Overexposed. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ “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. A military 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.”

      “What, are you a waiter now?” she asked, amused at the thought of him waiting tables. Especially since that chest of his could probably double as one.

      Nick had, like all the Santori kids, worked in the restaurant in high school. Just as Izzie had worked in the bakery—often eating her paycheck to sweeten her teenage angst.

      But he’d been in the Marines for years. She didn’t see him slinging pizzas now that he was back in Chicago. Not after he’d been slinging Uzis or whatever those macho soldier guys carried.

      “Maybe. Why don’t you tell me what you want and I’ll let you know if I can get it for you?”

      Thin and cheesy New York style pizza was the first thing that came to mind, but Izzie didn’t want to get strung up at the corner of Taylor and Racine. “I already placed my order.”

      He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t just talking about pizza.”

      God, was that…it was. There was a flirtatious twinkle in those blackish-brown eyes of his. He’d been throwing some subtle innuendo at her and it had gone clear over her head.

      “Oh,” was all she could manage.

      Cake flour must СКАЧАТЬ