Waking Up to You Overexposed - By Leslie Kelly Page 0,103
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.”