Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (2 page)

“Thanks for what?” she managed to husk out.

“For letting me be a part of this.” The reverence in Tad’s tone caught her off guard. Leaning in, he kissed her sweaty forehead with warm, firm lips, then dropped a gentle kiss on the soft crown of her baby boy’s head.

The pleasure was all hers, though the way her vision blurred seemed to contradict that. Demon’s fist shot out and grabbed at her hair in vain.

“He’s going to be a great pitcher for the Cubs,” Tad said with a chuckle, ghosting over the serious moment from a few seconds before.

“Footie, Tad. You’ll have to teach him the sport of his ancestors.”

“I’ll teach him everything he needs to know. How to score with girls, how to appreciate the finest wines—”

At her raised eyebrow, he laughed. “In moderation and not until he’s at least fifteen. Hey, he’s part of the Italian culture now. And if he’s got Jack riding him hard, he’s going to need a cool uncle.”

Uncle.
And that’s all Tad would or could ever be. She had spent twenty-three years on planet Earth wishing for a family to love and accept her, hoping she might one day be the center of someone’s world. Reconnecting with Jack and finding acceptance in the bosom of the DeLucas was the best thing to ever happen to her.

Well, the second best thing. Her gaze fell to her bonny baby boy and she let go of a happy sigh.

Acting on this inconvenient attraction to Tad would only put her newfound stability at risk. She had responsibilities now and they trumped her treacherous hormones. Men would come and go, but
this
—she looked down at her new focus, the precious heart beating outside her body—this was the love of a lifetime.

Chapter One

Wine, women and tobacco reduces one to ashes.
—Italian proverb Tad DeLuca ground his teeth so hard he risked bone dust shooting out of his ears.

“It needs a part,” came the latest utterance from under the hood of the pizza oven. Four little words that signaled a screwing over of the major variety was about to take place. Compounding the insult, the speaker, complete with abundant ass cleavage and just-for-show tool belt, crawled out from behind the oven, butt first, and adjusted his waistband.

Too late, dude; you’re already the clichéd repair guy who can’t seem to find a pair of jeans—or a belt—to fit him.

“That’s what you said last week,” Tad said patiently. Really patiently. “You installed the…”

“Temperature regulator.”

“Temperature regulator, and said that should be it.”

Over the oven guy’s head, the pizza oven loomed, mocking Tad’s foray into the world of business ownership. Flatbreads were one of the cornerstones of his new wine bar menu—or had been—and now he was thinking about his back-up plan. The non-existent one. The joys of being his own boss.

“It’s not the regulator this time. There’s a—” He said something incomprehensible and Tad tuned out. Three semesters of engineering coursework under his belt didn’t really qualify him to talk pizza oven repair shop, but maybe if he’d stuck around college longer, he’d be on more of a conversational footing here. Unfortunately, thinking about his college days inevitably led to thinking about how they’d ended, conjuring memories that scorched him fresh to this day.

“How long?”

Still in an ungainly squat, Oven Guy rubbed the back of his neck while he caught his serrated breath. “A week. More like two.”

God
damn it
. The man’s eyebrow shot up as if Tad had spoken that aloud. He hadn’t, but the pulverized bone dust blasting from his ears might have given anyone pause.

In less than a week, he was slated to open Vivi’s in trendier-by-the-second Wicker Park, just a stone’s throw from his family’s restaurant, DeLuca’s. Going from bartender to bar owner had seemed like a logical progression but fate hadn’t been on speaking terms with logic for a while. His first location choice had burned to the ground before he signed the lease. He had been outbid on the second. Not to mention his chef had up and quit, leaving Tad without someone capable of cooking the spectacular tasting menu he had planned. But he couldn’t dwell on the roadblocks; now it was all systems go.

It had taken him a while to get here. Years of dwelling on his mistakes and making excuses had held him back. Letting people down was second nature to him, but
this
—he looked around at the gleaming, polished surfaces of his new kitchen—would be his way back in. Making Vivi proud might get him there.

A menu of delicious snacks would definitely help.

“Penny for ’em, babe,” Tad heard softly in his ear. “Or should I just
tell
you what’s going on in that charming head of yours?”

Smiling away his irritation at how shitty the day had gone so far, Tad turned to greet the girl-next-door blonde who could make it all better. Hair in a topknot, dark circles under her green-gold eyes, her shirt shapeless and wrinkled over baggy desert camo pants rolled to just below her knees. If it were anyone else, he would guess she had just tumbled from a warm bed where she had been well and truly serviced. But this was Jules Kilroy, his best girl who, as far as he knew, had never been on a date—or anything more—in the two years he had known her.

The smart upturn of her lips couldn’t disguise how tired she looked. Neither did it detract from her pale, fragile beauty, which had him itching to wrap his body around her and gather her tight to his chest.

Instead of focusing on all the reasons why he wanted to protect her, which inevitably led to the reasons why that was a terrible idea, he moved his gaze back to the safer territory of that smirk. When Jules wore that look, it was easy to remember why they had become friends in the first place. They had connected the moment she showed up in his family’s restaurant, knocked up, beat down, and in need of a pal.

Some pal he had been. He jerked his brain away from that thought and dialed up a friendly grin.

“You don’t want to know what’s going on in my head. It’s a whirling cesspit of debauchery that would make your hair curl.”

She gave a discreet nod to Oven Guy, who had once more descended to all-fours to poke around the appliance mechanics.

“You’re thinking there’s nothing more attractive than the sight of a generous arse peeking out of denim.”

He’d always liked that word.
Arse.
Or really he liked the way Jules’s lips shaped it. Her British singsong accent hadn’t diminished one iota in the time she had lived in the States. It wasn’t one of those regal voices that sounded like her mouth was filled with plums, either; it was a good-time girl voice. A little husky, the kind of rasp you might get from screaming above the boom-boom bass at a club the night before.

Up until her baby bump had made her self-conscious about shaking her booty on the boards, they had been quite the team on the dance floor. Now she had her hands full with her eighteen-month old, Evan. The kid was adorable but those circles under Jules’s eyes confirmed he was also a handful.

His phone buzzed and he checked it discreetly, unable to hide his frown at the number of the last person in the world he wanted to talk to. When he looked back at Jules, there was no missing the blatant curiosity on her face.

“How’s the washed-up ballerina?”

Usually there was a more engaging proposition on the other end of the line and Jules liked to tease him about his flavor of the month.

“Retired Olympic gymnast,” he corrected, referring to the gamine hottie he had been seeing the week before and who had now been relegated to Tad’s past tense.

“Still pulling out all the stops on the floor exercise?”

That drew a laugh from deep in his gut. Jules and her cheeky mouth.

“It didn’t work out,” he said sadly.

“Oh, the poor thing. Marked down by the Italian judge.” A slender finger touched her lips. “Or maybe not as flexible in her old age. What was she? Eighteen, fifteen?”

“Twenty-two. She just looked young.”

“Taddeo DeLuca, when are you going to settle down with a nice-ah plump girl and make-ah da bambinos?” she sang in a terrible stage Italian accent. For good measure, she pinched his cheek, an unapologetic nod to his Aunt Sylvia, who devoted her non-Mass time to matchmaking for her unattached nieces and nephews.

In his head, the answer to the rhetorical question rang clear as a bell. No one compared to the fair, green-eyed beauty standing before him. On his lips, something more flippant hovered. Maybe a joke about how his Facebook fan base would never stand for it, but she had already redirected her attention.

At Oven Guy, who had pulled himself to a lumbering stand and was writing up his chit of can’t-help-you-a-damn.

“Hi, there.” Her bright grin became impossibly wider.

Visibly startled, the repairman ran thick fingers through his untidy hair.

“Uh, hello,” he offered cautiously.

“Looks like hard work,” Jules said, her eyelashes fluttering. That’s right, fluttering.

Juliet Kilroy did not have a flirty bone in her body. Not once had he seen her even talk to a guy with any intention beyond ordering a Sprite in a bar. Of course, as long as he’d known her, she was either pregnant or mom to a rambunctious kid, so flirting was fairly low on her list.

But it sure looked like she was flirting now.

With Oven Guy.

“So two weeks to get that part?” She loosed a breathy sigh and chewed on her bottom lip. Oven Guy’s cheeks flushed and he stood up a little straighter, and damn if Tad didn’t blame him. That lip snag thing was very cute. And very sexy.

Defenseless in the face of Jules’s charm assault, the man’s hands fell into a distinct caress of his tool belt.

Jules looked down at the belt with wide-eyed innocence, as if the notion of belt-stroking and all it implied had only just occurred to her. Slowly, she returned her gaze with a slide up Oven Guy’s body.

“What are you doing?” Tad asked her and then wished he hadn’t because his voice registered more peevish than curious.

“Practicing,” she said without taking her eyes off the non-repair guy. “You don’t know how much we’d appreciate it if you could get that part sooner. The pizza needs of the masses must be appeased.” Was it Tad’s imagination or did her accent sound a little posher than usual?

“Practicing what?” Tad asked, no longer caring how put out he sounded.

Ignoring him, she kept her green-gold gaze trained on her target.

“I could probably put in a special order,” Oven Guy said, his blush now saturating his hairline. “Have it in a couple days.”

“Lovely man,” she said with a fire-bright smile.

Lovely Man returned a shy grin and backed out of the kitchen, muttering something about calling with an update the next day.

“Sorted,” Jules said, rubbing her hands together in satisfaction.

“What in the hell was that?” Tad asked.

“It’s a well-known fact that honey gets the bee. Do you want your special part or not?”

If it meant he had to witness that display again, that would probably be a whopping great negative.

“Thanks,” he said, trying not to sound like a curmudgeon and failing.

“You’re welcome.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts, an action that molded the shapeless material to her figure in a way he should not be noticing. “Where’s Long Face?”

That was the nickname she had given to Jordie the chef, who usually wore the lugubrious expression of a man with the weight of the world on his reedy shoulders. The bastard hadn’t sounded all that sad when he called to quit this morning. Tad filled her in on his tale of woe, glad for the distraction and gratified when she made sympathetic noises in all the right places.

Moving her gaze around the room, she rocked that look where she wanted to say something, usually some criticism about how he was mistreating his latest woman or the fact that he drove too damn fast on his Harley. As well as being one of his closest friends, she was unafraid of playing annoying sister and nagging mother hen.

“Out with it,” he said, eager to hear what she had to say. Her smart-mouthed take on his occasionally imperfect decision-making was often the highlight of his day.

“No working pizza oven, no vittles, and a dining room about to be filled with the harshest critics known to man. You’re in deep doo doo, mate.”

Shit. In all the excitement, he had forgotten to cancel the trial tasting of his now non-existent small plates menu. Luckily, the impatient herd about to descend on his fledgling bar was his family and not Chicago’s rapacious food cognoscenti.

He had planned trendy accompaniments to go with the extensive wine list. Duck rillettes. Porcini and shallot flat bread. The expected selection of artisanal cheese and charcuterie. Items that didn’t require too much effort and absorbed healthy mark-ups. He might expand the menu later but he didn’t want to overextend himself starting out. For now, it was all about the wine—especially today when there was no hot food on offer.

At least there were cold cuts. He strode over to the prep station and uncovered a couple of platters.

“Here, make yourself useful, wench,” he said to Jules. “Take this out to the horde.”

* * *

“What do you mean he quit?”

Jules lifted her head at her brother’s sharp tone. Jack was going with the dark and disapproving thing he used to great effect, and laying it on even thicker because he also happened to be an investor in Tad’s business. She knew Tad would have preferred to go it alone but it was either bring Jack on board or wait another three years to accumulate enough seed money. Sometimes dreams involved compromises.