“Back problems?” she persisted unrelentingly.
“No, and what does that have to do with having a rocker in my room?”
“They say President Kennedy had a rocker because of chronic back problems. I’ve seen pictures of it.”
Ryan nodded. “Okay, yes, I guess I have heard something about that, but it’s got nothing to do with this. I saw it in a shop and I liked it. End of story.”
Her gaze narrowed with obvious disbelief. “Did your mother rock you when you were little?”
Ryan bit back a curse at the accurate guess. “How the hell would I remember a thing like that?” he asked derisively.
Maggie’s gaze never left his face. “She did, didn’t she? That’s why you bought this chair. It reminds you of one your family had.”
The truth was, he suspected it might have been this chair. On the one occasion he’d ventured back to his childhood neighborhood, he’d found the rocker in a shop not all that far from where they’d lived. He’d been drawn to it at once, and despite his claim that he wanted nothing at all to do with the past, he hadn’t been able to put it out of his mind. He’d gone back the next day and bought the rocker, but only after asking the shop owner what he knew about the original owner. Unfortunately, the man had bought the shop from someone else, and the rocker had been a part of the inventory. He’d known nothing at all about its history, not even the year in which it had been purchased.
“Maggie, drop it, okay? It’s just a chair.”
“And if someone were to take an ax to it, it wouldn’t bother you at all?” she inquired innocently.
Hands jammed in his pockets, he shrugged. “It would be a waste of a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, nothing more,” he asserted.
She sighed at his response. “If you insist.”
“I do.” He gestured toward a door across the hall. “The bathroom’s over there. There are towels in the closet. If you need anything else, let me know.”
“Just a phone. I need to call home and let them know what’s going on.”
He felt guilty for not having suggested it right away. “Given the way they worry, they must be frantic by now.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it. I called them last night and told them I was going to be with you.”
Ryan couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d punched him in the gut. “You told them that? In those words?”
She grinned at his discomfort. “Maybe not those precise words, but that was the gist of it, yes.”
Curious despite himself, he asked, “How did they react?”
“Mother said I need to bring you home to dinner tonight.”
“That’s it?”
“Oh, I imagine she’ll have quite a bit to say when you get there, but last night that’s all she said,” Maggie replied, clearly enjoying herself.
“Then let’s postpone that dinner for a while—like maybe ten years from now.”
She laughed. “If you think that will work, you don’t know my mother at all. She’s counting on tonight. No excuses accepted.”
“You’ll just have to extend my apologies,” Ryan insisted. “Tonight’s out of the question.”
“A prior engagement?”
“Nope. Just a healthy desire to live.”
“I don’t think it will come to that,” Maggie said soothingly. “My folks haven’t killed a prospective son-in-law yet. And before you panic—which, by the way, I can see that you’re doing—you should know that they regard any male of an appropriate age as prospective marriage material. It’s not as if they’re getting invitations printed as we speak.”
“I should hope not,” he said fervently.
She frowned at him. “You know, if I were a less confident woman, I might be offended.”
“Maggie, you know where I stand on this. I don’t do commitment. I don’t do love.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
She didn’t seem particularly dismayed. Either she didn’t care or she didn’t believe him. “It’s not something you should forget,” he told her, to make the point clearer.
“As if you’re likely to let me,” she scoffed.
Ryan still wasn’t at all convinced she was taking him seriously. However, prolonging the subject struck him as a decidedly lousy idea. “Get some sleep,” he muttered, then left the room and closed the door behind him.
The woman was dangerous. As if she couldn’t tempt him with a glance, now she was deliberately taunting him every chance she got. One of these days, his willpower was going to snap and his common sense was going to fly right out the window, and then nothing would keep him from joining her in that bed of his. In fact, right now, with the image of her snuggled beneath his sheets firmly implanted in his brain, it was almost more than he could cope with.
Just to be sure he didn’t give in to the desire swirling through him, he left the apartment and locked the door securely behind him. Of course, short of his tossing the key in the river, there was nothing to prevent him from unlocking the door and going right back in there an hour from now and struggling with the same neediness. To prevent any chance of that, he went downstairs in search of coffee and Rory’s company.
The cook glanced up when he walked in. “I thought I heard you moving about upstairs,” he said, and gestured toward a pot of coffee. “The coffee’s fresh and strong.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said, pouring himself a cup.
Rory gave him a sly look. “Of course, I also thought I heard another set of footsteps and a lovely feminine voice. Those wouldn’t belong to our Maggie, would they? Have you finally come to your senses where she’s concerned?”
“I never lost my senses, which is why I’m down here and she’s up there,” Ryan retorted.
Rory regarded him with disappointment. “You’re breaking my heart, lad. You’re a disgrace to all the males of Ireland.”
Ryan thought of what Maggie was offering
