Jo Leigh - One-Click Buy - September Harlequin Blaze

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.

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.”

“You must know I already have it.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t frown. “Gloria. Dead sister walking.” The coffee had finished brewing, so she poured two big cups. “Cream or sugar?”

“Neither.” Taking the cup from her, he inhaled the steam. “My mother makes lousy coffee. So does your sister, who seems to have decided even the smell of caffeine can make our hooligan nephews bounce off the walls.”

“Decaf’s for quitters,” she muttered.

Startled, Nick barked a laugh. This was no sweet little Izzie, the girl he remembered.