At Your Service (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins

were about her.
    “I pretty much picked her up off the street,” he was saying, “cleaned her up, and tonight I plan on taking her home with me.”
    “What?” she shrieked and stood up so fast that the top of her head cracked against his chin.
    “Ouch.” He rubbed his chin, and was pleased to see how quickly she rose to take his bait. “I was just saying, darlin’, that—”
    “Not another word,” she threatened, turning and advancing on him with soapy hands ready to strangle.
    “—you’d be coming home with me tonight. You know you need a place to stay.”
    “I’m not going home with you, you moron.” She was shouting by now and it felt good. “I’m going home with your sister.”
    When the wave of laughter from the happily eavesdropping customers broke over her, she realized that they’d gathered quite an audience. Good-natured catcalls and comments flew her way from the men seated at the bar, their girlfriends laughing along with them.
    “Man, Sarah’s boyfriend isn’t going to be too happy to hear that!”
    “Or maybe he’ll be twice as happy!”
    “Get your minds out of the gutter,” she scolded the collection of faces at the bar.
    “Don’t be mad, Gracie.” Catching her off guard, Tyler wrapped his arms around her and reeled her in close to him. “You’re too hard to resist.” With a wolfish smile, lots of teeth and a look of hunger in his eyes, he bent his head over her and she knew he was going to kiss her in front of the entire bar.
    And because she wanted him to so badly, could feel herself rising up onto her toes to lean into his kiss, could feel her legs shifting to cradle one of his thighs between hers, she panicked.
    Next time, hit him with this.
    Susannah’s words from opening night raced through her head—along with the fleeting thought that later on she’d regret this—before she reached out blindly with one hand.
    She only had a moment to realize that she’d grabbed the dirty spoon Tyler had been using to stuff olives with blue cheese and then she was rapping it sharply against his skull.
    “Grace!” Addy looked shocked at the far end of the bar.
    Tyler rubbed his head gingerly and grimaced as he smushed the blue cheese in his hair even more.
    The crowd of onlookers had doubled in number. She could see Richard and his wife clapping hands in approval across the room.
    She threw her hands in the air.
    “His mother told me to do it,” she announced, and decided to march out from behind the bar with whatever dignity remained intact. And she did, except for the part where she had to duck down to squeeze beneath the bar counter. She headed straight to the kitchen.
    Sarah and her mother were singing along to “Under the Boardwalk” when she burst through the doors. Sarah was sending the last of the big soup pots through the dishwasher and Susannah was wiping down a counter. They both looked up when they heard the saloon-style doors slam against the wall.
    “I had to do it.”
    “Do what?” Sarah called.
    Susannah was already smiling.
    “I had to hit him upside the head. With a spoon.”
    Tyler’s mother just grinned peacefully as Sarah pelted the both of them with questions. “I knew you would.”
     
     
    Her feet might never recover.
    Grace decided that it had definitely been years since she’d worked a full schedule as a server. She propped her feet up on a chair across the aisle and dug into the plate of pasta balanced on her lap. Susannah had insisted on making her a plate when she realized that Grace hadn’t had time to eat before her shift, or had a spare five minutes during it, either. They’d finally closed the kitchen at ten o’clock, although the bar would stay open until 2:00 a.m. But without food that needed to be served, Tyler could handle the customers at the bar and she could sit for the first time in eight hours.
    At a table in the back of the room, she spread out with her dinner and her paperwork. She totaled up her checks and credit card