Nick didn’t need that kind of distraction in his life. A hot stripper definitely did not fit in with the nice Santori lifestyle he kept telling himself he wanted. Not one bit. Which meant working with her was going to be a trick.
But he’d handled bigger challenges. Besides, meeting her—talking to her—would take the bloom off that rose. Intense fantasies were meant for women who were untouchable, mysterious, unknown. It was, he’d come to believe while living in the Middle East, part of the allure of veiled women living in that culture. The unknown always built high expectations.
The Crimson Rose soon would not be an unknown. He’d see the face that had been hidden behind the mask and her secrets would be revealed. Which would make her much less intriguing.
Wanting his mind off her until it had to be when he started work, he changed the subject. “This place is hopping.”
“So why aren’t you out there taking orders from women who’d like to order a side of you with their thick crust?”
“Even the help gets an occasional night off.”
He cast a bored glance around the room. A line of patrons stood near the counter, waiting for carry-out orders. Every table was full. Waitresses buzzed around in constant motion, all of them overseen by Mama. Nothing caught his attention… until he spotted her. And then he couldn’t look away.
She stopped his heart, the way the dancer had, though the women couldn’t be more dissimilar.
The stranger stood near the door, leaning against the wall. Looking at no one, her eyes remained focused on some spot outside the windows. Her posture spoke of weary disinterest, as if she’d zoned out on the chattering of customers all around her. She was separate, alone, lost in her own world of thought.
Not fitting in.
That, as much as her appearance, kept Nick’s attention focused directly on her. Because he, too, knew what it was like to not fit in among this loud world of family and friends and neighbors who’d known one another for years.
She was solitary, self-contained, which interested him.
And her looks simply stole his breath.
From where he sat, he had a perfect view of her profile. Her thick, dark brown hair hung from a haphazard ponytail, emphasizing her high cheekbones and delicate jaw. Her face appeared soft, her skin creamy and smooth. Though her lips were parted, she didn’t appear to be smiling. He suspected she was sighing from her open mouth every once in a while, though out of unhappiness or of boredom, he couldn’t say.
Dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, she also wore a large baker’s type apron over her clothes. That made it impossible to check out her figure. But judging by the length of those legs, shrunk-wrapped in tight, faded denim, he imagined it was spectacular. With a lightweight backpack slung over one shoulder, she looked like she’d stopped off to grab a pizza on her way home from work, like everyone else in line.
Only, she was so incredibly sexy in her aloof indifference, she didn’t look like any other person in line.
Across from him, Mark said something, but Nick paid no attention. He continued to stare, wishing she’d turn toward him so he could make out the color of her eyes. Finally, as though she’d read his mental order, the brunette shifted, tilted her head in a delicate stretch that emphasized her slender neck, and turned. Sweeping a lazy gaze across the room, she breathed a nearly audible sigh that confirmed she was bored.
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 someone 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