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“Uh…definitely not.” A grin tickling his lips, he admitted, “Demi Moore and Lethal Weapon 3.”
Izzie laughed softly. There was a twinkle in those dark brown eyes of hers and a flash of a dimple he remembered in one cheek. At last.
“Are you…”
“What?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s none of my business.”
“What’s none of your business?”
“I guess I was just wondering if you felt…a little…out of place with your family.”
“I feel like I belong with the Santoris about as much as that kid in the Jungle Book belonged with the dancing bear.”
She nodded, as if in complete agreement. “But if I recall correctly, I think he wanted to belong with the dancing bear and couldn’t understand why he didn’t quite fit in.”
Nick said nothing. She’d made his point for him.
Izzie seemed to realize it. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Something else we have in common,” he said.
“Don’t get too excited about it,” she muttered, “I’m still not giving you my phone number.”
“You must know I already have it.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t frown. “Gloria. Dead sister walking.” The coffee had finished brewing, so she poured two big cups. “Cream or sugar?”
“Neither.” Taking the cup from her, he inhaled the steam. “My mother makes lousy coffee. So does your sister, who seems to have decided even the smell of caffeine can make our hooligan nephews bounce off the walls.”
“Decaf’s for quitters,” she muttered.
Startled, Nick barked a laugh. This was no sweet little Izzie, the girl he remembered.
“I lived on coffee in Manhattan,” she admitted. “It was the only way I could maintain my schedule.”
He sniffed appreciatively, allowing the rich aroma to fill his head. When combined with all the other scents permeating this room, it was making him weak with physical hunger.
Or she was. He honestly wasn’t sure which.
“I think I would have killed for something this good even when it was one-hundred-twenty degrees in the desert.”
Izzie sat on one of the other stools across from him, her cup on the counter between them. Watching him intently, with a bit of trepidation, she forecast her curiosity before the words left her mouth. “How did you make it through every day?”
What a good question-and one nobody had asked him yet. Oh, he’d been asked about the action and the things he’d seen. Asked if he’d shot anyone, killed anyone, saved anyone. Asked what he’d done to relieve the boredom, to accomplish his mission.
But nobody had asked him what it was that had held him together every single day. Not until now.
“I’m sorry, that’s probably none of my business.”
“It’s okay. If you want to know the truth, it was this that held me together.” He gestured around the room.
She frowned skeptically.
“I don’t mean the bakery. I mean this lifestyle. Home, family, all the safe, secure stuff I grew up with that I thought would be exactly the same when I got back. Only, it wasn’t.”
Staring at him, Izzie revealed her thoughts in her expressive brown eyes. She understood what he meant-got it, exactly. Nick didn’t look away, liking the connection even though they were separated by several feet of sweet-smelling air. Mentally, though, they were touching. Bonding. Sharing the unique brand of estrangement they had each been feeling from the world they’d grown up in.
She finally shook her head. “Well, obviously you have some things to figure out, man-cub.”
He grinned, remembering what he’d said about the Jungle Book. “Yeah, well, so do you, right? You didn’t get what you bargained for when you came home, did you?”
She shook her head.
“What’d you do in New York, anyway?” he asked, never having gotten the whole story. He knew she’d had a good job but had given it up to come home and help her family.
“I was…in the arts,” she murmured, lifting her cup to her mouth. She blew across the surface of the coffee, sending steam curling up into the air. It colored her cheeks, already flushed a delicate pink from the heat of the yeasty kitchen. “On the stage.”
An actress. The idea stunned him for a second, though it made sense. Izzie had looks and personality and a lot of self-confidence. He suspected she was amazing on stage.
“But I got hurt last winter and haven’t worked since.”
He lowered his cup, waiting.
A tiny frown line appeared between her eyes as she explained. “I tore my ACL in my left knee and had to have surgery. It required a lot of rehab.”
