Читать книгу Overexposed - Leslie Kelly - Страница 7

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FOR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS after he’d returned from the Middle East, Nick Santori genuinely didn’t mind the way his family fussed over him. There were big welcome home barbecues in the tiny backyard of the row house where he’d been raised. There were even bigger dinners at the family-owned pizzeria that had been his second home growing up.

He’d been dragged to family weddings by his mother and into the kitchen of the restaurant by his father. He’d had wet, sticky babies plopped in his lap by his sisters-in-law, and had been plied with beer by his brothers, who wanted details on everything he’d seen and done overseas. And he’d had rounds of drinks raised in his honor by near-strangers who, having suitably praised him as a patriot, wanted to go further and argue the politics of the whole mess.

That was where he drew the line. He didn’t want to talk about it. After twelve years in the Corps, several of them on active duty in Iraq, he’d had enough. He didn’t want to relive battles or wounds or glory days with even his brothers and he sure as hell wouldn’t justify his choice to join the military to people he’d never even met.

At age eighteen, fresh out of high school with no interest in college and even less in the family business, entering the Marines had seemed like a kick-ass way to spend a few years.

What a dumb punk he’d been. Stupid. Unprepared. Green.

He’d quickly learned…and he’d grown up. And while he didn’t regret the years he’d spent serving his country, he sometimes wished he could go back in time to smack that eighteen year old around and wake him up to the realities he’d be facing.

Realities like this one: coming home to a world he didn’t recognize. To a family that had long since moved on without him.

“So you hanging in?” asked his twin, Mark, who sat across from him in a booth nursing a beer. His brothers had all gotten into the habit of stopping by the family-owned restaurant after work a few times a week.

“I’m doing okay.”

“Feeling that marinara running through your veins again?”

Nick chuckled. “Do you think Pop has ever even realized there’s any other kind of food?”

Mark shook his head. Reaching into a basket, he helped himself to a breadstick. “Do you think Mama has ever even tried to cook him any?”

“Good point.” Their parents were well matched in their certainty that any food other than Italian was unfit to eat.

“Is she still griping because you wouldn’t move back home?”

Nodding, Nick grabbed a breadstick of his own. For all his grumbling, he wouldn’t trade his Pop’s cooking for anything… especially not the never-ending MRE’s he’d had to endure in the military. “She seems to think I’d be happy living in our old room with the Demi Moore Indecent Proposal poster on the wall. It’s like walking into a frigging time warp.”

“You always did prefer G.I. Jane.”

Nick just sighed. Mark seldom took anything seriously. In that respect, he hadn’t changed. But everything else sure had.

During the years he’d been gone, the infrequent visits home hadn’t allowed Nick to mentally keep up with his loved ones. In his mind, when he’d lain on a cot wondering if there would ever come a day when sand wouldn’t infiltrate every surface of his clothes again, the Santoris were the same big, loud bunch he’d grown up with: two hard-working parents and a brood of kids.

They weren’t kids anymore, though. And Mama and Pop had slowed down greatly over the years. His father had turned over the day-to-day management of Santori’s to Nick’s oldest brother, Tony, and stayed in the kitchen drinking chianti and cooking.

One of his brothers was a prosecutor. Another a successful contractor. Their only sister was a newlywed. And, most shocking of all to Nick, Mark, his twin, was about to become a father.

Married, domesticated and reproducing…that described the happy lives of the five other Santori kids. And every single one of them seemed to think he should do exactly the same thing.

Nick agreed with them. At least, he had agreed with them when living day-to-day in a place where nothing was guaranteed, not even his own life. It had seemed perfect. A dream he could strive for at the end of his service. Now it was within reach.

He just wasn’t sure he still wanted it.

He didn’t doubt his siblings were happy. Their conversations were full of banter and houses and SUVs and baby talk that they all seemed to love but Nick just didn’t get. And wasn’t sure he ever would…despite how much he knew he should.

I will.

At least, he hoped he would.

The fact that he was bored out of his mind helping out at Santori’s and hadn’t yet met a single appropriate woman who made his heart beat faster—much less one he wanted to pick out baby names with—was merely a product of his own re-adjustment to civilian life. He’d come around. Soon. No doubt about it.

As long as he avoided going after the one woman he’d seen recently who not only made his heart beat fast but had also given him a near-sexual experience from across a crowded room. Because she was in no way appropriate. She was a stripper. One he’d be working with very soon now that he’d agreed to take a job doing security at a club called Leather and Lace.

Forcibly thrusting the vision of the sultry dancer out of his brain, he focused on the type of normal woman he’d someday meet who might inspire a similar reaction.

He’d have help locating her. Everyone, it seemed, wanted him to find the “perfect” woman and they all just happened to know her. The next one of his sisters-in-law who asked him to come over for dinner and coincidentally asked her single best friend to come, too, would be staring at Nick’s empty chair.

“Do you know how glad I am that your wife’s knocked up?”

“Yeah, me too,” Mark replied, wearing the same sappy look he’d had on his face since he’d started telling everyone Noelle was expecting. “But do I want to know why you’re so happy?”

“Because it means she doesn’t have time to try to set me up with her latest single friend/hair stylist/next-door-neighbor or just the next breathing woman who walks by.”

Mark had the audacity to grin.

“It’s not funny.”

“Yeah, it is. I’ve seen the ones they’ve thrown at you.”

“You seen me throw them back, too, then.”

Nodding, Mark sipped his beer.

“Doesn’t matter if she’s a blonde, brunette, redhead or bald. Any single woman with a pulse gets shoved at me.”

“And Catholic,” Mark pointed out.

“Mama’s picks, yeah. But none of them are my type.”

Deadpan, his brother asked, “Women?”

“F-you,” he replied. “I mean, I do have a few preferences.”

“Big—”

“Beyond that,” Nick snapped.

Mark relented. “Okay, I’m kidding. What do you want?”

That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Nick had no idea what he wanted. It was supposed to be someone who’d make him want this. This sedate, small-town-in-a-big-city lifestyle.

“I don’t know if I’m cut out for what all of you have.”

When Mark’s brow rose, Nick added, “I wasn’t criticizing. You all seem happy. The couples in this family don’t seem as…”

“Boring?”

“I guess.”

“Thanks,” his brother replied dryly.

“No offense. But you’re all the exception, not the rule.”

Mark murmured, “That’s a lot of exceptions.”

It was. Which meant Nick was out of luck. How many great, happy marriages could one family contain?

But damned if he wasn’t going to give it a try. He’d been telling himself for the last three years of his active enlistment that once he was free—once he was home—he was going to have the kind of life the rest of his family had. The dreams of that normal, happy lifestyle had sustained him through some of the wickedest fighting he’d ever seen. He would not give them up now. Not even if they suddenly seemed a little sedate.

“Face it, they won’t rest until you’re ‘settled down.’”

“Like you?” he asked, raising a brow. His twin was a hard-ass Chicago detective who could hardly be described as “settled down.” The man was as tough as they came, despite his occasionally goofy sense of humor.

“Yeah. Like me.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You are in no way settled down.” He glanced at the cuts on his twin’s knuckles.

Mark smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. “Guy resisted.”

“Does Noelle know?”

The smile faded. “No, and if you tell her I’ll pound you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Leaning back in the booth and crossing his arms across his chest, Mark nodded. “I guess you might be able to hold your own now that the Marines toughened you up and filled you out.”

It had long been a friendly argument between them that Nick had inherited their mother’s lean, tall build like Luke and Joe. Mark and Tony resembled their barrel-chested father. But after many tough, physical years in the military, Nick was no longer anybody’s “little” brother. “I think I could take you on.”

“I think you could take anybody on. So why don’t you come down to the station and talk to my lieutenant?”

“Not interested in your job, bro. I’ve had enough of rules and regulations for a while.” They’d talked about the possibility a few times since Nick had returned home, but he wasn’t about to relent on that issue. He’d done his time on the battlefields of Iraq, he didn’t want to add to them in Chicago.

“Yeah, okay,” Mark said, glancing around the crowded restaurant. “I can see why this is so much more up your alley.”

Nick followed his glance and smothered a sigh. Because Mark was right. Helping at the pizzeria was no problem in the short term, heck he’d helped run the place when he was in high school, putting in more time than any of his siblings. But did he really want to become a partner in the business with his brother Tony, as he used to talk about…and as the family was hoping?

Seemed impossible. But Mark was the only one who would understand that. “I’m getting into protection,” he admitted.

“You gonna mass-produce rubbers?” Mark sounded completely innocent, though his eyes sparkled with his usual good humor.

“I can’t wait to tell your kid what a juvenile delinquent you were. Like when you put the Playboy magazine in Father Michael’s desk drawer in sixth grade.”

“Believe me, my kid will know Dad’s on the job from the time he’s old enough to even think about swiping candy bars. Now, what’s with this protection business?”

“I’m going to work part-time as a bodyguard.”

“No kidding?” Mark said, sounding surprised.

“Joe did some renovation work on a nightclub uptown and got friendly with the owner. Turns out they need extra security, so he set up a meeting. I went in Sunday night to talk to them.”

“Bet Meg loved big brother Joe working in a nightclub.”

Like the rest, their older brother Joe was happily married. Nick knew he’d never even look at another woman.

“So,” Mark asked, “why does a club need a bodyguard?”

Nick knew exactly why this club needed a bodyguard after watching the erotic performance by a dancer called the Crimson Rose. The sultry stranger had inhabited his dreams and more than a few of his fantasies ever since he’d seen her on stage, revealing her incredible body while still remaining, somehow, so above it all. He imagined men with less control might try to do more than fantasize about the woman.

“The performers attract a lot of unwanted attention,” he said, not wanting to get into details. Not because he was embarrassed about his job, but because he didn’t want to start talking about the rose-draped dancer and her effect on him.

Nick didn’t need that kind of distraction in his life. A hot stripper definitely did not fit in with the nice Santori lifestyle he kept telling himself he wanted. Not one bit. Which meant working with her was going to be a trick.

But he’d handled bigger challenges. Besides, meeting her—talking to her—would take the bloom off that rose. Intense fantasies were meant for women who were untouchable, mysterious, unknown. It was, he’d come to believe while living in the Middle East, part of the allure of veiled women living in that culture. The unknown always built high expectations.

The Crimson Rose soon would not be an unknown. He’d see the face that had been hidden behind the mask and her secrets would be revealed. Which would make her much less intriguing.

Wanting his mind off her until it had to be when he started work, he changed the subject. “This place is hopping.”

“So why aren’t you out there taking orders from women who’d like to order a side of you with their thick crust?”

“Even the help gets an occasional night off.”

He cast a bored glance around the room. A line of patrons stood near the counter, waiting for carry-out orders. Every table was full. Waitresses buzzed around in constant motion, all of them overseen by Mama. Nothing caught his attention… until he spotted her. And then he couldn’t look away.

She stopped his heart, the way the dancer had, though the women couldn’t be more dissimilar.

The stranger stood near the door, leaning against the wall. Looking at no one, her eyes remained focused on some spot outside the windows. Her posture spoke of weary disinterest, as if she’d zoned out on the chattering of customers all around her. She was separate, alone, lost in her own world of thought.

Not fitting in.

That, as much as her appearance, kept Nick’s attention focused directly on her. Because he, too, knew what it was like to not fit in among this loud world of family and friends and neighbors who’d known one another for years.

She was solitary, self-contained, which interested him.

And her looks simply stole his breath.

From where he sat, he had a perfect view of her profile. Her thick, dark brown hair hung from a haphazard ponytail, emphasizing her high cheekbones and delicate jaw. Her face appeared soft, her skin creamy and smooth. Though her lips were parted, she didn’t appear to be smiling. He suspected she was sighing from her open mouth every once in a while, though out of unhappiness or of boredom, he couldn’t say.

Dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, she also wore a large baker’s type apron over her clothes. That made it impossible to check out her figure. But judging by the length of those legs, shrunk-wrapped in tight, faded denim, he imagined it was spectacular. With a lightweight backpack slung over one shoulder, she looked like she’d stopped off to grab a pizza on her way home from work, like everyone else in line.

Only, she was so incredibly sexy in her aloof indifference, she didn’t look like any other person in line.

Across from him, Mark said something, but Nick paid no attention. He continued to stare, wishing she’d turn toward him so he could make out the color of her eyes. Finally, as though she’d read his mental order, the brunette shifted, tilted her head in a delicate stretch that emphasized her slender neck, and turned. Sweeping a lazy gaze across the room, she breathed a nearly audible sigh that confirmed she was bored.

Then her eyes met his…and there they stopped.

Hers were brown, as dark as his. As their stares locked, he noted the flash of heated awareness in her stare. She made no effort to look away, watching him watch her. As if she knew he’d been checking her out, she returned the favor, looking him over, from his face down, her stare lingering a little long on his shoulders, and even longer on his chest. Nick shifted in his seat, his worn jeans growing tight across his groin, where heat slid and pulsed with seam-splitting intensity.

Though he was seated and there was no way she could see her effect on him, the stranger began to smile. One corner of her mouth tilted up, revealing a tiny dimple in her cheek. But it wasn’t a cute, flirty one…nothing about this woman was cute and flirty, she was aggressive and seductive.

Needing to know her—now—he pushed his beer away and slid to the end of the bench seat without a word.

“Nick?” his brother asked, obviously startled.

“I have to meet her.”

“Who?”

Nick didn’t answer, he simply rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off the stranger.

Mark turned around. “Her?” his brother asked, sounding so surprised Nick wondered if marriage had made him entirely immune to the appeal of a hot, sexy stranger. “You have to meet her?”

Already walking away, Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he strode across the restaurant, determined to not let her get away. He had to meet the first real woman—not a fantasy dressed in rose petals—who’d made his heart start beating hard again since the day he’d gotten home from the war.

IZZIE NATALE HAD A SECRET.

Well, she had many secrets. But the secret she was trying to disguise right now was one that would get her thrown out of the windy city for life.

She preferred New York style pizza to Chicago deep dish.

Shocking, but true. In the years she’d been living in New York during her dancing career, she’d fallen in love with everything there, including the food. But she’d be taking her life in her hands if she admitted it. Because, man, they took their pizza very seriously here. Her grandfather would turn over in his grave if he found out she’d gone to the dark—thin-crust—side. Her father, at whose request she’d made this stop at Santori’s, would disown her. And her sister, whose husband ran this place, would never speak to her again.

Hmm. That might be a blessing. Considering her sister Gloria never had mastered the art of shutting up when the occasion demanded it, Izzie felt tempted to tell her that not only did she like her crust thin, but she also preferred the Mets over the Cubbies. That would get her stoned in the street.

How am I going to get through this?

It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered that in the two months she’d been home, taking care of her family-owned bakery while her father recovered from his stroke. If her friends in Manhattan could see her—covered in flour, wearing an apron, working behind a counter—they’d think she’d been kidnapped.

This could not be Izzie Natale, the former long-legged Rockette who’d had men at her fingertips. Nor could it be the Izzie who’d gone on to land a spot with one of the premiere modern dance companies in New York, short-lived though that spot may have been after her ACL injury had required major surgery seven months ago.

But it was. She was. And it was driving her mad.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family. But oh, did she wish one of them could run the bakery. Because she was not happy being once again under the microscope, living in this big-geographically, but small-town-at-heart area of Little Italy.

Before she could groan about it, however, something caught her eye in the crowded pizzeria. Make that someone caught her eye. As she cast another bored look around, half-wishing she’d see someone she’d recognize from her other life here in Chicago—the one nobody else knew about—she spotted him.

A dark-haired, dark-eyed man was staring at her from across the place. Even from twenty feet away she felt the heat rolling off him. An answering sultry, hungry fire curled from the tips of her curly dark hair down to the bottoms of her feet.

God, the man was hot. Fiery hot. Global warming hot.

His jet black hair was cut short, spiky. A military man.

His dark eyes matched the hair. They were deep set, heavily lashed…bedroom eyes, she’d have to say. His lean face was more rugged than handsome. The strong jaw jutted out the tiniest bit, and his unsmiling mouth was tightly set, as if intentionally trying to disguise the fullness of a pair of amazing male lips.

His shoulders were Mack-truck wide and his chest was football-field broad. And his attitude was all, one-hundred-percent Santori male.

Because Izzie knew it was Nick Santori who’d met her stare from across the room. Nick Santori who’d risen from his seat and was winding his way across the room toward her. Nick Santori who was making the earth shake a little under her feet, just as he always had when she was a teenager.

She told herself to breathe and not let him get under her skin. He sure had once…like at Gloria and Tony’s wedding, when she’d been a bridesmaid of fourteen and Nick had been a groomsman. He’d had to escort her down the aisle, and his big, bad, going-into-the-Marines-eighteen-year-old self hadn’t liked it. And that day was one she would never live down.

Somehow, though, that memory didn’t steady the floor. Nor did it cool her off as he came closer. Those dark eyes of his were locked on her face as he effortlessly cleared his way through the crowd with a look here or glance there. Everyone made way for him. The men out of respect. The women… well, the women looked like Izzie imagined she did: dumbstruck. All because of the simmering sensuality of this one sexy man.

The one she’d wanted since the first time she’d felt heat between her legs and understood what it meant.

“Hi,” he said when he finally reached her.

“Hey.” She felt almost triumphant at having achieved that note of casual aloofness. She even managed to keep slouching against the wall, probably because she needed the support. She might have learned to handle men but she’d never gotten over feeling like Izzie-the-geek around this one.

“Is there something I can do for you?”

Oh, yeah. She could think of several somethings. Starting with her getting some payback for him ignoring her when she was a chubby, lovesick kid. And ending with him naked in her bed.

But getting naked in bed with Nick Santori would involve serious complications. Her sister was married to his brother. The families were old friends. If she so much as looked at the guy with interest the neighborhood would have them married off with her popping out brown-haired Italian babies within a year.

Uh-uh. No thanks. Not for Izzie. Sex with Nick would be delightful. But it came with way too many strings.

“I don’t think so,” she finally answered.

He didn’t back off. “I’m sure there’s something.”

“What, are you a waiter now?” she asked, amused at the thought of him waiting tables. Especially since that chest of his could probably double as one.

Nick had, like all the Santori kids, worked in the restaurant in high school. Just as Izzie had worked in the bakery—often eating her paycheck to sweeten her teenage angst.

But he’d been in the Marines for years. She didn’t see him slinging pizzas now that he was back in Chicago. Not after he’d been slinging Uzis or whatever those macho soldier guys carried.

“Maybe. Why don’t you tell me what you want and I’ll let you know if I can get it for you?”

Thin and cheesy New York style pizza was the first thing that came to mind, but Izzie didn’t want to get strung up at the corner of Taylor and Racine. “I already placed my order.”

He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t just talking about pizza.”

God, was that…it was. There was a flirtatious twinkle in those blackish-brown eyes of his. He’d been throwing some subtle innuendo at her and it had gone clear over her head.

“Oh,” was all she could manage.

Cake flour must have clogged her femme-fatale genes in the past two months. It was the only way someone with her experience with men could have missed his double meaning.

“Want to sit while you wait for your order?” he asked, gesturing toward a few chairs in the waiting area.

“No, thanks.” She fell silent. If she opened her mouth again, she might do something stupid like throw out a dumb, “Wow, what I wouldn’t have given for you to look at me like that when I was a teenager,” line, which she so didn’t want to do.

She zipped her lips. She’d be Izzie the uninterested mute. Which was better than Izzie the lovesick mutant.

“How about at a table?”

“At a table…what?”

He smiled again, that sexy, self-confident smile that had probably had woman on five continents dropping their panties within sixty seconds of meeting him. “We can sit at a table while you wait for your order.”

God, she was an idiot. “No, I’m fine here, thank you.”

She had to give herself a break for being so slow. After all, Nick Santori had been scrambling her brains since she was ten—right around the time her sister Gloria had started dating his brother Tony. And though he’d always had a way with females, he’d never looked twice at her that way.

Especially not since Gloria and Tony’s wedding. The one where she’d tripped on her ugly puce gown—which hugged her tubby hips and butt—while they were dancing the obligatory wedding party waltz. She, the kid who’d been in dance lessons since the age of three, had tripped.

Maybe it wasn’t so shocking. She’d been worried about what he’d think of her sweaty palms. She’d been terrified that her makeup was smearing off her face and revealing that she’d had the mother of all break-outs that morning.

Nervous plus terrified times the pitter-patter of her heart and the achy tingle in her small breasts from where they brushed against the lapels of Nick’s tux had left her dizzy. So dizzy she’d stepped off the edge of the slightly raised dance floor and crashed both of them onto a table full of cookies and pastries made especially by her parents for the wedding.

It hadn’t been pretty.

Colorful candy-covered almonds had flown in all directions. Her butt had landed on a platter of cream puffs, her elbows in two stacks of pizelles. Her dress had flown up to her waist to reveal the panty girdle she’d worn in an effort to hide her after-school-cookie-binging bulge.

The icing on the five-tiered Italian cream wedding cake—which she’d somehow managed to not destroy—had been Nick. He’d gotten tangled up in her dress, and had landed on top of her, sprawled across her chest.

And right between her legs.

It was the first—and last—time she’d figured Nick Santori would be between her legs, which both broke her heart and fueled some intense fantasies throughout her high-school years. Shocked by the unexpectedness and the pleasure of it, she’d been slow to part those legs and let him up. Slow enough for the moment to go from embarrassingly long to indecently shocking.

She’d thought her mother was going to kill her afterward.

But that wasn’t all. Because Izzie had the luck of someone who broke mirrors for a living, the incident had also been the money shot of the whole day. The videographer caught the whole thing on film, creating a masterpiece that would taunt her throughout eternity.

She’d been a laughingstock. Everyone in the crowd had whooped and clapped and teased her about it for months afterward. She might as well have worn a banner proclaiming herself, “Lovesick pubescent girl who crushed the cookies and dry-humped the groomsman at the Santori-Natale wedding.”

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” he said, finally breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

“I come here a couple of times a week,” she replied.

He shrugged. “I’ve been gone a long time.”

“In the military.”

“Right. Things have definitely changed around here in the past twelve years.”

“Maybe in some ways,” she said. Then she glanced around and saw a minimum of five people she knew—all watching intently as she talked to Nick. Frowning, she muttered, “In some ways it’s still the same small town hell it always was.”

She surprised a laugh out of him. “I somehow think we have a lot in common.”

His laughter softened his tanned face, bringing out tiny lines beside his eyes. It also made him utterly irresistible, as several women sitting nearby undoubtedly noticed.

Nick had been incredibly hot as a teenager. Lean and wiry, dark and intense. As a thirty-year-old-man he was absolutely drool-worthy. Not that he’d changed a lot—he’d just matured. Where he’d been a sexy guy, he was now a tough, heartstopping male, big and broad, powerful and intimidating.

She didn’t suspect he’d changed on the inside, though. Once a Santori male, always a Santori male. The men of that family had always been good-hearted.

Honestly, looking back, if Nick had been a jerk about what had happened at the wedding, she might have gotten over her crush a lot sooner and this moment might be a lot simpler. She could tell him to f-off, remind him he’d once laughed at her and added to her humiliation. Only…he hadn’t. Curse the man.

He’d been very sweet, carefully helping her up—once she’d released her thunder-thigh death grip from around his hips. He’d gently wiped powdered sugar and cream off her cheek. He’d helped her pull her dress back down into place without making one crack about her chubby thighs or her panty girdle. He’d pretended she hadn’t practically assaulted him. And he’d helped her back up onto the dance floor and continued their dance. Absolutely the only annoying thing he’d done was to start calling her Cookie.

As her mother often said, he’d been raised right. Just like his brothers. He was every bit a gentleman—a protector—and he’d never given her a sideways glance that hadn’t been merely friendly. In his eyes, she’d always been Gloria’s baby sister—the chubby ballerina who looked like a little stuffed sausage in her pink tutu and tights and he’d treated her with nothing but big-brotherly kindness.

Until now.

Fortunately, though, she wasn’t sweet Izzie the cookie-gobbling machine anymore. He hadn’t seen her for almost a decade…she no longer blushed and stammered when a hot guy teased her. And she no longer even tried to imagine she could have been a ballerina with her less-than-willowy figure.

Once she’d stopped eating pastries and hit brick-shithouse stature at age eighteen, she’d known her future as a dancer would come from another direction than the ballet.

She’d also learned how to handle men.

Now, she was in the driver’s seat when it came to seduction. She’d been running the show with men for years. And it was high time to let Nick Santori know it.

“So, when you offered to serve me…what were you talking about?” she asked, swiping her tongue across her lips. It was a move she’d perfected in her Rockettes dressing room. Men used to come backstage, trying to pick up the dancers and they all went for the lip-licking. God, males were so predictable. She held her breath, hoping for more from this one.

And she got it.

“I’m talking about me serving you with a line and you tipping me with your number. But since it’s crowded and I’m rusty at that stuff, why don’t you just give me the number?”

Izzie had to laugh. If he’d come back with a smooth line, the laugh would have been at his expense—because she doubted there was one he hadn’t heard. But Nick had been completely honest, which she found incredibly attractive.

She also laughed to hide the nervous thrill she’d gotten when she realized Nick Santori really did want her number. That he really was trying to pick her up.

Her…the girl he’d once complained about having to dance with at a wedding. What were the odds?

“I think I’ve got your number.” She’d had it for years.

He didn’t give up. “Use it. Please.”

He meant it. He wasn’t teasing, wasn’t trying to make her blush, wasn’t treating her the way he treated his kid sister, Lottie, who’d been one of her classmates.

Nick Santori was trying to pick her up. Which shouldn’t have been a big deal, but, for some reason, had her heart fluttering around in her chest like a bird trapped in a cage.

“My name’s Nick, by the way.”

No duh. She was about to say that, then she saw the look in his eyes—that serious, intense look. He wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t pretending they were just meeting.

She sagged back against the wall, not sure whether to laugh or punch him in the face.

Because the rotten son of a bitch had no idea who she was.