Free The Ring on Her Finger by Elizabeth Bevarly

and flipped off the plastic lid, finding Mrs. Hill’s extremely delectable poached chicken on wild rice beneath. He was turning to collect the rest of the leftovers when he realized—too late—that Lucy had already retrieved them and was bringing them his way. Once more, their bodies connected, this time front to front, and in addition to a frisson of electricity rocking him, a plate of salad tumbled to the floor at his feet.
    Then he and Lucy were both stooping to clean up the spilled food, their arms, hands and fingers tangling, both of them apologizing, neither hearing the other or paying attention to anything except extricating themselves, succeeding only in making matters worse, until finally they bonked their heads together hard enough to send them both slamming back on their fannies. For one brief moment, they looked at each other blankly, both rubbing their foreheads, neither seeming to understand what just happened. Then, as one, they started to laugh. Hard. As they laughed, the tension and awkwardness that had settled over them evaporated.
    For all of ten seconds.
    Then Max made the mistake of looking at the spilled food. But it wasn’t the spilled food that captured his attention. Lucy had landed with her legs sprawled open, and before he could catch himself—without meaning to, honest—he caught a glimpse of black lacy panties beneath her hiked-up skirt. She must have noticed what he was noticing, because she hastily scrambled to her knees and yanked down her skirt. Without speaking, but blushing lavishly, she pushed herself to standing and raced to the other side of the kitchen to wrestle a roll of paper towels from the holder over the sink.
    Oh, damn. Max really wished he hadn’t seen that feathery lace covering that silky part of a woman every man fantasized explicitly about. Especially Max, since fantasizing was the only thing he was able to indulge in these days where women were concerned. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed an actual glimpse of an actual woman’s actual underthings. He’d almost been able to make himself forget what a view like that could do to a man like him. A man who had a voracious sexual appetite and a history of satisfying it whenever and wherever he wanted. Now that he had enjoyed an actual glimpse of an actual woman’s actual underthings, and now that he did remember what it could do to a man like him...
    Well. It would probably be best if he just went back to fantasizing. Unfortunately, he suspected that fantasizing was never going to be enough again.
    “I don’t think anything got broken,” Lucy said as she hastened back to where Max still sat on the floor, his arms hooked loosely over his denim-clad knees.
    “Just my heart,” he said under his breath.
    “What?” she asked as she stooped to clean up—keeping her legs clamped together and turned to the side, he couldn’t help noticing.
    “Nothing,” he said, more loudly this time. “It was nothing.” He knelt and began to scoop up what he could of the mess, trying to nudge Lucy aside. “I’ll do that. It’s my mess.”
    “That’s all right,” she said, nudging him back. “I’m the housekeeper, remember? This is my job.”
    “But you’ve got something else to—”
    “It’s okay,” she interrupted him. “I’ll take care of this. Go ahead and heat up what’s left of dinner. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
    Understatement of the century, Max thought. But he did as she asked, mostly because he didn’t want to get into a nudging match with her. Two nudges and a collision with a woman were about all his deprived libido could stand these days. As it was, he probably wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight, because he’d be too busy replaying those nudges and that collision over and over in his brain. He was getting hot already just thinking about it.
    Oh, yeah. He had a full night ahead.
    He watched Lucy surreptitiously as he prepared a plate and popped it into the microwave. Always, he made sure he