Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (15 page)

“Show me how a real Italian makes pasta.”

She lasered him with an acute look that said she wasn’t buying what he was shoveling. Any chef worth his salt knew how to make pasta, and she knew that, but her lovely shoulders sank in resignation.

“I’m nowhere near as good as my father, but my Italian genes can probably conjure up some noodle magic.”

Within minutes she had assembled the ingredients—flour, water, salt, an egg—and spellbound, he watched her elegant hands as she expertly worked the dough in a startlingly erotic clench and unclench. The rolling and kneading action also did other things. Wonderful things. It made her body undulate in a sexy wave that plumped her breasts and rocked her hips. He gawked, fantasizing about how her fingers might clench a particular part of his anatomy. The one that was stiffening with every passing second.

Keep it together, idiot.

She took his hand and pressed it down on the dough. He almost had a heart attack.

“This is the consistency you’re looking for.” Her palm covered his knuckles and her slender fingers intertwined with his. “Sort of smooth and elastic. Better to knead too much than too little.”

“Uh-huh.” He had his doubts about the effectiveness of this two-handed strategy, but now wasn’t the time to bring it up. Throwing a sneaky glance sideways, he found her staring at their joined hands, her lips parted, a watercolor pink bloom on her cheeks that was in no way attributable to the heat of the kitchen. So, not that pissed after all.

Her long fingers worked, but the dough was no longer getting the treatment. Their flour-covered hands hovered an inch above the countertop, fingers lacing, unlocking, exploring. Critics on three continents had described his food as sexy and sensual, and in his younger days he had banged more women against refrigerators than he’d had hot dinners, but this was, without a doubt, the most arousing experience he’d ever had in a kitchen.

I love your hands,
and as she jerked away, he realized he’d spoken aloud. She wiped her brow, leaving a streak of flour that he longed to attend to.

“That was all you,” he said, annoyed that he couldn’t go ten minutes without running his mouth off about his attraction to her.

A smile threatened, but the blush suffusing her cheeks overcame it and spread across the exposed skin of her neck and, no doubt, to the other parts hidden by her clothing. Parts that pulsed and pinked, parts he wanted to kiss and lick. The nipples now straining against the unholy thinness of her blouse would be a dusky rose, maybe darker in keeping with her Mediterranean coloring. Across the curve of her belly, his mouth would suck while his hands would shape those tweeting globes of perfection. Moving to the southern trail, he would find her pretty pink, succulent sex begging for his tongue to taste and own.

Woman needed her own section in the Michelin guide.

“Jack.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you okay? You look a little dazed.” Her lips parted, revealing more luscious pinkness that would look so good wrapped around his— Dazed. Yep, dazed, confused, head-over-nuts in lust. He shook his head to clear it. If only a quick shake of his dick could have the same effect.

“We should finish this,” he said inadequately.

They returned to the original plan—she kneaded; he stared longingly. It wasn’t a bad plan.

“What do you miss about your restaurant?” she asked.

He hesitated, unsure how to answer because he missed too much. That first thirty minutes of service when he gauged the mood of the brigade and how each piece of the machine was operating that night. The haul-arse-hustle as everything came together like a symphony of gliding motion. Even the nights it all went wrong and the only option was to get wasted at the basement dive on Tenth while the postmortem was argued over well into the wee hours.

“The swearing,” he said. “I miss the swearing.”

Their gazes met. Held. She nodded, and relief that she got it drenched him.

“Kitchen crews tend to be close,” she said. “Like family.”

Yes, exactly like that. For someone who didn’t have much in the way of family after his mother’s death when he was barely in his teens, the camaraderie of the kitchen was the next best thing. Jealousy tweaked him that Lili enjoyed the best of both worlds—the restaurant and her big Italian clan.

“Everyone’s in everyone else’s business, that’s for sure,” he said lightly. “Weddings, kids’ soccer games, who’s banging who. My crew at Thyme is mostly Dominican. I’m telling you, if I never go to another
quinceñera
, it’ll be too soon.”

She laughed, a rich and robust sound that stroked his spine. “Liar. I bet you love line-dancing with all the teenagers. You probably think you’re as good a dancer as you are a singer.”

“Hell, yeah. I’ve got moves you’ve never seen, DeLuca.”

That sent another flush to her cheeks that looked so good on her he felt alternatively aroused and annoyed. He had never wanted something to happen so much, but he couldn’t expect a woman as grounded as this to turn her life upside down for him. The stinking injustice of it all popped him in the gut.

Her smile was sympathetic, an acknowledgment that they had stretched the boundaries of what was possible.
Give it up, dude.

They continued in silence, except for her instructions on how to make the
pappardelle
noodles as thin as possible using the roller. He’d already started the stockpot of boiling water—it came as no surprise that Tony DeLuca didn’t use a commercial pasta cooker—and after a couple of minutes, Jack drained, then dressed the noodles with a quick waltz of the rabbit ragu around a sauté pan. Together, they carried the Chianti, plates, and a basket of truffle oil focaccia he had whipped up earlier out to one of the booths at front of house and settled in.

He swirled the coated pasta around the fork and slipped it between his lips. The world halted on its axis, then jolted awake as he swallowed. He had died and woken up in Tuscany.

“Oh, baby. This is absolutely amazing,” he said. The pasta ribbons were the perfect size and consistency to pick up the rich, meaty rabbit ragu.

“You didn’t just call me baby,” Lili said.

“Correct, I didn’t. I was talking to the food.”

“You two need to be alone?”

“Maybe. I would have sex with this pasta if I could.”

“With the way your love life is going, that might be your best bet.” She licked her lips, catching some of the sauce from the corner of her mouth. Her hand hovered over the focaccia, but she withdrew breadless.

“There’s plenty more.”

“That’s okay,” she murmured, and something about how she said it sent a quiver of unease through him. Bloody Twitter.

Covertly, he watched her slurping the noodles, all while envying her fork. Damn if it wasn’t sexy. He loved that she’d eaten everything he had fed her today and that she didn’t have a weird relationship with food. So unlike most of the women he dated who were constantly whining about carbs and diets. He was suddenly aware of the irony, that his taste in women usually veered toward the ones who despised the very thing he spent his life’s work on. It gave him a moment’s pause. At the same time, another interesting thought lit up his blood-deprived frontal lobe.

Healthy appetites usually had universal application.

He loved cooking, women, and, since he’d moved to New York eight years ago, the Mets. In that order. And this season, the Mets couldn’t hit for shit. He’d played sexy food games with previous lovers but it had always felt like a fraud, like he was going through the motions because eating involved mouths and tongues, ergo it was a natural complement to sex. But experiencing food with a woman had never felt like this. Sensual and visceral. Right.

Rein. It. In.
Eager to get his filthy mind off sex, he shifted his gaze to the restaurant’s exposed brick walls. “These photos are good. Yours?”

She looked around as if noticing them for the first time. “Yeah. I took some of them in Italy. Some of them in the parks around the city.”

“Is this the kind of work you usually do?”

“No, this was just for fun, my take on Cartier-Bresson. Trying to catch people at a decisive moment. I’m more interested in posed portraiture at the moment, specifically the human body as text and narrative.”

“What does that mean?”

She paused, probably trying to think of one-syllable words to explain it to him.

“Nudes, Jack.” She gifted him with a lazy, devastating grin. “I work with my friend Zander. He’s interested in the male form and the interplay of light on muscle, particularly when the body is under stress.”

“Under stress?”

“Yeah, working out, tied up, that kind of thing. The tauter the muscle action, the better for Zander.”

Jesus, only artists could get away with that kind of shit.

“Do you work with men?” The only taut male musculature he wanted to think about Lili seeing was his.

“No, I work strictly with the female body. As interesting as the male form is, a female’s lines are much more beautiful.”

“On that we can agree,” he said, stupidly relieved. “Cara said you’re planning to go to graduate school in New York. Which one?”
Real subtle, subconscious.

“I had my eye on Parsons. They have a great photography program, but…” The pause stretched tight.

“You’ve been busy with other things,” he finished for her.

A short nod, a quick blink, and she looked away. Her thoughts echoed loudly, so loudly they made his heart thud against his rib cage.

“Sounds like it’s been a tough year,” he said.

She made a gulping noise. “Tougher for my mom. And for Dad, too. He’s crazy about her and I’m not sure he would have survived if she hadn’t.” She hesitated and rubbed the lip of her wineglass.

“Go on, love.”

She took a deep breath. “It changed him. You’d think he’d be overjoyed, see every day as precious. Don’t get me wrong, he was always difficult before. Bossy, traditional, real old-school Italian, you know, just like the movies, but now he’s even harder. He acts like we’ve only been given a reprieve, like the axe could fall any second.” Her gaze panned over the restaurant, visualizing something beyond the space. “He can’t see what a gift it is to have her with us still.”

His chest tightened to the point of discomfort. He so wanted to touch her, but any overture might be taken the wrong way. And frankly, he wasn’t sure he could trust his body not to want to go there if he laid a finger on her. He was such a dick.

“My mother died when I was twelve and my sister was just two,” he said, drawing a jerky uplift of her chin. “My stepdad didn’t handle it so well.” That was a complete understatement. His mother’s death from cancer had sent his stepfather into a spiral of neglect—of himself, his stepson, and his daughter, before he died a couple of years later with a bottle in his hand.

Liquid pain filled her eyes and she curled those long fingers around his palm. His whole body sighed into her hand’s embrace.

“That must have been awful for you.”

It had been hell but luckily for Jack, his own surly teenage years had kicked in and created other distractions.

“And for your sister. She was so young. What about your own father?”

“He wasn’t around. I met him once but it didn’t go so well.”

“What happened?”

“He wasn’t interested.” The father-son reunion had been a bitter disappointment, a foregone conclusion when reality overtakes hope. He shook off that dark memory and focused on a happier time. The happiest of times. “Not long after my mother died, I found cooking. Or rather it found me.”

Her hand squeezed tighter, so he talked, knowing she liked the sound of his voice. Women dug the accent, for sure.

“I acted out, got into trouble. Fights, stealing, kid stuff. I ended up in a program for juvenile delinquents that taught me to cook. Apprenticeship in Paris at eighteen, my first restaurant at twenty-three, my first restaurant failure at twenty-four…” That netted him a wry smile. “More success, British TV. I opened Thyme on Forty-Seventh, conquered America, and here we are.”

“Wow, just like the Beatles. The American dream fulfilled. And it’s about to get better with your new show.”

He wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms but he could see why she would think that. Money and fame equated to better for most people.

“Nice switch,” he said. “We started out talking about you and I managed to make it all about me.”

“One of my superpowers.”

A throwaway comment, but he suspected there was a lot of truth in there. Putting other people first was how she operated. Last night, she had taken a chance on him and he’d turned her down for his own self-flagellating reasons. Yep, he was a dick squared.

“What about your fairy-tale ending? Your mom’s better, so you can kick-start all your grad school plans again.” The thought of Lili living in the same city as him sent an unreasonable thrill through him. Curiously, it wasn’t sexual…or not only sexual.

She released his hand and his stomach felt weirdly hollow despite being stuffed with pasta and bread.

“I have responsibilities here. Managing this place.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” he prompted.

“It’s not so bad. The killer is the early morning deliveries. I’m so not a morning person.”