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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, heart-stopping 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.
