All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (32 page)

“We Irish boys don’t like it when women are disrespected.”

Cara shook her head and looked to the ceiling, clearly unappreciative of Shane’s “hands off our women” comment.

“Mason, we can’t apologize enough about what happened. If Michael needs anything, please let me know.” If Michael needs anything? Like free rein over the glorious, golden skin of Shane’s woman, perhaps? Her voice was smooth and soft, and every word shredded Shane’s nerves. “I hope this little blip hasn’t put you off considering Sarriette for future events.”

“I’m sure I can persuade Mick not to press charges but I think, at this point, you should be more worried about the negative publicity. If it was to get out that one of your staff is in the habit of losing it at the drop of a hat…” He trailed off suggestively.

“I’ll quit if it makes you feel better,” Shane said.

“No, you won’t,” Jack shot back without missing a beat. “We’re happy to host the dinner and cover all the costs.” He offered his hand, clearly in a hurry to put the whole sorry mess behind him.

“That’s very generous of you,” Mason said, his mouth twisting up in a half sneer, half smile, like he couldn’t make the full sneer-to-smile conversion. Their new client held onto Jack’s hand like a limpet. “But I’ll need something else.”

Jack looked at his captured hand in distaste, and withdrew it with a jerk.

“I’m getting married in November and I want you to design a menu,” Mason said, ignoring Jack’s animosity.

“Congratulations,” Cara said with false brightness. “I don’t remember seeing the announcement.”

“It’s going to be low key. Just four hundred guests.”

Shane repressed an eye roll. Another bloody wedding. Is that all anyone thought about? A lengthy pause followed as Jack and Mason sized each other up.

“I don’t do weddings,” Jack said. “I get a lot of requests, but this place and my family take up all my time.”

“I thought you might say that,” Napier said with a smirk. “Several people told me it couldn’t be done, but when Cara came to me with her bid for the Pink Hearts dinner, I figured you might have changed your mind. My fiancée sent me out with clear instructions to get your cooperation. Women, right?” He gave an almost embarrassed shrug as if the whole thing was terribly out of his control. His gaze flicked from Jack to Shane, and back again. “I think you could break your rule this one time, don’t you?”

This one was a slippery little bastard all right. Jack looked like he wanted to break more than his rule, though judging by Jack’s current mood he would be perfectly happy with either Shane or Napier on the other end of his fist.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Jack finally managed. Shane could tell every single word killed him.

Hands were shaken, good-byes exchanged. Shane held back, not wishing to be any part of Napier’s bargain, especially as it was down to him Jack had been put in an untenable position.

“Look after that shoulder, Doyle,” Napier said as he walked out with Cara, who still refused to look Shane’s way. “And your temper.”

Left with Jack, Shane jumped into his defense. “That lout touched Cara.”

Jack glowered. “And I was about to step in and take care of it.”

Shane suspected his face had frozen in astonishment. “When was this magical intervention going to happen? Were you planning to wait until he had two inches of dick out? Four? Maybe a testicle sighting? That’s
your
kitchen in there and you let a customer paw all over one of your employees. Great job, fearless leader. What happened to the guy who punched how many paparazzi when they got up in his sister’s face? Who went ape-shit on the whole Internet for insulting Lili?”

Jack had the decency to look uncomfortable. “I usually draw the line at thumping a guy in my own restaurant. Christ, I told you to stay away from her.”

Shane forced his fists to play ball and folded them under his arms. “I’m getting sick and tired of you telling me how to conduct my personal life. I’ll see whoever the hell I want, and if you don’t like it, you can go screw yourself.”

Jack visibly started. “Oh, that’s how you want to play it? You know, I don’t get what your game is at all, Doyle. Help me understand why an award-winning pastry chef would give up a job with Anton Baillard? Why, if you’re so desperate to work here, you already have your next gig lined up?”

He paced to the desk and back. “I called Baillard this afternoon and you know what he told me? He begged you to stay at Maison Rouge, offered you twice as much as you’d be earning here. Why would you give that up for lower pay and a smaller kitchen? It’s not as if I know anything about pastry.”

“You know enough,” Shane said, as if that was the most important fact in Jack’s speech. Talk about burying the lede.

Jack scowled. “I didn’t even want to hire you, but Laurent said you kept needling him about transferring here.”

Shane’s heart plummeted to his gut. Had he heard that right? Jack hadn’t wanted him to work here? His follow-up question was interrupted by Cara’s return.

“I had no idea he was going to pull that stunt,” Cara said to Jack.

“Who? Napier or your thick-as-a-plank boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

His heart bled into his chest. Jack didn’t want him to work at Sarriette, and now Cara had pretty much denied their connection. Could he blame her after everything that had gone down between them today? There was no place for him here, no space at the table. A curtain of frost had descended over the glass.

“Do you think we’re in the clear?” Cara was saying to Jack, all while doing a bang-up job of ignoring Shane. “He could sue us, destroy the entire business.”

Jack stopped pacing and gave a dismissive wave. “Napier will keep his word. No one’s getting sued, though the possibility of punitive action is still very real.” He glared at Shane.

Shane had had it up to his neck. It was bad enough he had wormed his way into Jack’s kitchen when he wasn’t even wanted, but to be dismissed by Cara was doing his head in. He wasn’t Jack’s brother. He wasn’t Cara’s
anything
. He was nothing.

“If you’re going to fire me,” he said to Jack, “just get it over with instead of holding it over my head like the Almighty. That God complex you’ve got going on is really starting to piss me off.”

“Shane,” Cara began in that coaxing tone she used on Napier, though she iced it with condescension. “Jack’s not going to fire you.”

Jack held up his hand. “Not so fast, Cara.”

Screw this.
“You know what? I’ll save you the trouble of having to think up any imaginative punishments. You can stuff your job.”

Shane crashed out into the hallway. He knew he’d messed up, but damn if he was going to kowtow at the great Jack Kilroy’s feet. He would rather suck out the grease traps with his mouth than apologize to that shithead.

*  *  *

“Shane!” Cara watched him pound out toward the front of the house, only to narrowly miss one of the harried servers.

“Leave him,” Jack said. “He just needs to cool down.”

Well, that was a given. Just when she thought she had a handle on what she was dealing with, he blindsided her all over again. What had he been thinking back at the chef’s table?

“You’re not going to accept his resignation, are you?”

Jack gusted a long sigh. “No, I’ll talk to him tomorrow and sort it out.”

Stepping back inside the office, Cara felt the tightness in her chest receding. What a catastrophe. It was bad enough she had to shine up her silver tongue for Mason when her heart was in shreds after her fight with Shane. Then, having to put up with that drooling idiot and his wandering digits was a nightmare, especially when all she could feel was Shane’s impression of a snarling junkyard dog just a few feet away.

As for closing the deal, she should have known it had been far too easy. Mason was no more interested in his mother’s charity dinner than Cara was in the outcome of the World Series. He had used her desperation to bag Penny Napier to get the true prize: former celebrity chef Jack Kilroy to preside over the food at his nuptials. While there was no way he could have planned tonight’s events, it had certainly worked out to his liking. He might have inherited most of his gleaming wealth but the man was clearly a shrewd businessman who knew how to make a deal. Or craft one out of nothing.

“Jack, I’m sorry about what happened with Mason.”

“Yeah, so am I. I should have stepped in sooner and put a stop to it. Shane was right.”

She had meant Mason’s methods, but to say she didn’t feel a little thrill at Shane’s defense would be a lie. For now, she needed to refocus on things not Shane. Mason’s ambush wasn’t the ideal way to win hearts and minds, but she was going to run with it all the way to the goal line.

“Now we have the Napier business, we can make a proper plan.”

Jack scrubbed a hand across his mouth and looked at her squarely. “This charity dinner isn’t going to kill me. His wedding, on the other hand…I’ll do it to get us out of this jam but it’ll be the only one.”

Her heart stuttered. “Jack, this is the perfect opportunity to launch us properly into bigger events. It’ll bring in a ton of business.”

He met her plea with a sigh. “Cara, you know I’ve been resisting. Well, it’s just I wasn’t completely honest about why I don’t want to take on the burden of an extra business.”

No, no, don’t say it.
It might be a burden to him but it was everything to her. She needed this to start something, but she could feel it slipping away with the blood draining to her toes.

“Once Lili and I are married, we want to start a family.”

She could have sworn the room tilted. “Oh, I see.”

“I don’t want to be one of those parents who’s never around. I can’t leave Lili a single mother while I’m out making more money than necessary. Kids need both parents and setting up another business or expanding this one is not part of the plan.”

So Jack had been bitten by the domesticity bug, and Cara couldn’t blame him. Who doesn’t want to cozy up with loved ones, spend quality time with the kids? Jack had grown up wild with a single mother, and later a neglectful stepfather, but he loved Lili, Jules, and Evan with a terrifying passion. Family was everything to him. At almost ten years older than Lili, it was understandable he’d want to get cracking on the next generation of genius sooner than later.

“Does Lili know about your plans to knock her up on your honeymoon? Thought she wanted a career,” Cara joked, the words hollow and distant.
Her sister would have a baby soon.

“She does know and she’ll still have the chance to do anything she wants career-wise because I’ll be around to share the parenting. I’m not farming my kids off to strangers. I don’t want to miss a minute of them growing up.”

Cara’s heart clenched. Her sister was a very lucky girl.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

He grimaced and took a moment before he responded. “There are occasions when I feel like we’re rubbing your face in our happiness.”

Shock sloshed over her. Sometimes she forgot how well Jack knew her. Sometimes, she felt like he was the only one who did until Shane.

“I’m fine. I’m—I’m in a better place than I have been for a while.”

Instead of looking mollified, his expression hardened. “That wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain hot-headed pastry chef, would it?”

She fixed him with a stare and lined up her excuses.
It’s casual. A one-off. I don’t need a man to make me happy.
The words clotted like heavy custard in her throat.

“That bad, huh?” Jack said to whatever was written on her face.

Legs shaking, she sank into the leather sofa. “I thought I could control it. There are a million reasons why it can’t work and every one of them is a doozy. But when I’m with him, all the reasons fade away.”

“Ever think that maybe you’re just falling for that stupid accent of his?”

“It has occurred to me.” She tried to smile, but her mouth got stuck.

Jack sat beside her, those stark green eyes intent. “He seemed out of sorts tonight. Yes, he had provocation, but that didn’t seem like the Shane I know.”

“We had a fight earlier. He doesn’t say much about himself and I was trying to learn more about him.” And instead of talking to her, he chose to exorcise his demons with the easiest target—a slobbery, grab-ass drunk. “I’m just not sure where he stands.”

Concern drew Jack’s lips into a tight seal. She had never been sure when he figured out her food issues or even how much he knew, but he knew enough. Every day, he made her plain old chicken dinner with care and precision (15 spinach leaves, no more, no less!) and now, as she held his gaze, not of pity but of support, she counted herself blessed that he was an arrogant ass to boot or she would have fallen in love with him years ago.

“I think after tonight it’s clear where he stands,” he said. “Guy’s crazy about you.”

And she was crazy about him, not just crazy, but hopelessly in love. She loved him because he didn’t balk at her weirdness. She loved him because he brought life-affirming color to her world. Shane saw that her sum was far greater than her parts. He saw
her.

She had been trying to keep her life ordered and neat so she wouldn’t drown, or worse, drown in someone else. Since that night in Vegas, she had viewed Shane as a millstone around her neck when really he had been a life preserver, keeping her head above water. But now he needed her. He needed to see that she had strength and buoyancy enough for both of them.