Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (35 page)

“I was trying to get something right.”

She squinted. “Did you?”

“I don’t know.” The entire night had been spent on one thing: the risotto from the taping. It wouldn’t make an appearance on his new menu, but he was determined to perfect it or die trying. After pan number fourteen—or was it fifteen?—his numbed taste buds won over his judgment and he packed it in. That’s when his friend Johnnie Walker stopped by for a confab.

“Aren’t there health codes against drinking and cooking?” She placed the whiskey bottle down on the counter with a disgusted nose wrinkle.

“I cooked, then I drank. No chefs were harmed in the making of this mess.” Much.

With her sandaled foot, she gave his thigh a gentle shove. “I remember you used to stay up all night cooking when you were hacked off about something.”
Before you left,
she didn’t add.

He had no desire to take a trip down memory ditch. Besides, more recent events took precedence in his overcrowded brain. “How bad is it?”

“Not so terrible. You’re top of the video charts, but this time, someone got your good side.”

Unfolding to a stand, he stretched the pins-and-needles away, wishing it were that easy to shove aside the pain in his head, his chest, his…hand? He turned over the palm of his right hand in response to the throbbing call of a burn. How the hell had that happened? Michelin-starred chefs, or the executive chefs of restaurants that earned Michelin stars, weren’t immune to the odd burn here and there, but usually he remembered how he acquired a raw welt that stretched from pinkie to thumb. The memory-numbing effects of alcohol, he supposed.

He took a sip of coffee, surprised that it was just how he liked it. That was immediately replaced with guilt. He had no idea if his sister even drank coffee.

Spanning his forehead with his injury-free hand, he shielded his vision for a needed moment and tried to recall the events of last night. All day he’d been pissed off—at Laurent for his know-nothing Frenchness, at Tony for his lack of trust, at Jules for the mixed-nuts messages, at his useless lawyer who had no legal solution to the online bullying. But mostly he’d been pissed at Lili, and going Jack-smash on the first person to look at him crooked seemed like a marvelous idea. The details were foggy. His gaze drifted to the bottle. He was fairly positive the fireworks had culminated in property damage but no fisticuffs. For months, his policy had been to let it ride so it didn’t acquire power, but he refused to stand by while someone took pot shots at his woman. And then to have her use his ham-fisted heroics as an excuse to bail…well, wasn’t that just the funniest cosmic joke? Protect her. Ignore it. Damned if he do, damned if he don’t.

Everything he was feeling must have been visible on his face. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself locked in Jules’s tight, and frankly unfamiliar, embrace.

“What’s that for?” he asked, ruining it.

“You looked like you were about to drop,” she said, making up for his crankiness as only family can do. “Heard about Lili. She didn’t like Tough Guy Jack?”

He drew back. “Don’t stop there. She doesn’t think all that highly of Bully Jack and can definitely do without World-Dominating Jack.”

When Jules didn’t jump to his defense, he stared. And waited.

Unfazed, she gave the slimmest of shrugs. “Well, you can be a bit over the top.”

He remained silent. There might have been glowering.

“That’s all well and good with your kitchen slaves, but it can be tough for the rest of us.”

“So, I’m a bully?”

“Not exactly. It’s more…” She pulled a breath from somewhere deep. “You’re like this force of nature, this bright star. Everyone wants to please you and you know that and expect it, so when they don’t, you get disappointed. You’re a fierce optimist, the most optimistic person I know, actually. You see all this promise in people and when they don’t live up to your expectations, it frustrates you. A lot.”

Stunned, he blinked at her because that was about the longest speech he had ever heard pass her lips. “But just to be clear, I’m not a bully?”

That earned him an indulgent smile, a blast of sunshine as rare as steak tartar. He loved when she turned it on for him. “Bully. Optimist. Perpetually disappointed. Which do you prefer?”

He preferred whichever one got him Lili, but there was only so much his overworked heart could withstand. Teasing her to distraction when she wanted sex and he wanted more was one thing. Bullying—no, convincing—her to date him was another. But he was damned if he was going to beg her to love him. He was flat-out, knockdown in love with a woman who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, match his raging appetite for her.

Fucking depressing.

And now Jules. How much of that sharp observation applied to their hell-in-a-hand-basket relationship? The perpetually disappointed tag, on both sides, sounded most apropos. Even though he felt like tiny people with tiny hammers had taken up residence in his head, and his heart sat in his gut like a lead balloon, there were still enough caffeine-activated neurons to recognize that Jules and he had just had a moment of honest-to-God communication.

“Thanks for checking in on me,” he said, meaning it. Needing it.

At this, her face crumpled like she’d just tasted vinegar. He pointed. She bolted. Looked like Baby’s spidey senses recognized the imminent threat of sibling candor and kicked off. He considered following her to the bathroom and holding back her hair while she threw up, but they weren’t quite at that level yet.

On the nearest counter, his phone lay in the shadow of a bowl of shitake mushrooms, and he turned it on for the first time since he’d parted ways with Lili last night. Seventy-three messages. Forty-four from Evie. Thirty-odd from Cara, Jules, and assorted well-wishers. Zero from Lili. That about summed up his life.

He bit the bullet and made the call. She answered on the first ring.

“Jack,” she dragged his name out to ten syllables. “You’re killing me.”

“Pretty sure your three-packs-a-day habit will get you first, Evie. Worried about your fifteen percent?”

A lung-stripping cough rattled the line, and for some reason, it cheered him. The world might be collapsing around his ears but Evie was still Evie.

“Fifteen percent of nothing is still nothing,” she husked out. “But all is not lost. They’re meeting right now and my source at NBN says Stone Carter had quote, unquote, a twinkle in his eye. Fat old fart. The ratings for
Kilroy’s Kitchen
reruns are better than the original broadcasts, and with the premiere of
Jack of All Trades
moved up to next week to capitalize on your current popularity, interest in the Jack Kilroy brand has never been higher. People can’t wait to see your great Italian love affair told with real production values and commercial breaks.”

His cells tingled with a pain he couldn’t ascribe to his hangover. It was looking increasingly likely that he’d be getting reacquainted with Johnnie W. the night of the premiere.

“But?” he prompted, because he could hear it as clear as if she were blowing smoke in his face.

“You’re going to have to cool it. Defending your Rubenesque girlfriend might appeal to the horny housewives of Middle America, but it can’t last. Once or twice is heroic. Any more will be seen as downright moronic. They won’t tolerate it in the long-term.”

Jack was well aware of that. On cable, he could be humping goats and roasting them on a spit afterward and no one would bat an eyelid. Network, as everyone insisted on telling him, was more suited for eunuchs. He’d been called a lot of things but testicularly deprived was not one of them. Anyway, the woman he would happily surrender every one of his Michelin stars for had no more use for Jack Kilroy’s personal bodyguard service, so Tough Guy Jack could officially retire.

“The cookware people phoned again—they want to set up a meeting this week. And Random House needs to nail down the proposal for the next book.” She coughed long and hard. “Relax, Jack. Everything’s coming up roses.”

The countertops, dappled with the remains of his elusive search for perfection, screamed back their dissent. His hand started to throb again.

Bloody roses with a mess of fucking thorns.

Chapter Twenty-Three

For the second time in as many weeks, Lili almost crashed the Vespa. The first time she had been thinking about dinner and had failed to notice a car door suddenly opening along Ashland Avenue. Luckily, her hunger meant her usual carb-dazed reflexes were nowhere in evidence. Now she was on her way to her parents’ for dinner and had just swerved out of the way of an SUV that decided to do a last-minute lane change without signaling.

That time she’d been thinking about Jack.

Her chest hurt something awful with a pain she hadn’t experienced since she’d first heard the news of her mother’s cancer. Back then, after a couple of days spent wallowing, she’d put that behind her and got on with the business of living, or more specifically making sure her mother lived. Getting past Jack should be easier than that. There was nothing life-threatening about a broken heart.

Every night since he’d left, she’d tossed and turned, her body aching. Aching for the one person who could put her straight and do her right, the man she missed more each day instead of less. The smile that scrambled her brain; the sexy, lickable scar; even the atrocious singing, all part of Jack’s armory of slash-and-burn. She needed to force herself into a place where Jack didn’t exist, which was near impossible when every thought was filtered through her time with him. Every word she hadn’t said. Every decision not taken.

Once, she had threatened to leave all she knew, move to New York, live her life at full tilt. Francesca’s illness had changed all that and not in the way she liked to think. She might have fooled herself that the relief she felt when she spent her savings paying those medical bills stemmed from putting her mother onto the road to recovery, but it was just as much about helping herself. Giving Little Miss Do Nothing an exit strategy so she wouldn’t have to take that chance. She hadn’t even tried to find another way.

For the longest time, she had been stuck in a shell of her own creating. The overweight teen who lost the pounds but not the baggage. The artist who lived in the space behind her camera because the shadows felt safe. The good daughter who used her family to keep her grounded, and caged. She knew that. Hell, she lived it. Because no matter what way she parsed it, she
was
afraid of trying and failing.

Or trying and succeeding.

When she got to her parents’ house, she slipped around back to where they sat with Tad—and sigh, Marco—at the outdoor table, already set to bursting with a glorious spread. Without asking, her mother piled a plate high with ziti and put it before her.

After the taping, Marco had gone missing for several weeks, ducking all the burning questions Lili longed to ask about moonlighting as viral video producer and saboteur. Now her self-loathing kept him safe as she internalized all her anger and tried to focus.

“Well, where are we at?” Marco asked, glancing at his watch.

“We’ve definitely seen an uptick in reservations since news of the show taping got out.” Lili slid an oblique glance to her father, who sat stoic and unyielding. “With the broadcast of the show next week, we’ll probably see some additional business for a short time but it won’t last.”

“Unless we find a way to hold on to them,” Tad chimed in.

“If they like the food, they’ll come back,” her father shot back, his refrain familiar but tired. “We have steady customers now who return monthly, sometimes weekly.”

“Right, Dad, but we’re not getting any new blood. It’s not just about the food. It’s an environment, an ambience—”

“So, we should play loud music and baseball games over the bar?” Her father made a disgusted noise. “Those are not the type of customers we want.”

“Dad, we’re a neighborhood institution, but there’s a lot of competition, and we look like old hat. Tad and I have some ideas for a design makeover, maybe trim the menu so it’s not so overwhelming. Just a few touches to make it more modern. Appeal to how the neighborhood has changed.”

Tony’s gaze grew narrow and hard. “When you are in charge of the business, Liliana, you can make these decisions. Until then, you must abide by my rules.”

“Then why am I even here? You asked me to take over as manager when Mom became sick, but you second-guess every decision I make. Every suggestion I offer. There’s no trust there.”

“This is not about trust. It is about what is best for the family, something you don’t seem to know anything about.”

“Tony, don’t.” Her mother lay a soothing hand on her father’s arm, threw Lili an affectionate look, and dipped her maternal gaze to the ziti.
Eat up, that’ll fix it.
Lili had already lost her appetite. A heart-rending breakup and parental recrimination beat Atkins every time.

“Dad, if I could go back to that night in O’Casey’s and do it over, I—” She faltered. What would she do? Not goad Jack into losing control? Ignore that surge of power she felt when he looked into her eyes with such hunger? No, she wouldn’t change a thing. Kissing Jack in a crowded bar would remain with her as one of the most precious experiences of her life. It was the first step toward becoming New Lili. No one could take it away from her, least of all her father.

“Well, we cannot turn back time, Liliana.”

“No, we can’t, Dad, but we can move forward.”