Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (13 page)

She became free.

Her father hadn’t liked it; photography was fine as a hobby but its practicality as a career was null. Never mind the strange types of people it attracted—deviants and misfits, with their elaborate body art and seedy, unhygienic piercings. Even getting her photos on the restaurant’s walls had been a titanic battle, and he had only relented when she produced conservative portraits dripping in family values instead of the edgier explorations of beauty that had become her hallmark. Good girls don’t take photos of naked people, he had said.

Good girls don’t molest strange men in bars, either.

“It wasn’t planned, Dad,” she said. Not entirely. Sure, she had planned to seduce notorious man whore Jack Kilroy, and she had expected he would be a good kisser, a better-than-good kisser. What she hadn’t planned on was the heat and the need, or how off balance she felt around him. She certainly hadn’t planned on liking him.

“I hope not, Liliana. DeLuca’s is a family establishment and that kind of behavior is bad for business.”

“You’d be surprised but this is the kind of thing that’s actually good for business. Along with the cooking show,” she added quickly.

“My daughter acting like—” He carved his hands through the air, grasping for an appropriate descriptor. It didn’t come. “In public is not good for business, no matter what you think.” He stopped and finally looked her straight in the eye. “And I’m not sure this Jack Kilroy is good for anything.”

She could take the unspoken hussy jibe like the hussy she was, but she didn’t like the sound of his dig at Jack. As much as she’d like to blame him for that toe-curling kiss and its fallout, she was just as guilty. More so. She had challenged him to match her and he had stepped up, in more ways than one. For a few moments while they teased and flirted, while he spoke about his sister, there had been a spark of possibility.
Someone worthy of you,
her mom had said.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she steeled herself for an argument. The family’s livelihood was on the precipice. They desperately needed Jack’s show, and her father would have to put aside his disapproval for the sake of the greater good—namely, saving their pancetta.

“Dad, the show is going to be a boost. It’ll open us up to a whole new audience—young professionals, foodies. I have friends who could help spruce the place up, and Tad’s got some great ideas for a new cocktail menu. We can jump-start a new, more modern DeLuca’s.”

“And what about our regular customers? Are we to abandon the people who have been with us from the start just to become fashionable?” A tired sigh slipped his lips, matching the slump of his shoulders. “I will see you for dinner tonight, and do not be late.”

He stalked off into the house, his disappointment chilling her every cell despite the muggy heat. She tried to call on the moments when they had been simpatico—most of them involved the kitchen and a ball of dough—but the image of fear marring her father’s face when he gazed on her mother during chemotherapy trumped the good times.

Fear had a habit of trumping everything.

Chapter Eight

Jack stood outside DeLuca’s office, hand paused in midknock. Lili’s voice, unusually somber, rang out clear. “I should have done this years ago, but I was too much of a chicken. We’re finished.”

He pushed ajar the door to the smallest office he had ever seen and the sight before him pulled a smile from deep inside. Lili sat at the paperwork-laden desk, tan legs bare, crossed, and tapering to short boots with cutouts for her toes. Her fingers curled around a glazed doughnut and she was glaring at it with a mix of lust and disdain.

“Are you breaking up with a pastry?” he asked. She was so bloody adorable.

Her eyes met his, half pissed, half challenge. All sexy. “I’m cutting out the bad influences in my life. And that includes you.”

“Surely it’s not as dreadful as all that.”

“You want to know how dreadful it is?” she said, mimicking his accent. Terribly. “There’s a Facebook page called ‘I hate Jack’s fat chick.’ It’s got over a thousand fans, Jack. A thousand.”

Tension spread through his body like a series of clenching fists. “That’ll be Min.”

“Who?”

“She’s the president of one of my fan clubs.”

“You have more than one?” she blurted incredulously.

“Yep. But Min runs the most vocal one. They hate everyone I date. You should have read some of the things they said about Ashley.” Of course, Ashley had scrutinized every single post like it was a criticism from her withholding mother.

“Well, we’re not dating, but it seems everyone thinks we are—or worse.” Her voice squeaked high in protest. “Someone posted pictures of us coming back to the hotel, and you look dazed and drunk while I look like I’m taking advantage of you with my big bear paws.”

“I’m hard to take advantage of.” Making light of it seemed like the best strategy here, though he was finding it mighty difficult to retain his composure. He plucked the doughnut out of her hand and took a bite. Cinnamon notes, the sweet glaze a little crunchy. Lili’s lovely lips parted and her eyes took on a sweet glaze of their own. The familiar tug of desire tightened his groin but now it was mixed with two parts anger and three parts protectiveness. If that wasn’t the recipe for an atomic fuck, he didn’t know what was.

The cluttered desk was starting to look awfully inviting. Just move that stapler to the left and the pencil sharpener to the right—

“And that’s not all.” She stood, her gaze still fixated on the doughnut. He bit into it again because she needed distracting. And he needed distracting from the way her skirt’s fluid fabric clung fondly to her hips.

She tried to smile but couldn’t quite make the conversion. “One of the hotel people took photos of the breakfast we ordered and now it’s up on the Web with snarky comments like ‘Jack’s fat chick needs her vittles’ and ‘Feeding time for the fat chick.’”

His jaw tensed midchew. Heads were going to roll at that hotel once he got through going medieval on their oh-so-hospitable arses. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. Any idea who posted the video?”

“No. I called everyone I know who was there. No one’s owning up.” Every breath of her distress was like a paring knife to his heart. “And you know what the kicker is in all this?”

“There’s a kicker?”

Her eyes blazed and he knew he didn’t want to hear it. “My butt is tweeting.”

Okay, maybe he did want to hear it. “Come again?”

“Gina told me. My butt has its own Twitter account.”

“How do you know it’s yours?” he asked cautiously. “I’m sure there’s plenty of arse on Twitter.”

A couple of indignant taps later, she pointed at her phone. “Look at what it just said.”

The latest tweet from @FatChicksAss read,
Wish Jack’s hands were grabbing a meaty handful right now.
Oh, FatChicksAss, you have no idea.

There was nothing he could say that could make this better. Gamely, he tried all the same. “I’d follow your arse on Twitter any day of the week, Lili.”

She socked him hard in the chest, which shouldn’t have felt good, but it did. Really good. “How can you make jokes about this?”

The crack in her voice hit him hard in the solar plexus as it dawned on him that for all her bravado, she was having a hard time holding it together. He was used to this, could weather the insults with the never-ending play-by-play analysis of his personal life. Hell, he had no personal life. Now she’d been caught up in his drama in the worst possible way.

He gathered her into his arms and stomped down on the hot charge that ripped through his body. Thankfully she didn’t resist, but she didn’t relent either. “Jokes are the only thing you can make. You’ve got to see the funny side or you’ll never get through it. People have been slamming me for years, so I stopped reading it.”

She held her body rigid, her forehead on his chest, her fists balled against his double-breasted chef’s jacket. Through ten layers of Kevlar, he would still be able to feel her heat and the swell of her gorgeous breasts. Her disorderly hair begged for his touch, but he compelled his hands to play nice and rub her back benignly.

The sucking sound in his head told him what his brain thought of playing nice.

She peeked up, eyes wide and vulnerable. “When are you leaving Chicago?”

“Soon.”

“Not soon enough,” she muttered.

Reality poured over him like a vat of iced water. Last night leeching into this morning, there had been a wonderful stretch when he thought he had a real chance with this woman. She had shut him down, but he’d been confident he could persuade her to come around. Now they were irrevocably connected, yet further apart than ever.

He told himself it was for the best. He’d get back to his glamorous life and her amazing behind could return to obscurity. This existence he had chosen precluded normal relationships. He couldn’t even take care of his sister. How in the hell could he protect a wonderful woman like Lili?

With a not-so-accidental lip brush against her forehead, he reluctantly let her go. He had a couple more days in Chicago. He could spend it moping about lost opportunities or he could spend it bringing pleasure to this woman without using the dick that was in danger of shriveling from disuse.

“Pity you’ve cut out all your vices,” he said.

She arched a suspicious eyebrow. He’d never met anyone who projected skepticism quite like she could.

“Because I know what might make you feel better,” he continued.

“Oh, please. Enlighten me.”

“Food, Lili. Food cures all.”

*  *  *

If the heady aromas hadn’t tipped her off that Jack was making himself at home in the DeLuca’s kitchen, the bass guitar riff of Iggy & the Stooges might have done the trick. Walking in, Lili was instantly transported to happier times. Meals at her nonna’s in Fiesole. Family dinners before her mother’s illness turned their lives upside down. Her father teaching her to cook when she was a kid. Cara had never been interested, and learning to love food with Tony was one of Lili’s earliest and fondest memories. So much had changed in the last year.

Now the smell of her father’s cooking conjured up disquiet and anxiety. She had always felt the equal tug of love and duty at DeLuca’s, but since taking over as manager for her mother, duty was winning out. Not just winning, but morphing into an ugly bitterness. She didn’t want to be the girl who whined about her lot but refused to throw off the shackles of her insecurity. She wanted to be liberated Lili, the girl who proudly stepped out in figure-hugging superhero outfits, told a gorgeous guy she wanted him in the clearest terms, and grabbed her future by the
coglioni.

Look where liberation had got her.

She had shared only half the story of her sudden infamy with Jack. Some of the nastier comments about her size on Facebook were too embarrassing to mention, as were the hateful barbs about the audacity of someone like her hooking up with a god like Jack.
Fat chick
was about as nice as it got; the anonymity afforded by the Web brought every troll and hater out of their caves. Those defenses she’d carefully constructed in high school couldn’t possibly stand a new onslaught. Worse, who would ever have thought she’d need them again?

Tamping down her emotions, she surveyed the kitchen, hungering for escape if only for an hour or two. Every burner held a pot of promise, merrily bubbling away in direct contrast to her foul mood. The counters looked like a futuristic garden out of a sci-fi movie, metal and glassware vying with vegetables and herbs for breathing room.

“When did all this happen?”

Jack leaned his hip against the far counter and folded his arms, causing those unreasonable biceps to push up the sleeves of his chef’s jacket. “Cara took me to see some of your father’s suppliers. We also hit that big farmers’ market in the park yesterday morning.”

“The Green City Market? I love that place.” The largest farmers’ market in Chicago, it was one of her favorite stops when she was in Lincoln Park. That he had shared it with Cara sparked a surge of jealousy so powerful she almost grabbed a bunch of carrots and dashed them to the ground. But Lili had no right to that feeling because she had no right to him. Instead of taking out her frustration on innocent vegetables, she completed a calming circuit of the kitchen, pausing at the stovetops to check out the sources of the delicious smells. Jack’s tracking eyes made her itchy.

“What’s this?” Holding her hair back, she bent over a pot of something stewlike and inhaled the generous scent. Her knees almost jackknifed with hunger.

“Braised rabbit with white wine and thyme. It should go well with pasta.”

“
Coniglio
,” she murmured appreciatively. Warmth flooded her body at the idea that Jack had cooked something that connected with her on such a basic level. Meanwhile, Jack’s dizzying nearness was connecting with her on an even more basic level.

“But I thought you didn’t get to choose your
primi
or
secondi
?” The wooden spoon on the adjoining counter whispered to her. She needed that stew in her mouth now.

“Yeah, I know. Your father’s calling the shots there. But I could always turn it into an appetizer, too. Serve it over rustic bread.”

“Hmm,” she said, doubly distracted by the potted glory before her and the hard-bodied banquet at her side. The expression
food porn
came to mind.