Waking Up to You: Overexposed (22 page)

They
both
seemed that way, really. Lilith with her supposed psychic abilities. This woman with her risky, who-gives-a-damn attitude. So unlike little Izzie of the bakery.

Maybe, however, not too unlike the Crimson Rose. She wondered what these two would think if they knew she wasn’t quite the sweet, simple bakery worker she appeared to be.

“Who is this guy, anyway?” the stranger asked. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to figure out if that ring is a wedding band and he’s the asshole you’ve been dating for the past three months.”

“Ew.”

“So he’s not your lover.”

“Say that again and I’ll dump the dregs on you. He’s a jerk I’m investigating.”

“A jerk?” The stranger snorted. “What makes him different from every other man on this planet?”

“Good question,” Izzie muttered, though her heart wasn’t really in it. Nick had always been one incredibly good guy. The fact that he wouldn’t have sex with her as a stripper didn’t mean he was a jerk.

Even though he was.

She wandered away from the other two, cleaning off the empty tables in preparation for closing. As she worked, she kept up with the other women’s conversation, trying to stay out of it, but unable to when she heard who Lilith was currently dating. Hearing that the sexy medium had hooked up with Mac Mancuso, a nice boy-next-door type turned Chicago cop, she had to put her two cents in. Mainly because their situations—whether Lilith would believe it or not—were very similar.

“Mac’s not a jerk. He grew up just a few blocks from here. Our families know each other. I’d think any woman would love to catch a good, honest cop like him.”

The stranger in black immediately stopped typing. “You’re sleeping with a cop.” Somehow, Izzie suspected the woman was allergic to anyone official—especially the police.

“I’m sleeping with him, not married to him,” Lilith insisted. “Trust me when I say that my definition of right and wrong varies from his by huge degrees.”

Huh. Sounding more and more like Izzie’s situation. She almost wished she and Lilith were alone so they could talk.

“Keep working and your next ten espressos are on me,” Lilith told the other woman.

“I won’t be around that long, but thanks for the offer.”

“Add her to my tab,” Lilith told Izzie. “Any time she stops in, coffee’s on me.” Glancing at the stranger, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Seline.”

Amused since Lilith’s tab currently took up two pages in her accounts book, Izzie asked, “Does that mean you’re actually going to pay it someday?”

Lilith shrugged in unconcern, watching as Seline kept working. When she finally struck pay dirt and got Lilith the information she wanted, they both seemed triumphant.

Izzie only wished her problems with Nick could be solved with an internet search. Unfortunately, if she searched for the stuff she wanted to do with Nick Santori on the internet, she’d probably get inundated with spam from sites like bigpenises.com from now till eternity.

Finishing up her cappuccino and shutting down her computer, Lilith thanked Seline for helping her out, then turned to Izzie. “Thanks for the sugar boost and the wi-fi.”

“Anytime.” Unable to help it, Izzie called out, “Lilith, don’t be so quick to write off a great guy like Mac. Maybe you and he can find a way to make it work, even if you think there’s no way it ever could.”

And maybe she was a sucker who should still be reading fairy tales. But hey, it didn’t hurt to dream, did it? Even if she was dreaming on behalf of someone else.

Once Lilith was gone, the other woman, Seline, approached the counter. Even her walk was feline—sultry—and Izzie wondered if she’d ever danced before.

“Here,” Seline said. She put a one-hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “For her tab. I sense that she needs the money more than I do. And I don’t have to be psychic to figure that out.”

Stunned, Izzie murmured, “Thanks.” She opened her mouth to say more—to offer the money back—but the mysterious woman in black had already turned toward the door, her coffee in hand. She walked out into the bright sunshine without another word, got onto her sleek motorcycle and roared away down the street.

* * *

B
RIDGET
D
ONAHUE
HAD
always known she would never be wildly sexy and self-confident like her cousin Izzie. But there were times when she allowed herself to think that, maybe, since they were related, Bridget had a tiny bit of Izzie-power trapped deep inside her. So ever since she was a kid, she’d played a game. WWID, aka
What Would Izzie Do?
And then she’d try to do that.

Asking Dean Willis to go out with her one day at lunchtime had definitely been a WWID moment. And Bridget still couldn’t believe she’d gone through with it. But if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t now be sitting at a coffee shop, looking across the table at his handsome face. Make that staring at his face.

Staring. Izzie wouldn’t stare.
Bridget ducked her head down, focused on her cup of Earl Grey tea. Not the double-shot espresso she probably needed—because of her “I don’t drink coffee” fib—but okay...mainly because of the company.

“You ready for a refill?” Dean asked.

Bridget shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

They weren’t at her uncle’s bakery, but at a big chain place not far from her apartment. Bridget had chosen the spot, which seemed safe, neutral and impersonal. Not the kind of place that said she thought they were on a date. Not the kind of place where a date would be absolutely out of the question.

God, she sucked at this. Izzie would have met him at a hotel bar.

Small steps,
she reminded herself. Asking a man out was a first for her. It wasn’t that she’d never dated—or that she was completely inexperienced. But if Izzie was on the top rung when it came to dealing with men, Bridget was still pulling the ladder out of the cellar.

They sat in an alcove by the front window. Bridget had her chair pushed back from the table, to accommodate the length of his legs beneath it. He looked crowded—bunched up in the small chair and the small corner—but he hadn’t complained.

“You must be tired of hearing me rattle on about my landlord problems,” she said as the conversation lagged. “I haven’t seemed to shut up.”

He shook his head. “You’re easy to talk to.”

“You haven’t been doing much talking...just listening.”

“You’re easy to listen to,” he replied with a small smile.

Nice answer. And it was mutual, because he was also very easy—easy to like. But she still didn’t feel like she knew anything about him. “So how do you like working for Marty? You’ve sold more cars in the month you’ve been there than any other salesman has sold in the past three.”

He shrugged. “It’s not hard when you have good products to sell.” Lowering his gaze, he reached for his cup. “I guess you’d know that since you’ve worked for Marty longer than I have.”

Sighing, Bridget shook her head. “Not much longer.”

“Really?”

“I started just a couple of months before you did so I don’t know much of anything, either.”

He frowned. “But you keep the books, surely you know how things are going. I bet the place is raking in the bucks, huh?”

Grunting in annoyance, she admitted, “I have no idea. I see just enough to keep the books balanced and not much else.”

Dean stopped stirring his tea and lifted his eyes to hers. Leaning forward over the table, he asked, “You don’t know
anything
about what’s going on at Honest Marty’s Used Cars?”

“I know Marty’s a bit of a con artist,” she said tartly. “Honesty is just one of his...embellishments.”

She suspected her boss also embellished some other things—like stuff he told the IRS. But she didn’t have proof and was not about to say such a thing to anyone else.

He persisted. “But you must make the deposits, pay the invoices, keep an eye on the accounts receivable.”

“I take what he gives me and do what I can.” Shrugging, she added, “Honestly, I don’t know much of anything about the business, it’s all I can do to keep the checkbook balanced.”

He held her stare, his blue eyes looking searchingly into her face, as if he was trying to find the answer to some question. She couldn’t imagine what. She had no idea why he was so interested in the financial dealings of their employer.

Then she thought of something. It
could
be a matter of job security. Dean was personable and a good salesman, but he didn’t exactly dress like someone who had a lot of money. The sports coats he wore to work usually didn’t fit well across his broad shoulders, and his pants were sometimes a little shabby.

Dean hadn’t said a lot about what he’d done before coming to Honest Marty’s. For all she knew, he’d been put out of work by poor management at his last job. That would certainly be enough to make anybody ask questions, especially somebody who lived paycheck to paycheck, as she suspected he did.

Not wanting to embarrass him, she carefully tried to set his mind at ease. “Look, I don’t know specifics, but I know the dealership’s doing well. I see the number of cars coming onto the lot and the number leaving it. You don’t have to worry.”

He frowned, as if not understanding what she meant. Some impulse made Bridget reach across the table and put her hand on his. She almost pulled her hand back right away, surprised to feel a warm tingle where skin met skin. But, swallowing for courage, she left it there.
Like Izzie would.

If this was a date, he’d interpret her touch as a signal that she wanted more. If it was
not
a date, he’d interpret it as concerned friendship. Bridget considered it a little of both. “Your job is secure.”

He was staring at their hands, still touching. “My job?”

He sounded—distracted. As if he was as affected by their touch as she was, which gave her a little thrill. “Marty would be a fool to let you go. You’re the best salesman he’s got.”

He said nothing at first, he just slowly twined his fingers in hers, rubbing at the fleshy pad of her palm with the tip of his thumb. Her pulse raced and she wondered if he could feel it throbbing right there below her skin.

She somehow managed to concentrate on getting a positive message across, ignoring the tingling in her fingers and the flip-flopping of her heart. “It’s okay, I know what it’s like to worry about making ends meet, but please don’t worry about the company. I’m sure you’re not going to lose your job.”

He looked up at her, his jaw dropping. “Lose my...”

“I thought that’s why you were curious.”

Dean’s mouth snapped and he mumbled, “It’s okay.” He pulled the hand she’d been touching away and dropped it onto his lap. “Well, they probably want this table for other customers. I guess we should go.”

Oh, God, she felt like a fool. She’d ruined this, he probably thought she had been pitying him or something. “Dean, I really didn’t mean anything...”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I just wasn’t sure what you meant at first. It’s good to know the company’s doing so well,” he said, still sounding distracted. “Thanks again for meeting me. I’m glad we got the chance to get to know each other better, since we’ll be working together.”

Bridget managed to suck her trembling lip into her mouth, recognizing a brush-off when she heard one. Either he’d never intended this as a get-to-know-you date at all, or he
had
and she’d blown it. But whatever the case, it was finished now. He was not interested in seeing her again.

WWID...
Izzie wouldn’t cry. So she blinked. Hard.

“Bye, Bridget,” he said as he escorted her outside.

She somehow managed to sound perfectly normal when she said goodbye, too. But deep inside, she felt anything but normal.

In fact, Bridget felt a little bit broken.

5

O
VER
THE
NEXT
WEEK
, Nick went out of his way to change Izzie’s mind about going out with him. He stopped by the bakery, phoned in orders for stuff he didn’t really want and made sure he was the one to sign for any deliveries at the restaurant, just in case she happened to be the delivery person.

She never was.

But he wasn’t giving up. While at first she’d been a sexy stranger who’d caught his eye, she’d now become something of a challenge to him. He wanted to work his way around her protective wall and see if the smiling, funny girl was still there behind that to-die-for woman exterior.

Maybe it was just as well that Izzie consumed his thoughts by day. Because it made it easier to resist temptation by night. It definitely had on Saturday and Sunday night.

He’d worked at Leather and Lace for a second weekend. This time, knowing what he was in for, he’d been careful to avoid being alone with Rose, the club’s sultry star performer, and hadn’t even exchanged a word with her. Even still, it had been impossible to keep his eyes off her.

Especially when she danced.

Especially when she watched
him
while she danced.

If she’d made another move on him, he honestly didn’t know that he’d have been able to refuse. So ensuring he was never alone with her was probably a good thing.

Hell, he honestly wasn’t sure why he was resisting. As long as he kept the woman safe, he didn’t see Harry Black being the kind of man who’d have a problem with it. After all, he was married to one of his own former star performers.

And letting off a little sexual steam didn’t have to have anything to do with Nick’s normal, daytime life. In fact, nobody in his family ever needed to know about it. There was no law that said an unattached man couldn’t have sex with a willing woman, just because he was interested in another woman.

One who wasn’t interested in him.

Damn. That’s why he hadn’t done it. Because it was driving him crazy that Izzie wasn’t interested in him.

Frankly, he’d never worked so hard to get a woman’s attention in his life. The fact that Izzie was the woman in question made the whole situation that much more challenging.

She’d been crazy about him once. He’d get her to see him that way again if it was the last thing he did. Even if it meant doing stupid, sappy shit like showing up at her bakery with a handful of flowers.

Like he was right now.

God, how the guys in his unit would laugh to see him, standing on a street corner on a hot August day, holding a brightly colored bouquet he’d bought off a guy on the corner.

“What are you doing?” she mouthed through the glass late Thursday afternoon when he knocked on the locked front door.

“I’m bringing you flowers,” he yelled back. “Open up.”

“Don’t bring me flowers.”

Shrugging, he flashed her a grin. “Too late.”

“I mean it.”

“Like I said, too late. Come on, let me in. They’re thirsty.”

She glared at him. Seeing pedestrians stopping to watch the show, she went a step further and bared her teeth.

Man the woman was
hot
when she was hot.

“Go away!”

Tsking, he shook his head. Then he looked at the closest woman who’d paused midstep to see what was going on. “Can you believe she doesn’t want my flowers?”

A teenager and her girlfriend, who’d also stopped nearby, piped in together, “We’ll take them!”

The older woman, an iron-gray haired grandmother, frowned. “What did you do?”

Good question. He wasn’t
entirely
sure. “I didn’t recognize her after not having seen her for ten years.”

The grandmother’s eyebrow shot up. Pushing Nick out of the way, she marched up to the glass, stuck her index finger out and pointed at Izzie. “Take the flowers you foolish girl.” Rolling her eyes and huffing about youth being wasted on the young, she stalked down the street.

Izzie, still practically growling, unlocked the door, yanked it open and grabbed his arm. “Get in here and stop making a fool of yourself.”

“I wasn’t making a fool of myself,” he pointed out. “You were making a fool of me.”

“You don’t require much help.”

Shaking his head and smiling, he murmured, “What happened to the sweet, friendly, eager-to-please Izzie?”

“She grew up.”

She yanked the bouquet out of his hand, stalking behind the counter and grabbing a glass to put it in. Watching her, he noticed the surreptitious sniff she gave the blooms, and the way she squared her shoulders, as if annoyed at her own weakness.

Nick didn’t follow her, tempted as he was. Instead, he leaned across the glass counter, dropping his elbows onto it. “The flowers are a peace offering.”

“Are we at war?”

“It’s felt that way to me ever since I was stupid enough to not recognize you that night at Santori’s.”

Ignoring him, she finished filling the glass with water, turned off the tap and plopped the flowers in.

“I still can’t believe you’re punishing me over that.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not punishing you over anything. I’m just not interested in you, Nick.”

“Yeah, I got it.” Only he didn’t. He was in no way ready to concede that. Something had caused Izzie to put a wall up between them...and he was going to find out what it was. “But there’s no reason we can’t go back to being friends, is there? We were once.”

“No. We weren’t. You were the stud of the known universe and I was the puppy dog with the big humiliating crush. You can’t seriously think I’d go back to that.”

“I tell ya, Izzie,” he said, hearing the frustration in his voice, “I don’t know for sure
what
I want from you. I just know I can’t stand that you won’t even look at me.”

She finally did just that. Looked at him, met his direct stare. In those dark brown eyes he saw stormy confusion. It was matched by the quiver of her lush lips and the wild beating of the pulse in her throat.

“You liked me once,” he said softly. “And we did pretty well helping each other out at the neighborhood-prying-session disguised as lunch last Sunday. Can we at least try being friends?”

She opened her mouth to reply. Closed it. Then, sighing as she pushed the vase of flowers to the center of the counter, slowly nodded. “I
guess.
”

It was a start. Maybe not the start he wanted to make with her...but at least the start of something.

“Do you want some coffee?” She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about the invitation.

He glanced at the industrial coffeemaker, scrubbed clean for the night, and shook his head, not wanting to put her to the trouble.

“I have a small coffeemaker in the back.”

“Sounds good.”

Nick followed her down a short hallway between the café and the kitchen, trying to remember that it wasn’t very polite to stare long and hard at the ass of someone who was just a friend. It didn’t work. Because though she wore loose-fitting khakis and an oversize apron, the woman had a figure to die for. Every step pulled the fabric a little tighter across her curves, and the natural sway in her hips made him dizzy.

Friends. That’s it.
And
not
friends with benefits.

“How do you like being back in Chicago?” he asked as he sat at a tall stool beside a butcher-block work counter.

Izzie ground fresh beans. At last—a woman who knew how to make coffee. One more thing to like about her, aside from the cute way her ponytail wagged when she moved and the way she smelled of sugar and butter and everything nice. “About as much as I like getting a root canal.”

“That bad? You don’t like being back in the family business?”

She glanced around the kitchen, immaculately clean and stocked with every baking supply ever invented. “My prison smells like anisette.”

“Mine smells like marinara,” he muttered, meaning it.

She nodded, not asking him to elaborate. She obviously knew exactly what he meant. “Not easy to come home, is it?”

He shook his head. “Not easy at all. My parents still haven’t forgiven me for moving into an apartment, not back into my old room. It still has my high-school posters on the walls.”

She snickered. “Mine, too. Though I don’t suppose yours were of ballerinas and Ricky Martin.”

“Uh...definitely not.” A grin tickling his lips, he admitted, “Demi Moore and
Lethal Weapon 3.
”

Izzie laughed softly. There was a twinkle in those dark brown eyes of hers and a flash of a dimple he remembered in one cheek. At last.

“Are you...”

“What?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s none of my business.”

“What’s none of your business?”

“I guess I was just wondering if you felt...a little...out of place with your family.”

“I feel like I belong with the Santoris about as much as that kid in
The Jungle Book
belonged with the dancing bear.”

She nodded, as if in complete agreement. “But if I recall correctly, I think he
wanted
to belong with the dancing bear and couldn’t understand why he didn’t quite fit in.”

Nick said nothing. She’d made his point for him.

Izzie seemed to realize it. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Something else we have in common,” he said.

“Don’t get too excited about it,” she muttered, “I’m still not giving you my phone number.”

“You must know I already have it.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t frown. “Gloria. Dead sister walking.” The coffee had finished brewing, so she poured two big cups. “Cream or sugar?”

“Neither.” Taking the cup from her, he inhaled the steam. “My mother makes lousy coffee. So does your sister, who seems to have decided even the
smell
of caffeine can make our hooligan nephews bounce off the walls.”

“Decaf’s for quitters,” she muttered.

Startled, Nick barked a laugh. This was no sweet little Izzie, the girl he remembered.

“I lived on coffee in Manhattan,” she admitted. “It was the only way I could maintain my schedule.”

He sniffed appreciatively, allowing the rich aroma to fill his head. When combined with all the other scents permeating this room, it was making him weak with physical hunger.

Or
she
was. He honestly wasn’t sure which.

“I think I would have killed for something this good even when it was one-hundred-twenty degrees in the desert.”

Izzie sat on one of the other stools across from him, her cup on the counter between them. Watching him intently, with a bit of trepidation, she forecast her curiosity before the words left her mouth. “How did you make it through every day?”

What a good question—and one nobody had asked him yet. Oh, he’d been asked about the action and the things he’d seen. Asked if he’d shot anyone, killed anyone, saved anyone. Asked what he’d done to relieve the boredom, to accomplish his mission.

But nobody had asked him what it was that had held him together every single day. Not until now.

“I’m sorry, that’s probably none of my business.”

“It’s okay. If you want to know the truth, it was
this
that held me together.” He gestured around the room.

She frowned skeptically.

“I don’t mean the bakery. I mean this lifestyle. Home, family, all the safe, secure stuff I grew up with that I thought would be exactly the same when I got back. Only, it wasn’t.”

Staring at him, Izzie revealed her thoughts in her expressive brown eyes. She understood what he meant—got it, exactly. Nick didn’t look away, liking the connection even though they were separated by several feet of sweet-smelling air. Mentally, though, they were touching. Bonding. Sharing the unique brand of estrangement they had each been feeling from the world they’d grown up in.

She finally shook her head. “Well, obviously you have some things to figure out, man-cub.”

He grinned, remembering what he’d said about
The Jungle Book.
“Yeah, well, so do you, right? You didn’t get what you bargained for when you came home, did you?”

She shook her head.

“What’d you do in New York, anyway?” he asked, never having gotten the whole story. He knew she’d had a good job but had given it up to come home and help her family.

“I was...in the arts,” she murmured, lifting her cup to her mouth. She blew across the surface of the coffee, sending steam curling up into the air. It colored her cheeks, already flushed a delicate pink from the heat of the yeasty kitchen. “On the stage.”

An actress. The idea stunned him for a second, though it made sense. Izzie had looks and personality and a lot of self-confidence. He suspected she was amazing onstage.

“But I got hurt last winter and haven’t worked since.”

He lowered his cup, waiting.

A tiny frown line appeared between her eyes as she explained. “I tore my ACL in my left knee and had to have surgery. It required a lot of rehab.”

“And you’re on your feet working in a kitchen all day?” he asked, appalled at the idea of how much pain she had to have experienced. He knew guys who’d had those injuries during his high-school sports days. They were not fun.

“I’m better.” She pointed down to the stool on which she sat. “And I work sitting down a lot.”

Nick wanted to know more. Lots of things. Like what kind of life she’d led in New York and whether anyone had shared it. And what her neck tasted like. And what she planned to do once her father was well enough to come back to the bakery. And what she’d eaten today that had left her lips so ruby red. And why she was resisting something happening between them.

And when she was going to be in his bed.

But the phone interrupted before he could ask, much less get any answers. Excusing herself to answer it, she revealed her frustration with the caller with every word exchanged. Nick heard enough to understand what was going on—her part-time delivery person was calling in sick.

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered after she hung up the phone. “All these orders and he bails on me.” Almost growling, she added, “Are the Cubs playing today? It sounded like the little bastard was at the ball park.”