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.

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 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 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.