Chapter Five
Forbidden fruit is sweetest.
—Italian proverb
Climbing the stairs to Lili’s studio at the Flat Iron Arts Building on Milwaukee Avenue, Tad allowed himself a moment to enjoy the glorious sensation coursing through his body.
Victory.
So he had employed a rather sneaky approach to the situation. That Jules was a great cook he didn’t doubt, and her bruschetta had been pretty damn good. But he’d had no notion to actually employ her until he’d seen that look pass over her face when he took a bite. The glimmer of joy, one he recognized because he used to feel that way when someone ate something he created, had punched him hard. She craved the encouragement, and while everyone loved the living daylights out of her, no one expected her to amount to much outside of being a great mom. Jules was so much more than everyone gave her credit for.
And that’s when the idea came to him.
He was under no illusions that he could keep Jules from swimming in the dating pool completely, but with a job she might take it slower. Dip her toe gently. See how warm it was before submerging completely. Giving her a job cooking would kill several birds stone cold dead—and having her nearby for even a couple of hours a day would keep him sane.
Tad would never forget how scared she had been when she showed up in Chicago almost two years ago. So vulnerable, so alone. Jack was too busy, and Jules was too hurt and proud to ask for his help. It was a watershed moment for them but before they made it over the hump, Tad had been the one who listened. Even after they had reconciled, Tad was still around being her friend.
Her friend. So sometimes a few stray, inappropriate thoughts crossed his mind and stiffened his dick. She was a hot woman and he was a red-blooded American male. And maybe he was in a bit of a funk and maybe it coincided with a certain scorching kiss his gal pal had surprised him with a while back.
His mind didn’t have far to reach for that particular memory. Eleven months ago, Evan was teething, keeping Jules up all night with his crankiness. Tad had gone over to Jack and Lili’s with Pad See Ew and a bubble tea—he thought it tasted like shit but she loved that stuff—and the relief on her face when she saw him had melted his bones.
“I’m so hot for you right now,” she had said, barely looking at him as she grabbed the brown paper bag from his hand.
“Hot for my late-night delivery, you mean.”
“That’s what you give the ladies, right, babe? Hot stud at midnight.” She’d danced into the kitchen singing Abba’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme.”
This was their way, the joking and bantering, always so easy between them. She was often alone, between Jack pulling late nights at the restaurant and Lili in her artist zone at the studio a couple of blocks away. That night, the food was good, the company was better, and Game of Thrones was on TV. Not a bad way to spend an evening.
Until Evan started up again, which wouldn’t have been a problem except it sent Jules into a tailspin of doubt.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said tearily when she finished soothing the infant back to sleep.
He walked her back to the sofa, a big black leather affair that squeaked when they sat. Funny how certain things stuck in your head. Such as how the dark smudges had arced like crescents under her eyes and strands of her honey blond hair had fallen out of her hair-tie thingy. One errant lock curled over her cheek and he brushed it away, unthinking.
Not realizing that even the smallest action has a consequence.
“You’re doing just fine, honey. You’re a new mom who’s overwhelmed but everyone is here to help you.”
She closed her eyes just then, shuttered those stunning peepers in the most unusual shade of green he had ever seen. A clear verdant emerald, like that first flush of spring grass on a Tuscan hillside. And he knew that when she opened them again, he would kiss her until she realized she had been kissed.
So he got a jump on that terrible idea and held her tight instead. Wrapped his body around her and whispered words of comfort against her golden hair. Put that smooth mouth he wanted to ravish her with to more benign uses. But it couldn’t last, not with this relentless pulse thrumming in every cell, telling him to make her better. And in the harbor of her body, he might finally get some of that elusive peace he had been seeking.
Drawing back, she tilted those weapons up and blinked away a tear. God, she was killing him.
“Tad,” she whispered, her voice filled with a longing that scrunched his heart, and he was helpless in the face of her softness. Her Jules-ness. If pressed in a court of law, he couldn’t say who kissed whom first. One second turned into three, then five… Her soft, supple lips tasted of bubble tea sweetness with a hint of salt from her tears, the electric fuel that sparked his body to life.
He pulled away before the recharge was complete because if he’d let it get to fifty, even seventy-five percent, there would be no going back.
“Jules, we—we shouldn’t do this.” They shouldn’t get hot and sweaty and dirty. They shouldn’t tear off their clothes and twine their limbs and f*ck each other stupid. Most of all, they shouldn’t comfort each other and lose all sense of reason. Since his parents’ death, he was a broken mess, an amalgam of jagged pieces held together by sheer force of will. His need for her in that moment knocked him on his ass, and while he had no doubt she would ease the pain in the short-term, he couldn’t reciprocate. He would take and take from this amazing woman, and give her nothing but heartache in return. With her it would be real and raw and there would be no coming back from it.
Her shock at his reaction sent a dread chill to his gut. He continued to compound it with his stupidity because he was a guy and that’s what guys did.
“We would be terrible together. Absolutely terrible,” he said.
Stupid, absolutely stupid.
“Right.” Clipped, British, final. Those beautiful green eyes frosted over.
She slunk to the other end of the sofa and he slunk out the door, mumbling like an idiot. They barely spoke for two weeks until Evan fell ill, and with Jack and Lili out of town, he stepped up to take them to the emergency room. The little blighter was fine and suddenly, so were they.
Their friendship had survived but his sex life had plummeted into the toilet.
Eleven months. He’d gone eleven months without so much as a whisper across his zipper. It wasn’t that he couldn’t perform—he had a very satisfying relationship with his right hand that was prepared to suffer a blast of blister burn in the name of self-love. He just couldn’t get excited around any of the women he dated. He would drop them home and they’d look up (one looked down, but that was another story) with eyes wide and expectant. Cherry red lips were licked, finely sculpted breasts were heaved. Occasionally, he would kiss those lips, waiting for the click in his dick. That chemical explosion of endorphins or connection or whatever the hell was supposed to happen to move him from first base to home. More often, he just politely went on his way, ignoring the surprise on their faces.
It ain’t you, honey, it’s all me.
It wasn’t as if he saw Jules as soon as he puckered up and went in for the kill. That would be a blessing because at least then he could run with that fantasy to slide all the way home. No, it was worse than that. He saw nothing. Just a void where his libido should be. Only later, lying awake and pondering why he couldn’t close the deal, would he allow his hand to take over and relieve all that pent-up frustration. And if thinking about a certain blond beauty got him there faster, then that was between him and his pillow.
Perhaps it would be better if she dated. If she found someone she liked, someone who would be kind to her—preferably a eunuch who was good with kids—then he’d be happy for her. She needed a good guy without a truckload of baggage and a very checkered sexual history. Once she nabbed her frog, and he saw her settled, then he could finally get laid again.
But it would be best if it didn’t happen too fast.
The door to Lili’s studio was ajar. Shut, it meant Lili was with a photo subject and he shouldn’t just saunter in. The women she photographed were usually knockouts—tattooed Goth chicks, hot-to-trot soccer moms, fresh-faced sorority girls, all dying to get naked for Lili’s art. He was in the wrong business.
It was a relatively small space that had become more roomy when Lili’s studio mate Zander moved out and onto greater things in New York. Jack had offered to build Lili a studio at their townhouse but she preferred to come to this separate space to work. Tad stole a few enjoyable moments taking in the skin on the walls, but then stilled when he heard Lili’s low murmurs of encouragement echoing from the other side of the studio. He pulled up short, ready to retreat. A thick pillar blocked his view.
“Tip your chin up—yeah, just like that.” Click. “Now lean forward, lemme see those puppies.”
“Lili,” came the slightly embarrassed reply. Jules.
“Come on, don’t be shy. You have an amazing figure and—oh, perfect. Hold that.” Click.
Tad’s heart thudded insanely fast. He crept a few inches forward until he had cleared the pillar with his gaze. Lili had her back to him, shielding her subject, but he got a very healthy view of shapely legs inadequately covered by something red and soft-looking.
“You know, if you ever felt comfortable enough to go bare, I’d love to photograph you.”
Jules snorted. “I can see Jack’s face now.”
His cousin laughed. “We could insist he put it up in the dining room at Sarriette. He’d be so torn between wanting to encourage my art and being totally skeeved out.”
Girly giggles ensued.
“My wild days are behind me,” Jules said on the downside of a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shenanigans I got up to back in London.” He heard her breathy sigh of reminiscence and strained to hear what salacious details might follow. This London version of Jules sounded like a woman he’d like to know.
“Oh, yeah? Spill, girl.”
“Well, there was one time I jumped in a fountain and stripped down to my—”
“Hey, cuz,” Lili said to him, a sly smile quirking one corner of her mouth. “How long have you been there?”
He patted the pillar he had just been leaning against/hiding behind like they were great pals. “Just got here.”
Lili’s smile turned slyer. “Didn’t expect you.”
“Do I need an excuse to come see my favorite cousin?” It came out a touch testy.
“Not at all. I just thought you’d be busy stroking your Cabs and Pinots.”
“Only do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Should I leave?”
“No, we’re just finishing up.” Lili sat at her iMac and hooked up the camera with a cable.
“All right?” Jules asked, almost shyly, as though they barely knew each other and in a way it felt like he was looking at her anew. The dress she wore was one he hadn’t seen before, a cherry-red, draped affair. One of those wrap-around deals that separated her breasts and flared over her waist. Not especially sexy but…
In that dress, she looked like she should be running the PTA, then going down on her husband in the Subaru in the school parking lot. Thankfully, that was years off because Evan was just an ankle biter… unless she hooked up with some lonely widower who already had school-age kids. Damn, that was a real possibility. He bet those websites were crawling with lonely widower fathers.
He was having problems catching his breath, a hitch that extended to his cock, which suddenly needed breathing room. To be perfectly honest, if Lili wasn’t there, he would be seriously considering unwrapping that dress and exploring the finely curved gift underneath. Jules stared back, probably wondering why he was ogling her like a just-released convict who hadn’t seen a woman during his fifteen and a third in the clink.
“Hey,” he said, finally responding to her greeting of about ten minutes back. He diverted his eyes away from her breasts to a good twelve inches north. Women 101. They preferred when you looked at their faces.
“Getting your photo taken?” he mumbled in a clear case of graduating summa cum laude from the School of the Freaking Obvious. His IQ had just dipped a hundred points.
“Uh huh. For my profile.” She blushed, and that’s when he noticed that she was wearing a lot of eye make-up. The smoky, sexy eyes that you saw on magazine models. She had done something different with her hair, too. It was tousled, f*ck-me hair.
“My glamour shot, as Lili calls it,” she said with an eye roll. Can you believe what they’re trying to make me do?
His body clenched and he willed it to relax. Her glamour shot. She may as well have painted a sign: Come All Takers, Get Your Hot Mama Here. Lord knew he was trying to stop staring at her but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from all those damn curves.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” he snapped, and then softer, “It’s all good.”
“I’ll just get changed,” she muttered, swaying away to the cover of an ornamental screen in the corner.
He blinked to get his brain in the groove and made inane chitchat with Lili about the plans for Tony and Frankie’s wedding anniversary party. If his parents had still been here it would have also been their anniversary. The couples had married in a double wedding extravaganza thirty-five years ago. He shoved that to the back of his mind with the rest of the shit he had succeeded in burying.
He was an absolute expert at it by now.
Jules walked out from behind the screen, pulling up the zip of her sweatshirt, but not so fast that he missed the sweet swell of her breasts in something thin and stretchy. Come on!
“Could I see how it came out?” she asked Lili as she set a suit bag over a chair.
“Sure.” His cousin clickity-clicked her screen.
Tad stole another glance at Jules. He couldn’t not look at her. A pearly pink glow had washed her cheeks and she looked so damn fine, he wanted to lick every inch of her. He turned back to the screen and what he saw wasn’t much better.
She looked f*cking gorgeous.
Well, she always looked gorgeous, whether she was in baggy sweats or a frayed tee that had seen better days. Even when she looked like she was falling asleep on her feet, she never failed to look amazing to him.
Now she looked amazing to the world.
Lili had caught her in a pose that suited her. It was more sensual than sexy, an acknowledgment of how much she had to offer. Her head was cocked to one side, a jaunty tilt that revealed her humorous side. Some guys didn’t care how funny a girl was, but Tad liked that in a woman. Jules was one of the funniest people he knew, with a dirty mouth that would shock a trucker.
“Oh, Lili, it’s—it’s…” Jules turned to Tad with her hand over her mouth, her eyes sparkling like stars.
“Gorgeous,” Tad finished for her. Croaked, more like.
“Do you really think so? You don’t think it’s too much?”
Oh, yes, he thought it was way too much, but he was playing at friend right now. The good friend who supports his gal pal in everything she does even when she created a visual invitation to take her slow and deep until they both collapsed in a sated, sweaty heap.
“So you like it, cuz?” Lili cut into whatever-the-hell-that-was. “Cara’s done all this research. Apparently red is supposed to be the color that men find most attractive. Some evolutionary junk about how a woman looks flushed when she’s ovulating.”
What? Man, he hated Cara’s guts right now.
“Yeah, it’s great. It’s just…”
“It’s just what?” Jules asked, concern pitching her voice a couple of octaves higher than normal.
He backpedaled… “It’s just that it gives off a certain something.” …into dog shit. “I mean, it just might attract the wrong sort.”
“What do you mean the wrong sort?” Jules snapped.
Careful. “Guys who are looking for a good time.”
So much for careful. That statement cannoned straight from his gut to his mouth without checking in with his brain first.
Lili eyed him shrewdly. Of everyone in the DeLuca menagerie, they were the closest and she always saw right through his bullshit. “Maybe she’s the one looking for a good time.”
“Yeah, maybe I am,” Jules said in a huff. She glared at him for a second before shaking her head in disapproval. He felt her disdain to his toes.
“I’ve got to go and pick up Evan from Frankie. Thanks a lot, Lili. Maybe we can talk later about how to make it more suitable for the right sort.” Without saying good-bye to him, she strode quickly out the door, her suit bag flapping over her shoulder like a stiff cape.
Clang went the door.
Lili started a slow clap.
“Oh, shut it.”
“Proud of yourself?”
“She has to hear it, Lili. This isn’t some indictment on your art. I just think she should have something a bit more wholesome. Guys see that picture and she’s going to be fighting them off with a stick. And the kind of guys who use those sites are weirdos. Men who can’t get dates in the normal way.”
She blinked at his outburst, which had sounded a bit overcooked. “So is Jules a weirdo for doing this?”
“It’s different for women, especially women who don’t get a chance to meet people through the usual channels. I can understand why she’s doing this.” Hated it, but understood it. “The men are bad news. At least, if she looked like—”
“Like a mom?”
“What’s wrong with looking like a mom?”
“Nothing, but maybe she’d like to look like a sexy, gorgeous, bangin’ mom. A MILF.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do they still say that?”
He cleared his throat noisily. “Yeah, they still say that.”
“She’s beautiful and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to have a little fun.”
Not on his watch. “I thought she just wanted to find someone to have dinner or go to a movie with.”
Lili looked at him like he was an idiot. “Perhaps she’d like to take a turn around the block a few times with a down ’n dirty pop-pop before she digs into the husband hunt.”
His head was building to explode. How the hell was he supposed to get Lili and Cara on his side when the two of them made such a formidable team? He’d said it before and he’d say it again: every single woman in his family was a menace.
“Jack’s not going to like that at all.”
Lili laughed, a naughty tickle. “I know. He’s going to hate it, but he’s got to admit his sister is all grown up and she’s ready to play.” She cocked her head and considered him. Here it comes.
“There’s nothing to stop you from asking her out yourself.”
“She’s my friend,” he said, not feeling in the least bit friendly toward anyone right now, especially one Juliet Kilroy.
“I know you like her, cuz. What I don’t understand is why you won’t do anything about it.”
“I like her too much to inflict someone like me on her.”
“Whatever that means.” She stared at him, her grin fading. “God, you’re serious, aren’t you? You really think you’re not good enough for her.”
Crap on ciabatta, that had not come out right. Before he could respond, she was out of her seat, looking like… Jesus, like she wanted to hug him or something. That was not how they operated. He was the one who gave the comfort. Always had been.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked, biting her lip.
“About what?”
“The price of olive oil, dummy.” She rolled her eyes. “How about how you look at her like she’s the only woman in the world or how your eyes light up like Michigan Avenue at Christmas every time you hold Evan.”
His heart seized at her words, at the rightness of them. As close as they were, they didn’t talk about the important things, or at least about what was important to him. And they were not about to start.
“She’s like a sister or cousin to me,” he said, getting back to Jules and his brotherly concern. “Annoying, pain-in-my-ass, whatever. I wouldn’t be doing my job as an overbearing Italian relative if I didn’t have an opinion about this.”
His cousin gave him the DeLuca stare down. She’d always been the best at it but he’d always been the best at withstanding it.
When he refused to melt under the weight of her glare, she asked archly, “Just doing your job?”
“Just doing my job.”
* * *
Baking focaccia sucked.
Jules loved focaccia, the oily, crunchy chew, and her brother made a truffle oil version that she sometimes considered worthy of her child as payment. But this lump of dense, dry, dead bread was nowhere near Jack’s level of perfection.
A basic staple, and she couldn’t even get that right. She glared at Vivi’s recipe, not that it would help. Frankie had written out an English translation on a post-it note so really she didn’t need the original piece of sepia-tinted paper, but Italian mama had insisted she take it home with her all the same. Something about drawing strength from the original words, as though the mere presence of this magical object blessed Jules’s entire, dodgy enterprise.
While she’d combined the water, flour, and yeast, and kneaded the dough—using the stand mixer didn’t fit in with the Old World vibe she was cultivating—she had felt close to this woman who had meant so much to Tad. She had even worn a peasant blouse and gauzy ankle-length skirt.
So much for that. All she was left with was a big old rectangular block that not even the layer of olive oil on the bottom of the sheet pan could salvage. Who had she been kidding when she’d thought she could do this?
Failure in the kitchen, failure all round. Damn Taddeo DeLuca.
Who the hell did he think he was to tell her that photo might attract the wrong sort? Who the hell was the wrong sort, exactly? He thought she looked like she was asking for… Lord knew what. Just that it had sounded insulting. Like she was a girl-woman incapable of making her own decisions when it came to her own dating choices. Her own sexuality.
Back in London, she had been determined to own her choices, sexual and otherwise, but as much as she tried not to let it, her reading problems informed so much of her life. She had gone through moments of not feeling worthy, feeling stupid around everyone, self-destructive blue periods where she slept with guys because if she couldn’t offer sparkling repartee, she could offer her body. She found herself drawn to macho, pushy guys who got aroused at the thought of ordering for a woman in a restaurant. You order for me, babe, I’m sure you know what’s best, she’d say with an eyelash flutter over the menu she couldn’t read. That small surrender of power would manifest in the heightened flush of red on their cheeks. A flash of something in their eyes that mirrored the shift in their seats to accommodate the hard-on.
Sometimes they didn’t even make it home. Her date would meet her at the restroom, push her back inside and take her there and then. It was funny how this flaw of hers and these little tricks she had for covering it often ended with hot and heavy sexual encounters. They liked that she didn’t keep up with the news, though she played a touch dumb there. She watched TV but if she tried to read web pages, she got a headache as she puzzled out the words. They liked the ditzy blonde who was happily unambitious with her menial bar job collecting glasses—she didn’t even want to work with the cash register. They liked her until she started talking back, not quite embodying that blond stereotype. There would be a curious narrowing of the eyes, as if they couldn’t quite compute what they were hearing. Oh, you have an opinion on Wall Street bankers or human rights abuses in China? They’d laugh uncomfortably, like the mannequin had come to life, and then she would realize she’d made a mistake. Shown too much.
Until Simon. Simon St. James with his easy smile and his arctic-blue eyes. The man who understood immediately that her tough dummy act was a well-crafted show of smoke and mirrors. Who called her on it and wanted her all the same.
Oh, God, she didn’t want to think about Simon but she had no choice because the man was clearly thinking about her.
Jules wiped her hands on the apron and picked up her phone, all while burning her retinas into the screen, as if she could change what she saw into something that made a lick of sense. It was only a number—the same missed call on her phone over the past couple of weeks—but now it looked like the most ominous string of digits she had ever seen.
Because this time it was accompanied by a voice. A voice mail, to be exact. After more than two years, Simon St. James had knocked her off her feet. Again.
There was a time she would have done anything to hear from him, especially during those first nights clutching her pillow in a strange bedroom when she had landed in Chicago. She had told Jack she couldn’t return, that she had to get out of London. She had acted as though she were on the run, and in a way, she was. From the memories and the pain of finding out the man you loved and whose child you carried saw you as merely an inconvenience. Crying herself to sleep during those first few lonely weeks at Casa DeLuca, she had vowed not to return, but a whisper in her heart said she would cave if he called.
Her weak-as-water resolve was never put to the test because he never did.
Now he was ringing from a new number. Had he lost his phone? Was that why he couldn’t call for two years?
Not. A. Chance.
Jack visited his businesses in London every couple of months and she often wondered if he ran into Simon, who was one of his closest friends. Did he mention that his sister lived with him in Chicago, that her child was a bonny, blond tyke with shocking blue eyes just like his father’s?
Those first couple of calls with no messages left—was he nervous about what to say? Was he unsure how to bridge the gap between them after so long?
I’d love to catch up with you, Jules, the message had said. Detached but friendly. Everything and nothing.
She’d love to bean him with a rock but then we can’t all get what we want, can we?