Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen)

chapter Three


Jack leaned his elbows on the bar and steepled his fingers. He had reached a point where it was easier to take the hits than disabuse people of their precious preconceptions. Hack. Sellout. Whore. Since Ashley’s post-breakup media blitzkrieg, he refused to read anything written about him, but tuning out an in-your-face insult like that required a different level of fortitude.

The less time he spent in his restaurants, the more he found himself on the receiving end of the snide, the smug, and the outright scornful. There was nothing he’d prefer than to be working the line at his New York kitchen, Thyme on 47th, instead of traipsing all over the country like a glorified carnival barker. Damn, he was tired. An unsettlingly soul-deep tired that had little to do with his road-warrior status. Keeping Jack Kilroy front and center had turned into the biggest challenge of his life, and not for the first time in the last six months, he questioned whether he was up for it any longer.

But the new show would be different. Less travel, studio-based, and a chance to take his brand to the next level. He didn’t want to recommend a particular skillet; he wanted his name on the box. He didn’t want one cookbook; he wanted twenty with translations in thirty languages. Mostly he wanted to show people how to make a restaurant-quality meal for a quarter of the price.

Preferably with Jack Kilroy–branded cookware.

Like any enterprise that required a public face and hard work, there were pitfalls. Lack of privacy for one. Bloodsuckers who made a living off gleefully reporting his mistakes and grabbing compromising pictures of him. Or the people he loved. His sister’s face, scared and hunted, flashed before him. It was bad enough he continued to fail her every damn day; he couldn’t even treat her to an unmolested dinner in public. What a cliché he had become. The brilliantly successful professional who couldn’t negotiate the thorny path of his personal life. The notorious celebrity afraid to trust any woman who piqued his interest.

And we’re back. That Cara’s sister held him in such low esteem should have been enough to dismiss her as just another member of his know-it-all public, fond of regurgitating the crap spewed by every lurid tabloid outlet. Why, then, was his body zinging and every nerve on fire?

He had forgotten that feeling, that excitement when something new was starting. A new recipe. A new restaurant. A new woman. It galvanized him, helping him overcome the fatigue. Then he remembered his agent’s admonishments and his bones ached, weary again.

Do not engage the local talent.

He risked a glance in Lili’s direction. If only the local talent weren’t so damn engaging.

The bartender tossed a coaster down and asked him what he needed. Some peace and quiet and a six-month holiday to sort out his life. Not that there was a chance in hell of getting it. He had five episodes to complete and a contract for his new show to negotiate. He had his Chicago restaurant to open and seven others to oversee so the quality wouldn’t slip. At the ripe old age of thirty-three, everything he touched was golden, a far cry from that fourteen-year-old Brixton street thug who had been headed for the gutter, prison, or worse. Cooking had saved him and set him on the right path. Now he felt…He wasn’t sure what he felt.

Oh yeah, tired.

He looked into the deep blue eyes of the bartender, an older Italian guy who could probably intuitively tell a troubled soul when he saw one. At least Jack hoped so.

In a heavy accent, the bartender offered, “How about some grappa?”

Jack gestured his surrender. “Lay it on me. Show me what I’ve been missing.”

Twenty minutes later, he’d tried three different varieties of the pungent grape brandy and was feeling that comforting burn in the pit of his stomach. The bartender had explained how grappa was made and how the varieties differed from each other. It was quite the education. With that warm Italian-inflected English washing over him, Jack watched, entranced, as he expertly poured cocktails and manned the bar. He should poach this guy away when he opened his new restaurant.

Lili’s scent, hot woman and floral, but more specifically vanilla with shades of hibiscus, reached him before she did and he felt that pleasurable prickle again. Grappa, like all alcohol, was a great leveler and summoned his magnanimous streak. He opened his mouth to apologize, but he couldn’t actually remember what he was supposed to apologize for. There had to be something. With a woman like this, there was always something.

“Your appetizers have arrived and there’s no way on earth we’re serving them over here.” She turned to leave.

“Hey, wait,” he said, his hand brushing her arm.

She stood, fists at her waist, her stiff posture drawing his gaze to the flare of her hips, the slope of her breasts. Christ, she was a lot of woman.

“What?” she asked, still pissy.

“I’m surprised you’d take the time to give me a personal update on my first course.” Though close to twenty-five minutes for appetizers was a bit much.

“I just want you to eat them how the chef intended. Hot instead of cold.”

He blew out a breath. “Look, I’m sorry about insulting Italian cuisine this morning. I’m sure your father’s a great cook and the meatballs are fantastic.” It came out sarcastic, so not his intention. As well as being a great leveler, grappa turned guys into morons.

“He is a great cook. You won’t eat better in Chicago.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He flashed a conciliatory grin.

“Okay, then,” she said, clearly thrown. Hey, it worked on housewives. She hovered for a moment, then turned heel and split.

“I am sorry about that,” the grappa-pusher said, his brow lined with concern. “She is not normally so rude.”

Jack waved the apology away. “No worries, mate. That’s how she usually talks to me—or that’s how she’s only ever talked to me.”

Another shot appeared before him. The man knew how to work it.

“She is right, though. The food here is quite good,” Ol’ Blue Eyes said, pouring a shot for himself. He clinked Jack’s glass. “Salute.”

Jack slammed it and peered at the man before him. It was time for this guy to step up and do what bartenders do—listen inattentively to some drunken digressions while dispensing old-world wisdom.

“Have you ever met a woman who annoys the hell out of you?” He paused to judge his next words carefully, his muddled brain already ascribing high-level importance to them. His head both pounded and spun like wet sneakers in a dryer. Drinking was not the cleverest of ideas.

“I mean, you just want to touch her, and if she’s mouthy, kiss her to shut her up.” He turned the shot glass over. When the idiotic rambling started, the night was pretty much kaput. Time to halt the crazy train at this station.

The bartender’s face darkened and he spouted something in Italian that reeked of wisdom and portentousness. Now we’re cooking. Jack lifted an eyebrow and waited to be wowed.

“It means ‘Wine, women, and tobacco reduce one to ashes.’ So my Liliana has made an impression?”

My Liliana? Jack’s body wrenched in sobering alert; then his self-preservation instincts kicked in and he thrust out his hand. “I’m Jack Kilroy. Pleased to meet you.”

The bartender laid down his towel and considered the outstretched hand for a heartbeat before taking it in his firm grasp.

“Tony DeLuca. Cara’s and Liliana’s father.”

For f*ck’s sake, that’s just sneaky. Tony’s grip crushed him. Jack let his hand go slack; he might be tipsy, but he wasn’t stupid. He studied the cherrywood bar for five seconds. Ten. When he looked up, he found Tony regarding him closely, his expression unreadable.

“Any chance I can see your kitchen in action?” Jack asked, throwing in a hopeful grin that the code of courtesy among professional chefs might drag this into the draw column. Not only that, but also the craving for action that might break his skin into hives at any moment needed to be assuaged. And if he couldn’t get his fix with a woman, or one particular woman, then he’d take the next best thing—a visit to the kitchen of the man who would be his cooking rival for the next two days.

Tony’s lips curled up into a not-quite-smile. “Si, naturalmente.”

* * *

It seemed everyone and his brother had decided to stop in at O’Casey’s, the after-work hangout for the DeLuca crew. As the smallest Irish bar in Chicago, its cozy dimensions did an admirable job of accelerating intimacy in case the beer wasn’t flowing. Not that it wasn’t flowing tonight. Jack was running a tab for the gang, who were knocking it back like they had to report to Cook County Correctional Center the next day.

Lili glanced over her shoulder to where her ex, Marco, was engrossed in conversation with the man himself, who had the glassy-eyed look of the condemned. She tried not to notice that Jack was a few inches taller than Marco or that he was broader and generally more…space-filling. She also tried not to notice the way a light dusting of chest hair poked above the V of Jack’s shirt or how the rolled-up sleeves of his white button-down contrasted scrumptiously with his tanned forearms.

Jack Kilroy had it going on.

Sighing, she returned to the other man of the moment. Laurent had waylaid her the second she stepped through the bar door and was now on his third White Russian. Addled as he was, Lili still felt flattered to have such a quality charmer touching her bare arm and looking down her shirt at every opportunity. Her curiosity about Jack got the better of her, though, so she steered the conversation around to his friend.

“You and Jack have worked together a long time, then?”

“Oui. We met in Paris many years ago during our apprenticeship, but we didn’t work together again until a few years later when he needed a sous-chef for his first restaurant in London. I have been with him for all his restaurant openings, but I am now based at Thyme on Forty-Seventh in New York.”

“You don’t want to run your own restaurant?” It seemed strange he would be satisfied to remain in Jack’s shadow, but then, that’s what she’d been doing for years with Cara. Some people were just born to play sous-chef.

He hesitated, and while she would usually put it down to the alcohol, there was something faraway in his expression. “I would like to be in charge at Thyme but Jack is not one to give up the reins so easily. He likes to be in control.”

Bet he does. The mere mention of that word in relation to Jack sent a long, shivering pulse through her body.

“But I like working with him,” Laurent continued. “He’s the smartest and most creative guy in the business.” He inclined his head to hers, and the fumes knocked her sideways. His eyebrows arched up like accent marks. “Why are you so interested in Jack? You should be interested in me, chérie. The Italians and the French have always been close, oui?”

She pointed with her beer bottle. “Except when the Romans conquered France. And that whole Napoleon thing. And World War Two. But other than that, we’ve always got along exceptionally well.” She grinned. “Not like the French and the British. Aren’t you supposed to be terrible foes?”

“There is a lot of the rivalry, oui. But not between Jack and me. He is my best friend.”

Aw, Lili couldn’t help but be touched by his loyalty. After another few minutes of good-natured ogling, he excused himself to hit the restroom.

Gazing around the room, she spotted Tad at the other end of the bar chatting with Shannon, the buxom bartender who reminded Lili of a female Bond villain. The kind who could crush walnuts with her thighs. Her cousin sent an impudent smile her way and bowed in the direction of Jack, who now had his hands full trying to fend off the attentions of a gaggle of DeLuca women.

Do it, Tad’s grin said.

Not on your life, her frown replied. After her mouthy put-down earlier, there was no way Jack would still be interested, and even if he threw his hat into her ring again, she was so rusty she wouldn’t know what to do with it.

This night was a wash on the man front, but all was not lost. There were cookies. Double-chocolate chip cookies. And they were waiting for her less than a block away in her apartment. She had just put a foot to the floor when a heady, expensive man scent, straight from the perfume counter at Macy’s, stopped her cold.

“Hey, Lil.” Marco was a sidler, one of his many talents. If his cologne weren’t so potent, he might have had a promising career in Special Forces.

“Ciao, Marco.”

“Exciting about the show, isn’t it? It’s going to be great for business.” Her ex’s favorite topic of conversation, after his Lamborghini, his Italian shirt maker, and his net worth, was how to make his twenty-five percent investment in DeLuca’s worth the time he didn’t want to put into it.

“Sure is,” she said, all too aware of Marco’s undertone. He was thinking about the personal loan he’d made to her father covering her mother’s medical bills and how soon it might be repaid.

While he yammered on about getting a local news crew involved, she observed him closely, drinking in his golden looks, that deep baritone that used to make the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end, and his habit of talking too loudly when he got excited. This past winter, she had needed a warm body to get her by, and he had been kind enough to step up. Not exactly fireworks between the sheets, but he had given her what she needed—arms to hold her for a couple of hours when she felt overwhelmed by her mother, the restaurant, and her life half written. In true Lili fashion, she had listened to all his problems and kept quiet about her own. Then the inevitable happened: she fell for him hard just as he realized he could do much better.

He rolled his lips in, his usual signal that he didn’t approve of something. He did that a lot. “I heard you’re going to make a play for Kilroy.”

Lili almost fell off her barstool. “Where’d you hear that?”

Marco delivered a condescending smile. He did that a lot, too. “Someone’s running a book on it.”

Madre di Dio, she was going to drown Tad in wet noodles. At Marco’s sympathetic expression, Lili could feel the knuckles whitening on her clenched fist. It would be so easy to hit him on that square jaw. He wouldn’t even see it coming because his gaze had already wandered to a boobs-on-a-stick blonde draped over the jukebox. She flexed her hand; Marco’s hazy focus returned.

“I don’t think Kilroy’s your speed, Lil. Maybe you should stick with the frog. Aim a little lower.”

Aim a little lower. Marco’s words went down like Pepto—they tasted awful but they were probably good for her. She could fake it up to a point, but no way, no how could she pull a league jump of this magnitude.

A glass of clear liquid appeared in front of her with uncanny timing and a wink from Shannon. Tad saluted a bottoms-up cheer with his beer bottle. Marco raised a disapproving eyebrow. She knocked back the shot—ugh, mint schnapps—and her Benedict-Arnold hormones did the rest.

Pinned against the dartboard, Jack had been stunned into submission by a crescent-shaped line of brunette admirers with a blonde thrown in for variety. Lili watched as he engaged in a rally of repelling tactics, from slow nodding to diversionary swigs of his beer. The blonde loitered at his shoulder with intent, her hand glossing over his bicep. Angela was two baby steps short of clambering on top of him. Gina, despite her affianced status, was trying to outflank her cousin with a couple of undone shirt buttons and frenzied eyelash batting.

Jack’s gaze locked onto Lili’s, and she felt a sudden and startling jolt of attraction right down to her toes.

“Kilroy’s working it, I see. You’ve got no chance there, Lil,” Marco said, his tone jovial but laced with something else. She looked at her ex with interest. If it was possible for eyes to sneer, Marco’s were doing it right now. Her own eyes were drawn back to the evening’s entertainment and found Jack still staring above Angela’s frizzy curls, his gaze direct and true. His sexy mouth hadn’t moved a muscle but his eyes, in that rare green hue…they promised everything.

That look enveloped her like a curl of flame, immolating all her hesitation in a fiery burst. Just one night was all she asked. One night to see stars, to experience scorching passion, to get a little lost. A combination of the corrosive burn from the liquor and Marco’s smug grin decided it. She was tired of aiming lower.

“Later, Marco.”

Sidestepping him, she skirted around the fan club and addressed Jack. “Hey.”

His eyes widened and shifted to a smoky darkness. “Hey, yourself.”

“We should talk.”

“We should?” he asked in a graveled voice that guaranteed talking would be low on the list for the rest of the evening.

“Logistics,” she said, playing along. “Getting into the kitchen tomorrow to test your dishes. That kind of thing.”

“Right, we should talk about that.” He bowed to his rapt audience. “Ladies, business calls.”

The ladies shot her unladylike glares aimed at sending her six feet under, twice. Jack tucked his hand under her elbow and with a gentle, but very deliberate, pressure propelled her toward the bar.

“How can I ever thank you?” he murmured close to her ear.

Lord, that accent. Combined with his touch and that delicious male spice, it set off a high-frequency vibration throughout her body.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of something.”