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Beautiful women made me lose my mind, exhibit 1,000.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“It was an accident,” she said, letting go of my hands. “No harm done.”

Her mouth kicked up in the briefest of smiles.

“I’m still sorry,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not burned?”

“The coffee wasn’t that hot,” she said. “No permanent damage.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good.”

She continued to look down at me as I held the dripping towels in my hands, unable to break my gaze from hers.

I opened my mouth to say something else, but then I couldn’t, because she had kissed me.

The towels fell from my grasp as the stranger shoved me against the sink and ravished my mouth.

What. Was. Happening?

In the moments it took me to register that I was being kissed by this very tall and very hot stranger, my instincts took over and I was kissing her back, trying to push myself up to be as tall as I could to get closer to her. That mouth was surprisingly soft and lush and demanding. She attacked me, but it was a coordinated attack. Targeted. As if she knew exactly what she wanted and was going to do whatever it took to get it.

One moment I was struggling to stand and the next she had picked me up and set me on the sink. I yelped a little at the coldness of the marble, but she just swallowed the sound and slid her tongue into my mouth.

This woman was relentless, and I wasn’t sure if I would even survive it. She was so much, too much, but I only craved more. Whatever she wanted to give me, I would take it.

Just as abruptly as the kiss started, it stopped. My eyes fluttered open and I found myself staring deep into those blue eyes.

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.

Slowly she stood back to her full height, gazing down at me. She brushed her thumb across my mouth once.

“Let’s just keep that between us,” she said, and I found myself nodding. Honestly, I would have agreed to anything she asked of me. Anything.

My entire body was still on fire from the kiss, and my knees wobbled as I tried to hop gracefully down from the sink and stumbled.

She picked up her coffee-soaked shirt and buttoned it with more finesse than I’d ever had in my entire life before opening the door and leaving the bathroom. I followed clumsily after her, trying to find something to say, but failing.

She made it to the door and paused, giving me one last look over her shoulder. The intensity in her eyes pinned me to the spot and took my breath away.

“Have a nice day,” I gasped as she pushed through the door and walked down the street.

“Have a nice day?” I repeated to myself over and over the rest of the afternoon. What the hell was that? I could have said anything else, should have said anything else.

It couldn’t have been possible to die from embarrassment, because I would have expired that afternoon from replaying the morning over and over in my mind. I knew I was obsessing, and I needed to break the mental cycle, but I couldn’t stop.

Somehow, I made it through the rest of the day without making a further fool of myself and it was a huge relief to lock the door and turn off the lights and say goodbye to Eileen. She’d been in the back making pottery the entire time and had no idea about the coffee spilling or the kiss, and I wasn’t going to tell her about it.

I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and headed home, feeling the tension melt off my shoulders. I always felt better when I pulled into my driveway. Safe. I was safe now.

My parents had only owned the house for six months, but that didn’t matter. It was home. The farmhouse was built in the 1800s and renovated about five years ago, but it retained so much of the charm of the original house with carved wooden banisters, stone fireplaces, and pretty little windows with stained glass. My favorite part, though, was the porch swing where I spent a lot of time sitting and drinking coffee and reading.

“Hey,” I called as I walked through the door and back to the kitchen to set down the groceries.

“How was your day?” a voice said behind me as I opened the fridge. I turned around and found my mom with her arms out for a hug.

“Fine,” I lied through my teeth as she hugged me. “Hey, Mama.” My other mother came out of her office and approached me for a hug as well.