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
