Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen)

chapter Eight


Jack stood outside DeLuca’s office, hand paused in midknock. Lili’s voice, unusually somber, rang out clear. “I should have done this years ago, but I was too much of a chicken. We’re finished.”

He pushed ajar the door to the smallest office he had ever seen and the sight before him pulled a smile from deep inside. Lili sat at the paperwork-laden desk, tan legs bare, crossed, and tapering to short boots with cutouts for her toes. Her fingers curled around a glazed doughnut and she was glaring at it with a mix of lust and disdain.

“Are you breaking up with a pastry?” he asked. She was so bloody adorable.

Her eyes met his, half pissed, half challenge. All sexy. “I’m cutting out the bad influences in my life. And that includes you.”

“Surely it’s not as dreadful as all that.”

“You want to know how dreadful it is?” she said, mimicking his accent. Terribly. “There’s a Facebook page called ‘I hate Jack’s fat chick.’ It’s got over a thousand fans, Jack. A thousand.”

Tension spread through his body like a series of clenching fists. “That’ll be Min.”

“Who?”

“She’s the president of one of my fan clubs.”

“You have more than one?” she blurted incredulously.

“Yep. But Min runs the most vocal one. They hate everyone I date. You should have read some of the things they said about Ashley.” Of course, Ashley had scrutinized every single post like it was a criticism from her withholding mother.

“Well, we’re not dating, but it seems everyone thinks we are—or worse.” Her voice squeaked high in protest. “Someone posted pictures of us coming back to the hotel, and you look dazed and drunk while I look like I’m taking advantage of you with my big bear paws.”

“I’m hard to take advantage of.” Making light of it seemed like the best strategy here, though he was finding it mighty difficult to retain his composure. He plucked the doughnut out of her hand and took a bite. Cinnamon notes, the sweet glaze a little crunchy. Lili’s lovely lips parted and her eyes took on a sweet glaze of their own. The familiar tug of desire tightened his groin but now it was mixed with two parts anger and three parts protectiveness. If that wasn’t the recipe for an atomic f*ck, he didn’t know what was.

The cluttered desk was starting to look awfully inviting. Just move that stapler to the left and the pencil sharpener to the right—

“And that’s not all.” She stood, her gaze still fixated on the doughnut. He bit into it again because she needed distracting. And he needed distracting from the way her skirt’s fluid fabric clung fondly to her hips.

She tried to smile but couldn’t quite make the conversion. “One of the hotel people took photos of the breakfast we ordered and now it’s up on the Web with snarky comments like ‘Jack’s fat chick needs her vittles’ and ‘Feeding time for the fat chick.’”

His jaw tensed midchew. Heads were going to roll at that hotel once he got through going medieval on their oh-so-hospitable arses. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. Any idea who posted the video?”

“No. I called everyone I know who was there. No one’s owning up.” Every breath of her distress was like a paring knife to his heart. “And you know what the kicker is in all this?”

“There’s a kicker?”

Her eyes blazed and he knew he didn’t want to hear it. “My butt is tweeting.”

Okay, maybe he did want to hear it. “Come again?”

“Gina told me. My butt has its own Twitter account.”

“How do you know it’s yours?” he asked cautiously. “I’m sure there’s plenty of arse on Twitter.”

A couple of indignant taps later, she pointed at her phone. “Look at what it just said.”

The latest tweet from @FatChicksAss read, Wish Jack’s hands were grabbing a meaty handful right now. Oh, FatChicksAss, you have no idea.

There was nothing he could say that could make this better. Gamely, he tried all the same. “I’d follow your arse on Twitter any day of the week, Lili.”

She socked him hard in the chest, which shouldn’t have felt good, but it did. Really good. “How can you make jokes about this?”

The crack in her voice hit him hard in the solar plexus as it dawned on him that for all her bravado, she was having a hard time holding it together. He was used to this, could weather the insults with the never-ending play-by-play analysis of his personal life. Hell, he had no personal life. Now she’d been caught up in his drama in the worst possible way.

He gathered her into his arms and stomped down on the hot charge that ripped through his body. Thankfully she didn’t resist, but she didn’t relent either. “Jokes are the only thing you can make. You’ve got to see the funny side or you’ll never get through it. People have been slamming me for years, so I stopped reading it.”

She held her body rigid, her forehead on his chest, her fists balled against his double-breasted chef’s jacket. Through ten layers of Kevlar, he would still be able to feel her heat and the swell of her gorgeous breasts. Her disorderly hair begged for his touch, but he compelled his hands to play nice and rub her back benignly.

The sucking sound in his head told him what his brain thought of playing nice.

She peeked up, eyes wide and vulnerable. “When are you leaving Chicago?”

“Soon.”

“Not soon enough,” she muttered.

Reality poured over him like a vat of iced water. Last night leeching into this morning, there had been a wonderful stretch when he thought he had a real chance with this woman. She had shut him down, but he’d been confident he could persuade her to come around. Now they were irrevocably connected, yet further apart than ever.

He told himself it was for the best. He’d get back to his glamorous life and her amazing behind could return to obscurity. This existence he had chosen precluded normal relationships. He couldn’t even take care of his sister. How in the hell could he protect a wonderful woman like Lili?

With a not-so-accidental lip brush against her forehead, he reluctantly let her go. He had a couple more days in Chicago. He could spend it moping about lost opportunities or he could spend it bringing pleasure to this woman without using the dick that was in danger of shriveling from disuse.

“Pity you’ve cut out all your vices,” he said.

She arched a suspicious eyebrow. He’d never met anyone who projected skepticism quite like she could.

“Because I know what might make you feel better,” he continued.

“Oh, please. Enlighten me.”

“Food, Lili. Food cures all.”

* * *

If the heady aromas hadn’t tipped her off that Jack was making himself at home in the DeLuca’s kitchen, the bass guitar riff of Iggy & the Stooges might have done the trick. Walking in, Lili was instantly transported to happier times. Meals at her nonna’s in Fiesole. Family dinners before her mother’s illness turned their lives upside down. Her father teaching her to cook when she was a kid. Cara had never been interested, and learning to love food with Tony was one of Lili’s earliest and fondest memories. So much had changed in the last year.

Now the smell of her father’s cooking conjured up disquiet and anxiety. She had always felt the equal tug of love and duty at DeLuca’s, but since taking over as manager for her mother, duty was winning out. Not just winning, but morphing into an ugly bitterness. She didn’t want to be the girl who whined about her lot but refused to throw off the shackles of her insecurity. She wanted to be liberated Lili, the girl who proudly stepped out in figure-hugging superhero outfits, told a gorgeous guy she wanted him in the clearest terms, and grabbed her future by the coglioni.

Look where liberation had got her.

She had shared only half the story of her sudden infamy with Jack. Some of the nastier comments about her size on Facebook were too embarrassing to mention, as were the hateful barbs about the audacity of someone like her hooking up with a god like Jack. Fat chick was about as nice as it got; the anonymity afforded by the Web brought every troll and hater out of their caves. Those defenses she’d carefully constructed in high school couldn’t possibly stand a new onslaught. Worse, who would ever have thought she’d need them again?

Tamping down her emotions, she surveyed the kitchen, hungering for escape if only for an hour or two. Every burner held a pot of promise, merrily bubbling away in direct contrast to her foul mood. The counters looked like a futuristic garden out of a sci-fi movie, metal and glassware vying with vegetables and herbs for breathing room.

“When did all this happen?”

Jack leaned his hip against the far counter and folded his arms, causing those unreasonable biceps to push up the sleeves of his chef’s jacket. “Cara took me to see some of your father’s suppliers. We also hit that big farmers’ market in the park yesterday morning.”

“The Green City Market? I love that place.” The largest farmers’ market in Chicago, it was one of her favorite stops when she was in Lincoln Park. That he had shared it with Cara sparked a surge of jealousy so powerful she almost grabbed a bunch of carrots and dashed them to the ground. But Lili had no right to that feeling because she had no right to him. Instead of taking out her frustration on innocent vegetables, she completed a calming circuit of the kitchen, pausing at the stovetops to check out the sources of the delicious smells. Jack’s tracking eyes made her itchy.

“What’s this?” Holding her hair back, she bent over a pot of something stewlike and inhaled the generous scent. Her knees almost jackknifed with hunger.

“Braised rabbit with white wine and thyme. It should go well with pasta.”

“Coniglio,” she murmured appreciatively. Warmth flooded her body at the idea that Jack had cooked something that connected with her on such a basic level. Meanwhile, Jack’s dizzying nearness was connecting with her on an even more basic level.

“But I thought you didn’t get to choose your primi or secondi?” The wooden spoon on the adjoining counter whispered to her. She needed that stew in her mouth now.

“Yeah, I know. Your father’s calling the shots there. But I could always turn it into an appetizer, too. Serve it over rustic bread.”

“Hmm,” she said, doubly distracted by the potted glory before her and the hard-bodied banquet at her side. The expression food porn came to mind.

“Want some?”

The rabbit? Yes, let’s pretend they were talking about the rabbit. Her mouth watering, she dipped the spoon and pulled out a couple of chunks of meat with the thick sauce. She allowed the morsels to lie on her tongue for a few wonderful, anticipatory seconds, the liquid coating the inside of her cheeks. A single swallow. A satisfied moan. It tasted like the best Tuscan food should—rich, gamey, comforting. Life-affirming.

“You approve?”

“Not bad,” she said evenly, then threw a light jab: “Although it’s more of a winter dish.”

She caught him smiling at the feeble attempt to dampen her enthusiasm and inwardly kicked herself for not doing a better job. Minimizing the mouthgasms would be a good start.

From the oven, he extracted a tray of what looked like mini-pizzas and moved them to a cooling rack. Mini-pizzas? Really? Any self-respecting Italian would be all over that, but she’d lost all self-respect last night when she goaded him in that bar and woke up to find herself clogging the Twittersphere. Besides, they looked oniony and cheesy, two of her favorite flavors.

He poured her a glass of wine, a Chianti she didn’t recognize from their list. Humph. So DeLuca’s cellar wasn’t good enough for Lord Kilroy. There was something a little decadent about drinking wine at 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday, a twisted take on morning Mass without the sermons and smoky incense.

“What should we toast to?” he asked.

“The supremacy of Italian cuisine over all others?”

His lips parted on a sigh. “Must you be so competitive? I was thinking something more pleasant…like new friendships.”

Ah, the friend speech. The final breadstick in the basket. After all the drama of the past twenty-four hours, she knew it was for the best. But she couldn’t help feeling that she had missed out on something special, and not just the potential of hold-on-to-the-light-fixtures sex.

Suppressing a sigh of her own, she clinked her glass against his. “To new friends…and may the best chef win tomorrow night.” She sipped her wine and let it roll around her mouth like her father had taught her. It tasted thick and fruity.

Sparkling assessment, DeLuca.

“Where’s Laurent? Shouldn’t he be helping you prepare?”

“Couldn’t get his sorry arse out of bed. He claims someone slipped him a Mickey at the bar.” He added a curly leaf of arugula atop each of the little pizzas.

“Bowing to the porcelain god all night, was he?”

“Yep. And I heard the doorman at the InterContinental needs a new uniform.”

Squashing a giggle at the thought of Laurent barfing all over some unfortunate hotel employee, she was about to offer up a witty riposte when she felt the ground fall away beneath her feet. Jack lifted her onto the counter, and shock, he didn’t even grunt.

How ridiculous! Here she was melting in a girlish puddle because a big strong man lifted her a couple of feet off the ground.

Okay, she was thrilled.

His hands lingered lightly on her waist. “Now I’m going to feed you,” he said in a rumble so low and sexy that her body translated it as, Now I’m going to make love to you. The cool, stainless-steel surface against her thighs did little to counteract the wildfire racing through her blood. Slowly he moved his palms down her hips and she parted her thighs in readiness.

“Comfortable?” he asked, his green-gold gaze locked on hers.

Her nod was a barefaced lie; she was the opposite of comfortable, but years of hiding had taught her how to train her expressions. He stepped away, taking his warmth and the scent of lemon-spiced skin.

Anticipation mounted even as the herby, heat-infused aroma of the cooling pizza diminished. Jack held the pizzette up, an invitation to eat from his outstretched hand. Not a chance, mister. She took it from him, anxious to avoid contact, anxious to suppress the memory of his talented hands. A memory still warm and present from last night’s kiss and this morning’s near miss.

A light bloom of flour on the underside of the crust coated her fingers and heat seeped from the mini disk into her skin. Little specks of green sprouted above the snowy, tan-freckled surface. It was just a squiggle of golden-brown onion topped with melted cheese, but right now she’d never seen anything so beautiful. Jack’s gorgeous mug finally had competition.

She bit down, listening for the juice-crunch, that familiar sound of crust and squish. The dough base was perfect. Chewy in the middle, crispy around the edges. The candied tang of sautéed onions assaulted her taste buds, invoking all sorts of happy.

“What do you taste?” he asked.

“Hmm, caramelized Vidalias?” she ventured. He was standing too close to her, his eyes searching her face for signs of yea or nay.

“And?”

“Oregano, for sure. Goat cheese?” He might have been sneaky and used feta, but she didn’t think so. Not salty or tangy enough, and feta didn’t look the same when it melted. She stroked her teeth with her tongue, relishing the creamy richness. “Definitely goat.”

“Oui, le chevre. Anything else?”

That little trill of French sent a quake of pleasure barreling down her spine. Not even Laurent’s dulcet tones had such a devastating effect on her. Although, Jack could be talking about cleaning out the kitchen grease traps in English, French, or Klingon and she’d be drooling like a St. Bernard within seconds.

“Lili, are you still with me?”

She blinked to find him staring at her, the corners of his mouth tipped up.

“I can’t work out that other flavor,” she murmured thoughtfully, trying to cover her drift off to Jacklandia.

“Sarriette. It’s called santoreggia in Italian. We use it in French cooking a lot, but it goes well with the oregano, don’t you think?” He pronounced it ori-gahn-oh, and yes, that got her worked up all over again. Get a grip. “Actually, you should tell me if you think it goes well.”

“It’s good,” she said, though he didn’t need to hear it from her.

The assembly line of tastes continued, each more delicious than the last. A tomato consommé with plump, ocean-kissed crab, reminding her of summer visits to the Cinque Terre. Chicken liver crostini slathered in a fig marmalade that melted down her throat. A decadent, lush bruschetta with lobster crème fraîche and prosciutto. Turkey meatballs in a tomato cream sauce so divine she wished she could inject it straight into her veins.

All the while, he talked. Nonstop. About cooking and his favorite dishes and that spark he felt when he created something new. She usually disliked guys who gabbed constantly—heaven knows, she had dated enough of them—but this was different. It wasn’t so much about him, but about his worldview and his quest to make haute cuisine accessible to everyone. He drew her in, asking her questions about flavors that resonated with her and ones that didn’t (there weren’t a whole lot in the latter category). At the hotel, she’d told Jack she liked food, which was a lie. She loved it, and talking about it was the next best thing to eating it.

Correction. Talking about it with Jack. Because she loved talking to him, more than any other guy she could recall.

A frisson of excitement fizzed through her, like the anticipation felt at the beginning of something new, which made no sense because it was coming to an end. Once the show was done, he’d be out of her life and regular programming would resume. Perhaps he’d pay a courtesy visit to her father when his Chicago restaurant opened, but the intimacy they had shared, the intimacy they were sharing right this minute, would be nothing more than an ancient memory. An all-encompassing taste that overwhelmed at first and lingered after swallowing but would fade as time passed.

He made her laugh, he made her feel sexy, and she would miss that.

It seemed incredibly unfair that she would have to miss that.

“Come here,” he said, pulling her back into the reality of hot male at close quarters. At the stove, he tested a pan with a few drops of water, then a couple of shards of butter, eyeing it carefully while the fat melted and bubbled. His hands shaved garlic, working fast, and she imagined they would do wonderful things to her body. When he threw in the slivers, the aroma exploded, dragging her closer. By the time he’d added a chopped chili pepper and dropped in several jumbo shrimp, tails still on, she was practically on top of the stove.

Down, girl.

The shrimp pinked up perfectly, and he held one by the tail and bit into it. “Mmm, that’s the stuff,” he murmured as he offered the remainder to her.

“No, you’re okay. Remember, I’m trying to cut out bad influences and that includes death foods like butter.” And you, she thought, keenly mindful that letting him feed her would stir up all sorts of sultry sensations in the deep south.

He muttered something in French. She responded with her blankest, least-turned-on look, and silently congratulated herself. Mistress of her domain.

“Butter. Give me butter. Always butter,” he translated. “That was the mantra of Fernand Point, a great French chef who died about fifty years ago.”

“Let me guess. He keeled over after a madeleine binge.”

The shrimp still beckoned, so she surrendered, placing her hand over his while she bit down on the chili-and-garlic-encrusted crescent of joy. God, so good. A trickle of melted butter drooled from the corner of her mouth and his thumb was immediately there, sneaky-fast, wiping it away. He dawdled, dragging her bottom lip down gently. A wild yet insistent pulse started deep within her.

His eyes bored into her and she pulled away, but her retreat was only physical. Riveted, she stared, hunger gnawing at her that was completely unrelated to food. He licked the butter from his thumb. The same thumb she wished was jammed inside her mouth this very minute.

“It’s okay to admit it, you know,” he said quietly.

Her breath caught. “Admit what?”

“That you like my food.” They both knew that wasn’t what he meant.

She held his molten gaze. “We’re in a contest tomorrow night and I can’t be seen giving comfort to the enemy. It’s best we keep this on a professional level, don’t you think?”

“So, no flirting.” He stepped in. Pretty damn flirty.

She backpedaled. “No flirting.”

Two more steps to make up for her withdrawal, and he cupped her jaw. The spread of his warm fingers along the curve of her neck was unbelievably sensual.

“Or kissing,” he said.

Her body acted fairly predictably to his provocation before what was left of her brain took over and insisted that her hormones would not be the boss of her. Little suckers refused to play ball but she talked up her best game.

“Especially not kissing.” She moved out of his reach. “Haven’t you heard? You’re bad news, Jack Kilroy. It’s all over the Internet.”

Discomfort brushed across his features. Her stomach pitched in guilt, but she made her back a titanium rod and steeled her resolve. Better a little upset now than a bellyful of heartache later.