Waking Up to You Overexposed - By Leslie Kelly Page 0,142

sounded a little...empty. Lonely. Bored.

Which made Izzie suddenly remember the way she’d been feeling right before she’d hurt her leg.

Very much the same way.

All the things Vanessa had been describing were things Izzie had been doing the past few years in New York. She missed none of them. Honestly, all she really missed were her friends and her apartment. The lifestyle she’d already begun to outgrow even before she’d been forced to leave it.

Going back to it didn’t sound very palatable.

She shook off that crazy thought—not go back to her life? Insane. Like she had anything better going on here? “So which guy did you shove in the fountain?”

“The French dude. Pierre from Paris. Only, I think his name was probably really Petey from Poughkepsie or something. He wasn’t French any more than my dry wheat toast was French this morning.” Sighing, her friend added, “Why do men suck so bad?”

“Not all of them,” she said before thinking better of it.

Vanessa caught the tone in her voice and leaped on it. “Talk. Who is he? What’s he do? When did you start doing him?”

Having had no one to truly confide in since she’d been here...about her feelings, her relationship with Nick, even a bit about her sexy weekend job, she found herself spilling all of it to Vanessa. She must have talked for a solid five minutes without letting her friend get a word in. Finally realizing that, she whispered, “You still there?”

Vanessa murmured, “Oh, honey. This is serious.”

Yes. It was. Very serious.

“This Nick, I remember you talking about him.”

Izzie was afraid of that. Nick had always been—for her—the dream guy she’d never landed.

Now she’d landed him. She just didn’t know if she was going to get to keep him. Or if he even wanted her to, considering he hadn’t been able to bring himself to watch her dance again at the club.

“He might be a man worth settling down for, Izzie. Giving up your dancing...wait, what the hell did you say is the name of this place you’re dancing at?”

She should have known that would interest her friend more than any potential romance. “It’s called Leather and Lace.”

“Holy shit, girl, you’re strippin’.”

“Yeah. I’m stripping. And I’m having the time of my life.” Well, the stripping wasn’t giving her the time of her life. Nick was. But she’d already talked enough about Nick.

Vanessa demanded all the details on Izzie’s secret life, not sounding the least judgmental, and asked a bunch of questions. “That sounds like fun. You know, I’ve thought about taking a strip-dance exercise class they offer at my health club, but there’s a waiting list.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, honey, I’m not. It is the hottest thing going—there’s a three-month-long list to get in this class and everybody I know is putting their name on it. If you come back, you need to teach me how and maybe I’ll retire and we can start a school somewhere. Teach housewives how to shake their booties.”

Izzie laughed softly at that silly idea. Then she thought of the word Vanessa had used. If. “What do you mean, if I come back? Why wouldn’t I come back?”

Vanessa grew very quiet, as if working out what to say. Knowing her friend was streetwise in a way Izzie never had been, she very much wanted to hear it. Anything Vanessa put this much thought into had to be worth hearing.

Finally, her friend murmured, “Why would you come back here when the life you really want is there?”

“You think I want to be a baker for the rest of my life?” Izzie protested, shocked that her friend would even suggest it.

“I don’t know whether you want to be a baker or a stripper. A pizza-delivery gal or a ballerina. All I know is that whatever you end up wanting to do, it’ll be tied up with that man you’ve loved for half your life.”

Izzie’s jaw dropped. She flinched so hard the phone fell onto her lap. Scrambling to get it, she heard Vanessa’s words echoing in her head. Especially because they’d come so quickly—mere minutes—after Izzie had been tearing herself apart to try to figure out just what she felt for Nick.

She really shouldn’t have had to think about it so hard. She knew what she felt for Nick. It was the same thing she’d always felt for him, only deeper now, adult. Sensual. Mature.

Forever.

Vanessa was right. She loved him. Part of her knew she should resent that, since it had been what she’d feared—and why she’d thrown