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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 some one 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.
