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He chuckled. “Actually, I came for my jacket. Remember?”
“Oh, right,” she murmured. Of course, he wouldn’t have come to see her. He was simply retrieving his gear. She slowly turned, then walked to the end of the counter. “I’ll go get it. It’s in the office.”
“No hurry,” he said. “You can give it back to me later. After I take you to dinner.”
Meggie’s heart stopped about the same time her feet did, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Had she heard him right? Or was her mind playing tricks on her the same way it had all those years ago, when she’d convinced herself that Dylan Quinn harbored secret passions for her. “What?”
“Dinner,” he said. “You look like you could use a break and it would give us a chance to catch up on old times.”
Meggie swallowed hard. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be real. “I—I really can’t,” she murmured, turning away to busy herself wiping the back counter. “Not tonight.”
“Then tomorrow night? I get off at eight. We could get a bite to eat, then maybe catch a movie.”
She shook her head. She’d made a fool of herself once before, falling for him then having her heart stomped on. It wasn’t going to happen again. She wouldn’t allow it. “No,” she said firmly. “I have too much work to do.” Meggie grabbed his cup from the counter, then hurried over to fill it from the carafe.
When she’d finished, she spun around to hand it to him. But the hot coffee sloshed over the edge of the cup, scalding the top of her hand. She cried out in pain and dropped the cup, the hot liquid spattering over her shoes. In an instant, he was beside her, taking her hand gently in his and leading her to the small sink tucked beneath the counter.
Dylan flipped on the cold water, then held her hand beneath it. “Do you have ice?” he asked.
Meggie winced, then nodded at the icemaker nearby. He grabbed a towel then wrapped it around a handful of ice before returning to her side. “How does it feel,” he asked.
“It hurts,” Meggie replied. But in truth, she barely noticed the pain. It had vanished the moment he’d touched her, the flood of adrenaline simply washing it away. He touched her again, this time pulling her hand from beneath the water. He pressed her palm against his chest, then laid the ice over it. Beneath her fingers, she could feel his heart beating, strong and even.
She was thankful their roles weren’t reversed for if he felt her heart racing, he’d know exactly how his touch had affected her. “That feels good.”
He smiled down at her. “You should be more careful,” he murmured, his gaze drifting lazily over her features. He stopped at her lips and she held her breath. For a moment, she was sure that if she closed her eyes and tipped her head up, he’d kiss her.
But then he chuckled softly, and pulled the ice from her hand. “Let see here,” he said, carefully examining the skin just below her wrist. “It’s a little red but no blistering. I think you’ll be all right.” He drew her hand up to his lips and pressed a cool kiss on her flaming skin.
Stunned, Meggie yanked her hand away as if she’d been burned all over again. He was teasing her, taking advantage of her nervousness when he was near. Dylan Quinn knew exactly how he made her feel and he was using it against her. “Please, don’t do that,” she murmured. She snatched the ice from his hands and drew a ragged breath. “I’ll just go get your jacket and then you can be on your way.”
Dylan stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged indifferently. “I’ll get it another time,” he said, stepping around the end of the counter. He looked back once. “I’ll see you around, Meggie Flanagan.” With that, he strode toward the door.
She fought the urge to run after him, to order him to stay away from her coffee shop and out of her life. But instead, all she could manage to do was admire the wide shoulders hidden beneath his leather jacket and the narrow hips accented by his jeans. He stepped through the door and a soft sigh slipped from her lips.
“I am such a coward,” she murmured. She’d wanted to accept his invitation to dinner and she’d wanted his kiss to drift from her wrist, up her arm, to her mouth. She wasn’t that same clumsy girl that she’d been thirteen years ago. She was a woman, now, almost thirty years old, and only occasionally clumsy. And most men even considered her pretty. She was smart and well-read and always felt that given the right man, she could be a sparkling conversationalist.
Yet the prospect of getting to know Dylan Quinn frightened her. Whenever he was near she reverted to that insecure and anxious teenager. Meggie groaned then pressed her forehead against the cool copper counter. If she’d only been able to think straight, maybe she could have done something once and for all, to even the score between them.
She imagined a wonderfully romantic dinner with witty repartee. He’d fall madly in love with her in just one night and then she’d oh-so casually tell him that she wasn’t really interested in a relationship. Or maybe she’d allow him to kiss her and he would experience an instant passion for her before she walked away.
Another groan slipped from her lips. This whole incident only proved one point. She was not the kind of woman who could handle a man like Dylan Quinn. So she had only one choice—she needed to stay as far away from him as possible.
2
DYLAN PARKED JUST down the block from Quinn’s Pub. He let the Mustang idle, not sure he wanted to go inside. Saturday night was always a rollicking good time at Seamus Quinn’s South Boston watering hole, with an Irish band and free corned-beef sandwiches. And there were sure to be plenty of beautiful women waiting inside, ready and willing to be charmed by one of the Quinn brothers.
How long had he gotten by on just charm alone? Since he was a kid, he’d used his winning personality and good looks to make a place for himself in the world, with his teachers, with his friends, with the opposite sex. Everyone loved Dylan Quinn. But no one ever got to know the real Dylan, the kid whose home life was in such chaos. They could never see how scared he was behind the smiles and the clever quips.
He wasn’t scared anymore, yet he hadn’t given up trying to charm every woman he met. But since Conor had fallen in love, Dylan realized that he wanted something more from life than just an endless string of beautiful women. He wanted something real and honest. Why couldn’t he find a woman to love? And why couldn’t a woman care enough about him to return that love?
“I probably should see a shrink,” he muttered as he reached over to flip off the ignition. A weaker man would make an appointment immediately, but he was a Quinn. Quinns just sucked it up and got on with their lives. If they had a problem, they didn’t discuss it, they just fixed it. He shoved the car door open and stepped out into the chilly November night. Now, if he could only fix this strange attraction he had to Meggie Flanagan, he’d have all the answers he needed.
Dylan glanced both ways, then jogged across the street, following the sounds of a tin whistle and a fiddle and an Irish drum. After their first encounter, he’d written off any chance of a date with Meggie. Besides the fact that she held some grudge against him, she was still Tommy Flanagan’s little sister. But after their second encounter, all the rules had been cast aside. The moment he’d touched her, something inside of him had changed. Though he’d tried, he couldn’t think of her as anything but a sexy, desirable woman—who didn’t want anything to do with him.
Maybe he was going through a phase. He’d had his fill of women who wanted him. Now, to avoid boredom, he’d become fascinated with the only woman in Boston who had ever rejected him, a woman completely immune to his charms. He shook his head. “You don’t need a shrink, boyo, you just need a few pints of Guinness. That’ll straighten you out.”
He yanked the pub door open and immediately stepped into an atmosphere custom-designed to make him forget his problems with women. He took his time weaving through the crush of patrons and made a slow perusal of the room, searching for a pretty diversion, determined to forget Meggie Flanagan. Dylan started toward an empty stool at the middle of the bar, right next to a cute little brunette who was nursing a beer.
Sliding onto the stool, he waved at Sean and Brian who were taking their turns behind the bar. Seamus was shouting his way through a round of darts and Brendan stood nearby, chatting with one of their father’s old friends. He glanced over his shoulder to find Liam at a booth with his current girlfriend. To round out the impromptu family reunion, Dylan was surprised to see Conor and Olivia sitting at the far end of the bar, deep in conversation, their heads close.
His big brother looked completely besotted and every now and then, Conor would pull Olivia near and kiss her without regard to the crowd around him. Had someone told him that Conor would be the first Quinn to fall prey to the love of a woman, Dylan would have laughed. Brendan or Liam were the more logical choices, the more tender-hearted of the bunch. But then, when it came to love, a guy never knew when it might lay him low.
Dylan looked across the room and watched his father engaged in a rousing argument over the exact position of a dart. They’d all heard the tales, the yarns Seamus Quinn spun about the Mighty Quinns and the dangers of love. Dylan had always wondered if he’d become the man he was in an effort to please his father—a guy who had never seemed to approve of anything Dylan did.
He hadn’t been Conor, the son who kept the family together. And he hadn’t been Brendan, the son who loved to work the lines on his father’s swordfishing boat, The Mighty Quinn. And he certainly hadn’t been Brian or Sean or Liam, the sons who adored their father without questioning his flaws. He’d been Dylan, the guy who could charm any woman, then walk away without a second thought.
But deep inside lived a person he’d rarely showed anyone—Dylan, the rebel, the kid who really didn’t have a role in the family, the kid who blamed his father for the empty bellies and the endless insecurity. When his mother had been around, he’d felt safe. And after she’d left, he’d experienced the loss as deeply as if she’d ripped his heart from his chest and taken it with her. The man he’d become was all tied up in the past. He just hadn’t been ready to untangle it yet.
Sean sauntered over with a pint of Guinness and Dylan cocked his head to the left. “Baby brother, why don’t you buy this lovely lady a drink while you’re at it.” Though a free drink was always a good icebreaker, he really wasn’t interested in conversation. The woman just looked a little lonely—a little vulnerable. The least he could do was to offer her a fresh beer while she waited for whatever or whomever she was waiting for.
The woman turned suddenly, as if surprised that he’d noticed her at all. For a moment, he was taken aback. A current of recognition shot through him and he tried to place her, to recall her name. But Dylan was certain that he’d never met her. He would have remembered because though she was pretty, she was also young, with a face that could only be described as…innocent. And those eyes, such an unusual shade. He would have remembered her eyes.
“What are you drinking?” Dylan asked sending her a warm smile.
She forced a smile in return, then stumbled off her stool. “I—I have to go,” she murmured. “Thanks anyway.” She grabbed her purse and her jacket, then hurried to the door, slipping out quietly.
Dylan turned back to Sean. “That makes me two for two today. I’m actually beginning to enjoy rejection.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Sean said. “I’ve been trying to talk to her all night long but she’d have nothing of it. She just wanted to sit there, alone, sipping her beer and staring at me and Brian. You know, she looked familiar at first, but I’m pretty sure I don’t know her.”
“You, too? I thought I recognized her.” Dylan shrugged, then grabbed his Guinness. He pushed off his stool. “If I’m going to spend the night crying in my beer, then I might as well do it with people who’ll feel sorry for me.” He wandered over to an empty spot next to Olivia, then sat down.
“Hey, Dylan,” she said, her smile bright and affectionate. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “What have you been up to?”
In just a few short weeks, Olivia had become part of the family. Even though she and Conor weren’t married yet, she was like a sister to him. Dylan liked having her around. After all, it was nice to get a woman’s point of view every now and then. Growing up in a household of boys had its disadvantages.
“You look like you’ve had a rough day,” Olivia said, draping her arm around his shoulders. “You want to talk?”
The offer was made facetiously for Olivia knew full well that the Quinns didn’t talk about their problems. But maybe she’d be able to explain why he was attracted to the maddening and mercurial Meggie Flanagan, a woman who stumbled all over herself to stay away from him, a woman who hurled insults at him like fastballs in Fenway Park.
Had he suddenly developed a streak of masochism that only Meggie Flanagan could feed? Or was the notion of a woman playing hard to get so foreign to him that he found it irresistible? All he knew was that he couldn’t stop thinking about her, recalling how soft her skin felt and how perfect her mouth was and how tempting her body looked.
“Well?” Olivia asked, interrupting his thoughts.
“Today?” Dylan asked. “Just the usual. Rescued a few kittens from trees, put out a few raging infernos, saved a few dozen lives. No big deal.”
“And whose life have you saved lately?” Brendan slipped into the spot on the other side of Dylan and sent Olivia a warm smile.
“Mary Margaret Flanagan,” Dylan said. Just the sound of her name on his lips brought back a flood of images. The sight of her face, covered in soot and marked with the tracks of her tears, then the fresh and natural beauty he discovered just an hour ago. Why couldn’t he put her out of his head? There was just something so fascinating about her—the contrast between the girl she’d been and the woman she’d become.
Conor frowned. “Mary Margaret who?”
Sean leaned over the bar and chuckled. “Meggie Flanagan? Meggie Flanagan with the horn-rimmed glasses and the mouth full of metal?” He glanced over his shoulder toward the far end of the bar. “Hey, Brian, come here. Guess who Dylan saved.”
“I didn’t save her,” Dylan insisted. “It was just a little fire. She’s opening a coffee shop over on Boylston, not too far from the station. It looks like it’ll be a real nice place. Anyway, yesterday afternoon her coffee machine shorted out and started a small fire. I had to carry her out when she refused to leave.”
“You carried her out of her shop?” Conor asked.
Dylan took another long sip of his Guinness, then licked the foam from his upper lip and nodded. “Yeah, like a sack of potatoes. Although she wasn’t nearly as lumpy.”
“Oh-oh,” Olivia warned. “That’s how it starts.”
Dylan’s eyebrow rose. “What?”
Conor chuckled softly. “That’s how Olivia and I met. I picked her up, tossed her over my shoulder and hauled her back inside the safehouse. Then she kicked me in the shin and called me a Neanderthal. After that, it was true love. That must be how it starts for us Quinns. We carry a woman away and that’s the beginning of the end.” He shrugged. “I guess I should have warned you.”
“I’m not going to fall in love with Meggie Flanagan,” Dylan insisted. “Carrying her out was part of the job, I had no choice. Besides, she hates me. She was downright hostile. She called me a Hun.”
“Why?” Brendan asked. “You barely know her.”
“But she knows you,” Brian said. “At least by reputation. You cut a wide swath through the girls at South Boston High School. Was she one of the girls you left weeping in your wake?”
Why was that the quality that seemed to define Dylan Quinn? He wasn’t remembered as a great athlete, which he was. He wasn’t remembered as a loyal friend or a nice guy. It always came back to the women. “She was the kid sister of my best friend,” Dylan muttered. “Even I have scruples. In fact, I was the one who got her a date to that sophomore dance. Didn’t Sean take her?”
Brian shook his head. “No, that was me. And that was my very first date and probably the most traumatic experience with the opposite sex I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, do tell,” Olivia said, bracing her arms on the bar and leaning forward.
There was nothing a Quinn brother could refuse Olivia. Each one of them would jump into Boston Harbor in the dead of winter if that’s what she asked. Recounting an embarrassing memory, complete with mythical Quinn embellishments, was nothing as long as it pleased her. “I was a foot shorter than Meggie and I had a pimple the size of Mount Vesuvius on my nose that night. I was so nervous I almost puked on her shoes. After that night, I didn’t ask a girl out for two years.”
“Do you think she’s still mad about the pimple?” Dylan asked. “Or did you do something stupid? Did you try to feel her—” He stopped, then gave Olivia an apologetic smile. “Did you try to get to first base with her?”
“Second base,” Sean said. He pointed to his chest. “That’s second base.”
“I didn’t touch her,” Brian insisted.
“Why don’t you just ask her why she doesn’t like you?” Olivia suggested.
All the brothers looked at each other, then shook their heads. “That would involve a discussion of feelings,” Brendan said. “It’s part of Quinn family genetics that we avoid discussions like that. Haven’t you read the manual?” He turned to Conor. “You have to give her the manual.”
“Hell, it doesn’t make a difference,” Dylan said. “I’m not going to see her again, anyway.”
But even as he said it, Dylan knew it was a lie. He had to see her again, had to figure out this strange and undeniable attraction he had to her. Maybe if he figured that out, he’d be able to unravel the rest of his feelings.
“I guess you’re just going to have to wonder, then,” Olivia said, giving his arm a squeeze. “But she must have a good reason. After all, how could any woman resist the charms of a Mighty Quinn?”
“YOU LOOK LIKE A girl who just found out her dress was caught in the back of her panty hose during the Grand March,” Lana commented as she looked over Meggie’s shoulder.
Meggie stared down at the photo from the Sophomore Frolic. She was dressed in a pouffy formal that looked like it was already out of style when she’d chosen it. But it was pink and shiny and at the time, it was the most beautiful gown she’d ever seen. She and her date stood beneath a flower-draped arbor. “At that moment, I would have rather walked the length of the gym with my dress up over my head,” she murmured to Lana. “It was tragic. Humiliating. I thought I’d never be able to love another boy in my entire life.”
“Your evening couldn’t have been that bad. He’s cute. A little short, but cute.” She squinted at the photo, then reached over and scratched her nail on the surface. “What’s that on his nose?”
“He wasn’t Dylan,” Meggie continued. “When they played our song that night, I thought I’d cry. ‘Endless Love.”’
“See there,” Lana said. “You two had a song. It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It was our song—Dylan’s and mine.”
A frown wrinkled Lana’s brow. “How could you and Dylan Quinn have a song? He barely knew you existed.”
Meggie shoved the photo back into her purse and tossed her purse behind the counter. Then she grabbed a handful of pour spouts and began to shove them into the bottles of flavoring syrup. “Believe me, we had a whole relationship—in my poor deluded sophomore mind.”
Lana slid onto a stool on the opposite side of the counter, then sipped at the latte she’d just prepared. “Sounds like you had it bad. No wonder you want revenge.”
“Not revenge,” Meggie said. “Just a little payback. Maybe then I wouldn’t always wince when I think about high school. That whole thing followed me around until I graduated. I was defined by that night. I was the girl who carried the huge torch for Dylan Quinn, then got it dropped on her head. The geek and the god.” She paused. “I’ve come a long way since then, but all it takes is one look at Dylan Quinn and I’m right back there, standing in the gymnasium with everyone staring at me.”
It sounded like a good explanation for her attraction to Dylan—just a few residual feelings left over from that night so long ago. She was attracted to him because she hated him. After all, there was a thin line between love and hate, isn’t that what people said? Or maybe seeing him again just threw her off.
She led such a well-ordered existence, focusing all her energies on the shop. Everything else, including her personal life, had its place and he was an anomaly. Even she knew a crazy attraction to Dylan Quinn didn’t have any place in her life!
Lana shrugged. “Too bad you can’t get him to fall in love with you. Then you could dump him and everything would be cool.”
“You could do that,” Meggie said. “You can wrap a man around your little finger and make him love every minute of it. And considering your strategical abilities, you’d go in with a battle plan that was sure to succeed.” She grabbed a bottle of hazelnut syrup and turned the notion over and over in her brain as she twisted off the cap. If only she were more like Lana. More brazen with men, more uninhibited, more—
“We could do it,” Lana murmured. “Why not? I mean, we put together a business plan for this place then convinced the bankers to finance it. If we use the same approach, we could make Dylan Quinn fall for you. We’ll just use the same basic business and marketing principles we learned in b-school.”
“How will that work?”
“We’re selling a product—you. And we have to make the consumer—Dylan Quinn—want that product. Once he does, we’ll just discontinue production and close the factory doors.” Lana slipped off her stool, hurried around to the other side of the counter and rummaged around in a small drawer. She pulled out a battered old notebook where they kept a list of supplies they needed to order. She grabbed a pencil and drew a square at the top of an empty page. “This is our end goal. R-E-V-E-N-G-E.”
“Not revenge,” Meggie said, her interest piqued. She stepped to Lana’s side. “That sounds so nasty. I’d rather call it…the careful restoration of the balance in my love life.”
“We’ll just call it revenge for short,” Lana countered. “Now our intermediate goal is to get him to fall in love with you.” She drew another box, then an arrow between the two. “Once that’s accomplished, you can dump him and all will be right with the world.”
“And just how do I make that happen?” Meggie asked. “You know what a disaster I am when it comes to men. As soon as I say something stupid or do something weird I get all flustered and they think I’m mentally unstable.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Lana said. “You’ve just had bad luck with men.”
“Do you have any little boxes and arrows to change my personality?”
“We won’t need to change your personality,” Lana said with a sly grin. “With my vast and detailed knowledge of the male ego, I could make Dylan fall in love with a parking meter if I wanted. Dylan Quinn is an unrepentant ladies’ man. As such, he’ll be quite easy to manipulate. All you have to do is play hard to get.”
Meggie laughed. “I can barely get a date when I’m working at it. Why would he ask me out if I act uninterested?”
“Because you’ll be a challenge and men like Dylan want what they can’t have.” She quickly wrote numbers down the side of the page. “Now, we’ll have to develop guidelines. And you’ll have to trust that I know what I’m talking about.”
“I do,” Meggie said. When it came to men, Lana definitely knew what she was doing. What Meggie didn’t trust was her own feelings. Could she actually maintain her resolve and her objectivity around Dylan Quinn? She cursed silently. If she didn’t do something, she was doomed to spend the next thirteen years as she had the last, reliving her mortification at the hands of Dylan Quinn, caught in the humiliation of a certified wallflower. “And I’ll do whatever you say.”
