Hot and Bothered (Hot in the Kitchen) (9 page)

And that’s when the idea came to him.

He was under no illusions that he could keep Jules from swimming in the dating pool completely, but with a job she might take it slower. Dip her toe gently. See how warm it was before submerging completely. Giving her a job cooking would kill several birds stone cold dead—and having her nearby for even a couple of hours a day would keep him sane.

Tad would never forget how scared she had been when she showed up in Chicago almost two years ago. So vulnerable, so alone. Jack was too busy, and Jules was too hurt and proud to ask for his help. It was a watershed moment for them but before they made it over the hump, Tad had been the one who listened. Even after they had reconciled, Tad was still around being her friend.

Her friend.
So sometimes a few stray, inappropriate thoughts crossed his mind and stiffened his dick. She was a hot woman and he was a red-blooded American male. And maybe he was in a bit of a funk and
maybe
it coincided with a certain scorching kiss his gal pal had surprised him with a while back.

His mind didn’t have far to reach for that particular memory. Eleven months ago, Evan was teething, keeping Jules up all night with his crankiness. Tad had gone over to Jack and Lili’s with Pad See Ew and a bubble tea—he thought it tasted like shit but she loved that stuff—and the relief on her face when she saw him had melted his bones.

“I’m so hot for you right now,” she had said, barely looking at him as she grabbed the brown paper bag from his hand.

“Hot for my late-night delivery, you mean.”

“That’s what you give the ladies, right, babe? Hot stud at midnight.” She’d danced into the kitchen singing Abba’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme.”

This was their way, the joking and bantering, always so easy between them. She was often alone, between Jack pulling late nights at the restaurant and Lili in her artist zone at the studio a couple of blocks away. That night, the food was good, the company was better, and
Game of Thrones
was on TV. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Until Evan started up again, which wouldn’t have been a problem except it sent Jules into a tailspin of doubt.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said tearily when she finished soothing the infant back to sleep.

He walked her back to the sofa, a big black leather affair that squeaked when they sat. Funny how certain things stuck in your head. Such as how the dark smudges had arced like crescents under her eyes and strands of her honey blond hair had fallen out of her hair-tie thingy. One errant lock curled over her cheek and he brushed it away, unthinking.

Not realizing that even the smallest action has a consequence.

“You’re doing just fine, honey. You’re a new mom who’s overwhelmed but everyone is here to help you.”

She closed her eyes just then, shuttered those stunning peepers in the most unusual shade of green he had ever seen. A clear verdant emerald, like that first flush of spring grass on a Tuscan hillside. And he knew that when she opened them again, he would kiss her until she realized she had been kissed.

So he got a jump on that terrible idea and held her tight instead. Wrapped his body around her and whispered words of comfort against her golden hair. Put that smooth mouth he wanted to ravish her with to more benign uses. But it couldn’t last, not with this relentless pulse thrumming in every cell, telling him to make her better. And in the harbor of her body, he might finally get some of that elusive peace he had been seeking.

Drawing back, she tilted those weapons up and blinked away a tear. God, she was killing him.

“Tad,” she whispered, her voice filled with a longing that scrunched his heart, and he was helpless in the face of her softness. Her Jules-ness. If pressed in a court of law, he couldn’t say who kissed whom first. One second turned into three, then five… Her soft, supple lips tasted of bubble tea sweetness with a hint of salt from her tears, the electric fuel that sparked his body to life.

He pulled away before the recharge was complete because if he’d let it get to fifty, even seventy-five percent, there would be no going back.

“Jules, we—we shouldn’t do this.” They shouldn’t get hot and sweaty and dirty. They shouldn’t tear off their clothes and twine their limbs and fuck each other stupid. Most of all, they shouldn’t comfort each other and lose all sense of reason. Since his parents’ death, he was a broken mess, an amalgam of jagged pieces held together by sheer force of will. His need for her in that moment knocked him on his ass, and while he had no doubt she would ease the pain in the short-term, he couldn’t reciprocate. He would take and take from this amazing woman, and give her nothing but heartache in return. With her it would be real and raw and there would be no coming back from it.

Her shock at his reaction sent a dread chill to his gut. He continued to compound it with his stupidity because he was a guy and that’s what guys did.

“We would be terrible together. Absolutely terrible,” he said.

Stupid, absolutely stupid.

“Right.” Clipped, British, final. Those beautiful green eyes frosted over.

She slunk to the other end of the sofa and he slunk out the door, mumbling like an idiot. They barely spoke for two weeks until Evan fell ill, and with Jack and Lili out of town, he stepped up to take them to the emergency room. The little blighter was fine and suddenly, so were they.

Their friendship had survived but his sex life had plummeted into the toilet.

Eleven months. He’d gone eleven months without so much as a whisper across his zipper. It wasn’t that he couldn’t perform—he had a very satisfying relationship with his right hand that was prepared to suffer a blast of blister burn in the name of self-love. He just couldn’t get excited around any of the women he dated. He would drop them home and they’d look up (one looked down, but that was another story) with eyes wide and expectant. Cherry red lips were licked, finely sculpted breasts were heaved. Occasionally, he would kiss those lips, waiting for the click in his dick. That chemical explosion of endorphins or connection or whatever the hell was supposed to happen to move him from first base to home. More often, he just politely went on his way, ignoring the surprise on their faces.

It ain’t you, honey, it’s all me.

It wasn’t as if he saw Jules as soon as he puckered up and went in for the kill. That would be a blessing because at least then he could run with that fantasy to slide all the way home. No, it was worse than that. He saw nothing. Just a void where his libido should be. Only later, lying awake and pondering why he couldn’t close the deal, would he allow his hand to take over and relieve all that pent-up frustration. And if thinking about a certain blond beauty got him there faster, then that was between him and his pillow.

Perhaps it would be better if she dated. If she found someone she liked, someone who would be kind to her—preferably a eunuch who was good with kids—then he’d be happy for her. She needed a good guy without a truckload of baggage and a very checkered sexual history. Once she nabbed her frog, and he saw her settled, then he could finally get laid again.

But it would be best if it didn’t happen too fast.

The door to Lili’s studio was ajar. Shut, it meant Lili was with a photo subject and he shouldn’t just saunter in. The women she photographed were usually knockouts—tattooed Goth chicks, hot-to-trot soccer moms, fresh-faced sorority girls, all dying to get naked for Lili’s art. He was in the wrong business.

It was a relatively small space that had become more roomy when Lili’s studio mate Zander moved out and onto greater things in New York. Jack had offered to build Lili a studio at their townhouse but she preferred to come to this separate space to work. Tad stole a few enjoyable moments taking in the skin on the walls, but then stilled when he heard Lili’s low murmurs of encouragement echoing from the other side of the studio. He pulled up short, ready to retreat. A thick pillar blocked his view.

“Tip your chin up—yeah, just like that.”
Click.
“Now lean forward, lemme see those puppies.”

“Lili,” came the slightly embarrassed reply.
Jules.

“Come on, don’t be shy. You have an amazing figure and—oh, perfect. Hold that.”
Click.

Tad’s heart thudded insanely fast. He crept a few inches forward until he had cleared the pillar with his gaze. Lili had her back to him, shielding her subject, but he got a very healthy view of shapely legs inadequately covered by something red and soft-looking.

“You know, if you ever felt comfortable enough to go bare, I’d love to photograph you.”

Jules snorted. “I can see Jack’s face now.”

His cousin laughed. “We could insist he put it up in the dining room at Sarriette. He’d be so torn between wanting to encourage my art and being totally skeeved out.”

Girly giggles ensued.

“My wild days are behind me,” Jules said on the downside of a laugh. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shenanigans I got up to back in London.” He heard her breathy sigh of reminiscence and strained to hear what salacious details might follow. This London version of Jules sounded like a woman he’d like to know.

“Oh, yeah? Spill, girl.”

“Well, there was one time I jumped in a fountain and stripped down to my—”

“Hey, cuz,” Lili said to him, a sly smile quirking one corner of her mouth. “How long have you been there?”

He patted the pillar he had just been leaning against/hiding behind like they were great pals. “Just got here.”

Lili’s smile turned slyer. “Didn’t expect you.”

“Do I need an excuse to come see my favorite cousin?” It came out a touch testy.

“Not at all. I just thought you’d be busy stroking your Cabs and Pinots.”

“Only do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Should I leave?”

“No, we’re just finishing up.” Lili sat at her iMac and hooked up the camera with a cable.

“All right?” Jules asked, almost shyly, as though they barely knew each other and in a way it felt like he was looking at her anew. The dress she wore was one he hadn’t seen before, a cherry-red, draped affair. One of those wrap-around deals that separated her breasts and flared over her waist. Not especially sexy but…

In that dress, she looked like she should be running the PTA, then going down on her husband in the Subaru in the school parking lot. Thankfully, that was years off because Evan was just an ankle biter… unless she hooked up with some lonely widower who already had school-age kids. Damn, that was a real possibility. He bet those websites were crawling with lonely widower fathers.

He was having problems catching his breath, a hitch that extended to his cock, which suddenly needed breathing room. To be perfectly honest, if Lili wasn’t there, he would be seriously considering unwrapping that dress and exploring the finely curved gift underneath. Jules stared back, probably wondering why he was ogling her like a just-released convict who hadn’t seen a woman during his fifteen and a third in the clink.

“Hey,” he said, finally responding to her greeting of about ten minutes back. He diverted his eyes away from her breasts to a good twelve inches north. Women 101. They preferred when you looked at their faces.

“Getting your photo taken?” he mumbled in a clear case of graduating summa cum laude from the School of the Freaking Obvious. His IQ had just dipped a hundred points.

“Uh huh. For my profile.” She blushed, and that’s when he noticed that she was wearing a lot of eye make-up. The smoky, sexy eyes that you saw on magazine models. She had done something different with her hair, too. It was tousled, fuck-me hair.

“My glamour shot, as Lili calls it,” she said with an eye roll.
Can you believe what they’re trying to make me do?

His body clenched and he willed it to relax.
Her glamour shot.
She may as well have painted a sign: Come All Takers, Get Your Hot Mama Here. Lord knew he was trying to stop staring at her but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from all those damn curves.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he snapped, and then softer, “It’s all good.”

“I’ll just get changed,” she muttered, swaying away to the cover of an ornamental screen in the corner.

He blinked to get his brain in the groove and made inane chitchat with Lili about the plans for Tony and Frankie’s wedding anniversary party. If his parents had still been here it would have also been their anniversary. The couples had married in a double wedding extravaganza thirty-five years ago. He shoved that to the back of his mind with the rest of the shit he had succeeded in burying.

He was an absolute expert at it by now.

Jules walked out from behind the screen, pulling up the zip of her sweatshirt, but not so fast that he missed the sweet swell of her breasts in something thin and stretchy.
Come on!

“Could I see how it came out?” she asked Lili as she set a suit bag over a chair.

“Sure.” His cousin clickity-clicked her screen.

Tad stole another glance at Jules. He couldn’t not look at her. A pearly pink glow had washed her cheeks and she looked so damn fine, he wanted to lick every inch of her. He turned back to the screen and what he saw wasn’t much better.

She looked fucking gorgeous.

Well, she always looked gorgeous, whether she was in baggy sweats or a frayed tee that had seen better days. Even when she looked like she was falling asleep on her feet, she never failed to look amazing to him.