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Nodding, Mark sipped his beer.
“Doesn’t matter if she’s a blonde, brunette, redhead or bald. Any single woman with a pulse gets shoved at me.”
“And Catholic,” Mark pointed out.
“Mama’s picks, yeah. But none of them are my type.”
Deadpan, his brother asked, “Women?”
“F-you,” he replied. “I mean, I do have a few preferences.”
“Big—”
“Beyond that,” Nick snapped.
Mark relented. “Okay, I’m kidding. What do you want?”
That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Nick had no idea what he wanted. It was supposed to be someone who’d make him want this. This sedate, small-town-in-a-big-city lifestyle.
“I don’t know if I’m cut out for what all of you have.”
When Mark’s brow rose, Nick added, “I wasn’t criticizing. You all seem happy. The couples in this family don’t seem as…”
“Boring?”
“I guess.”
“Thanks,” his brother replied dryly.
“No offense. But you’re all the exception, not the rule.”
Mark murmured, “That’s a lot of exceptions.”
It was. Which meant Nick was out of luck. How many great, happy marriages could one family contain?
But damned if he wasn’t going to give it a try. He’d been telling himself for the last three years of his active enlistment that once he was free—once he was home—he was going to have the kind of life the rest of his family had. The dreams of that normal, happy lifestyle had sustained him through some of the wickedest fighting he’d ever seen. He would not give them up now. Not even if they suddenly seemed a little sedate.
“Face it, they won’t rest until you’re ‘settled down.’”
“Like you?” he asked, raising a brow. His twin was a hard-ass Chicago detective who could hardly be described as “settled down.” The man was as tough as they came, despite his occasionally goofy sense of humor.
“Yeah. Like me.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “You are in no way settled down.” He glanced at the cuts on his twin’s knuckles.
Mark smiled, a twinkle in his eyes. “Guy resisted.”
“Does Noelle know?”
The smile faded. “No, and if you tell her I’ll pound you.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Leaning back in the booth and crossing his arms across his chest, Mark nodded. “I guess you might be able to hold your own now that the Marines toughened you up and filled you out.”
It had long been a friendly argument between them that Nick had inherited their mother’s lean, tall build like Luke and Joe. Mark and Tony resembled their barrel-chested father. But after many tough, physical years in the military, Nick was no longer anybody’s “little” brother. “I think I could take you on.”
“I think you could take anybody on. So why don’t you come down to the station and talk to my lieutenant?”
“Not interested in your job, bro. I’ve had enough of rules and regulations for a while.” They’d talked about the possibility a few times since Nick had returned home, but he wasn’t about to relent on that issue. He’d done his time on the battlefields of Iraq, he didn’t want to add to them in Chicago.
“Yeah, okay,” Mark said, glancing around the crowded restaurant. “I can see why this is so much more up your alley.”
Nick followed his glance and smothered a sigh. Because Mark was right. Helping at the pizzeria was no problem in the short term, heck he’d helped run the place when he was in high school, putting in more time than any of his siblings. But did he really want to become a partner in the business with his brother Tony, as he used to talk about…and as the family was hoping?
Seemed impossible. But Mark was the only one who would understand that. “I’m getting into protection,” he admitted.
“You gonna mass-produce rubbers?” Mark sounded completely innocent, though his eyes sparkled with his usual good humor.
“I can’t wait to tell your kid what a juvenile delinquent you were. Like when you put the Playboy magazine in Father Michael’s desk drawer in sixth grade.”
“Believe me, my kid will know Dad’s on the job from the time he’s old enough to even think about swiping candy bars. Now, what’s with this protection business?”
“I’m going to work part-time as a bodyguard.”
“No kidding?” Mark said, sounding surprised.
“Joe did some renovation work on a nightclub uptown and got friendly with the owner. Turns out they need extra security, so he set up a meeting. I went in Sunday night to talk to them.”
“Bet Meg loved big brother Joe working in a nightclub.”
Like the rest, their older brother Joe was happily married. Nick knew he’d never even look at another woman.
“So,” Mark asked, “why does a club need a bodyguard?”
Nick knew exactly why this club needed a bodyguard after watching the erotic performance by a dancer called the Crimson Rose. The sultry stranger had inhabited his dreams and more than a few of his fantasies ever since he’d seen her on stage, revealing her incredible body while still remaining, somehow, so above it all. He imagined men with less control might try to do more than fantasize about the woman.
“The performers attract a lot of unwanted attention,” he said, not wanting to get into details. Not because he was embarrassed about his job, but because he didn’t want to start talking about the rose-draped dancer and her effect on him.
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 jet black hair was cut short, spiky. Amilitary man.
His dark eyes matched the hair. They were deep set, heavily lashed…bedroom eyes, she’d have to say. His lean face was more rugged than handsome. The strong jaw jutted out the tiniest bit, and his unsmiling mouth was tightly set, as if intentionally trying to disguise the fullness of a pair of amazing male lips.
His shoulders were Mack-truck wide and his chest was football-field broad. And his attitude was all, one-hundred-percent Santori male.
Because Izzie knew it was Nick Santori who’d met her stare from across the room. Nick Santori who’d risen from his seat and was winding his way across the room toward her. Nick Santori who was making the earth shake a little under her feet, just as he always had when she was a teenager.
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.”
