in the quaint village of East Soybean these days, my mistake,” I say with a chuckle. “Congratulations, by the way. I’d been wondering when you were going to take the leap.”

“We were waiting to be ready for kids, and I think we’re there now. We’ve got the house, I’m practicing full-time, or to be perfectly accurate, we need to hire an additional physician because I’m trying to cut down to full-time. So it’s time. Better now than never.” In contrast with his pragmatic words, his smile and his eyes light up. “I’m ready to be a husband and a dad. We’ve got the dog. We’re in the market for a picket fence.”

He takes a bite of boxty, then adds, “The whole thing is completely fucking terrifying, honestly, so I should say I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

I nod. Fair.

“I’ve never dwelled on it too much, but I think I’d like to have some kids,” I say. “Not seven, but a couple would be nice.” The foolish and delusional part of me rises up, and for a second, I consider how much fun—and how aggravating—it would be to have intelligent and snarky and witty little girls like Kait. But I don’t know what color eyes or hair they would have because I’ve never even seen Kait. The stabbing sensation over my heart is real.

It’s laughable, really. Like a giant cosmic joke, this situation I’ve managed to place myself in, and before I can dwell on it, Lachlan speaks and pulls me back to our conversation.

“We’ll start with one and hope they aren’t like Declan, because we’ll end with one if that’s the case.” I let out a huff of laughter. I should feel sorry for Deck, six against one, but I don’t. “They can look like him, but otherwise, no go.”

He unrolls his silverware and fusses with his napkin before he speaks. “A mini herd, maybe three. No need to overachieve like Mom and Dad,” he says. “We have enough bedrooms. I swore as a kid I’d never make my kids share.”

“Oh, come on, I wasn’t that bad,” I protest. “I’m as tidy as you, and I was always listening to music on my headphones. Sharing a room doesn’t get much better than that.”

“You’re fine,” he says, matter-of-fact. “But before you, I shared a room with Killian and Sky in one set of bunks, and Wells and I shared a second bunk bed. Four of us in one room. You probably don’t remember. We moved when you were five.”

One-on-one, my quiet brother becomes downright chatty. A busy family dinner will silence him aside from an occasional “pass the potatoes, please,” but when it’s us, he rambles about the old days before my parents got a bigger house and the horror of sharing a room with three siblings and a single bathroom with what was then a family of seven, before launching into a rant about how Declan had his own room.

“If you think he’s bad now, you should have seen him when he was the lord and king of his own room.” Lachlan has a memory like an iron trap and can carry a grudge like a bucket.

We share an order of Reuben egg rolls. I have to go back to work, so I skip the beer, but Lachlan has a Guinness.

“I earned this beer. Medicine is harder than I ever expected, and it’s not the schoolbook learning stuff. It’s the sad stuff,” he says, cramming another boxty in his face. “I never thought there would be a day when my continuing medical education would include an entire hour on gaslighting, internet fraud, theft, and catfishing instead of being harassed about the judicious use of antibiotics, yet here we are.”

“That doesn’t seem very doctor-y,” I say, holding off on taking a bite of my egg roll. “I would think that would be more my area.”

“No, it’s definitely mine too,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’ve had several of my elderly patients scammed out of serious money in the last year. One was told it was the FBI calling, and they’d be arrested if they didn’t pay their fines. They handed over an entire IRA. The other got a call saying her son was in the hospital in the Caribbean, and they wouldn’t help him until someone could pay for his care. He was in the Caribbean, safely aboard a cruise ship, and when he didn’t answer his phone, my patient sent a buttload of money to ‘save’ him.”

“As a lawyer, hearing that makes me want to punish someone.”

“Good luck. Most of the scammers aren’t even in this country,” he says with a grimace. “And it’s not just old people. Pete was telling me the other day that a guy came into the sheriff’s office. Dude’s been in a long-distance relationship with a woman for eighteen months now. They’ve never met in person, but of course, she sounds amazing on the phone, and he’s been sending her presents and gifts and what have you for a while now.”