Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (7 page)

Jules’s eyes were inexorably drawn to the undone top button of Tad’s shirt. The Slinkster had just had her hand in a very proprietorial hold over that button and the tasty man flesh beneath it. Like she had needed to give herself a boost of Tad’s body heat for the road.

Jealousy-tinged bile rose in Jules’s throat as she watched this piece of work slither off. She was woman enough to admit it. She fancied her friend something rotten and when another woman mauled him, she felt territorial. And then she felt ill.

Tad looked annoyed, like he’d been caught with both hands in the cookie jar. Except in this case the cookies were stunning brunettes with legs that went on foh-evah. A dull flush flagged high on his scimitar-cut cheekbones.

“The new dishwasher seems very nice,” she said with her cheekiest grin once she was sure her voice wouldn’t betray her.

He ran a hand through his hair. “She’s a critic who wants to do a profile of me for
Tasty Chicago
.”

A critic.
Someone clever and intellectual, who probably did Scrabble triple-word plays in her sleep and the
New York Times
crossword in under five minutes.

Silence ruled while they stared at each other. Clearly, he had forgotten his invitation for her to come over and learn about wine.

“We were going to…” she prompted.

“Right, right,” he said quickly, scrubbing his hair again. Wow, this woman must have done a number on him. What exactly had they been doing behind that closed door?

“I brought that mushroom bruschetta you said you liked.” She held up her Tupperware container, feeling more foolish with every painful, passing second.

He looked at it blankly before breaking out the usual Tad grin. “Awesome. I know just the fruity little number to go with this.”

Hesitantly, she followed him into the kitchen, desperately trying to get her inner envy monster under control. This was how it always was with Tad. The guy was a sex magnet—he loved women and they loved him. She shut her mind against the images of that clever bitch running her clever hands all over Tad’s body.

Serenity, bloody well now.

She had seen it before, but it still surprised her how small it was for a professional kitchen. Just two burners, two gleaming chrome prep counters, a fridge, and the brick oven for pizzas.

It was perfect.

“How’s the oven coming along?”

He shook his head. “Your boyfriend claims he’s coming out with the part tomorrow.” He grabbed a loaf of ciabatta and a bread knife, and started to slice it for toasting. “Maybe you should be here to turn on that special charm of yours and make sure the job gets done. Or perhaps you’ve already found his competition. How’s the dating going?”

“Nothing’s happened yet,” she said, her mind still abuzz with the stunning woman who had just left. She had an Elizabeth Taylor circa
Cleopatra
thing going on that was rather troublesome. “Just getting my profiles up.”

“Profiles? Plural?” He looked up, a flash of something flitting over his face before leveling to a blank expression.

“Cara has a strategy. Fling the net wide and watch the fish flail. Her words, not mine.”

She tried to smile and cover how awkward it felt to be talking to Tad about this. It was never awkward when he talked about his dates, but now she thought of it, she had been hearing less and less on that score in the past year. Since The Incident.

He popped the bread in the toaster and dug out a corkscrew from his pocket. On the counter, he had put a bottle of red and two large bell-shaped glasses. The bottle’s label read “2010” below—she squinted—
Chaka Khan
?

“Funk soul queen Chaka Khan has her own wine now?”

His smile was dangerous with not an ounce of pity. Tad was the first person she had shared her literacy problems with when she came to Chicago and he had never once made her feel any less about herself.

“Close. Chakana. It refers to the Inca cross. Big in South America. This is one of the better known Argentinian Malbecs.”

Beneath the name was an image of an animal, a stylized version of a cat with large, dangerous teeth. Not unlike the man before her.

He watched her closely as she absorbed the label. “They call it the
yaguerette
in Spanish. Jaguar.” Tad knew what she was doing. He knew more than anyone about her compensation strategies. She put it together as “Chaka-cat.”

He popped the cork and poured a small amount of inky-purple wine into the stemware. The air came alive with the aroma of earth and fruit.

Then he leaned in and buried his nose in her neck.

She jumped back, her skin buzzing from crown to toes. That was… something.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Smelling you.”

Her gaze flew to the wine, looking to lay the blame on alcohol that no one had yet imbibed. She felt color flaming her cheeks.

“Why?”

Again, he moved in and got all up close and personal. The sheer outrageousness of it kept him safe from a thumping or a ravishing. There had to be a good reason for it—didn’t there?

“What’s that scent?”

Swallowing hard, she struggled to come up with an answer. Eau de flop sweat or essence of green-eyed gorgon?

“It’s a body wash. Orange and oatmeal.”

In other news, he smelled pretty incredible. Clean and fresh, one of those grocery store soaps that meshed with hints of his body chemistry and created a branding spanking new male scent that made her weak-kneed.

“Fruity porridge. I like it.” He drew back and picked up the glass, all casual-like, as if he hadn’t just been sniffing her like a feral tomcat. “Wearing an overpowering cologne or perfume can play havoc with your taste buds.”

Ah. That was as good a reason as any for the personal space invasion. Her stomach roiled in disappointment. Nervous and not a little stressed out, she put her mouth to the lip of the glass. She needed a drink real bad.

“Hold up there, Nelly. There’s work to be done first.” He shook his head slightly and, oh bloody hell, tutted. “Give it a swirl.”

She repressed an eye roll. Whenever she saw people do that, it looked so pretentious.

“Does this get us into wine-tasting mode?”

“It activates the aromatic compounds and gives us a clue about alcohol content.” He swirled his own, coating the glass with the dark liquid. Mimicking his motion, she was just getting the hang of it when some precious drops jumped the lip and landed on his shirt.

Oh, crap. With a grimace, her hand flew automatically to his chest, a maternal reflex from days spent cleaning up after Evan. Not that her fingers would do any good in cleaning Tad up and not that her feelings toward Tad resembled anything close to maternal. Before she could withdraw, he placed his hand over hers, oddly legitimizing her grope of his rock-solid muscles.

He felt warm and male, a conclusion that had her feeling… warm and female.

“This is harder than it looks,” she spilled nervously, the words out of her mouth before she realized the innuendo.

“Sure is,” he said, hoisting an expressive eyebrow.
Sure is?

What felt like several lifetimes passed before he released her. What felt like several more passed before she could trust her hand to pick up the glass again.

She swirled again, less vigorously this time.

“Now get your nose in there. Just a few sniffs, nothing too deep, but hold it for three to four seconds. It might smell fruity or spicy or earthy.”

She did as she was told, then listened as he told her all the things that could go wrong with a wine: excess sulphur, oxidization, corked wine that smells like wet, musty running shoes. The smell she found was… well, wine.

That most learned conclusion sent her into an uncontrollable laugh.

He read her mind. “Brat.”

She pursed her lips to hide her smile.

“Now you can taste, but don’t gulp it, you heathen. Roll it around your tongue and try to hit all the taste receptors.”

She took a healthy mouthful and swirled it around her mouth, with better consequences than her swirl around the glass. No spit takes here. All class.

His lips contorted expertly as he moved the wine around his mouth. She tried to do the same, suspecting she looked ridiculous.

“What do you taste?”

Startled by his question, she swallowed. Wow, this shit was good. The fullness felt like a dark chocolate with a cherry finish. Decadence in a glass. “Berry flavors. It tastes bright.”

He smiled, clearly pleased with her answer, and her body flushed at his approval. After just two sips, she was feeling a touch light-headed. Blame it on the wine and not the drop-dead delicious hunk of male before her.

“Maybe we should eat something,” she said quickly.

“Let’s try this bruschetta then.”

He pulled out the warm toasted bread, drizzled a little olive oil on it, then spooned the mushroom bruschetta on top. She watched as his sensuous lips closed over the bread. Tad’s lips were one of the things she enjoyed most—they could give the forearms a run for Top Tad Body Part—and now she found herself a little obsessed with how they moved while he chewed her food.

Very nice,
Bad Girl Jules mused.

Control yourself,
Good Girl Jules snapped back.

“Hmm,” he hummed in clear satisfaction. The sensual pleasure she took in watching him eat was soon evicted by a different kind of pleasure. The warm glow she felt when someone tasted one of her humble creations.

Whenever she brought an eggplant dip or artichoke spread to Sunday lunch at the DeLucas and watched as they all plowed through it like they did Tony’s gnocchi or Jack’s focaccia, she felt that zing of victory. She wasn’t a professional chef or anywhere close to the same league as the culinary royalty in her family, but she had something. A spark she felt when she was in the kitchen.

“This isn’t half bad,” Tad said.

“You sound surprised.”

He smiled, a little crooked. “Nothing you do surprises me, Jules.”

“You sure looked surprised when I said I was going to start dating.”

Some unnamed emotion flickered across his handsome features. “I wouldn’t say surprised. More like intrigued. Maybe a little worried.”

“You don’t think I’m ready?”

“I don’t think the world is ready for you, Juliet Kilroy.” He followed it up with a penetrating stare that made her skin itch. The air in the kitchen felt close, oppressive.

“So what are we going to do about it?” he asked in a low voice.

“About what?” Her heart hammered in her chest.

“This amazing talent of yours.” He gestured to the last morsel of the toast and popped it in his mouth. When he’d finished chewing, he spoke again. “What else have you got in your bag of tricks?”

“Salsas, dips…” Things that didn’t require her to read a recipe. Things she could figure out as she went along. Wandering the Green City farmers’ market, she committed the scents and shapes to memory. She felt the skin of an aubergine, remembered that it was purple—just like Malbec—and focused on the shape of the word so she would know it the next time she came across it. It didn’t always work, which was the primary reason why she kept her ambitions to herself. Jack didn’t believe in doing anything by half. He would expect her to attend culinary college and schooling was the worst thing she could imagine.

“I’m so stupid,” she would think during primary school as the letters on the page swam before her eyes. She might recognize basic three-letter words—cat, dog, man—and could sound out some others, but reading aloud was a nightmare. Standing in class, all eyes on her, cruel mouths judging and ready with their taunts at the first stumble. After too many soul-sucking pauses, she would be dismissed to her seat by Mrs. Macklin with her sharp, ferret features.

Tad was speaking and she had to work to focus. “What would you say to putting some of it on the menu?”

“Some of what?” she asked, searching for her place in the conversation.

“This bruschetta. We could try it as a special and see how it goes over.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded, a slow burn of a smile lifting his face.

Thrown by his offer, she launched at him and molded her body to his. She could still blame the wine, all two glorious mouthfuls, but really, it was the perfect excuse to touch him, absorb all that heat and musk that improved her day by a factor of ten thousand.

“Tad, do you mean it? You’d put my bruschetta on the menu?”

His arms circled her waist and held her fast. Oh… that was nice. She wasn’t quite ready to go so she supposed it was okay to stay here. Hugging her friend. Hugging the hard, hot body of her friend.

“Frankie and Aunt Syl would be happy to look after Evan while you work here.”

Screech.

She stepped back but he still held onto her. Caged in his embrace, she tried to form words.

“Work here? But I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can just make the food at home and bring it.”

He shook his head. “Not unless you want to go up against the City of Chicago. It’s illegal to operate a food business out of your home kitchen and it makes more sense to do it here where we’re already covered. Liability issues, you know.”