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rollicking affair? It was pretty clear she didn't want that. Otherwise she would have welcomed him with open arms and one of her mind-blowing kisses back there at her front door. A rollicking affair was precisely what she'd run away from.
    That brought him to marriage. Not that Maggie had ever made any noises around him about wanting marriage, but she was the kind of woman who would eventually want happily-ever-after. He'd gotten that early on. She came from a large and loving family. He'd only met Ashley and spoken to their mother on the phone, but Maggie talked about all of them, probably even more than she realized. She seemed to take particular delight in her parents' long and loving marriage and her sister Melanie's recent whirlwind courtship and wedding. It would be perfectly natural for her to want the same thing for herself one day. Maybe that was why she'd
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    kicked him out. Maybe she'd recognized that he was a bad bet for that kind of permanent relationship.
    He tried to imagine himself in the role of devoted husband, tried to envision being tied down to one woman, to having kids underfoot. He'd been footloose for a long time. His folks had been divorced when he was only ten, and after that, his dad was gone and his mom had lost interest in parenting, turning to booze to drown her sorrows. Rick had pretty much raised himself. He knew a whole lot about growing up independent, but he didn't know beans about what it took to keep a family happy, except maybe sticking around. He wasn't sure that was a gene he possessed.
    The Flannery men apparently had a long history of being rogues and scoundrels, going all the way back to Ireland. Rick's mother had drunkenly recited all the tales to him on numerous occasions to explain why his father was no longer around. She'd said it was history repeating itself.
    Given all that, his decision to stay put and pursue Maggie made no sense. But after listening all night to his conscience asking the hard questions?and even when he couldn't come up with any credible answers?Rick found himself picking up a couple of lattes first thing in the morning. Filled with a familiar anticipation, he headed for that quaint little cottage on the bay for another encounter with the stubborn, sexy woman who seemed dead set on tying him into knots.
    He told himself he didn't need to have a long-range plan. Living in the moment had served him well enough for years. One step at a time, that was the key.
    Today his goal was merely to get inside the door.
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    Maybe by tomorrow he'd start worrying about pinning down why Maggie was really running so scared around him and what she really expected from him. Then, if he didn't like those answers, he could head for the hills.
    She was going to go to bed with him. Maggie knew it the instant Rick showed up looking all rumpled and sexy with two lattes in hand. She'd spent the whole night telling herself she was rigr t to send him away, that they couldn't possibly have any sort of future because she wasn't cut out to compete with women who made her feel like a whale, even if she was a perfectly respectable size ten instead of a two. She was not that masochistic. She reminded herself that she wanted a whole lot more from a relationship than explosive passion.
    But even as she'd been congratulating herself on her good sense, a part of her had been yearning for the man's touch. Anomer part?her libido, no doubt?had been bargaining widi her brain, telling it that if Rick actually came back again, all bets were off. Explosive passion didn't come along all that often. A woman would have to be an idiot to turn her back on it, at least while she was off on vacation. Back in Boston, she'd have to face facts, not now.
    After all, she justified, Rick would only be here a few days at most. How much more complicated could things get in a few days?
    She tried to keep all of that off her face when she accepted the cup of coffee with a perfectly uncomplicated,