Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (11 page)

“It’s not exactly chaste,” he murmured. Chaste it was not, more like smoking. They got to the point in the performance when she wrapped her leg around his thigh. Yum.

“Weak spot,” she whispered.

“What?”

“When I did that, you moaned. It’s one of your weak spots.” She couldn’t meet his eyes.

In the video, they parted, exchanged now-forgotten words, but almost immediately, they were kissing again. That’s when her hand had started an unauthorized solo mission down his chest, his abs, past his waistband. Oh dear, she had gone
there
and someone had captured it frame for damning frame.

She covered her face, then splayed her fingers to find Jack zoned in on her, his eyes dark with intent. Neurons in her brain fired like a round of applause. Her nipples beaded; her breasts ached. She had never wanted a man with such desperate, taut need. The thought of being kissed by him—or worse, not being kissed by him—made her shake.

For a moment they did that age-old dance where neither could decide which was most compelling, eyes or mouth. Eyes or mouth. Eyes or—oh, thigh. His sudden move made her jump like water drops on a griddle or maybe it was the distant loud thumping sound that jolted her. The Ghost of Illicit Kisses Past. She could almost hear the clanking of chains.

The pounding got louder. “Jack Kilroy, open this door right now.”
Cara.

He frowned, then inhaled with a wince. “That’s all right. I don’t need all that hair.”

“What?”

“Chest hair. Some skin, too.”

Lili looked down to find one of her fists full of Jack’s tee. Wonder when that happened. “Oh, sorry.” She slackened her grasp but her fingers refused to open all the way.

Cara hammered again. “Jack, if you don’t open up, I’m calling nine-one-one.”

Lili reluctantly loosened her hold on the bull’s-eye covering his chest and the Kilroy DNA she’d taken a fancy to.

Rubbing his maligned pec, Jack dragged himself off the sofa and made a subtle package adjustment.
Oh, yeah.
He opened the door to admit an agitated Cara and waved her by with a deadpan, “Please. Come in.”

Her sister was dressed in lime-green Juicy sweats. Eight a.m. and she looked stunning.

“Are you okay?” Cara asked Jack. “I just got Lili’s messages.” Reaching out to cup his jaw, she got in close and personal. A potent surge of emotion waved through Lili, terminating in her brain with one word.
Mine.

“It was nothing.” He stepped out of Cara’s grasp and Lili cheered a mental touchdown.

“
Grazie a Dio
,” Cara said. “Well, prepare yourself for a new heap of cray cray.” She thrust her phone in Jack’s face.

“We’ve seen it,” he said, nodding over to Lili.

Cara’s priceless expression was almost enough to procure Lili’s forgiveness for her manhandling of Jack. Almost. “Lili! What are you doing here?”

“I stayed to make sure Jack didn’t fall into a coma.”

Cara cast a shrewd look at her star and his gorgeously mussed hair, then turned back to Lili and her mushroom-cloud helmet. “Did you know you’re trending on Twitter, Sis?”

“Christ,” Jack muttered.

Twitter?
That sounded…not good. “What does it say?”

“Just something stupid,” Cara said, waving it away to a corner of the room.

Lili stood as quickly as her head daze would allow. “Cara, what is it? Tell me now.”

Her sister flushed, a glow that only made her more beautiful. “Hashtag, Jack and the fat chick. But it’s all one word, so you have to really focus to figure it out.”

The fat chick?
Lili buried her massive face in her gargantuan hands. Flashes of teenage wretchedness discharged in her brain, evicting all those happy spark-offs she’d felt moments ago while Jack’s eyes feasted on her. In their stead, long-suppressed images of torment returned to taunt her. Pencils jabbing her fleshy back. Upset books as she walked from her locker to class. Macaroni salad splattered in her lap—she rarely made it through lunch unaccosted. She had joked with Tad that she should thank Diana Matteo and her clique for helping lower her daily calorie intake. The bully diet.

But as bruising as the physical teasing had been, it didn’t compare to the jibes and sneers. Lardass Lili. Tubby DeLuca. Lili the Elephant.
Fat chick
was comparatively kind.

A voice called to her, muffled and far away.

“Lili, are you okay?”

She blinked to find Jack staring at her. Not so hot and needful now, just compassionate. Pitying.

“I’m the fat chick?”

“Don’t be daft. You are not fat,” Jack said sternly, sending a scowl Cara’s way in a clear demonstration of shooting the messenger. His phone hummed again. “I need to take this.” He treaded back into the bedroom, answering as he walked.

Cara smiled sympathetically. “Lili, don’t worry about what they’re saying online. Haters gonna hate.” The benevolent grin turned saucy. “Damn, girl. You sure went for it with Jack.”

“Cara, I—”

“Jack’s agent is probably already working on a plan to spin this. We just have to be careful it won’t affect the contract.” Her sister patrolled the doorway, her ponytail swishing furiously behind her. With a graceful pivot borne of ten years in a tutu, she wagged her finger. “Jack wants me to produce his new show. It’s my big chance and your little spectacle last night better not get in the way.”

Cara had conveniently forgotten this was her dumb idea. Best to fess up. “Don’t worry. Nothing—”

“I’ve already had Aunt Sylvia calling in a complete conniption. It was all the congregation at seven a.m. Mass at St. Jude’s could talk about.”

“Aunt Syl called?” Lili glared at her own phone, lying like a time bomb on the coffee table. Church bells chimed faintly in the distance, and her throat went dry. Her aunt was probably interrogating Father Phelan this very minute about the going rates for an exorcism.

A tremor started up in Lili’s thigh, and not the sexy kind either. If Sylvia knew about Lili’s fallen woman status, her parents were waking up to the joyful news right about…Lili’s phone started to vibrate. Now.

“That’s Mom,” Cara said as her own phone rang out with Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” which meant Dad was leaving a message on Lili’s phone. “
Ciao
, Mom.”

Lili shook her head fiercely, the signal for
I’m-not-here-to-anyone-especially-parents
. Cara raised a razor-thin eyebrow and uh-huh-ed and um-ed through the conversation before ringing off.

“You need to call her. Il Duce’s on the warpath.”

“Who’s Il Duce?” Jack’s crisp voice penetrated through Lili’s mental fog as his bare feet whispered across the plush carpet.

“My father,” Lili said. “I’ve brought shame upon the entire family.”

She stared at Jack, daring him to come up with some smug, charming response so she could punch him in the arm. His face registered only concern. He slid an arm around her waist and slipped his fingers below the border of her cargo pants, caressing. A chef’s hands, scarred and calloused. She had never felt so grateful for the touch of another human being.

Moving behind her, he skated his hand beneath her tank top while his muscle-corded forearm banded beneath her breasts. Usually, when a guy cradled her, she felt big and graceless, but not with Jack. He was the right size for her, and dare she say it, she was the right size for him. She allowed her body to rest into Jack’s hardness and strength, marveling at how quickly the tremor abated.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said, his lips tickling her ear. She didn’t believe a word of it but her rapidly heating skin clearly appreciated the effort. If it had been Marco, he would have made some offhand comment about her loveable squishiness.

Cara’s lips formed a grim seal; then she said, “Well, there’s work to be done. Jack, you’re still coming to Casa DeLuca for dinner tonight?”

Lili’s discomfort zone expanded alarmingly. Her father and the man she had publicly groped, both at the same table with easily accessible steak knives, her matchmaking mother, and Aunt Sylvia wringing a novena out of the rosary beads.

“Counting down the hours,” Jack said easily.

Cara’s eyes scanned her phone, then squinted up at Lili. “Now, no more PDA, you two, especially during the taping. There’s only so much we can edit out.” Her sister left, leaving a blast of air in her wake that was completely disproportionate to her slight frame.

Jack still held tight, his strong arm feeling so good twined around her. Her body prickled with pleasure before ratcheting up to high alert. She told herself there’d be no more kissing. She was most insistent.

“How are we doing?” he asked, low and seductive.

The sheer absurdity of the situation crashed down on her hard. Was there such a thing as a sympathy concussion? Because if there was, she must have it. Considerable damage to her gray matter could be the only way to explain her presence in that video, in this man’s hotel room, and in his solid, ripped arms.

She jerked away. “You just can’t stop, can you?”

“I told you I can’t help flirting with hot women. You’re a hot woman, so you’ll just have to put up with it. Most women would be happy to receive this kind of attention.”

Perhaps, but in the cold light of day, when forced to address your panda eye makeup and the run in your stockings, clarity kicks in like a bitch. This was no longer a bar on a steamy summer night crawling with tipsy Frenchmen, stunning Brits, and oversexed Italian girls. This was the morning after the night before. The Brit was still hot. She was just a punch line on the Web.

“I’m not most women”—she was certainly not hot—“and right now, I’m more concerned with my reputation. And the fact I’m known all over the Twittersphere as the fat chick.”

“You’ve changed your tune from ten minutes ago.”

“Ten minutes ago, I was anonymous Kilroy bait in a bar. Now I’m famous.”

He grunted. “You’re not famous. No one knows who you are.”

She wasn’t too hopeful of that lasting long, not once her cousins got involved, but they weren’t here to blame and he was.

“This is entirely your fault,” she snapped. “You and your grabby hands.”

“I’d say
your
grabby hands are what’s driving Internet traffic this morning.”

“Oh, God.” Both offending hands went to her burning face. How was she ever going to live this down? She met Jack’s grin, now bright enough to power the grid for the Chicago Loop.

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Aren’t you overreacting just a smidge?” Oh, that was classy. Throwing her words back at her.

“My life is ruined,” she grumbled.

“Give it a day. It’ll all blow over.”

Chapter Seven

Jack should have been on his way to DeLuca’s to start testing his dishes, but he felt about as useful as a chocolate teapot, so he took some time out after Lili left to clean up his phone messages. Today’s special was schadenfreude. Evidently, news of the impending contract had made the rounds because most of the calls were dripping with malignant joy. Former cooking colleagues who considered him a sellout checking in to see if he was okay. Text messages with sad faces. Hushed voices with barely suppressed glee. Even Ashley had called, her breathy, Daytime Emmy–nominated gush letting him know she was here for him. He almost threw the phone at the wall.

At least he hadn’t heard from
him
, and he offered up a moment of thanks that John Sullivan had heeded Jack’s warning and stayed out of his son’s life. Though once the man Jack preferred to call his sperm donor heard about the multimillion-dollar network deal, Jack expected he’d turn up again with his hand out. It would be far too good an opportunity to miss.

He wished Lili had stayed, but as soon as Cara dropped that Twitter bomb, she had shut down. All her sass and flirt stowed away as she drew a fireguard over her quick mouth. There had been an ease between them while they shared breakfast, like they had leapfrogged the getting-to-know-you phase and were hovering on the edge of comfortable. Flirting with trust. Which, given his experience scrabbling around the hamster wheel of fame, did not come easy.

Oh, and he was balls-deep in lust with her. Can’t forget that.

Last night, those soothing tones and her fingers cooling his forehead made all his blood rush south. Never mind the ache in his head, it was a wonder he could answer anything she asked when all he wanted to do was pull her astride him and relieve the ache in his dick. Instead, he forced himself to watch her lush sway as she padded away from him. In his Black Sabbath T-shirt, no less. She had stood in the doorway, that banging body of hers silhouetted by a corona of light from the outer suite, and he had bit back a moan. During all three visits.

Abstinence was a multihorned bitch.

The call he expected wasn’t forthcoming, so he took the initiative. Two p.m. in London, but it still took his sister five rings to pick up.

“Why don’t you answer any of my texts?” he asked sharply.

“You know I don’t text. It’s better to ring.” Jules was the only person he knew under the age of thirty who hated texting. When she bothered to answer his messages, it was with meaningless emoticons. When she bothered to answer his calls, it was usually obvious she’d just woken up. Like now. She worried him greatly.