Chapter Four
The best armor is to keep out of range.
—Italian proverb
“Thanks for the interview, Tad. I’ll be in touch.”
The sloe-eyed, raven-haired woman with alabaster skin she must have gotten by bathing in the blood of male virgins slid past Jules with barely a glance. In two brief seconds, she had surmised that Jules was not a threat. Frumpy motherhood was stamped all over her and radiating non-threatening vibes.
Jules’s eyes were inexorably drawn to the undone top button of Tad’s shirt. The Slinkster had just had her hand in a very proprietorial hold over that button and the tasty man flesh beneath it. Like she had needed to give herself a boost of Tad’s body heat for the road.
Jealousy-tinged bile rose in Jules’s throat as she watched this piece of work slither off. She was woman enough to admit it. She fancied her friend something rotten and when another woman mauled him, she felt territorial. And then she felt ill.
Tad looked annoyed, like he’d been caught with both hands in the cookie jar. Except in this case the cookies were stunning brunettes with legs that went on foh-evah. A dull flush flagged high on his scimitar-cut cheekbones.
“The new dishwasher seems very nice,” she said with her cheekiest grin once she was sure her voice wouldn’t betray her.
He ran a hand through his hair. “She’s a critic who wants to do a profile of me for Tasty Chicago.”
A critic. Someone clever and intellectual, who probably did Scrabble triple-word plays in her sleep and the New York Times crossword in under five minutes.
Silence ruled while they stared at each other. Clearly, he had forgotten his invitation for her to come over and learn about wine.
“We were going to…” she prompted.
“Right, right,” he said quickly, scrubbing his hair again. Wow, this woman must have done a number on him. What exactly had they been doing behind that closed door?
“I brought that mushroom bruschetta you said you liked.” She held up her Tupperware container, feeling more foolish with every painful, passing second.
He looked at it blankly before breaking out the usual Tad grin. “Awesome. I know just the fruity little number to go with this.”
Hesitantly, she followed him into the kitchen, desperately trying to get her inner envy monster under control. This was how it always was with Tad. The guy was a sex magnet—he loved women and they loved him. She shut her mind against the images of that clever bitch running her clever hands all over Tad’s body.
Serenity, bloody well now.
She had seen it before, but it still surprised her how small it was for a professional kitchen. Just two burners, two gleaming chrome prep counters, a fridge, and the brick oven for pizzas.
It was perfect.
“How’s the oven coming along?”
He shook his head. “Your boyfriend claims he’s coming out with the part tomorrow.” He grabbed a loaf of ciabatta and a bread knife, and started to slice it for toasting. “Maybe you should be here to turn on that special charm of yours and make sure the job gets done. Or perhaps you’ve already found his competition. How’s the dating going?”
“Nothing’s happened yet,” she said, her mind still abuzz with the stunning woman who had just left. She had an Elizabeth Taylor circa Cleopatra thing going on that was rather troublesome. “Just getting my profiles up.”
“Profiles? Plural?” He looked up, a flash of something flitting over his face before leveling to a blank expression.
“Cara has a strategy. Fling the net wide and watch the fish flail. Her words, not mine.”
She tried to smile and cover how awkward it felt to be talking to Tad about this. It was never awkward when he talked about his dates, but now she thought of it, she had been hearing less and less on that score in the past year. Since The Incident.
He popped the bread in the toaster and dug out a corkscrew from his pocket. On the counter, he had put a bottle of red and two large bell-shaped glasses. The bottle’s label read “2010” below—she squinted—Chaka Khan?
“Funk soul queen Chaka Khan has her own wine now?”
His smile was dangerous with not an ounce of pity. Tad was the first person she had shared her literacy problems with when she came to Chicago and he had never once made her feel any less about herself.
“Close. Chakana. It refers to the Inca cross. Big in South America. This is one of the better known Argentinian Malbecs.”
Beneath the name was an image of an animal, a stylized version of a cat with large, dangerous teeth. Not unlike the man before her.
He watched her closely as she absorbed the label. “They call it the yaguerette in Spanish. Jaguar.” Tad knew what she was doing. He knew more than anyone about her compensation strategies. She put it together as “Chaka-cat.”
He popped the cork and poured a small amount of inky-purple wine into the stemware. The air came alive with the aroma of earth and fruit.
Then he leaned in and buried his nose in her neck.
She jumped back, her skin buzzing from crown to toes. That was… something.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Smelling you.”
Her gaze flew to the wine, looking to lay the blame on alcohol that no one had yet imbibed. She felt color flaming her cheeks.
“Why?”
Again, he moved in and got all up close and personal. The sheer outrageousness of it kept him safe from a thumping or a ravishing. There had to be a good reason for it—didn’t there?
“What’s that scent?”
Swallowing hard, she struggled to come up with an answer. Eau de flop sweat or essence of green-eyed gorgon?
“It’s a body wash. Orange and oatmeal.”
In other news, he smelled pretty incredible. Clean and fresh, one of those grocery store soaps that meshed with hints of his body chemistry and created a branding spanking new male scent that made her weak-kneed.
“Fruity porridge. I like it.” He drew back and picked up the glass, all casual-like, as if he hadn’t just been sniffing her like a feral tomcat. “Wearing an overpowering cologne or perfume can play havoc with your taste buds.”
Ah. That was as good a reason as any for the personal space invasion. Her stomach roiled in disappointment. Nervous and not a little stressed out, she put her mouth to the lip of the glass. She needed a drink real bad.
“Hold up there, Nelly. There’s work to be done first.” He shook his head slightly and, oh bloody hell, tutted. “Give it a swirl.”
She repressed an eye roll. Whenever she saw people do that, it looked so pretentious.
“Does this get us into wine-tasting mode?”
“It activates the aromatic compounds and gives us a clue about alcohol content.” He swirled his own, coating the glass with the dark liquid. Mimicking his motion, she was just getting the hang of it when some precious drops jumped the lip and landed on his shirt.
Oh, crap. With a grimace, her hand flew automatically to his chest, a maternal reflex from days spent cleaning up after Evan. Not that her fingers would do any good in cleaning Tad up and not that her feelings toward Tad resembled anything close to maternal. Before she could withdraw, he placed his hand over hers, oddly legitimizing her grope of his rock-solid muscles.
He felt warm and male, a conclusion that had her feeling… warm and female.
“This is harder than it looks,” she spilled nervously, the words out of her mouth before she realized the innuendo.
“Sure is,” he said, hoisting an expressive eyebrow. Sure is?
What felt like several lifetimes passed before he released her. What felt like several more passed before she could trust her hand to pick up the glass again.
She swirled again, less vigorously this time.
“Now get your nose in there. Just a few sniffs, nothing too deep, but hold it for three to four seconds. It might smell fruity or spicy or earthy.”
She did as she was told, then listened as he told her all the things that could go wrong with a wine: excess sulphur, oxidization, corked wine that smells like wet, musty running shoes. The smell she found was… well, wine.
That most learned conclusion sent her into an uncontrollable laugh.
He read her mind. “Brat.”
She pursed her lips to hide her smile.
“Now you can taste, but don’t gulp it, you heathen. Roll it around your tongue and try to hit all the taste receptors.”
She took a healthy mouthful and swirled it around her mouth, with better consequences than her swirl around the glass. No spit takes here. All class.
His lips contorted expertly as he moved the wine around his mouth. She tried to do the same, suspecting she looked ridiculous.
“What do you taste?”
Startled by his question, she swallowed. Wow, this shit was good. The fullness felt like a dark chocolate with a cherry finish. Decadence in a glass. “Berry flavors. It tastes bright.”
He smiled, clearly pleased with her answer, and her body flushed at his approval. After just two sips, she was feeling a touch light-headed. Blame it on the wine and not the drop-dead delicious hunk of male before her.
“Maybe we should eat something,” she said quickly.
“Let’s try this bruschetta then.”
He pulled out the warm toasted bread, drizzled a little olive oil on it, then spooned the mushroom bruschetta on top. She watched as his sensuous lips closed over the bread. Tad’s lips were one of the things she enjoyed most—they could give the forearms a run for Top Tad Body Part—and now she found herself a little obsessed with how they moved while he chewed her food.
Very nice, Bad Girl Jules mused.
Control yourself, Good Girl Jules snapped back.
“Hmm,” he hummed in clear satisfaction. The sensual pleasure she took in watching him eat was soon evicted by a different kind of pleasure. The warm glow she felt when someone tasted one of her humble creations.
Whenever she brought an eggplant dip or artichoke spread to Sunday lunch at the DeLucas and watched as they all plowed through it like they did Tony’s gnocchi or Jack’s focaccia, she felt that zing of victory. She wasn’t a professional chef or anywhere close to the same league as the culinary royalty in her family, but she had something. A spark she felt when she was in the kitchen.
“This isn’t half bad,” Tad said.
“You sound surprised.”
He smiled, a little crooked. “Nothing you do surprises me, Jules.”
“You sure looked surprised when I said I was going to start dating.”
Some unnamed emotion flickered across his handsome features. “I wouldn’t say surprised. More like intrigued. Maybe a little worried.”
“You don’t think I’m ready?”
“I don’t think the world is ready for you, Juliet Kilroy.” He followed it up with a penetrating stare that made her skin itch. The air in the kitchen felt close, oppressive.
“So what are we going to do about it?” he asked in a low voice.
“About what?” Her heart hammered in her chest.
“This amazing talent of yours.” He gestured to the last morsel of the toast and popped it in his mouth. When he’d finished chewing, he spoke again. “What else have you got in your bag of tricks?”
“Salsas, dips…” Things that didn’t require her to read a recipe. Things she could figure out as she went along. Wandering the Green City farmers’ market, she committed the scents and shapes to memory. She felt the skin of an aubergine, remembered that it was purple—just like Malbec—and focused on the shape of the word so she would know it the next time she came across it. It didn’t always work, which was the primary reason why she kept her ambitions to herself. Jack didn’t believe in doing anything by half. He would expect her to attend culinary college and schooling was the worst thing she could imagine.
“I’m so stupid,” she would think during primary school as the letters on the page swam before her eyes. She might recognize basic three-letter words—cat, dog, man—and could sound out some others, but reading aloud was a nightmare. Standing in class, all eyes on her, cruel mouths judging and ready with their taunts at the first stumble. After too many soul-sucking pauses, she would be dismissed to her seat by Mrs. Macklin with her sharp, ferret features.
Tad was speaking and she had to work to focus. “What would you say to putting some of it on the menu?”
“Some of what?” she asked, searching for her place in the conversation.
“This bruschetta. We could try it as a special and see how it goes over.”
“Are you serious?”
He nodded, a slow burn of a smile lifting his face.
Thrown by his offer, she launched at him and molded her body to his. She could still blame the wine, all two glorious mouthfuls, but really, it was the perfect excuse to touch him, absorb all that heat and musk that improved her day by a factor of ten thousand.
“Tad, do you mean it? You’d put my bruschetta on the menu?”
His arms circled her waist and held her fast. Oh… that was nice. She wasn’t quite ready to go so she supposed it was okay to stay here. Hugging her friend. Hugging the hard, hot body of her friend.
“Frankie and Aunt Syl would be happy to look after Evan while you work here.”
Screech.
She stepped back but he still held onto her. Caged in his embrace, she tried to form words.
“Work here? But I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.”
“No, I can just make the food at home and bring it.”
He shook his head. “Not unless you want to go up against the City of Chicago. It’s illegal to operate a food business out of your home kitchen and it makes more sense to do it here where we’re already covered. Liability issues, you know.”
That did make sense from a business standpoint but from every other angle it was a disaster in the making. She was trying to stay away from him—she knew she shouldn’t have come over here—and now he was dangling this lovely brown sugar-glazed carrot in front of her.
Bad Girl Jules laughed softly. Good Girl Jules had nothing.
Forging a path of independence required finding what she needed to do with her life. She loved to cook and Tad was giving her a chance to do it professionally. For money. That felt good.
His hand made fiery circles on her back.
That felt good as well.
She stepped away from that lethal body and all it promised, but she wasn’t going to step away from this opportunity. It was far too good to pass up.
“I can’t guarantee I’d be here every day. Don’t want to take advantage of Frankie and Sylvia.” And she wanted time, no, needed time, to get a lunch date in every now and again.
“We’ll work something out.” He thrust out his hand.
Showing no hesitation, she took it and tried to ignore the zing that rough, callused palm sent through her. She tried to ignore everything except the rush of empowerment surging through her body.
Good luck with that, Jules.
* * *
Jules bounded up the steps of the DeLucas’ brownstone in Andersonville on Chicago’s north side, feeling light as a fluffy meringue. Just when you think your feet are in cement, along comes a power drill to break you free.
Hmm, was Tad the power drill in that scenario?
She really needed a mind-cleanse to expunge those dirty thoughts from her system and it came in the form of the man coming through the strong, oak door at the top of the steps: Tony DeLuca, patriarch and father to Lili and Cara, uncle to Tad. Tall, urbane, and imposing, Tony was a man of few words so every time he spoke to her, it felt like a gift.
“Julietta,” he said, leaning in for the Euro double kiss. She loved that. He always made her feel so Continental with his Italianization of her name and the affectionate greetings.
“Hiya, Tony. How’s it going?”
He lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug, more of the Old-World nonchalance that came as natural to him as breathing. Despite his casualness, she knew he wasn’t an easygoing man underneath it all. The high expectations for his family made him tough to be around, but he had never once made her feel less than welcome since the DeLucas took her in two years ago.
“It is time you visited the kitchen again, Julietta. You have much to learn.”
She had been hanging around the DeLuca restaurant kitchen on a semi-regular basis, watching the chefs making homemade pasta and rich, flavorful gravy as they called the marinara that formed the basis of so many of the veteran establishment’s dishes.
“Yes, Yoda. Come to kitchen I will.”
Tony looked his usual stone-faced self. She didn’t believe it for a second.
“You young people speak a different language,” he said gravely.
Laughing, she hugged him, gratified when he softened in her arms. Tony might be a hard arse but he could also be a big, soft, teddy bear.
“Go earn the big bucks,” she said to his back as he scooted down the steps on his way to work. Like her brother, he headed into his kingdom by early afternoon to begin prep for the dinner service. No doubt he had been up at the crack of dawn accepting deliveries and his visit home in the middle of the day was to spend a little quality time with his wife, Frankie.
A nooner with his wife. Blimey, even the oldsters were getting more action than she was.
“There’s my little monkey,” Jules said, picking up Evan from the floor of Francesca’s living room as soon as she stepped inside.
“He’s been asking for you all day,” Francesca said.
Over her son’s head, Jules smiled at Francesca, the woman who was the closest thing she had to a mother. When Jules had first showed up in Chicago, Tony and Frankie had taken her in, no questions asked, while she tried to repair her fractured relationship with Jack, who was busy laying siege to their youngest daughter.
“Do you have time to stay and have an espresso with me?” Frankie asked with a smile.
“I always have time to get caffeinated.”
Frankie got busy at the espresso machine while Jules settled Evan on her lap. He curled into her neck and breathed deep. She loved when he did that, when he gave these little signs of need. She knew to enjoy it while she could. Like all kids, he’d eventually go through a phase of despising the ground his mother walked on.
As Francesca worked her magic with dexterous fingers, Jules looked around the DeLucas’ warm, homey kitchen, which seemed to be steeped in a permanent aroma of just-baked biscotti. Her memory receptors flared—thoughts of those early, terrifying days of her pregnancy flooding her brain. Knocked up, ignored by her aunt and uncle back in London, barely communicating with Jack. Wishing Simon would come charging in on a white steed to whisk her away.
He hadn’t come and now she was glad. Finding the inner strength to solve her own problems, even if it meant admitting she needed Jack’s help, was a lesson she needed to learn. In this kitchen, she had made her tentative peace with her brother and found a family to love and love her back.
“So how is the party planning going?” Frankie asked.
“Party?”
“Yes, the surprise party for our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.” She bathed Jules with her impish grin. “Did you think I did not know?”
“No idea what you’re talking about, lady,” Jules threw out with a mischievous grin of her own. The family was planning a great shindig at DeLuca’s Ristorante next month, or rather, Cara was planning it with the military precision of D-Day and everyone else was following in lockstep. Jules was not going to be the one who officially spilled. Boldly, she held Frankie’s stare until the older blonde laughed and returned to her coffee-making task.
Jules’s gaze fell to the table and a sheaf of pages held together with spit and string. Handwritten in a curly yet neat script. A little flare of excitement ignited in her stomach. Recipes.
“Is this a family cookbook?” she asked as Frankie put the espresso down in a cute demitasse cup with the twist of lemon on the saucer. Jules dropped the twist in while Frankie grabbed the tin of homemade almond-cranberry biscotti off the counter.
“It belonged to my sister-in-law, Genevieve.”
Tad’s mother, better known as Vivi, who had died in a car accident with her husband about ten years ago. Tad had been nineteen, his sister Gina a year older. Whenever their names came up, there was no missing that hollow look in his eyes.
“She was a marvelous cook. Better than her husband, Raphael, Tony’s brother.” She laughed softly, a private tickle of a sound. “Better than Tony, though don’t tell him I said that.”
“Tad doesn’t talk about them.”
“It was hard for him when they died,” Frankie said, her voice low. She took a sip of her espresso, then dipped a stick of biscotti in the tobacco-colored liquid.
Tad shared stories about Gina, his childhood with Lili and Cara, but not about the people who had raised him. Jules never pressed. Her own upbringing had been marked by a cool sense of obligation on the part of her aunt and uncle. They hadn’t been interested enough to know what to do with a girl who failed miserably in school and was destined for a job where intellect was unnecessary. She had fulfilled all their expectations and more—up the duff, careerless, living off the welfare of her brother.
Jackpot.
Which was why Tad’s offer had been so enticing in spite of the clear emotional danger. Knowing that her work—oh, that wonderful word, work—had the potential of value was worth the extra few cranks to her pulse rate every time she saw her friend. Besides, while she would be in the kitchen, Tad would be off doing wine bar owner things.
“May I look?” Jules asked, her fingers itching.
Francesca nodded sagely.
The pages were worn and dog-eared, no doubt had been used over and over again. There were a ton of stories in here, between the lines, in the margins. Each section began with a folksy Italian proverb. A woman is not capable of friendship, she knows only how to love, started the appetizers. Another one pronounced, If your life at night is good, you think you have everything. Preach it, sister. Sounded like advice from one bad girl to another. There was even a message addressed to Tad above a chocolate tart recipe: Taddeo, make sure more chocolate gets in the bowl than in your mouth! Jules couldn’t help her smile. This woman who had meant so much to her friend had put her heart and soul into these pages.
Gingerly, she turned the pages, stopping wherever she recognized a word. Pasta fagioli. That was an Italian white bean soup and she recalled seeing it on the menu at DeLuca’s. Arugula. Formaggio.
“What’s this one?” She pointed at the recipe with the familiar words.
“A cheese and onion tartine. Quite a nice antipasto.”
Yes, it would be. She could see it on Vivi’s bar menu now, a mouthwatering mix of caramelized onion, thyme and oregano, perhaps some piquant red peppers or chili flakes to give it some heat.
“What kind of bread should this go on?”
Francesca’s lips curved. “A thinly sliced herbed focaccia. Vivi’s focaccia was legendary.” She pointed to a section below the words Jules had recognized. “Perhaps you would like to borrow this? I could translate the recipes you are interested in.”
Jules’s heart hammered triple time. It was only a cookbook but there was something very intoxicating about using one that had all this history and significance. Still, a niggle on the edge of her brain started up.
“Doesn’t Tad want it?”
“He doesn’t cook.”
That was true. He had come up with the menu at Vivi’s but as owner, he was expected to be out front, turning on that Tad charm for the guests. He knew a lot about food but everyone around him did the cooking, a fact she had never thought all that odd until now.
“But he used to with Vivi,” Frankie answered Jules’s unspoken question. “She and Taddeo were very close. Taddeo would have been a great chef—it was what he wanted—but his father wanted him to go to the university. Become an engineer.”
“An engineer? Tad?” The words sounded alien on her lips. All the times they had talked and he had never let on. Engineers struck her as logical, intellectual, analytical types—not that Tad wasn’t any of these things, but he was emotional and caring as well. Big with it. A profession like that seemed too constricting for his larger than life personality.
“Oh, yes,” Francesca said. “He was taking engineering at the University of Chicago. A full scholarship. Vivi and Raphael were so proud of him and how smart he was. That boy has brains to…” She flapped her hand, searching for the word.
“Burn?” Jules prompted.
“Yes, bruciare. He could have done anything. Been anything.” She downed her espresso in one smooth swallow. “When they died, he dropped out of the university, traveled abroad for a few years.”
Her eyes shone bright, remembering sadness of sometime long past. “On his return, he became the bartender for Tony.”
“He didn’t want to become a chef and take over at DeLuca’s?”
“No, the joy left him the day Vivi and Raphael left this earth.”
The joy left him. An ice cold shiver frosted over her heart. What a strange thing to say about Tad, who radiated good humor and vibrant life.
Frankie visibly regrouped. “Tad was always the sensitive one of all the children. So much compassion and love for everything. Losing his parents was especially hard on him. It hollowed him out, closed him off to possibilities. But he has been better these last couple of years, now that he has found something he enjoys.”
Craftily, she eyed Jules, and the corner of her mouth tugged upward.
“Wine. He enjoys wine.” Jules said, feeling like a bug under a glass. She and Tad enjoyed each other’s company. Obviously so, perhaps. More than once their comfortable laughter had drawn curious looks at DeLuca family lunches, but now Frankie’s all-knowing gaze made Jules squirm. Scooped out her brain a touch, too. The woman was thinking.
That was never good.
Evan stirred in her lap and let out a sound of Feed me. Saved by the wail. She stood and settled her heavier-by-the-second toddler on her hip.
Frankie closed the cookbook and slid it a couple of inches toward Jules. “Let me know how the tartine turns out.”
Oh, I know your game, lady. Jules looked down at the package of pages, wishing she knew how to read Italian. Wishing she knew what the hell she was doing.