Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (23 page)

“I don’t see any bed linens on the sofa.”

Jules returned to feeding Evan, who was talking baby babble about bananas. “Funny story there. I know everyone has been expecting Tad and I to get together and last night…”

Sylvia leaned forward.

“I was all primed and ready…”

Sylvia nodded several times in encouragement.

“But he couldn’t, well, you know…” Jules shaded her mouth with one hand and said in a stage whisper, “Perform.”

He wrenched his head so quickly he winced.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t remember, babe, but you were pretty bladdered. The spirit was willing but the flesh was oh so weak.” She made an up-down gesture with her hand that seemed to indicate… “Flaccid.”

That was
not
the word he was going for.

Sylvia’s eyes were on stalks.

“So he’s all talk and—?”

“Small, useless appendage.”

Sylvia tutted and walloped him in the side. He didn’t even flinch because that was her standard manner of showing affection.

“You have a beautiful woman, ready and willing, and what do you do? Let the DeLuca name down and can’t fulfill your end of the bargain.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. The bargain had been fulfilled, over and over again. All night, she had been right there with him, alternating between satisfying his starving cock and begging him to feast on her honeyed heat. No part of his anatomy had even flirted with “flaccid.”

“Now hold up a second. I am more than capable—”

Jules waved a hand, countermanding his defense.

“Tad, love, nobody thinks any less of you for it. I’m sure these things happen all the time. I mean, it’s the first time
I’ve
encountered it, but I’m sure once you sober up it’ll be fine.”

Sylvia’s face lit up. “Betsey Corrigan’s boy just got out of a messy divorce. No kids,
grazie di Dio
. Taddeo, you remember Johnny Corrigan from your days as an altar boy? Don’t you think he’d like to meet a
bella donna
like Julietta?”

Tad scoffed. “That guy was such a Goody Two-shoes. Little pussy was afraid to get toasted on the communion wine with the rest of the crew.”

A quirk of amusement crossed Jules’s lips. “Communion wine?”

“Had to start my love for the grape somewhere.”

Their gazes locked. Held. Turned to heat and smoke that curled through his blood.

Jules blinked owl-like and nodded to the kitchen clock hanging above the counter. “Bet Cassie Shaughnessy is going all out with her walker to get into the front pew, Syl.”

His aunt dropped her coffee cup as if it were coated in killer African bees and shot out of her seat. “I had no idea it was so late!”

Sylvia and the Widow Shaughnessy were engaged in what could best be described as a to-the-death battle for the soul of Father Phelan. The prime real estate of the front pew at St. Jude’s was Ground Zero.

Before his aunt left, she appraised him with a shake of her head. “You must do better, Taddeo. Someone will snap her up.”

“Yes, Aunt Sylvia,” he said, suitably admonished, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Must. Do. Better,” Jules said, poking his chest for emphasis before walking his meddling aunt out.

Tad picked up the plate of banana-chocolate mush and helped himself. Not bad. Evan’s face lit up at the prospect of someone new to play with and Tad’s heart lifted right with it. The kid had a great personality. Playful, smart, and always reaching for the stars with his chubby fists. Not unlike his beautiful, bangin’ mom.

“Tad!” Evan shouted. “Banana banana.”

“That’s right, buddy. Time to eat it all up.”

Not for the first time, Tad considered Evan’s father. It was the one area of his relationship with Jules that was out of bounds. She never talked about him, and the fact she had concealed his identity from Jack pissed off her brother royally. Frankly, anything that pissed off Jack was A-okay with him, but her secrecy had Tad curious. The asshole must have bailed when he found out about Evan. What a fucking dick.

Tad knew in his heart that, despite having enough baggage to fill multiple 747 cargo holds, he would never abandon a woman who gave birth to his child. He’d want to be part of his kid’s life: the baseball games, the algebra, the awkward sex talk, the works. In a way, he was glad this duty-shirker was out of the picture because Tad didn’t like to share. He’d heard Evan’s first cry. He’d seen his girl’s face when she met her son for the first time. He’d felt the love of instant connection with a brand new human being.

Those memories belonged to him and him alone. He wanted to create more just like them with this woman and her beautiful kid, who more often than not felt like
his
beautiful kid.

With Tad off in la-la land, Evan grabbed at the spoon and got his hands filled with mush for his trouble. Soaking a washcloth under the faucet, Tad took a moment to appreciate how Jules had made the kitchen her own. Culinary-themed engravings and woodcuts dotted the walls above counters bordered with colorful cookie jars and kitchen utensils. A few well-worn cookbooks claimed space in the corner by the stove. This place had a good aura. Lili and Jack had fallen in love here, followed by Shane and Cara while they played kissing neighbors with each other across the hall. Now Jules was here, forging ahead with her life and taking charge of her destiny. The vision of her blazing expression last night as she announced her plan to take what she needed and fight for what was hers grabbed him by the throat. No one had ever telegraphed her passion quite like Jules.

This woman was the real deal.

The last thing he expected to see arrested his gaze and sent his pulse into a dangerous spike. Slotted among a block of books on the counter behind Evan’s high chair, it looked surprisingly at home.

Vivi’s recipe book.

He had assumed Gina had it, but he realized that Frankie or Lili must have been keeping it safe all these years. Now it was in this place with the one person who could appreciate it and fulfill all the promise within those precious pages. His chest felt too full, his blood surged with the rightness of it. His mom was here, mentoring another budding chef.

He swallowed away the rock of emotion and wiped Evan’s sticky pudding hands. Looking up, he found Jules in the doorway with a pensive expression on her face that morphed into a smart ass grin.

“Your mom thinks she’s hilarious, Evs. Did you enjoy raking my hard-won reputation over the coals, you minx?”

“Immensely. Serves you right for waltzing in here in all your glory and giving her an eyeful.”

All his glory.
Hell, that made a man feel good.

“She’s seen it all before,” he said. “She used to give me baths when I was a kid. Very thorough.”

Her grin turned impossibly wider, chasing away the last shreds of any remaining reservation. He felt that smile down to his toes. Stepping in close, she took over cleaning duties for Evan. Tad absorbed the scent of their happy little triumvirate into his bloodstream, something unique that the three of them created together.

This was happening.

“And there I was thinking the morning after might be awkward,” he said, testing.

“You don’t think your aunt showing up is awkward enough?”

“Nah, we made her matchmaking dream come to life. If only for a few magical seconds.” Their gazes tangled for a moment until Evan squealed because the adults weren’t focused on him.

Jules sighed. “Time to get you cleaned up, monkey. And that goes for you as well, Taddeo Gianni DeLuca.”

He tried to steal a kiss but she ah-ah’ed him with a significant glance at Evan.

“Let’s keep it PG.”

“Impossible with you in the room. My head is filled with Triple X.”

“Boy, those lines don’t improve the next day.”

He nipped her shoulder. “You’re the mint in my mojito, the honey to my bee…”

“Oh, hush.” But she was smiling as she said it.

As he headed back to the bedroom to dress, he mused on how terribly that could have gone. It was a risk he had been willing to take because his reptile brain had taken over and he was a greedy motherfucker. He wanted her and he had decided that the prospect of not having her body was worse than the prospect of not having her as a friend.

But there was more to this than friendship-risking lust. Frankie’s words echoed in his Jules-addled brain:
You have a right to be happy, Taddeo.

Jules made him happy and he suspected the feeling might be mutual. Stepping out of the shadows and choosing life had never felt so right. And with Vivi’s cookbook in the house, it felt like his mom was looking down, giving her blessing.

Five minutes later, he was following her hot little tail as it twitched in those skimpy shorts all the way to the front door. Last night, he’d grasped that curvaceous ass of hers, molded it, owned it. He wanted to do it again, but for now he settled for grasping with his eyes.

“Well…” she said, her hand on the doorknob.

“Well.”

“These situations can be tricky, so it’s great that we were able to handle it with such…” She waved her hand, seeking the right word.

“Maturity?” he offered.

“Yes, maturity.” She looked at his mouth, and her mouth twitched, and his mouth twitched right back.

He leaned in. She leaned back.

Okaaay.

A thoughtful look came over her. “Sex conjures up all sorts of feelings that sometimes we’re not ready to deal with, you know?”

He nodded, content to let her lead. They could take it slow, take it fast, take it up the middle. He didn’t care as long as he got the chance to bury his body between those beautiful thighs in the very near future. And he wanted to hang with her and Evan more, maybe share his favorite recipes from his mom’s cookbook. Connecting with Jules like they had last night was the perfect amulet against the dark cloud that threatened to engulf him.

“You’ve no idea how nice it was to get back on the horse in a safe environment. With a friend.”

He nodded again before realizing he had jumped the gun. He tried to parse that statement but the words “nice”, “horse,” “safe,” and “friend” jumbled in his brain and refused to compute. A niggle started up somewhere in the vicinity of his lungs.

“Get back on the horse?”

She smiled again, and the niggle turned into a full-scale body nag. “It’s been a while. Well, you know that.”

Right, because he was her friend. Her nice, safe, horse-providing friend.

“And getting into this dating business, I was seriously worried I’d make a shambles of it.”

The surprise on his face must have been obvious because she added, “Make a shambles of sex,” as if what they were talking about needed clarification.

“I don’t think it was a shambles,” he said quietly. Best sex of his life, nothing shambolic about it.

She laughed and it sort of grated. That was a first.

“Oh, no, I don’t think it was. In fact, it was a great way to dust off the cobwebs. The last person I was with was Evan’s father and since then I haven’t always felt at my most attractive. There’s always been a spark between us, so it’s good we’ve done it and got it out of our systems.”

“I suppose so,” he muttered, unbelievably pissed that she had mentioned Evan’s father in the same sentence as her brush off. Because that’s exactly what he was getting. The old heave-ho.

In his confused fog, it took him a moment to notice that she had opened the door and stuck her head out for reconnaissance. With her other hand, she pulled him toward the doorway. The electric tingle where she touched his forearm shot through him before short-circuiting in the acid bath of his stomach.

“You really did help, Tad. Now, I can get serious about dating and not worry that the first time in a while will be all fingers and thumbs.” She smiled beatifically and pulled the door open wider. “Well, we can hope, right? At least I won’t show myself up. Thanks for being a pal.”

“Sure,” he mumbled. There was a whole lot of mumbling going on. He had no choice but to step across the threshold, feeling a touch raw about the whole situation. Was it his imagination or was the hallway cooler? He turned back to find her closing the door.

“Oh,” she said, peeking her angelic head through the quickly evaporating gap.

“Yeah?” Shit, did his voice just break there?

Discomfort brushed across her face. “This isn’t going to be awkward, is it? I mean, if you’d rather I didn’t work at Vivi’s…”

“Of course not. I’ll be—we’re fine. Just fine.”
It’s all good, honey. We’re just fine.

She gave a serene smile. “Oh, good. Because I’m enjoying it so much. You’ve no idea what a world it’s opened for me.”

“Glad to help.”
With your all-round confidence and sexual tune-up.
The bathroom stall doors were right. This was where his talents lay. Easy. Casual. Every muscle in his body strained over his efforts to keep it so damn casual.

“Catch you later, babe,” she said, still with the regal smile before shutting the door on his frozen grin.

Chapter Thirteen

One can’t garden without flowers; one can’t become a woman without love.
—Italian proverb The radishes were ripe for the ripping. She had planted them only three weeks ago, and now they had matured and were ready to be harvested. The perfect, renewable resource.

Casting about her vegetable garden, pride expanded in her chest and pushed aside more negative emotions. The lettuce and pea seeds she had nurtured indoors just six weeks ago were now showing healthy growth. It may be on her brother’s property, but she still considered it her garden and the achievement she felt at having created something from a patch of nothing got her every time. Just a five-minute walk from her flat, she tried to get here at least every other day.

“Want out!” Evan pumped his fist and strained at the straps pinning him back in his stroller.

“Sorry, Demon. If I could trust you not to bash your head on something, I’d let you roam free.”

“Want juice!” came his next offer in the negotiation.

More sugar, she could do that. In yet another plug for Worst Mother of the Decade, she placed the sippy cup in his hand and watched as he chugged away merrily. Simple pleasures.

She picked up the trowel and thought about how it might make a nice tool for a lobotomy.

Tad hadn’t called.

She was unbelievably annoyed about that, not just because he hadn’t called but because her reaction to it was so ridiculous. Waiting for a guy to call was old, desperate Jules. They were friends—he didn’t need to call her. She could call him because that’s what friends do.

Of course she hadn’t given him much reason to call. Two days had gone by since she had practically handed him his Armani suit and told him his sexually therapeutic services had primed her good. Evan had been sick the next day so she hadn’t been able to go in to work. In true coward’s fashion, she had texted Tad to let him know.

Something she never, ever did.

Texting was her bête noir. She always preferred to call someone but this time, she had dropped a, probably, misspelled sick note to her boss-slash-lover, letting him know she wouldn’t be in.

No problem,
he texted back.
Let me know if you need anything.
She knew enough to get the gist.

It was exactly what he would have said in the old days, as in two days ago before they moved from friend zone into bone zone, with one shocking difference.

Pre-shag, he would have called right back and insisted she accept his help. Soup, a ride to the doctor, a shoulder to lean on. Not that she needed it, but she craved the assurance that they were still in the same place.

Nice job keeping the status quo, Jules.

“Derry told me but I didn’t believe him.”

Jules turned from top soil she had been moving around aimlessly to see Jack sauntering over from the back door. Panic flooded her chest. How could Derry have possibly found out about Tad?

“Told you what?” she fronted.

“That you’re cooking at Vivi’s.”

Phew.
“It’s just an experiment.”

Jack hunkered down and unclasped Evan, who looked like all his Christmases and birthdays had come at once. “More than that, I hear you’re getting on the menu.”

“Not every day. And it’s mostly my chutneys and jams.” She felt a sudden rush to defend her presence among gleaming steel counters, as if she had been caught playing dress up in her mother’s clothes and make-up.