on Izzie, he hadn’t let the thought of the sultry stripper drift into his mind. Now, however, knowing he was about to see her again, he couldn’t help but remember the way she’d made him feel last weekend.
Hot. Hungry. Needy.
So would any sexy, naked woman after such a long dry spell.
“She’s something else.”
“I noticed last weekend.”
Harry Black shrugged. “Yeah, she’s a looker, but there’s something special about her even when she’s not on stage. Got her head on right—a smart one. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried about her. She could get herself in trouble.”
Nick could certainly understand that. Considering how attracted he’d been to her, he could see how a much more desperate man might react to her sultry performance.
“She’s not going to like me hiring someone to mainly look out for her,” Harry cautioned. “So we’ll leave that part between us, okay? As far as she knows, you’re just another bouncer.”
“Fine.” In fact, it was more than fine. He wanted as little interaction with the woman he was supposed to be protecting as possible. Not that he was truly worried about her effect on him—it had been a one time thing, that was all.
He’d been telling himself that for days. He’d also been ignoring the fact that none of the other strippers he’d seen that night had so much as caused his heart rate to increase its regular, lazy rhythm. Only her.
Meeting her would take care of that, he was sure of it. She wore a mask, meaning her looks were all from the neck down. She’d have muddy eyes or crooked teeth or a hooked nose. Or a voice like a truck driver. Or she’d snort when she laughed. Something would be wrong. Something would break the spell.
That would be the end of his interest. No doubt about it.
THE CRIMSON ROSE spotted the dark-haired man in black the moment she peeked through the curtains on the stage. And the moment she saw him—immediately recognizing him by his height and the power of his shadowed body—her heart began to beat harder.
He’d come back. For her.
This was the first night she’d been back to the club since last Sunday night, when she’d first seen him during her last performance on this stage. Inexplicably, she suspected this was his first night back, too. When she’d asked the other dancers about him, all had denied seeing such a man in the club during the past five nights.
She had drawn him back. Just as he—the very thought that he might be in the crowd again tonight—had worked to draw her here as well.
Not that she needed much of a draw. She loved what she did. She positively came alive while moving under a spotlight. The fact that her clothes were falling off her body as she did so was completely incidental.
She honestly didn’t care.
“He came back,” she whispered, almost bouncing on her toes, so excited she could hardly stand it.
Not just excited. Relieved.
Because though she’d only seen him from a distance, she already felt incredibly attracted to him. He’d be a marvelous distraction from the other man who’d been occupying her thoughts lately.
The one she couldn’t have.
She began to smile, feeling, for the first time in days, a little upbeat. Working at the club was her one outlet, her only escape from the life she had so wanted to avoid coming back to here in Chicago. She loved these secret, wicked weekends.
And now that she’d realized there was another man—someone else—who could cause an instant, aching sort of want deep inside her, Izzie Natale sensed those weekends simply wouldn’t come fast enough.
“You’re not the only man in Chicago, Nick Santori,” she whispered while the stage crew finished stripping the stage for her signature solo number.
When she’d first seen the ad in the paper for dancers for a Chicago gentleman’s club, Izzie had had no illusions about what the job would entail. She wasn’t some young dance ingénue who’d turned up for an audition only to be shocked at the very idea of taking off her clothes for a bunch of men.
Izzie had taken off her clothes for plenty of men. Sometimes even groups of them.
It wasn’t as if the Rockettes danced in a whole lot of clothes. And during the three months she’d performed with the Modern Dance Company of Manhattan, she’d done two nude artistic performances.
The dancing she did at Leather and Lace wasn’t exactly artistic. But, then again, she wasn’t exactly nude, either. After all, she never took off her G-string.
Yes, her audience in Chicago was after sexual titillation rather than cultural stimulation. But, honestly, judging by the way some of the modern dance aficionados had come backstage and tried to pick up the dancers, she figured the motivations were, at heart, exactly the same.
Dancing was dancing. After the dire prognosis she’d received when having her torn ACL repaired several months ago, she didn’t care where she was performing, or what she was wearing when she did it.
Honestly, now, having had a taste of it, she realized she couldn’t have chosen a better venue. Because here, hidden behind a red velvet mask, she was free to be everything Izzie Natale of the famous Taylor Street Natale’s Bakery was not.
Sexual. Uninhibited.
Free.
Before she’d even dragged her mind into readiness, she was introduced and her music had begun. Izzie moved onto the stage, dancing for herself and herself alone, as she always did, letting the petals fall where they may. She remained above everything, even oblivious to the money being tossed onto the stage—the crew would pick it up when she was finished. She also ignored the gasps and avid stares of the crowd.
Except one man’s avid stare. His, she wanted to see, though it would prove difficult with him standing in the most shadowy area of the place and her nearly blinded by the spotlight. But when the choreography moved her downstage right—closest to the bar, and him—she risked it and looked.
And nearly fell off the stage.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
She lost the beat of the song and got a little tangled on her own feet. She also had to throw down an extra couple of petals a few measures too soon to try to cover her misstep.
Because in that quick flash when the light had hit him just right, she’d recognized the face, those shoulders, that hair.
It was Nick Santori who stood near the bar. Nick was the same dark, shadowy stranger who’d had her blood pumping through her veins, throbbing between her legs both last week when she’d first seen him here and a few moments ago when she’d glimpsed him again.
The bastard. Was she never going to be free of him? Would no man ever make her feel that crazy/excited/hungry feeling she got whenever he was in the vicinity? And what in the hell was he doing here, anyway?
Worse—what was he going to do about it if he realized she, the woman who’d shot him down in the bakery two days ago, was the Crimson Rose?
Her mind awash with the ramifications of Nick’s presence, Izzie finished her number. As soon as it was over, she darted behind the curtains and stuck her arms into a short, silky robe hanging right backstage. Barely noticing the crew members, who immediately got to work re-setting the stage for the more typical dancers, she hurried down the back stairs toward her private dressing room.
Normally, all the dancers would share one and Izzie was no prima donna who required her own space. But the owner of Leather and Lace had insisted on giving her a private, coat-closet sized room because of how serious Izzie was about protecting her identity. Once he’d realized just how much the “mystery” of the Crimson Rose enhanced the club’s reputation—and