Free Ryan's Place by Sherryl Woods Page B

look at Maggie before striding across the room and trying to block her presence from his thoughts.
    He didn’t get to keep his promise. Instead, it turned into an impossibly long night. Fridays were always busy because of the popularity of the band, but this was busier than most. It didn’t help that his new waiter was struggling a bit to keep up with the unfamiliar orders, but Ryan had to give Juan credit for trying. Still, it meant that Maureen was carrying more than her fair share of the load and that Ryan was spending extra time soothing ruffled feathers and keeping an eye out for Jack Reilly so he could ask for his help in tracking down Lamar’s father.
    Suddenly Maggie was beside him. “It looks as if you could use an extra pair of hands behind the bar,” she said, already donning an apron.
    He stopped filling an order for ale from the tap and stared. “What are you doing?”
    “Pitching in,” she said, moving away to smile at a new arrival. She’d taken the man’s order and placed a pint of ale in front of him before Ryan could blink. She came back to him with a satisfied smile on her face. “Any objections?”
    Ryan weighed uneasiness against pragmatism. Pragmatism won. “Not a one,” he said. “I can use the help.”
    Just then he spotted her parents heading toward the door. They gave him a cheery wave as they exited. Gaze narrowed, he turned to Maggie. “Wasn’t that your ride home that just walked out of here?”
    She grinned at him. “Not if I’m lucky,” she said, then vanished to take another order.
    “Meaning what?” he said when she reappeared.
    “I figure you’ll owe me,” she said. “A drive home’s not too much for a volunteer waitress to expect, is it?”
    Ryan shook his head, aware that he’d just fallen into a tidy trap. “No, I suppose not, but I ought to make Rory take you.”
    Her smile faltered at the suggestion, and Ryan grinned despite himself. “Not what you had in mind, hmm?”
    She met his gaze evenly. “Definitely not.”
    “Then I suppose I’ll have to be the one, if only to see exactly where this plan of yours is headed.”
    “You won’t be disappointed,” she promised.
    She said it with a look that had his temperature soaring.
    And a lifetime’s worth of defense mechanisms slamming into place.
     
    Maggie figured she would owe her mother for a really long time for coming up with the idea of leaving Maggie behind to help out in the pub. Nell had overcome all of Garrett’s objections by reminding him that it would give the two of them several hours at home alone. After that, her father couldn’t leave the pub quickly enough. Years of having six children underfoot had taught him to snatch any opportunity for privacy.
    Sticking around uninvited had been a risky notion. Ryan could very well have found someone else to give her a lift home, just as he’d threatened. The fact that he’d backed downand decided to take her himself was definitely a good sign. Unfortunately, she wasn’t at all convinced they were ever going to get out of the place.
    It was past midnight, and the last customer had been gone for twenty minutes, but Ryan was still tallying the receipts, dragging out the process, if she wasn’t mistaken. Maggie was sitting in a booth, rubbing her aching feet. It had been a long time since she’d spent so many hours as a waitress and bartender. She’d forgotten how exhausting it could be.
    Oddly enough, though, a part of her felt exhilarated. She’d made over fifty dollars in tips, which was the only money she intended to take for her efforts. More important, she had thoroughly enjoyed talking to the customers. She’d missed that kind of interaction with people in her old job. Being the senior accountant for a corporation might have carried more prestige than waiting tables, but it hadn’t been nearly as much fun.
    She glanced across the room and saw that Ryan had disappeared into his office. Maybe she could hurry him along, if she went over