LITMIR.BIZ

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he maneuvered through afternoon traffic. “That boy has a nasty habit of losing jackets. I’ll just have to tell the chief to take it out of his pay.”

      Dylan pulled the extra jacket off the hook beside his head and slipped into it. This time he wasn’t sure he wanted it back. Meggie Flanagan wasn’t like the other women for whom the ploy had worked so well. For one thing, she didn’t gaze up at him with an adoring look. From what he could tell, she pretty much hated him. And she certainly wasn’t the kind of girl he could just seduce, then leave. She was the kid sister of a very old friend.

      He drew a long breath, then let it out slowly. No, it would be a long time before he retrieved his jacket from Meggie Flanagan.

      A THIN COAT OF GRIMY soot covered every surface in the shop. The grand opening of Cuppa Joe was scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving and Meggie was overwhelmed by the task in front of her. She still had to train eight new employees and finish up with the last details of the decor. A call to the insurance company assured her of a check for both a cleaning crew and a new machine. But she didn’t have time to wait for the crew to come. Tables and chairs were due to be delivered tomorrow. If they expected to open on time, she and her business partner, Lana Richards, would have to get the place in shape on their own.

      The smoke hadn’t been the worst of yesterday’s fire. The destruction of her espresso maker had been a crushing blow. “Three months,” she muttered. “Three months until they can deliver another machine. I even offered to pay them extra for a rush order, but they said they couldn’t do it. Every coffee shop wants one of those machines.”

      “Can you please stop with the machine?” Lana struggled to her feet and tossed a dirty rag into the bucket of warm water, then brushed her blond hair out of her eyes. “We’ll just buy two Espresso Master 4000s. Or four Espresso Master 2000s. Anything so we don’t have to talk about the espresso maker anymore.”

      In truth, she’d had to force herself to think about the machine. It kept her from lapsing into daydreams about the handsome firefighter who had ordered it destroyed. How many times over the past 24 hours had she caught herself adrift in a contemplation of Dylan Quinn? And how many times had the contemplation ended in a surge of well-remembered humiliation.

      “This is our business,” Meggie said softly. “We didn’t spend the last five years saving every penny we made, working at jobs we hated, begging the Bank of Boston for a loan, just to have some overenthusiastic firefighter end it all with one swing of his ax.”

      Any woman might be fascinated by Dylan Quinn. After all, it wasn’t every day you met a real life hero, tall and imposing in his firefighting gear. He seemed made for his job, dauntless and determined…strong and… Meggie sighed softly. There was probably a Dylan Quinn in every woman’s life, a man who was the subject of an endless string of “what ifs.”

      What if she hadn’t been such a geek in high school and he hadn’t been such a god? What if she’d gotten her braces off a year earlier? What if she’d been able to talk to him without giggling uncontrollably? A moan slipped from her lips. Though she’d come a long way since those days, the memories were still acutely embarrassing.

      Over the past years, she’d thought about Dylan Quinn every now and then, wondering what had happened to her first love. On lonely nights or after disastrous dates, she’d even conjure up a fantasy of what it might be like to meet him again. After all, she was different now. The braces and thick glasses had been replaced by perfect teeth and contact lenses. Her once lackluster hair color was now enhanced by one of Boston’s best hairdressers. And most importantly of all, she’d grown curves in all the proper places.

      Still, there were a few things that hadn’t changed. She still wasn’t very good with the opposite sex. Though she’d accomplished a lot in her professional life, her personal life left a lot to be desired. It probably had more to do with the men she chose to date, but Meggie just wrote her bad luck off as a lingering effect from too many years as a geek.

      Dylan, on the other hand, had been one of the most popular boys in high school. With his dark and dangerous good looks and his devastating charm, he’d been every girl’s dream date. But he’d still been a boy and her memories of him had always held an image of a tall, lanky, high-school Casanova with a killer smile. That image had shattered the moment she met those strange and beautiful eyes again.

      All the Quinns had those eyes, gold mixed with green, a shade too unique to be called hazel. Those eyes that held the power to turn a girl’s knees weak and make her pulse race. And to send Meggie right back to the pain and humiliation of that one night, the night of the Sophomore Frolic.

      “The fire wasn’t all bad,” Lana said. “You got to see Dylan Quinn again.”

      “I needed that like a sharp stick in the eye,” she said.

      She and Lana had been friends since their college days at the University of Massachusetts, so there was very little that Lana didn’t know about the men—or lack of them—in Meggie’s life, both past and present. But the picture of Dylan Quinn she’d painted for her friend hadn’t been very flattering—or entirely truthful. Had Lana been asked she probably would have described him as a cross between Hannibal Lector and Bigfoot.

      The bell on the front door jingled and Meggie popped up from behind the counter, hoping that her new Espresso Master 4000 Ultra had arrived from the restaurant supply house. But it wasn’t Eddie, the usual driver, who walked in the door. This man was tall and good-looking and…Meggie swallowed hard. This man was Dylan Quinn!

      With a tiny groan, Meggie dropped back down behind the counter, then tugged on the leg of Lana’s jeans. He was the last person she wanted to see! “It’s him,” she said.

      Lana shook her leg until Meggie let go. “Who?”

      “Dylan Quinn. Tell him to leave. Tell him we’re not open. Tell him there’s another coffee shop over on Newbury.”

      “Oh, my God,” Lana murmured, staring toward the front of the shop, stunned by the revelation. “That’s Dylan Quinn? But he doesn’t look—”

      Her words were stopped when Meggie slammed her fist down on Lana’s big toe. Lana yelped in pain. “Get rid of him. Now!”

      Her partner muttered a quiet threat, then stepped out from behind the counter. “Hello. I bet you’re here looking for a good cup of coffee. Well, as you can see, we’re not open yet. Our grand opening is in three weeks.”

      “Actually,” he said. “I didn’t come for coffee.”

      The warm rich sound of his voice seemed to seep into her bloodstream as Meggie cowered on the floor. She wondered what it might be like to listen to that voice for an hour or two. Would it become so addictive that she couldn’t do without it?

      “But I’m sure I could make something for one of Boston’s finest,” Lana continued. “We’ll be one of the few places that serves Jamaican Blue Mountain. Would you like to try a cup? It’s like nectar of the gods. An appropriate drink for you, I’d say.”

      Meggie groaned, then grabbed Lana’s leg as she moved to the coffeemaker. “Don’t serve him the Jamaican,” she whispered. “It’s the most expensive thing in the shop. Just get rid of him!”

      Lana scooped some beans from a plastic container in the refrigerator, then dumped them in the grinder. “You’re Dylan Quinn, aren’t you?”

      “Do I know you?” Dylan asked.

      Just by the tone of his voice, Meggie could tell that he’d turned on the charm full force. And Lana, an accomplished flirt, was lapping it up like a sex kitten with a bowl of cream. He’d give her that boyish smile and those little crinkles at the corners of his eyes would make him look so appealing. And Lana would toss her perfect blond hair over her shoulder and laugh in that deep, throaty way she had. And before Meggie could stop them, they’d be rushing to the drugstore for a box of condoms.

      “No,” Lana said. “But I’m sure we can remedy that fact. I’m Lana Richards, Meggie’s business partner.

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