Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (8 page)

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.

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.