I’m feeling a need for some fresh cannoli,” he murmured, smiling as he looked out the window at the sky, streaked orange by the setting sun. Izzie was no longer in sight...she obviously wasn’t too desperate for pizza.
Maybe he’d deliver it to her.
“Judging by the way she bolted, you’d better think again.”
Nick shrugged. He wasn’t worried. After all, Izzie had had a thing for him once upon a time...she had practically chased him down. He just needed to remind her of that.
And to let her know he was ready to let her catch him.
* * *
“I SWEAR, BRIDGET, you should have seen his expression. It was as if it was the first time in his life a woman has ever turned him down.” Izzie didn’t even look at her cousin as she spoke. She was too busy punching into a huge ball of dough, picturing Nick Santori’s face while she did it.
Though it had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d run into him, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Drat the man for invading her brain again, when she’d managed to forget him over the past several years. Ever since she skipped out of Chicago to follow her dancing dreams, she’d been convincing herself her crush on him had been a silly, girlish thing.
Seeing him had reminded her of the truth: she’d wanted Nick before she’d even understood what it was she wanted. Now that she knew what the tingle between her legs and the heaviness in her breasts meant, the want was almost painful.
“Didn’t Nana always say the secret to a flaky crust was not to overwork it?” her cousin said, sounding quietly amused.
Izzie shot her cousin—who sat on the other side of the bakery kitchen—a glare. “You want to do this?”
Bridget, who was pretty and soft-looking, slid a strand of long, light brown hair behind her ear. “You’re the baker. I’m the bookkeeper.” She sipped from her huge coffee mug. “So why did you walk away? You’ve wanted him forever.”
“Maybe. But I don’t want forever in general,” she reminded her cousin as she floured the countertop and began to work the dough with a rolling pin. “You know I don’t want this for any longer than I’m forced to have it.” She glanced around the kitchen, where she was working alone to finish up the dessert orders for their restaurant clients. Including Santori’s.
Not that she’d be the one delivering their order...no way. Her delivery guy would be in to take on that task shortly.
“I know. You’ll be gone again once Uncle Gus is well enough to come back to work.” Bridget didn’t sound too happy about that, which Izzie understood. Her sweet, gentle-natured cousin was an only child, and she’d practically been adopted by Izzie and her own sisters. They’d been very close growing up.
Izzie missed her, too. But not enough to stay here. As soon as her father recovered, and her mother no longer had to nurse him at home full time, Izzie would be out of here for good. Whether she’d go back to New York and try to reclaim some kind of dancing career she didn’t yet know. But her future did not include a long-term stint as the Flour Girl of Taylor Street.
It also didn’t include becoming the lover of any guy who her parents would see as the perfect reason for Izzie to stick around and pop out babies. Even a lover as tempting as Nick.
“So how’s your life going?” she asked her cousin, wanting the subject changed. “How’s the job?”
Bridget leaned forward, dropping her elbows onto the counter. “I guess I’m not very good. My boss obviously doesn’t trust me, there are some files he won’t even let me look at.”
“Weren’t you hired to keep the books at that place?”
Bridget, who’d gone to work three months ago for a local used-car dealership right here in the neighborhood, nodded. “They’re a mess. But every time I ask him for access to older records, he practically pats me on the head and sends me back to my desk like a good little girl.”
Izzie assumed her cousin meant her boss figuratively patted her on the head. Because, though Bridget was in no way a fireball like Izzie and her two sisters—she wasn’t a pushover, either. It might take her a while to get her steam up, but Izzie had seen glimpses of temper in her sweet-as-sugar Irish-Italian cousin. That boss of hers obviously hadn’t gotten to know the real Bridget yet. Because she was about