One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Blaze

by Jo Leigh

  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

  OVER 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 mid-step 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 coffeemak
er, 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 oversized 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 on stage.

  “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.”

  Fierce. He liked it.

  “Don’t sweat it, Iz. I’ll help you out.”

  Blinking, she replied, “Huh?”

  “I’ll help you make the deliveries.” Hopping off the bench, he walked over to a tall cart, laden with cardboard
boxes labeled with the names of several local restaurants. “After all,” he said, offering her a boyish smile over his shoulder, “what are friends for?”

  FRIENDS WERE FOR going to the movies with. Sharing bad date stories with. Getting through boring reunions with. Crying over breakups with. Dieting with. Drinking with. Clubbing with.

  Friends were not for having sex with. Or lusting over. Or inspiring lust simply by the way they handled a few heavy boxes and filled out their soft, broken-in jeans.

  Nick Santori was no friend of hers. Because oh, God, she had already broken every “friend” rule in the book and she’d only agreed to his terms a few hours ago.

  When they’d talked in the kitchen, he’d been friendly and warm. That boyish smile he’d flashed her when he’d offered to help her with the deliveries had made him seem so charming and endearing. Completely the opposite of the brooding, simmering hunk of male heat she’d watched through covetous eyes at the club last weekend. It was like he was two people in one body.

  And she wanted both of them desperately.

  She couldn’t believe she’d thought she could handle being merely his friend. Now, having been closed up in a delivery van with him for the past couple of hours, she was definitely having second thoughts.

  He was being so damned wonderful. Not just offering to help her, he had refused to let her lift a single box. They’d gone to a dozen shops and restaurants, delivering cakes, pies and pastries to some places for their dinner customers tonight, and muffins and coffee cake to others for their breakfast crowds tomorrow. He’d charmed her customers, and her. He’d even driven, since Izzie hated dealing with the traffic. She’d sat in the passenger seat of the bakery van, reading off the list of stops, trying not to notice how big he was and how small the van felt with him in it.

  She also tried not to notice how wonderful he smelled. How the sound of his low laughter rolled over her, more warm and sultry than a summer breeze. How his short hair curled a little behind his ear. How strong his lightly stubbled jaw was and how thick his body was beneath his tight T-shirt. How he warmed her from two feet away.

  And how very, very much she wanted him.

  Especially after the cannoli. It was the damn cannoli that put the nail in her coffin…and the wetness in her panties.