Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (11 page)

Or so she had thought until Tad threw in his piece.

Five hours later and she was still furious.

Not once since she’d become pregnant with Evan had she felt like an attractive woman. She felt tired and worn and stupid and sometimes, horny, but never attractive. Until Lili had started clicking and talking in that soothing voice of hers, the one that drew out female power in all her subjects. She had felt it coursing through her as she crossed and uncrossed her legs, leaned forward to show her assets, leaned back to play it cool.

For a brief moment, when Tad said the photo was gorgeous, her heart had soared, then crashed and burned with his qualifying follow-up. Of course he was just being nice when he said it looked good. Tad was her friend and he didn’t think of her that way. So proven, time and time again.

“You don’t think it’s too much?” she asked Lili. Maybe it was a bit come-hither. It was the kind of aura she had given off in London, which was why Tad’s comment had struck so hard in her heart. It was all she had to offer, so she had played it to the hilt.

“Forget what Tad said,” Lili said, reading Jules’s mind. “He’s just doing his Italian macho thing. No woman of mine and all that.”

“What do you mean? I’m not his woman.”
His woman.
It gave her a sensuous thrill to say it.

“I mean the protective streak that all Italian guys feel about any woman in their immediate circle. Tad feels a responsibility to you as a friend and practical relative.” Lili considered her. “There was a time I thought…”

“You thought what?”

She shook her head, but Jules knew this trick. She’d seen her work it on Jack, this “oh, never mind, I must have been mistaken” thing, and before Jack knew it, he was confessing some misdemeanor or doing whatever the hell Lili had wanted him to do in the first place.

“What, Lili?”

“I always thought you guys would make a go of it. I know you said once it was a non-starter, but you never really explained why.”

Evan and Jack’s noisy laughter provided cover for their conversation, but Jules lowered her voice all the same.

“I made a pass at him and he turned me down.”

Lili’s DeLuca blue eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. It was almost a year ago, just before you and Jack got married. I was feeling hormonal and lonely and before I knew it Tad was holding me through some ugly sobbing fit and I was laying one on him.”

“Yowza. And?”

“And, that’s all she wrote. He jumped off the sofa—uh, this sofa, actually—like I was diseased, said it was the worst idea in the history of ideas, and hightailed it out of here as if I had asked him what china pattern we should get for the wedding registry. Later, we talked and he told me that it was for the best, that we’re great as friends and he’d hate to ruin a good thing, yadda, yadda. And I agreed. It was a moment of lady weakness and it had been a long time since someone I wasn’t related to had held me. He smelled good and I had an attack of the crazies.”

Lili looked skeptical. “So how do you feel about him now?”

“He’s my friend. One of my closest friends and he was right. It would have been awful if we got together and it fizzled. We’d have to see each other all the time. It’s not like we can avoid it.” She couldn’t bear it if all their meetings were anywhere near as awkward as those first few had been after her smooch attack.

“But what if it hadn’t fizzled? What if the two of you are better as something more than friends?”

Too often, she had let her mind wander to how good it would be to have Tad in her life that way. Her lover, her partner, a father for Evan. But they were too entwined in each other’s lives with the practically incestuous natures of their respective relatives. The fallout from crossing the line and failing would be devastating.

“It’s better this way, but I don’t want to be a nun. I’m ready to get out there.”

There
was a pretty scary place, but she had to do this. For herself, and for Evan, especially now that Simon was hovering on the edges ready to attack.

Lili opened her mouth to respond but luckily, Shane and Cara walked in from the kitchen, having just entered through the back door. After making sure Cara was sitting comfortably, Shane plucked Evan out of Jack’s hands and tickled him silly. Evan screamed “Chay”, which was what he called his uncle Shane.

Jules had been worried sick when he hadn’t spoken by the time he was fourteen months, but the pediatrician said he was at all the right developmental milestones otherwise and Jules shouldn’t be concerned. How could she not be? She knew that her dyslexia had nothing to do with her intelligence but there was still that nagging thought that she had passed on some intellectual deficiency to her son.

The relief when, a month later, he said his first word—
Mummy
—had been so overwhelming she had broken down. Jack found her sitting on this very floor, playing building bricks with her son while the tears streamed down her cheeks. Now at eighteen months, he jabbered constantly and she never got sick of hearing him.

“So how’s the profile looking?” Cara asked.

Lili turned the laptop around and Cara whistled. “Holy Jalapeño, Mama likey. And you’ve already got hits!”

“I do?” Jules peered at the screen.

“Yes, that’s what this number means in the corner. You have eight messages waiting for you. That was fast.”

“Fresh meat,” Shane said while he chugged Evan on his hip. “Your mam’s this pretty young chicky and all the foxes are sniffing around the hen house.”

“Uh, thanks, I think,” Jules said, ignoring the scowl Jack sent his brother’s way.

Cara clicked open the messages box. “Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all.”

“Lemme see.” Jules sat beside her while Lili crowded around the other side.

“This one’s an architect, but he’s an oldster. 52. Pity, because he has nice teeth.” She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “I know how important that is to you.”

An architect sounded intimidating. Too smart for her. She would prefer someone who wouldn’t expect much in the way of the little grey cells.

Cara opened the next one, who looked like a beach bum. His photo showcased washboard abs, biceps toned from surfing (she assumed), and sun-kissed, Fabio hair.

“Hubba hubba,” Lili said into the appreciative pause. That was about as articulate as anyone needed to get for that.

Cara’s forehead wrinkled. “We’re going to have to make a Fling and a Ring pile. Some of these guys are not worth the trouble of dinner, but they might be useful in other ways.”

Jules was just about to ask for details when she felt Jack at her shoulder, doing his glowering bit. With a sharp glance at Evan who was still resting in Shane’s arms, he cupped the little guy’s ears with his hands.

“So you just want sex?”

Squinting up, she took in her brother’s dark disapproval with a side of infinite know-it-all-ness. “I want adult conversation.”

“You get plenty of that. We’re all adults here.”

“That’s debatable. But really I’d like an adult conversation that has the potential for sex. So yes, I want sex.”

A low growl rumbled from Jack’s throat. For a reason known only to him, he subscribed to the view she’d only had sex once, likely an accidental fall onto a stranger’s penis that had resulted in Evan.

“Sex, Jack. Your baby sister wants to get rogered,” she said just as he released his hands-as-headphones from Evan’s ears.

Oops.

“And where is all this sex going to happen?” he snapped, his face a reddening storm. “You can’t carry on like that with Evan in the next room.”

“I know that. Do you not think I know that?” The temptation to tear out her hair made her fingertips buzz. “There are no end to the places I can get it on. Bathroom stalls, the backseat of a car, a convenient alleyway. Don’t worry that big, nosy head of yours about me scandalizing Evan.”

Jack threw up his hands in a very Italian gesture and strode into the kitchen, where he proceeded to make his position known in the language of clanking pots and pans. A chef tantrum.

She turned back to the room and the impossibly wide grins of Cara, Lili, and Shane. Even Evan thought it was funny, though he couldn’t possibly know why.

“Sex,” her son shouted. Fantastic.

The chorus laughed, keeping their amusement soft in case Jack’s wobbly in the kitchen whirled into something more threatening.

Jules eyed the computer screen with purpose. “Now, where were we?”

* * *

“She said that?”

Tad had just finished up the day from hell. The wine distributor had messed up the delivery so he’d spent an hour on the phone reaming the guy’s ass. The pizza oven was still playing up, refusing to hit the optimum temperature. Two hours on the phone lost to that. Now Shane had just got through telling Tad about Jules’s stand-off with Jack and while Tad would normally be taking that kind of thing in his stride, he was more than a touch interested in some of the statements she had made. Particularly the ones about how she wanted sex and the places she was happy to get it in.

“She was very forceful about it, too,” Shane said as he lifted a pint of ale to his lips. O’Casey’s, the smallest Irish bar in Chicago, was busier than usual with a group of bachelorettes snagging the attention of every guy in the room. In his heyday, Tad would be all over that, tapping the prettiest girl in the group. But now he couldn’t muster the interest, not even in the one who brushed her breast against his arm—slow and deliberate, like—as she tried to get the attention of Conor, the owner/bartender.

“Sorry,” she said, the sound more wheezy than Marilyn-breathless. A white veil was pinned at a drunken angle on her head. It had been a while since he’d hit on the bride and over the years, he’d raised his standards some.

“No problem,” he said, moving aside to give her space.

“I’m Giselle,” she said. “Like the supermodel.”

Who called their kid Giselle? And who tacked on “like the supermodel” during the overture?
Minus fifty points, honey.

“Pretty name.” He turned back to Shane, not before registering the moue of distaste that crossed her glossy lips.

“Is she really going to let some guy she met online fuck her in the back of his”—Tad carved the air with his hand, reaching for the douchiest car name he could think of—“Lexus?”

Shane gave a smirk of,
that’s the best you got?
“I think she was just trying to make a point to Jack.” His eyes flicked to the tipsy bride-to-be, then back to meet Tad’s with a look of
up-for-it babe at three o’clock,
followed by an eyebrow lift of
what’s your problem?

The guy needed to shut the hell up.

“So she’s not dying to get jumped by the first guy who shows her some interest?”

“Who’s not dying to get jumped?” Conor had just served Giselle her rum and coke with all the efficiency of a guy who could keep one eye on the Blackhawks game, run a thriving bar, and also put out fires with his work at Engine No. 35 down the street. He leaned over, ready for a gossip.

“Jack’s sister, Jules,” Shane said. “She’s dating.”

“She’s thinking about it,” Tad said sharply.

“More than thinking about it. She’s already on one of those dating sites. Getting lots of interest.”

“Jules, Jules, Jules,” Conor murmured like he was trying to think of who she was. Fucker knew exactly who she was because once seen, Jules was impossible to forget. “Blonde, green eyes, Sprite with a twist?”

Tad frowned his agreement.

“She used to come in with you when she was pregnant,” Conor said, his voice taking on a suspiciously dreamy quality. “Haven’t seen her in a while. Had her kid?”

“Evan. He’s great.” He really was. Tad adored that bundle of terror.

“So she’s ready to get back in the game? Interesting.”

“Don’t you have customers to serve?” Tad asked grumpily, waving an arm around the crowded bar.

Conor continued, undeterred. “I always thought you two had a little something.”

Tad could feel his body turn to titanium. Just because he looked happy with Jules did not mean they had “a little something.”

“You’re losing business,
cretino
.” Tad gestured to a cranky-looking guy angling for service at the other end of the bar. Just at that moment, the man pounded the bar to get Conor’s attention.

Straightening to an intimidating six-feet-four, Conor sent a dagger storm the guy’s way. “Do that again and you’re barred, asshole.”

He turned his back on the chastened customer. “So all those times you were hanging out with her in here, it was one of your plays? Is that Number 23? The one where you use the pregnant chick to establish your friend-to-all-women credentials, then you go in for the kill with some other hottie?”

Tad slid a glance in Shane’s direction. “Is this guy for real?”

Shane shrugged. “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

“No wonder you have to hold down two jobs,” Tad sniped to Conor. “You suck at being a bartender.”

Conor gifted them a devilish grin and sauntered off to salvage his customer base.

Tad’s neck prickled with the heat of Shane’s stare.

“What’s going on, dude?”

I don’t know.
He should be thinking about his opening in a week. About how he should have been nicer to that reviewer from
Tasty Chicago
. About how he should have banged her in the office, made good on the expectation she had the minute she walked in that door.