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“It’s my job.”
“It’s something you do part-time for kicks and to rub it in your family and the world that you’re not sweet little Isabella Natale anymore,” he said, frustrated beyond belief at her stoic refusal to listen to reason.
She appeared stunned by his accusation. “How can you say that? My family doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“I know and that proves my point. You get your secret kicks out of it without ever having to face the consequences. You’re not being honest to anyone-not even yourself-about why you’re doing this and what you really want.”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her. Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Nick wondered how he’d let this whole conversation spin so badly out of control so rapidly.
“You certainly are a fine one to talk,” she finally said, her tone steely.
“What?”
“You accuse me of that, but you’re doing exactly the same thing, Nick Santori. Stringing your family along with this idea that you’re going to be singing O Sole Mio and slinging pizza dough with Tony and your father. Meanwhile, you hide your nights doing something exciting and dangerous at a place they would never approve of. I call that hypocritical.”
He couldn’t believe she’d turned things around on him like that. “That’s ridiculous.”
“So why haven’t you told Tony you’re not sticking around? Why haven’t you told your father about this ‘protection’ business you’re thinking of going into with your Marine buddies?”
Leave it to a woman to use something he’d told her less than a day ago in a fight against him. “That has nothing to do with whether you go out on stage and flaunt yourself in front of someone who wants to hurt you.” But even as he said it, a small voice in his head whispered that she might be right. At least a little.
Not that he was going to admit that now…not when they still had the issue of her physical safety to work out. So he pushed on. “And I’m not on stage intentionally taking off my clothes to try to turn on a hundred strangers-one of whom might be trying to poison me.”
She’d stiffened at the world flaunt. By the time he’d finished speaking, Izzie’s face was as red as her mask. “Well, that’s it, then, isn’t it? We’ve finally gotten down to it.”
“Izzie…”
She put a hand up to stop him. “I knew it would come to this, and now it has. You need to leave. I’m going on stage tonight. By the time I get back, I hope there will be a new lock on my door, for my own protection.” Her chin quivered, her full lips shook. But she had one last thing to say. “And you most definitely will not have a key to it.”
NICK WASN’T IN the audience. Izzie scanned the crowd for him throughout her performance, wondering if he’d be lurking in the shadows, watching out for her.
He wasn’t.
It was over.
Somehow, she managed to not cry as she gyrated to the music. Managed to not show the hungry-looking men in the audience that her heart was broken.
It shouldn’t feel this broken, after all, she’d known going into this crazy, wild relationship with Nick that it would have to end badly. From day one, they’d wanted each other on opposite terms. He’d wanted the cute kid sister of his brother’s wife, who worked at the bakery every day. She’d wanted the sultry, sexy bodyguard who guarded her naked body every night.
That he’d tried to put his foot down and forbid her from dancing the very first moment he had a convenient excuse emphasized that and more.
As she dipped and swayed and thrust and jumped on the stage, four words kept time with the music. They played over and over, keeping the 4:4 beat.
It can not work.
By the time she was finished dancing, Izzie was as much angry as she was heartbroken. Aside from being her lover, Nick was supposed to be the club’s bodyguard. And yet when she’d been the most vulnerable-exposed-he’d been nowhere to be seen.
She’d have something to say about that the second she saw him. But that moment came almost immediately-he had been watching her back. Literally. He was standing, dark and predatory, in the wings just off stage. He’d been watching for her to come off…out of a direct line of sight to center stage. So he hadn’t watched her dance. And he most certainly hadn’t experienced watching her dance with the rest of a big, male audience.
Nothing had changed.
“I’ll escort you to your dressing room,” he said, his jaw as stiff as his shoulders. “Rose.”
She didn’t even respond as she slipped her robe on over her nearly naked body, then sailed past him toward the stairs. She didn’t need his help, she didn’t need his approval.
