LITMIR.BIZ

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ever she’d met one. There was a tiny scar at the corner of his mouth, barely visible unless one looked closely, which, of course, she had. After all, the man had a mouth that any sane woman would instantly imagine locked against her own.

      Yes, indeed, Ryan Devaney was the embodiment of every woman’s fantasy, all right. A very dangerous fantasy. It would be all too easy to fall in with Father Francis’s scheming.

      Ryan Devaney was also a man of contradictions. For one thing, he might have his hard edges and unyielding black moods, but she herself had seen evidence of his tender heart in the way he’d bustled the protesting priest out of the bar and into his car for a ride the few blocks to the rectory. Maggie was a sucker for a man with that particular mysterious combination.

      For another thing, Ryan was a successful businessman with the soul of a poet. The rhythm of his words, when he’d lapsed for a moment into an Irish brogue to tease a customer, had been like music to Maggie’s ears. She sighed just remembering the lilting sound of his voice. She could still recall sitting on her grandfather O’Brien’s knee years ago, enthralled by his tales of the old country, told with just such a musical lilt. Listening to Ryan Devaney, even knowing that the accent was feigned, had taken her back to those happy occasions.

      She’d known the man less than two hours, and she was already intrigued in a way that had her heart thumping and her thoughts whirling. She blamed at least some of her reaction on her innate curiosity. Her father was a journalist, always poking his nose into things that he considered the public’s business, long before the public even knew they cared. Her mother was a scientist and professor at MIT, a profession that managed to combine her curiosity about how the universe worked and her nurturing skills.

      Inevitably, living with two people like that, Maggie had grown up with an insatiable desire to understand what made people tick. She had a trace of her father’s cynicism, a healthy dose of her mother’s reason and an intuitive ability to see beneath the surface.

      Among her friends she was the one they turned to when they were trying to make sense of relationships, when a boss was giving them trouble, when a parent was making impossible demands. Maggie always had a helpful insight, if not a solution, to offer.

      The only life she couldn’t seem to make sense of was her own. She was still struggling to carve out a niche for herself. She had a degree in business and in accounting, but in one of those contradictions that she seemed to like in others, she kept searching for a creative outlet that would feed her soul as well as her bank account.

      Her last job certainly hadn’t offered that. She’d loved the small coastal town in Maine, which was why she’d persuaded herself that she could be happy doing bookkeeping for a small corporation. In the end, though, the early-morning strolls on the beach, the quaint shops and the friendly neighbors hadn’t compensated for the daily tedium in her job. She’d given her notice two weeks ago, on the same day she’d broken off a relationship that had been going nowhere.

      Now she was the one in need of direction, but she’d given herself until after the start of the new year to figure things out. With savings in the bank, she didn’t have to rush right into another job. She was going to stay with her parents, brothers and sisters for the next few weeks, then decide if she wanted to return to Maine, where she’d been making her home for the past four years, and look for more satisfying work and a relationship that had more excitement and more promise of a future.

      With all that heavy thinking awaiting her, Ryan Devaney and his contradictions offered a tempting distraction. She glanced his way again, noting that his focus on the road was no less intense.

      “I’m sorry to disrupt your plans this way,” she apologized yet again, hoping to spark a conversation.

      “Not a problem,” he said without looking at her.

      “Most people have a lot to do around the holidays.”

      “It’s okay,” he said, his delectable mouth drawing into a tight line.

      “Will the pub be open tomorrow?”

      “For a few hours. Some of our customers have nowhere else to spend Thanksgiving.”

      She recalled what Father Francis had said about Ryan having been abandoned by his parents. Obviously, he could relate to customers who were essentially in the same fix—all alone in the world. “It’s thoughtful of you to give them a place where they’ll feel welcome.”

      “It’s a business decision,” he said, dismissing the idea that there was any sentiment involved.

      “Your own family doesn’t mind?” she asked, deliberately feigning ignorance and broaching the touchy subject in the hope that he would open up and fill in the blanks left by Father Francis’s sketchy explanation.

      “No,” he said tightly.

      “Tell me about them,” she prodded.

      He glanced at her then. “There’s nothing to tell.”

      There was a bleak note in his voice she doubted he realized was there. “Oh?” she said. “Every family has a story.”

      His frown deepened. “Ms. O’Brien, I offered you a lift home. I didn’t offer to provide the entertainment. If you need some noise, turn up the radio.”

      Maggie hesitated at the sharp tone, but even an armchair psychologist understood that defensiveness was often a cover for a deep-seated need to talk. She wondered if Ryan Devaney had ever talked about whatever he was trying so determinedly to keep from her. Maybe he told his secrets to Father Francis from the shadows of the confessional, or maybe the priest was simply better at prying them loose.

      “Sometimes it’s easier to tell things to a stranger than it is to a friend,” she observed lightly.

      “And sometimes there’s nothing to tell,” he repeated.

      Though she already knew at least some of the answers, she decided to try getting them directly from the source. “Are you married?” she began.

      “No.”

      “Have you ever been?”

      “No.”

      “What about the rest of your family?”

      He slammed on the brakes and turned to glower at her. “I have no family,” he said tightly. “None at all. Are you satisfied, Ms. O’Brien?”

      Satisfied? Far from it, she thought as she gazed into eyes burning with anger. If anything, she was more intrigued than ever. Now, however, was probably not the best time to tell Ryan that. Maybe tomorrow, after she’d persuaded him to stay and spend Thanksgiving with her family, maybe then he’d be mellow enough to explain what had happened years ago to tear his world apart and why he claimed to have no family at all, when the truth was slightly different. They might not be in his life, but they were more than likely out there somewhere.

      Even without all the answers, Maggie was filled with sympathy. Because with two parents, three sisters and two brothers, a couple of dozen aunts, uncles and cousins—all of them boisterous, impossible, difficult and undeniably wonderful—she couldn’t imagine anyone having no one at all to call family.

      * * *

      Ryan caught the little flicker of dismay in Maggie’s eyes when he’d announced that he had no family to speak of. He was pretty sure he’d seen something else, as well, a faint glint of determination.

      Maybe that was why he wasn’t the least bit surprised when she invited him to stay over once they reached her family’s large house off Kendall Square.

      “It’s nearly two in the morning,” she told him. “You must be exhausted. Please stay. I’m sure there’s an overflow crowd here tonight, but there’s bound to be a couch or something free. If worse comes to worst, I know there are sleeping bags in the attic. I can set you up with one of those.”

      “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to late nights. I’ll be fine,” he insisted as he began unloading bags from his trunk. Since

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