Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (6 page)

“I am.” He smiled.

She scowled because it was the opposite of smiling, and if she gave him the slightest opening, he would take it as some sort of encouragement.

“You seem tense,” he said, his brazen grin widening.

“I have a lot to do and you’re very distracting.”

“You find me distracting, Lili?”

It was the first time he had said her name—correctly—and it sounded like a devil’s whisper. Her heart pounded like a trip-hammer. She choked out a laugh because it was ridiculous to be affected by something so silly as a man saying her name, even when the way he said it was calculated to make pulse rates soar and panties plummet.

“Oh, I don’t, but your siren call seems to have cast a spell on my girls. Maybe you should try to rein in your”—she flapped a hand and accidentally brushed against his chest, still solid, and warm, and male—“tendencies, so the rest of us can do our jobs.”

“If you can’t control your staff, that’s not my problem. I feel like a tourist attraction over there with all the visits from your girls. Perhaps you should train them better.”

Irritation simmered in her chest. She took great pride in how she ran DeLuca’s and in how her employees behaved, but she reluctantly admitted that the excitement of Jack’s visit might have led to a drop in everyone’s game, including her own. She was such a girl.

“There is nothing wrong with how my staff is trained.”

“So, trashing the fish special, arguing about the wine, and practically sitting in customers’ laps is all part of the training program? I’ve suffered through enough cleavage
Italiana
to last a lifetime.” His eyes gave an indolent dip. “Well, almost enough.”

He was doing it again, that thing where he spoke and he looked and her body ignited, setting the women’s movement back fifty years. His voice took a shivery road trip down her spine and back again. She tried to think of something to say, but her usual sass was out on a smoke break in the alley.

He tilted his head. “I understand this is a family business, but you may want to consider casting a wider net. Nepotism usually results in an inferior product.”

At last, her voice returned from its sabbatical. “We don’t hire people because they’re family.” Well, except for Angela. And, um, maybe Gina. Both were unemployable. Dammit. “We hire people because they’re good at their job. If you’d stop flirting with them and let them do that job, things might go a lot smoother.”

He moved in, taking up a stance a hairsbreadth from her body. “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in any of your waitresses,” he said, his voice a silky caress. “I’m more than willing to aim higher. Maybe even as high as the hostess.”

I’m the manager, you clod.
Heart still slamming, she plastered on a bored smile. “Oh, please don’t raise your standards for me, Kilroy. Just like I won’t be lowering my standards to a fame-hungry megawhore like you.”

Bingo. A flash of something flared in his eyes. Nothing so mundane as disappointment, more likely the annoyance that accompanies a bruised ego. Men like Jack Kilroy weren’t used to being told they weren’t good enough, especially by a member of the hoi polloi.

“So you believe everything you read online? Pity, you might have enjoyed a visit to the lower depths.” With a theatrical turn, he strode to the end of the bar and took a seat.

Well, she sure showed him, but why didn’t she feel better about it? Instead of the rush of empowerment she expected, she was left feeling like a nitwit. A turned-on nitwit. Who needed contraception when they had a mouth as big as hers?

Tad held up the keys to his Harley and jiggled them. “Poor Lili. Looks like you won’t be feeling anything hot and hard between your legs anytime soon.”

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 fuck’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?”