Home to Stay by Terri Osburn

Parsons! Danger, Will Parsons! —but her body ignored the message.
    “Where’s the first aid kit?” he asked, his mouth close enough for her to feel his breath on her lips. “This is going to need a Band-Aid.”
    Will tried to answer. Tried to break the spell he was weaving in her brain. But her body didn’t care about Band-Aids and paper cuts. About secrets or self-preservation. Her body wanted one thing, and that was the man standing beside her.
    “Will,” Randy said, his eyes dropping to her mouth.
    “Yeah?”
    “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, we’re going to give the diners quite a show.”
    Someone whistled from a booth near the windows, jerking Will back to her senses. With a shake of her head, she pulled away from Randy’s warm touch, putting enough space between them for her to think more clearly. Though his scent seemed to have permeated her brain, making it impossible to clear the fog completely.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”
    Randy cleared his throat. Maybe he’d been as affected as she was. “No need to apologize. I hope it happens again in a more private setting.”
    Again? Private setting? That sounded like an excellent idea.
    No it does not , screamed the one sane brain cell she had left. This was not supposed to happen. Will wasn’t sure when she’d dropped her guard, but now that it was down, she didn’t know how to put it back up. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to put it back up.
    Which was absolutely ridiculous. She’d definitely been alone too long, considering where her mind was going. But who could blame her? Will was a woman after all, with all the needs that any other woman experienced. Needs Randy looked ready to fulfill.
    Damn him.
    “You need to get back around the bar,” she pleaded. Randy didn’t move. “Please,” she added, keeping her eyes on the tiny paper cut. The bleeding had stopped, but a slight burning pain still pulsed in her finger.
    Randy stepped back, but only turned his back to the dining room. “I’m going to need a minute.”
    Will glanced up to his face, then down, spotting the problem right away. That was quite a problem. Wow. He had definitely been affected.
    “Right. Take all the time you need. I’m going to get a Band-Aid from the first aid kit in the kitchen.”
    Will leaned against the wall inside the kitchen, taking several deep breaths as she waited for her pulse to return to normal. With shaking hands, she managed to apply the Band-Aid, but gave up on a normal heartbeat and aimed for anything better than beating out of her chest. She hadn’t been aroused like that in longer than she could remember. The sensation felt foreign and familiar all at once.
    This was bad. So, so bad. Even now, she wanted to walk into that bar and jump his bones. All rationale seemed to have left her body. How in the world was she going to spend an entire day with him? What if she snapped and jumped him right there in the truck? Or maybe in the tuxedo store fitting room?
    That sounded kind of fun.
    So much for slowing her heartbeat. Will lifted the lid on the ice machine, extracting one large cube and running it along her warm neck. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, the cold, dripping water bringing her temperature back down.
    When she opened her eyes, Vinnie, the head cook, and Chip, his sous-chef, were watching her with mouths agape. Great. Now she was putting on a show for the staff. This was not her night.
    “Hey, guys,” she said, tossing what was left of the ice cube in the sink. “Good shift tonight. Food was great.” With that lame remark, she headed back to the bar, hoping Randy had returned to half-mast, so to speak, and joined their other friends back by the pool tables.

    Randy had managed to return to his bar stool, but only seconds before Will returned. When she stepped out of the kitchen, he watched a drop of water travel down the length of her slender throat and disappear behind the