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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.
