The Devaney Brothers: Ryan And Sean

2

Ryan liked a woman who knew when to keep silent. He truly admired a woman who knew better than to pry. To her credit, Maggie O’Brien was earning a lot of respect on this drive, thanks to her apparent understanding of those two points.

He’d seen the flare of curiosity in her eyes earlier. No telling what Father Francis had seen fit to share with her, but there was little doubt in his mind that the priest had done his level best to whet her interest in Ryan. A lot of women would have seized the opportunity of a long drive on a dark night to pester him with an endless barrage of personal questions, yet Maggie seemed to enjoy the silence as much as he did.

Of course, there could be too much of a good thing, he concluded finally. Any second now he was going to start filling the conversational lull with a litany of questions that had been nagging at him ever since she’d walked into the pub.

Over the years, working at Ryan’s Place, he’d managed to put aside his natural reticence in order to make the expected small talk with his customers. Few understood how difficult a task it was for him. In fact, there were those who thought he had a natural gift of the gab and many more who were sure he’d kissed the Blarney Stone during his stay in Ireland.

Outside the pub, though, he tended toward brooding silence. That was probably one reason why the handful of women customers he’d asked out over the years were so surprised to find him less than forthcoming on a date. And since he’d generally asked all the personal questions in which he had an interest during those evenings in the pub, it made him less than scintillating company. Since he had little interest in a long-term relationship, it generally worked out for the best all the way around. Few women pestered him for more than a single date. Those who took his moods as a challenge eventually tired of the game, as well.

Since Maggie O’Brien had never set foot in Ryan’s Place before, he had all his usual questions, plus a surprising million and one more personal queries on the tip of his tongue. But because asking them might give her an opening to turn the tables on him, he concluded he’d better keep his curiosity under control.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” he asked, already reaching for the dial.

She seemed startled that he’d bothered to ask. “Of course not. Whatever you like.”

“Any preferences?”

“Jazz,” she suggested hesitantly. “Not everyone likes it, I know, but I can’t get a single jazz station where I live, and I really miss it.”

Ryan was surprised by the choice. “Now, I would have pegged you as a woman who likes oldies.”

“I do, but there’s something about a mournful sax that tears my heart up. It’s such a melancholy sound.” She regarded him worriedly. “If you hate it, though, it’s okay. Oldies will be fine.”

Ryan flipped on the radio, and sweet jazz immediately filled the car. He grinned at her. “Preset to the jazz station,” he pointed out. “It seems we have something in common, Maggie O’Brien. Wouldn’t that make Father Francis ecstatic?”

“Something tells me we shouldn’t offer him any encouragement,” she said dryly. “The man does perform weddings, after all. He’s liable to have us marching down the aisle before we even know each other.”

“Not likely,” Ryan murmured, then winced at his own harsh response to what had clearly been nothing more than a teasing remark. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”

“No offense taken,” Maggie said easily.

But Ryan noticed he’d managed to wipe the smile off her face. Once again she turned away to stare out the window, seemingly fascinated by the falling snow.

And he felt about two inches tall.

* * *

Even with the soothing sounds of her favorite jazz to distract her, Maggie couldn’t help wondering about the brooding man beside her. Time after time during her brief visit to his pub, she had seen him turn on the charm with his customers. She’d also noted the very real affection between him and the old priest and Ryan’s quick recognition of the older man’s exhaustion.

Now, however, he’d fallen into a grim silence, apparently content to let the radio fill the silence. She could as easily have been riding with an untalkative cabbie.

When she could stand it no longer, she risked a glance at him. Ever since his offhand comment about the unlikelihood of getting trapped into marrying her by the scheming Father Francis, he’d kept his gaze locked on the road as if it presented some sort of challenge. Since the sky south of town was still clear and bright with stars and there hadn’t been a patch of ice on the highway since they’d left downtown Boston, she concluded that he was trying to avoid looking at her. Maybe he feared she shared the priest’s determination to create a match between them.

Of course, it was probably for the best. From the moment she’d walked into Ryan’s Place and looked into the eyes of the owner, she’d felt a disconcerting twinge of awareness that went way beyond gratitude toward a man who’d offered, albeit reluctantly, to bail her out of a jam. Every time she’d ever gotten a twinge like that, it had landed her in trouble. She had a whole slew of regrets to prove it, though few were romantic in nature. Her impulses tended toward other areas. Some had cost her money. Some had gotten her mixed up in projects that were a waste of her time. Only one had been related to a scoundrel who’d stolen her heart.

Still, she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off him. He was, after all, every girl’s fantasy of a Black Irish hunk. She noted again that his coal-black hair, worn just a bit too long, gave him a rakish, bad-boy appearance. His deep blue eyes danced with merriment, at least when he wasn’t scowling over having been outmaneuvered by Father Francis, a wily old man if 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 she and Father Francis had loaded the car, it was the first time he’d realized that she must have half her worldly possessions with her. He regarded her wryly. “You planning on a long visit?”

“Till after New Year’s,” she said.

“What about your job? You do have one, I imagine.”

“I’m between jobs,” she said.

“Fired?” he asked, pulling out the familiar note of sympathy he used when his customers hit a similar rough patch.

“Nope. I quit a very good job as an accountant for a corporation. I’m hoping to find something that’s more creatively satisfying.”

“Such as?”

She shrugged. “I wish I knew,” she said, then added with a note of total optimism, “but I’ll figure it out.”

“Ever considered psychology?” Ryan asked. “You’ve got the probing-question thing down pretty well.”

“I can’t be too good,” she retorted. “You didn’t answer most of them.”

“So what sort of career do you think you’d find creatively satisfying?” he continued. “Are there any options on the table?”

She grinned. “Trying to turn things around on me, Mr. Devaney?”

He laughed. “Every bartender has a bit of the psychologist in him. The difference is, we just ask questions and listen. We don’t dole out advice. Now let’s get this stuff inside before we both freeze to death.”

“We’ll go around back,” she said, leading the way. “A lot of this needs to wind up in the kitchen, anyway.”

He noted that there was a light on in one of the front windows, as well as another in the kitchen, beaming out a welcome for the latecomer. A little tug of envy spread through him even before a tall woman with a face only barely more lined than Maggie’s threw open the kitchen door and held out her arms.

“There you are,” she said, enveloping Maggie in a fierce hug. “I’ve been so worried.”

“Mom, I called less than forty minutes ago to let you know I was on my way,” Maggie reminded her, amusement threading through her voice. “I’m actually about ten minutes earlier than I predicted.”

“Which means you must have been speeding, young man,” the woman chastised, turning to Ryan with a twinkle in eyes as bright and as green as her daughter’s. “I’m Nell O’Brien. And you must be Mr. Devaney. It was kind of you to bring Maggie to us, even if you did exceed the speed limit getting her here.”

“No, ma’am, I can assure you there was no speeding involved,” he responded seriously. “I had it on cruise control the whole time.”

She laughed at that. “But set at what speed?”

Ryan met her gaze. “You’re not a cop, are you?” he teased, liking her at once. She reminded him of... He bit back a sigh. Best not to go there. He’d stopped thinking about his mother on the day she’d abandoned him. Or at least he’d tried to.

“No, but I’ve had a lot of experience at intimidating young men,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “I have four daughters and two sons, all of whom need to have someone in firm control.”

Ryan couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “If Maggie here is any indication, I imagine that’s true.”

“Hey,” Maggie protested. “I was the dutiful oldest daughter.”

“When it suited you,” her mother concurred. “Now get in here, both of you. I have coffee made, but if you’d prefer something else, I can fix it in no time.”

“Nothing for me,” Ryan said, already backing toward the door. The warmth of this big, cheerful kitchen, the teasing between mother and daughter—these were exactly the kind of things he tried to avoid. They brought up too many painful memories. “I need to be getting back to home.”

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “It’s much too late to be on the road, Mr. Devaney. You must be exhausted. I’ll make up the couch in the den. And before you try arguing with me, remember that I’m older and wiser and I will not be ignored.”

“If you’re not a cop, you must be a general,” Ryan said.