Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (3 page)

Her brother, Jack Kilroy, was one of those incredibly successful restaurateurs with a household name even Pygmy tribes in New Guinea had heard of. In the last couple of years, he’d scaled back his multinational food empire and eliminated his TV commitments to focus on his grand passions: his Chicago restaurant, Sarriette, the go-to foodie destination in the West Loop and his wife, Lili, who was Tad’s cousin.

“He was offered a job on a cruise ship,” Tad was saying about Longface, the AWOL chef. “The
idiota
wants to see the world. I hoped you could spare Derry for a few weeks while I work on getting someone else in.”

Jack’s forehead crimped. Lending Sarriette’s sous-chef to Tad for a month was not trivial. While Jules suspected her brother wouldn’t even cross the street to piss on her friend if he were on fire, she also knew Jack would do what he needed to make sure his investment succeeded. There had always been tension between them, most of it stemming from her brother’s disapproval of her closeness to Tad.

“We’ll sort something out,” Jack said after a long beat. “So we’re not eating, but what are we drinking?”

Tad twisted the bottle in his hand to face the rest of his audience—Lili, her sister Cara, and Cara’s Irish husband Shane Doyle, who was also Jack’s half-brother on their father’s side. Long story.

“Doggie!” Evan struggled in Jules’s arms, reaching for the bottle with a picture of a friendly overgrown terrier on the label. Her precious boy, the center of her world, was a touch obsessed with dogs lately. The label’s letters leapfrogged over each other, making little sense to Jules’s literacy-challenged brain. Dyslexia could be a real pain in the arse.

Tad launched into his wine spiel. “This is a Chilean Pinot. Plummy, lashings of fruit, full-bodied. Goes well with zin-braised short rib flatbread.” He met Jack’s pointed stare. “Or it will when we have someone to cook it.”

Tad poured tasting samples of the purple-red wine into stemware and passed them around. A small smile shaded his lips as he took a seat on the plush, chocolate velvet sofa, just one of three sofas ringing a low-to-the-ground stone table near the entrance. He had been planning this place for so long that Jules knew he couldn’t help himself. His pride at how the bar had turned out was clear. It was beautiful.

The flickering votive lights sitting on the window ledges bathed the room in an ethereal glow, casting a shine over the cherrywood furniture. On the exposed brick walls, Lili’s beautifully tasteful nude photos with nods to wine culture—models holding bunches of grapes in provocative poses, others with slashes of terracotta mud on their skin—were like a love letter from Mother Nature. Sun, earth, life. The kicker was the glass-walled wine cellar, which brooded behind the bar, a window onto the world of wine. Or at least that was the sales shtick the guy who built it had given Tad when trying to convince him to go with that design. Jules was glad he had. The shock of floor-to-ceiling glass staved off that air of pretension that often shrouded these types of places. There was an accessibility about being able to see right into the cellar from out here.

He caught her looking around and shared the secret smile with her. It was his dream, but he had talked about it for so long that she felt a small measure of ownership over it as well. He was unafraid of seeking her opinion and she was unafraid of giving it. Usually about the skank supermodel he was dating and how she didn’t much like that (lilac) shirt he was wearing and
damn it, Tad, could you not walk into every room like a herd of African elephants? I’ve got a kid trying to sleep here!

Underneath the sarcastic quips and snarky comments, the deep affection was unmistakable. Simpatico, that’s what they were. It had been like that from the beginning.

Cara leaned in and sniffed Shane’s glass, her hand falling naturally to her swollen belly. Five months gone with twins and already big as a house. She should have looked tired and worn, but this was Cara, who always managed to project disgustingly radiant.

“God, I miss this,” Cara said, burying her nose below the lip of the glass.

Shane snatched it away and took a healthy slurp before pulling his wife close for a hearty kiss.

“Don’t say I never do anything for you, Mrs. DeLuca-Doyle,” he murmured against his wife’s lips, the pleasure in his voice at being able to claim her as wife impossible to disguise. Jules turned Evan in her arms and lay his fussy head against her shoulder so she could take a sip of the wine. Yes, she was a terrible mother.

“What do you think, Jules?” Tad asked as the aroma of berries filled her nostrils.

“Warm, a bit spicy.”
Like your lips.

No, no, no.
Where the hell had that come from? She had been getting along just dandy, planting her head in her life as a busy mom, and trying not to dwell on that horrible night a year ago when she had almost destroyed her friendship with Tad. One kiss, three seconds of horror, a year of regret. She had harbored illicit hopes fueled by a lack of sleep and new mom hormones, but he shot her down. The right decision, she acknowledged now. Thankfully, they had recovered and got back on the friendship track, but every now and then a stray, wanton thought popped in to say “hello” courtesy of her inner bad girl trying to front a saucy charge.

Now, now,
Good Girl Jules admonished.

Bad Girl Jules giggled naughtily.

Within seconds, she felt the telltale signs of baby drool on her shoulder. Excellent. There was nothing like a cut to the reality of motherhood to remind her of her obvious unsexiness.

She had left the house in a hurry. Nothing new there. People had told her that once she had a child, getting out the door would be the biggest challenge, between the need to remember everything and the last-minute tantrums of your kidlet. There was no time to take a shower or put on any make-up. People had told her that, too. Forget about running a comb through your hair. All that is secondary to the needs of your child.

Usually she didn’t mind, but since she had moved to her own place the burdens of motherhood had started to weigh more heavily. For the last two years, she had been living a blessed existence in her brother’s town house, with all the human and financial support she needed. Early on, Jack had shared the childcare duties, getting up in the middle of the night no matter how late he trailed in from the restaurant, and feeding Evan from the milk supply she had pumped earlier. When the blues came to visit, her sister-in-law Lili was there for her, listening to her griping and moaning. She had the best extended family in the DeLucas that any girl could ask for. She knew she was lucky.

She also knew she was lonely.

It sounded so ridiculous, this need to have a man’s arms to hold her. Hairy, tanned, muscle-corded arms…

She was ensorcelled by Tad’s forearms again. Her friend’s forearms.

Could she help it if they were the model for the forearms she imagined cradling her as she slept? That when she thought of a line of ropy muscle and brawny sinew banded beneath her breasts while she stood at the sink washing out Evan’s milk bottles, these were the ones that shot to the top of the list? Maybe it wasn’t the sexiest fantasy—a man taking you while you tried to scrub that tough stain off the pot—but boy, a nice set of forearms could spice up the dreariest of tasks. But did they have to be her friend’s arms?

So what if her circle in Chicago was small; it was large where it mattered. Her family had no problem jumping in to babysit when she headed to the gym (for a smoothie) or picked up pin money while catering for one of Cara and Shane’s special events, but meeting people—meeting men—was nowhere near as easy as it had been in London. Back then, she had been single, child-free, and up for most anything after a couple of G and Ts. She didn’t miss those days, but she did long for the chance to feel sexy, desired, wanted. Frankly, she didn’t know a lot of unattached men, except for Tad.

And unattached was how he liked it.

Tad made a living out of blowing through women like he was in a race. Some of the stories he told her made her hair stand on end. Other body parts, too. She encouraged his sexy confidences, partly because they turned her on, and partly because Tad fascinated her. He was the kindest, funniest guy she knew—and he treated women like conveniences until they became inconveniences. She shuddered to think what it would be like to have Tad’s special kind of inattention.

But she’d never met anyone who cared so much about his family and friends. After all she’d been through, family like Tad and the DeLucas were worth their weight in gelato, and no way did she want to risk screwing that up. Again.

In the kitchen, they had joked around and it was good to be back to the easy vibe between them. Their friendship was precious, and that she felt comfortable teasing him about his vigorous love life again was a good sign. They were firmly ensconced in the F-zone—the friend zone—once more, and all was right with the world. And the occasional hormonal brain fart where she started fantasizing about his forearms, of all things, was just that. Occasional and hormonal.

He crinkled his eyes in a “You okay?” kind of way, and she battled to lose whatever frowny/befuddled/horny look she wore. Really, she needed to get a shot of Botox so her expressions around Tad could become unreadable.

Her efforts to blank her features failed miserably. Tad stood and held out his arms, concern bracketing his mouth.

“Let me take him, honey. You relax and have a drink.” He scooped Evan up and settled him into those strong, fantasy-inducing forearms. Thick as oak branches, they held her son safe and summoned up different, yet just as dangerous, fantasies.

“What’s that?” Tad was saying to Evan, listening intently as if his baby babble was as important as a State of the Union speech. “Wine? Cheese? Oh, a cracker. I hear you, buddy.”

Tad sent a questioning look Jules’s way. When she nodded her approval, he picked up one of the crackers from the cheese platter and placed it in Evan’s chubby little fist.
Sigh.
The sight of the two of them together busted her heart wide open.

Coming back to earth, she plastered on a smile for her family. Less than ten minutes in, and Jack and Shane were ribbing each other about who had the better palate. You could set a clock by the rhythm of their playful teasing.

“Your taste buds are ruined from all that sugar,” Jack said. “You probably can’t even detect salt anymore.”

“Taste buds deteriorate with age,” Shane shot back, instantly defensive of his pastry chef credentials. Jack was nine years older than Shane and they had only recently connected, but the bond between them had been instantaneous. It was as though they understood the meaning of family on some cellular level. Each passing day only strengthened the brothers’ relationship and while Jules was crazy about Shane, she couldn’t help a pinch of envy at how natural it was between them. Especially when she and Jack always seemed to be teetering on the edge of a sibling meltdown.

“Jealousy is so unattractive, little bruv. Don’t forget whose name is in bigger letters on the book cover,” Jack said, referring to their joint collaboration on a cookbook that had shot straight to number one on the
New York Times
bestseller list when it was released last year.

“Big-headed limey prick,” Shane muttered affectionately as he threw a thumbnail-sized wedge of gouda at Jack. Her brother caught it easily and popped it in his mouth with a grin.

“Now, now, you’re both pretty,” Lili said, snagging Jules’s eye with a
men
headshake. Like a magpie distracted by something shiny, Jack ran a hand through his wife’s hair, a look of boundless love for her softening his rugged features.

Jules checked her sigh. Her brothers—and their wives—were such talented buggers that it was bloody difficult to feel anything less than a complete loser around them. Coming from a family of rock stars sharpened her feelings of inadequacy to barbed points.

There had been a moment back in the kitchen as Tad recounted Long Face’s departure story when she thought:
I can do that!

Common sense had punched it back down where it belonged. She was an amateur among gilded professionals. Her small-time efforts making pizzas, preserving lemons, and futzing about in her organic vegetable garden were hardly the stellar credits needed to work in a real restaurant kitchen. Shane and Jack had been cooking since before they could walk. They had years of training under their belts. With her dyslexia, she could barely read the recipes, and then there was the hassle of finding childcare for Evan.

No, she was lucky. Filled with needs and desires, but incredibly lucky.

“So, we have some good news,” Cara said, all efficiency. She wasn’t one for lazy afternoons of shooting the shit with the clan, preferring to keep everyone on task. “Shane and I got the Daniels wedding in May next year.”

Everyone made noises of congratulations and raised their glasses. DeLuca Doyle Special Events had become the hottest party planning company in Chicago since its inception just over eight months ago. Getting the wedding of the mayor’s son was huge, but then Cara never did anything by half.

“By that time, the babies should be a few months old,” Jules said, unable to keep the awe out of her voice at the idea of Cara as Supermom. She’d always had a bit of a girl crush on the slender blonde who exuded sophistication and frightening competence. “How are you going to manage?”

Cara gave one of her knowing smiles. “This event will be big enough that we won’t need to take on as many clients for the next year, but we’ll probably hire someone to help with the business.”