“Hi, Rose,” someone said as she came in the back door.

“Hi, Bernie. How’s the week been?”

The bouncer shrugged, offering her one of his big, boyish grins. “Knocked a few heads together, wiped up the ground with a drunk or two. You know, the usual.”

Laughing, she began to walk past him.

But he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. He glanced at the big canvas bag she carried, which was filled with some street clothes and supplies. “Can I help you in any way, Rose? Carry that? Get you some dinner?”

She shook her head. “You are so sweet, but no, honestly, I’ve got it.” The guy had been tripping over himself to take care of her since her first night at work. If he’d ever made a move on her, she’d suspect it was because he was interested. But he’d never been anything but a nice-if overprotective-friend.

Still smiling as she walked toward her dressing room, Izzie acknowledged just how comfortable she felt here. The club staff was like a second family already. Bernie and Harry. Leah and Jackie and the other dancers. They were all people she cared about, who seemed to care about her.

She didn’t want to give this up. Which was another reason she didn’t quite know how to deal with Nick’s seeming inability to watch her perform. It was as if ever since he’d become her lover, he no longer liked her doing her job.

That was how it seemed. But she couldn’t be sure. “Maybe he really is just busy,” she mumbled, trying to convince herself.

When she reached her dressing room, she put her new key in the new lock and twisted it. Before going inside, however, Leah stopped her. “Hey, I feel like I’m always picking up your presents!” the grinning girl said. She held up a gold foil wrapped box. “Yum. Have I told you how much I love chocolate?”

Izzie glanced at the box, looked down at her own full hips-at least an inch bigger than they’d been when she moved back from New York-and sighed. “Have I told you how much chocolate sticks to my hips and butt?”

The one plus was that the candies were chocolate-covered cherries. And she wasn’t too crazy about them. If they’d been caramels, she’d probably be much more tempted to grab a fistful. As it was, she easily waved them away. “Take them out of my sight, would you?”

Leah clutched the box to her chest. “Woo-hoo! Remind me to watch for the next jewelry box heading your way.”

Entering her dressing room, Izzie slowly slipped out of her clothes and put her robe on. She took her time-there was lots of it. Over the next hour, she got ready for her night. The chatter of women’s voices from the greenroom couldn’t drown out the sound of lots of footsteps walking in the lounge above her head. Customers were already pouring in, performers already on stage judging by the low bass beat she could almost feel reverberating in her chest.

The whole place felt alive and vibrant. Exactly the way she felt when she was here. The only other time she felt as good was when she was with Nick. What on earth was she going to do if he couldn’t take her working here anymore?

“Don’t think about it,” she reminded herself as she glanced at her watch. She’d been here over an hour and he still hadn’t come in. Which was making her very jittery.

Izzie forced everything else out of her head and finished putting on her makeup. Her audience might not see much of her face, but that didn’t mean she didn’t cover the stage makeup basics. She was puffing anti-shine powder on her cheeks when she heard a knock on her door. “Come in.” Almost holding her breath, she let it out with a pleased sigh when she saw Nick. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” he said. He pushed the door shut behind him, bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Quick, hard…hot and sexy. “Been needing that,” he said when he finally straightened.

“Me, too.

“Want more later.”

She grinned. “Me, too.”

“Things are already heating up upstairs, but I wanted to see you before it got too crazy.”

Izzie turned away, slowly lifting the powder puff to her face again. “Do you think it’ll be too busy again for you to be there during my numbers?”

Nick met her eyes in the mirror. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I can’t promise anything.”

He was still hesitant, she heard it in his voice. Nick was avoiding having to acknowledge how he really felt-was going to feel-about her stripping. Izzie wanted to cry, sensing she knew what that answer would be.

He’d hate it. Sure, he’d been fine with her taking her clothes off when she was a stranger. But now that they were lovers? Well, if he was like every other male of the species, he was going to turn into the caveman he’d once jokingly pretended to be and get all overbearing. He’d want her to quit, he’d be surly and pouty until she did.

There weren’t many men who’d be able to take having their girlfriend strip down to a G-string in front of a bunch of strangers…why should she expect Nick to be any different?

“I’m doing my best, Iz.”

“Okay,” she murmured, blinking rapidly against unexpected moisture in her eyes, welling up not because she didn’t understand, she did. But because she so feared what this was going to mean when it finally came to a head between them.

“Oh, God, somebody get a bucket!”

Hearing the loud shout from the corridor outside her dressing room, Izzie immediately rose to her feet.

“Catch her!”

Nick flinched. “Wait here while I see what’s going on.”

She just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

Following him out, she immediately saw a small crowd of a half-dozen dancers gathered around someone who was lying on the floor. Nick pushed through them, and immediately bent down. “Leah, what happened? Are you okay?”

“She’s sick,” someone said. “Like, all over the floor sick.”

Poor Leah. She’d been ill last weekend, and now again. Izzie briefly wondered if the poor kid was hiding an unexpected pregnancy or something. Then, as the crowd parted and she saw Leah’s face, she discounted that idea.

The pretty blonde looked like she was in misery. Her face was ghost white, slicked with sweat, and she appeared too weak to even stand on her own. She looked absolutely nothing like the pretty young thing Izzie had run into a little over an hour ago. She had to have been hit with some kind of fast-moving bug.

Nick didn’t waste time asking questions. He bent to lift the dancer, easily cradling her in his arms as if she was a child, and carried her into the greenroom down the hall. “Somebody get her a cold cloth.”

One of the dancers rushed off to do as Nick said, the rest of them crowded around. Izzie couldn’t say whether their avid interest was more on Leah’s behalf, or because of the incredible sight Nick made playing hero. His muscular arms bulged and flexed, but he spoke so softly-gently-to Leah as he gently laid her on the lumpy sofa in the greenroom. He even brushed her hair out of her face.

It was enough to make the hardest of women melt. Even the half-dozen strippers surrounding the sofa.

Izzie, of course, wasn’t surprised. She knew the tenderness the man was capable of. She also knew the way he’d been raised and imagined he’d have done the same thing if his little sister, Lottie, had been the one lying on that floor.

“What happened?” he asked Leah.

Leah groaned. “It just came over me out of nowhere. I haven’t been nauseous or anything, then all of a sudden, boom.”

“Have you eaten shellfish today?” someone asked.

“Or some old lunch meat?” asked another.

Leah shook her head, gratefully accepting a wet clump of paper towels her dressing-roommate, Jackie, had brought her. She pressed it to her forehead and replied, “I had a salad for lunch, then nothing until I binged on Rose’s chocolates.”

Seven heads swung around to stare at Izzie, seven pairs of eyes wide and curious. Maybe even a little accusing.

She opened her mouth to reply, wondering if they thought she’d done something to make Leah ill, but didn’t have to. The sick dancer herself spoke up again. “I found them lying on the stoop when I got to work today, with Rose’s name on them. She never even opened the box, she just gave them to me.”