Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen)

chapter Fourteen


Jack was officially in the ninth circle of hell. Not knowing how the original circles of Dante’s Inferno were actually populated, Jack invented his own occupants. The seventh circle was for guys who hadn’t got laid in months. The eighth was for idiots who were sex-starved and had a sizzling woman raring to go but still chose to wait it out in the hopes of getting a date. And the ninth was for the suckers who had the same problems as the ones in the seventh and eighth circles but had to suffer through it all while listening to opera.

Jack loathed opera.

But Tony’s kitchen meant Tony’s rules, so Pavarotti or whoever the hell was shredding Jack’s nerve endings while he prepped his mise-en-place would be the musical accompaniment for the day and probably the entire evening. Laurent had muttered something about how it lent a sorely needed gravitas after Jack’s seedier exploits.

He was running on a couple of hours of ragged sleep, his every cell consumed with Lili and his aching need for her. He could still feel her kiss on his mouth, the imprint of her nipples on his tongue, her slick warmth coating his fingers. Holding her last night while she shattered against his hand had been so arousing that even giving it a flickering thought made him hard enough to pound nails.

Calling her out on her bullshit had seemed like such a smart idea until his dramatic exit had been cut short by that disclosure about her high school suffering. His heart hurt that she would ever have to endure that pain. Then it thundered furiously that she would allow it to create this barrier between them. Wasn’t it enough that no other woman could hold a candle to her hotness, that he wanted her more than was truly good for him?

Right, because his opinion was all that mattered. Bighead.

He had always considered his life becoming public property the necessary saddlebags to his goal of taking his brand to the next level. Any woman in his life would need a thick skin to withstand the barbs of twenty-first-century fame. He couldn’t ask Lili to upend her existence for him, and the express train to his next conquest, network television, had already left the station.

Still, even if they had no chance, he wished she could see herself the way he saw her. Funny, loyal, beautiful, sexy. Christ, so sexy. He rubbed his lip, still marked with her passion. When she bit him, he had almost come in his pants for the first time since he was a pizza-faced teen. That’s how she made him feel. Like an infatuated teenager with perma-wood.

“What are you smiling about?” Cara’s brittle voice arrested his fantasies while her glacial eyes screened him carefully. He needed to stop grinning like a half-wit. It would not do.

“Nothing.” He snatched one of the menus she’d brought and scanned for errors. He had decided to open with a bruschetta trio—mini-helpings of three toppings served over his own toasted, rustic bread: tomato-basil-fresh mozz, the braised rabbit stew, and prosciutto and lobster crème fraîche. Working with the contest twist, Tony had chosen a risotto for Jack and gnocchi for his own menu. Not being able to serve pasta had immediately put Jack at a disadvantage—risotto could be tricky—but he had been more concerned about the choice of entrée. If Tony had picked something that needed to be slow-cooked for hours, Jack would have been screwed.

Thankfully, the host chef had gone easy on him with lamb chops, leaving Jack to choose a sauce. Jack had spent the entire morning creating something new, and he was pleased with the outcome, a salsa verde that brought out the meat’s flavors to perfection. The finishing touch was another mini trio, this time sweet—a Valrhona chocolate torte, salted caramel gelato, and zabaglione with fresh seasonal berries.

All good, but he’d be hard-pressed to beat last night’s feast and the sweet taste of Lili’s plump, luscious breasts. He bet she tasted amazing all over.

“Listen, we need to talk,” Cara cut in. Hands cupping slender hips, she balanced her slight weight on one precarious heel and eyed him like she’d caught him looking at smutty photos.

“Shoot.”

“I don’t know what you think your end game is.”

His brain stutter-stepped, baffled at her choice of words. “My end game?”

“I was watching you last night at dinner, how you couldn’t take your eyes off my sister. I won’t have you screwing Lili over. When I suggested she indulge in your services, I never expected you’d get all”—with an arc of her hand, she swiped the air near his face in a threatening manner—“smitten.”

“Back up a second,” he said, scooting uncomfortably over the “smitten” bit. “When you suggested she indulge in my what?”

She tapped her foot. “Jack, did you, for one second, think my very young, very inexperienced sister would go for you without a little encouragement? She’s had a bad year between my mom and Marco and slaving away at this place for my father. I promised her you’d be up for some fun and games.” She looked to the ceiling and shook her head in disbelief. “And you couldn’t even do that.”

Well, he was with her on the disbelief front. In fact, he was more surprised that he was surprised at all. Lili had made it clear from the beginning that she was interested in one thing, and it wasn’t what was going on between his ears, but last night, she had shared an important part of herself. Her fragility had blazed through his veins and clamped his heart in a vise.

Shit. Three days in and his heart had entered the equation.

Luckily, he didn’t have time to inspect that because Cara was bringing her rant home. “I don’t know what you expect to get out of this, but you are not good enough for my sister, Jack.”

Cold fury grabbed him by the throat. “But I’m good enough to service her?”

She blanched. “She’s not like us, Jack. If you hurt her—”

“Cara, mind your own business.” He and his producer had butted heads before, but it had never gotten personal. Hey, it still hadn’t. In her eyes, he was a meal ticket, a vessel she could pour her ambitions into, not a real person with, God forbid, feelings. Had it occurred to no one that he might be the one at risk of getting his supposedly bulletproof heart stomped flatter than a veal cutlet?

Again with the heart stuff. That needed to stop. Stat.

“You hurt her,” Cara repeated, the ice coming through clear, “and I’m going to cut off your coglioni and feed them to tree squirrels.” With that, she strode out of the kitchen in a tornado of indignation.

What. The. F*ck.

All he wanted was a date. Just a little quality time to get to know this woman. He shook his head, trying to clear the shock. Didn’t work.

He needed to forget about loco DeLuca women and nails-on-a-chalkboard arias and get his mind in the game. A run might clear his head. Or whacking said head against the Dumpster in the alley for an hour.

“I’m taking a break,” he snapped at Laurent, who had been too busy flirting with one of the scarier big-hairs to notice Cara’s flip off the rails. Crashing through the kitchen doors, he bumped into that other infuriating DeLuca. Lili.

He frowned, then frowned harder at the way his heart boosted at the sight of her. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here.” She tilted her head, taking in his fierce scowl. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Of course she was killing him in hip-hugging jeans and a wispy excuse for a top that barely contained her everything. Killing him.

“Okay,” she dragged out. She peeked around his shoulder through the window panel into the kitchen. “Is Cara about?”

“No. I expect she’s off shouting at someone and making them feel very, very small.”

“I’ve always wondered what a food television producer does.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets for safety and his own sanity. “You sleep okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“Like a baby,” he lied.

“Wake up every two hours, wet?”

“How did you know?” That netted him a raspy laugh and went some way to defrosting his chill. It wasn’t far from the truth, either.

“Jack, about last night…”

He held his breath. Nothing good ever started with those words.

“I just wanted to say…well, grazie.”

That was a first and it eased a smile from him. “You liked my gelato?”

“Yeah, you give good gelato,” she said, her color rising while her eyelids dipped. He loved that. “How’s the prep?”

“Menu’s set. Your father breezed in for the beauty shots and then took off, so he must be feeling confident.”

“Beauty shots?”

“The final dishes, perfectly styled. They cut them in during editing.” A thought unfurled in his brain. A brilliant, sparkling thought. “I want to show you something.”

“Sounds promising.”

“You wish.” He took her slender-fingered hand into his. Zing. Every bloody time. Her nipples poked through the devilishly thin material of her top, all hard and pouty. And now his dick felt all hard and pouty. Wonderful. “Let’s get out of here for a while.”

A nose wrinkle preceded a furtive look over her shoulder. “I really should find Cara. I said I’d help.”

Farther along the hallway, a door banged open and out thundered Gina, closely followed by a bent-out-of-shape Cara. Both were far too involved in their drama to notice anyone else.

“Cara, I’m not taking it off,” Gina said, puffing out her ample chest. It strained against a sparkly pink T-shirt adorned with the words TEAM FAT CHICK.

“You cannot wear it,” Cara countered emphatically. “We need to show the restaurant in the most professional light possible. This is too important.”

“Oh no,” Lili murmured. She took a step forward, with the clear intention of doing what she did best—smooth and fix. His hand tightened around hers and willed her still.

Gina jutted her chin to match her chest. “Oh my God, Cara, you’re such a spoilsport. Even when we were kids, you always had to be the queen freaking bee. We just want everyone to know they can’t mess with the DeLucas.” She flounced off to the front of the house to Cara barking her name.

Taking it as a sign that the gods were finally working in his favor, Jack nodded toward the kitchen and whispered, “How about the great escape, alley-style?”

Ten minutes later, he parked his rental outside a nondescript building on Fulton Market, the West Loop street that hosted many of Chicago’s finest dining establishments, art galleries, and high-end lofts. He’d made sure the car’s air-conditioning was on full blast because apparently it wasn’t sufficient that he couldn’t have her—he needed to torture himself with the sight of those beautiful, erect nipples.

His jeans were not loose enough for this.

Her face lifted as they approached the entrance to the building. “Is this your new place?”

He smiled back, feeling unaccountably proud at her enthusiasm. “Yep. I’ve got six weeks to get it into shape, but I can do it.” The mostly Polish crew was working on the electrics today, and every ripped-up wall was awash in a spaghetti wiring explosion. Lili stepped forward and he body-checked her back into the foyer.

“Best not to go any farther. It’s easy to step on something you shouldn’t and get hurt.”

Smaller than his usual restaurant footprint, the space’s eighty-year-old ornate tin ceiling and the warm firehouse brick lent it an intimacy not usually found in a Jack Kilroy outpost. As she peered in, he spent a few minutes pointing out the planned locations of the kitchen and the dining room. It was still unformed but he itched to know what she thought.

“Nice, but what about the food?” Of course his girl would focus on the essentials.

“It’ll be new American with country French influences. Lots of small plates, no entrées over fifteen dollars.”

“Will you have that chicken liver crostini dish?”

“With the fig marmalade? You liked that?” he asked, knowing damn well that she did but needing the boost only her validation could give.

“Hmm.” Her eyes glazed over.

He spoke at length about his ideas, upping the ante with each subsequent dish, and watched carefully for her reaction while trying to control his own. Each description produced a sexy hum of approval or a flash of her tongue that aroused him intolerably. Why did his food sound so much better with her breathy endorsement? Cooking for her, then taking her while he tasted his flavors on her lips was about as good a date as he could imagine.

He snapped back to reality. His real life where dating this woman was no longer an option.

Somewhere along the way, her expression had faded to solemn. “Why do you do it?”

“What? Cook incredible food?”

“TV. The celebrity industrial complex.” She stared at him with such intent that his body tightened like he was being grill-pressed against the wall. “You said you’d rather be cooking in your restaurant. That you miss it. Except for all those annoying quinceñeras.”

The twinge in his belly acknowledged the truth of that. He did miss it but it wasn’t as if he could stop moving. Success addiction was about the sweetest feeling, almost as good as sex, and the way his sex life was panning out lately, it was his only reliable high.

“I do it because it’s never enough and I’m greedy.”

Her tongue darted and licked her lips. Pink, wet, making him hard. He stared, telegraphing exactly how greedy he was.

She didn’t back down, just hitched that skeptical eyebrow. “I thought you were going to say you owe it to the masses to share your genius.”

“That too.” He shrugged and the moment passed, as they always do. “I’m also providing significant employment. Publishing, television, tabloids. Cara’s coming with me to NBN, you know.”

“Good to know one of the DeLucas will still be employed by year’s end.”

Alarm pinged him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” She knuckled the corner of her eye and turned toward the exit. “We should go.”

Not so fast. He snugged her close and breathed her in while he still could. “Sweetheart, tell me.”

She didn’t speak, so he rubbed her back. Holding her felt comfortable and right, like the first bite of a warm bread pudding. They stayed like that for a few minutes until she murmured against his chest, “We’re in trouble. DeLuca’s is in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“My mother’s medical bills left us pretty strapped. And you saw it on Saturday night. We’re not exactly raking it in.” She peeked up, her eyes shining. “But the show should help, right?”

The show might generate some interest, but he doubted it would solve anything over the long-term. Jack had enough experience to know that brief spurts of publicity were exactly that. Brief.

“What about Maximo?”

That made her smile. “Marco.”

“Whatever.”

She shook her head. “He’s practically broke himself. He spends a lot of time in Vegas and he has the worst poker face. My eight-year-old cousin, Freddie, could run rings around him.”

Huh, just one more reason why Marco needed to be high-fived in the face. Taking her hand in his, he rubbed his thumb along her palm. “Do you mind me asking how much?”

“Marco loaned my father fifty grand for my mother, but we’re bleeding money every week and the lines of credit are drying up.”

His mind whirred. That was doable but, throwing money at it was just a Band-Aid. Her eyes, as big as blue headlights, found his again and it felt like minutes passed in her gaze. He released her because it was starting to feel a little too good.

“You’ve got something to say,” she said, reading something altogether different into the fact that he had practically shoved her from his embrace.

“It’s not really my place.” A chef’s kitchen was sacrosanct, which is why Jack despised those makeover shows where some mouthy big shot overhauled another chef’s menus.

“No, go on. I’d like to hear your opinion.”

He thought about diplomacy, then figured she was a big girl. “You’re overstaffed, overpriced, overstocked, and your menu’s too big. You have at least one line cook too many, maybe two, and your father would probably be better off running the kitchen instead of ambushing poor, unsuspecting, brain-injured chefs at the bar.” He tried to soften it with a smile. “But I think you know all that.”

“My father is old school. There are so many changes we could make to economize and draw in new customers but he won’t hear of it. And he likes to keep his hand in everywhere.”

Iron fist, more like, but Jack held his tongue and sucked in a speech-countering breath. Besides, he understood that instinct to control your environment. The position was called head chef for a reason.

She smiled. “At least you don’t have to work with your family. As much as I love them, it can be trying as all get-out.” The words were hardly on the air before discomfort marred her features. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”

“It was?”

A flush of red crept up her chest. “Yesterday, you mentioned trouble with your sister and something about your biological father. About how he wasn’t interested.”

He’d forgotten he told her that. Next time he had a concussion, he needed to refrain from the vino while knocking back the narcotics. Despite being a chatterbox, as Jules was fond of telling him, Jack didn’t usually lay out his life story on the first date. But hey, this wasn’t a date and the likelihood of it developing into one was slim to crapola because after the taping—in, oh, three hours—he was never going to see this woman again. Why, then, was his mouth itching to spill? Maybe because she had cracked open that steadfast façade of hers and he knew that had been difficult for her. More likely, he wanted to make the moment last and ride this wave of intimacy until he wiped out.

He must be starting to enjoy the hospitality in the ninth circle of hell.

“Until I was ten and my mother married my stepfather, it was just the two of us. She was Irish and she emigrated to England when her family threw her out at sixteen for getting pregnant. She went into labor with me on the Liverpool dock.”

Her eyes enlarged in surprise. “A dramatic beginning. How apt.”

He smiled, appreciating her effort to make it easier. “She never talked about him. Maybe she thought she’d have more time. She was only twenty-eight years old when she died.” A brief, painful memory of her brassy personality deadened by a faded hospital gown and an ill-fitting wig flashed across his mind. He blinked it away. “When I started getting spots on British morning TV about nine years ago, he came out of the woodwork looking for money.”

“Oh.” She rubbed her neck. “What did you do?”

“I paid up. Then I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

The low whine of a drill made the perfect soundtrack to the maudlin atmosphere. She stepped close and slotted her hand into his. “What happened, exactly?”

“Exactly?” He squeezed, taking strength from her warmth. “I’d hoped to show him my new restaurant in Covent Garden, but he had a same-day return ticket to Dublin and didn’t have time. Instead, we met in a bar at London Paddington.” The clarity of that day struck him anew. The bustle of the station, the departure announcements ringing reedy over the PA system. Jack had arrived a half hour early and knocked back a double scotch, then shredded countless napkins while he waited for the express train from Heathrow. A flying visit, his father called it, flashing that smile, a funhouse mirror image of Jack’s. No time to tour his pride and joy. No time to talk about his mother or why the man whose genetic material he shared had been absent all these years. Only a few rushed moments to clink whiskey glasses (both rounds on Jack—sláinte) and cut to the meat course.

“He led with ‘Jack, son, I’ve had a run of bad luck…’ He called me son. It was a nice touch, I suppose.” Learning his father’s true intentions had crushed him, but better he know than hold on to childhood fantasies of star-crossed youth ripped apart by their censorious families.

“He’s rung a few times since but I never call him back.” The most recent time six months ago. His assertion of illness hadn’t moved Jack in the slightest. He met Lili’s glossy blue gaze, challenging her to judge him. “I know that must sound harsh to someone for whom family is everything.”

Her hand tightened in his. “You did what you had to do, Jack. Sometimes you have to cut out the toxic elements. For your own sanity.”

He couldn’t help but read doom into that. It’s what Lili had been trying to do since that video came out. Weed him out before he poisoned her life any further.

Telling her should have made him feel better, especially as it opened up the possibility of sinking into that soft womanly body for a sympathy hug. There would be no more of that nonsense. He broke their connection and returned his gaze to the restaurant’s embryonic interior.

“There I go again, making it all about me.”

“I could listen to you talk all day,” she said, her voice thrillingly compassionate.

His chest tightened and he cleared his throat like he could dislodge the annoying constriction. “I’ll probably need art for these walls. Interested in picking up a commission?”

At his abrupt halt to the intimacy, her mouth quirked but she didn’t question it. “I’m not sure my work would be suitable. It’s—”

“Porny?” he cut in, aiming to lighten the mood.

That got him a cuff in the arm and they were back to the playful vibe between them. Not entirely, but he faked it. He’d learned a few tricks since climbing the ladder of fame.

“No!” she said. “I was going to say far too sophisticated for new American with country French influences. Though I suppose you could get some nice pics of farm girls doing chores.”

“Virginal milkmaids with big buckets?”

“The farmer’s wife with her husband’s huge…knife,” she said with a naughty laugh that did wonderful things to his brain, and surprisingly, not the one in his trousers. The tension of last night and the previous few moments had faded only to be replaced with a sweet ache somewhere in the vicinity of his lungs. A ground-rumbling sound started up at the back of the site.

“We should make a move,” he said, resolved to keep a cool head where Lili was concerned from here on out. Just a few hours to go.

“We have some time, don’t we?”

“Depends on what you have in mind.”

She brushed by him toward the exit. On purpose, the little minx.

“Well, I figured you showed me yours, so now it’s time I showed you mine.” Those pool-deep blues gaped wide, an innocent coda to her flirty words.

Not. Buying. It.

Heat burned a molten trail down his spine. So much for keeping it chill. He followed her out to the street.