Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (40 page)

“A ready-made army of child minders.” His face lifted in a grin. “That kid’s going to be so lucky.”

A wave of unease rolled over her. “What about Cara? Does she know about the show?”

His brow crinkled. “Not yet. In a couple of days, there’ll be a carefully worded announcement from the network about creative differences, but I still have to talk to her. Don’t worry, she’s the best at what she does and she won’t have a problem finding some other poor sap to order about. Come the zombie apocalypse, I want to be on Team Cara.”

“Jack, are you sure?” She had to ask, though she could tell he was decided. He might be impulsive when provoked to kiss or defend women in bars, but he wasn’t one to take a business decision, or a family one, lightly. And knowing that Jules figured largely in his thinking made her heart expand in love even more.

“I am. So sure. Now, do you think you could be with a once-famous, now-ordinary guy, who in a couple of years might be featured on one of those ‘Where are they now?’ TV shows?”

She rose up on her toes with a little help from his hands, which had now slipped to cup her toast-of-the-town behind.
At last.
Her lips baited his, and her tongue swiped the seam, teasing and tasting.

“You know I was never interested in your fame.”

“Right, just my body.”

“Hell, yeah.” She nuzzled his nose and kissed him softly. “Jack, I know you’re joking about me wanting you for your big, manly muscles, but I need you to know it really is so much more than that. You and Jules are family now. Welcome home.”

She heard his swallow, felt the tremble of his body. All his gratitude, his need, his love. Blinking, he buried his face in her neck. Underlying all that ambition lay a man more Italian than any guy she knew, who needed a family and heart big enough to embrace him and his. Her family, her heart. That Jack and Jules had found each other here in Chicago and now would be welcomed into the DeLuca clan swelled Lili’s chest with yet another upsurge of love. A few moments passed, the hum of the kitchen appliances providing backing vocals to the thud of their hearts.

“I love you so much,” she said, because she loved how it tasted on her lips and it was true.

Drawing back, he coasted his hands along her arms. “With no show, my huge ego is going to need to hear that a lot. Tell me again.”

“I love you, Jack Kilroy. I love your cocky smile, your pancakes, your terrible singing, and how you never gave up on me.” She tilted her head. “Hey, aren’t you going to say it back?”

“No chance. You can suffer for a while.”

“I think I’ve suffered long enough.” Hooking her foot around his thigh, she dug into that sensitive area she knew so well. She wandered her greedy hand down that wall of muscle to his belt buckle and lower, to a bulge—
yes!
—with a hard-edged shape. Huh?

“What’s this?”

“Oh, a pocket-sized pity party.” He fished out a robin-egg-blue box—Tiffany blue, but a little squashed—and flipped it open, revealing the biggest diamond she’d ever seen, with a yellowish tint that made it look like a very pricey Jolly Rancher. Her head spun and her heart jumped clear into her throat.

“But, Jack, you came here tonight with no expectations.”

“I’ve had it for a while and until I left Chicago, I suppose I wanted to hold on to something.” His throat worked through his emotion, his eyes shimmering. “I’ve known from minute one this was it for me and I wasn’t ready to let that go. So what do you say?”

“About what?”

“Try to keep up, DeLuca. About being my wife.”

“You’re asking me to marry you?”

“You’re not usually this slow on the uptake,” he said, vaguely exasperated. “I’ll assume that not seeing me for several weeks has dulled your wits. Now, before you answer, you might want to take it out.” When she looked pointedly down, he added wearily, “The ring, you guttersnipe.”

Laughing, she obeyed and examined it from all angles. It felt light and oddly…sticky. “But this isn’t a real diamond.”

“Nope. It’s made of sugar.”

Molecular gastronomy— science and food run amok. “You made me an edible ring.” Oh, this man knew her so well. Ferran Adrià and his elBulli minions couldn’t have done a better job.

“We’ll go shopping for a real one, but I like the idea of getting you off the market sooner rather than later, especially now you’re so famous.”

In a tremble, she put the ring on her wedding finger, feeling like a kid in the candy jewelry store. Another perfect fit. She gave it a tentative lick. “Tastes like chicken.”

“I should hope not or else I’ve really lost my touch.” He flashed that bone-melting smile and her heart pumped harder. “I love you, Liliana Sophia DeLuca. Now marry me and finish what you started when you clocked me with that frying pan.”

“Yes, Jack, I’ll marry you,” she said, trying desperately to sound like saying yes to a proposal of marriage from the hottest man on the planet was part of her usual skill set when really, her heart was in danger of bursting out of her chest.

“Thank Christ.” He kissed her hard, the relief ebbing and flowing between them like a tide. “Maybe Tony will finally forgive me for corrupting you.”

She caught her breath. “Let’s not run before we can walk, Jack.”

“You might be surprised. I asked for his blessing before we came in here. I figured after everything I put him through, I should do it properly.”

“Smooth move, Kilroy.” Wow, he would never stop surprising her. “You were positive I’d say yes, then?”

“Well, you’ve always been a sure thing.” He swept his fingertips along her jaw, against the wild pitter-patter at the base of her throat, and brushed her collarbone with a whispering touch. In his eyes, she saw right into his heart, the one that belonged to her. Completely, utterly.

She ran a lazy finger over the handle of the walk-in fridge and pulled it ajar. “How about we see how long it takes to heat things up in here?”

His expression registered mock shock. “Evil woman. The last time I was in there, it didn’t end so well.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Jack.” And to prove how evil she was, she pretzeled herself around the man she couldn’t get enough of and made him growl. “I’d say it ended very well indeed.”

Things get hotter in Kate Meader’s sizzling new novel…

See the next page for a preview of

All Fired Up.

Chapter One

It was the most beautiful wedding cake Cara DeLuca had ever seen. Three architecturally perfect layers of frosted purity designed to make the guests drool as soon as it was rolled out on a wobbly serving cart to the center of the harshly lit ballroom. Of course, a slice cost thirty, maybe forty-five extra minutes kicking the bag at the gym.

Cara checked that thought to the tune of screeching tires in her head. In a previous lifetime, she had measured every bite in push-ups and treadmill minutes, piling on more to punish the slightest infraction. Old Cara would be looking for an excuse to slip out of a wedding reception before the cake so she could work off the chicken or fish entrée, and she had several options for how she did that. New Cara—
healthy
Cara—didn’t need to count every bite and worry if she had passed over onto the wrong side of the fifteen-hundred-calorie border.

But only an amazing cake could tempt her.

Cutting into the slice on the Limoges porcelain dessert plate, Cara slipped it past her lips, chewed slowly, and swallowed.
Ugh.
Dry, pedestrian, uninspired. No one knew better than Cara the truth behind that old adage about looks being deceiving. This cake might have been the bride’s dream, but a single bite confirmed the suspicions Cara had formed the day she was roped in to salvage her cousin Gina’s wedding. About ten minutes after the official planner had finally thrown up her hands in despair and gone running to the nearest sanatorium—read, palm-tree-lined sandy beach.

This wedding was cursed.

It wasn’t so much the poisonous dwarf’s insistence on the stab-your-eyes-out pink, fishtail-hemmed bridesmaid dresses or her requirement that she must have both a Neil Diamond string quartet for the cocktails
and
an all-girl Neil Diamond tribute band, the Sweet Carolines, for the dancing. Neither did Cara mind having to organize last-minute fittings for a wedding party of twelve or a reception for two hundred ravenous Italians. As for corralling the ovary-explodingly cute ring bearers? Child’s play, though Father Phelan had drawn the line at chocolate Lab pups traipsing down the aisle behind ankle biters who could barely stay upright.

No, all that was manageable, and managing was what Cara did best. Where it all went undeniably south was at the joint bachelor-bachelorette party in Vegas. This type of thing had become de rigueur, and as much as Cara would have liked to put down the poker chips and back away slowly, she’d felt it incumbent on herself to manage that, too. A gaggle of drunk-off-their-butts DeLuca women needed her superior wrangling skills to make sure they had a wild and crazy—but safe—time. Unfortunately, her usually sober view had been crusted over by one colossally stupid mistake. A six-foot-tall, amber-eyed, mussed-up-haired mistake.

She should have stayed home in Chicago.

Slowly, she surveyed the room and tried to breathe herself to calm in the face of the happiness onslaught. Her father—
Il Duce
to his daughters—held court at the elders table after spending most of the meal bounding in and out of the hotel kitchen. Ensuring his menu was followed to exact specifications, no doubt. His queen, Francesca, rocking regal now that her corn-silk blond hair had returned to its pre-cancer glory, wore a familiar upward tilt on her lips as she viewed the dance floor hijinks. Cara tracked her mom’s gaze to a flash of flailing arms among the writhing bodies.
Oh, you’ve got to be kid—

“I’m beginning to have second thoughts.” A crisp, British voice intruded on her internal scold.

Jack, her boss and future brother-in-law, wrinkled his patrician nose and lay down his fork primly as if it might be radioactive.

“If you can’t even get the cake right, Cara, I’m not sure I should be entrusting you with the most important day of my life,” Jack added with just enough of that divo tone to remind her why she was glad he was marrying her sister, Lili, in six weeks and not her. Having worked with Jack as his TV producer when he was
the
Jack Kilroy—ragingly successful restaurateur, cooking show icon, and tabloid meat—and now, as the private events manager for his Chicago restaurant, Sarriette, she was comfortably familiar with his moods and tics. Jack was almost as controlling as Cara, and that type never made it onto her dance card. The one that had turned yellow and dog-eared from disuse.

“The cake was a done deal before I got involved, but don’t fret your pretty head,” she said, enjoying immensely how his face darkened at her patronizing tone. The man was so easy. “You’ve requested the most spectacular, stylish, knock-’em-dead—”

“Artistic, poetic, avant-garde,” Lili picked up, a little breathlessly.

Cara smiled up at her sister, newly arrived after cutting a rug on the boards. “Wedding to end all weddings,” Cara finished while Jack pulled his fiancée into his lap despite her whiny protests. It was a cute playact they did that would have turned her stomach at its sheer preciousness if it had been anyone else. The ache she felt in her belly could only be that cardboard cake talking.

“You shall have the wedding you’ve wanted since you were a little girl, Jack,” continued Lili, touching his forehead in the style of a fairy godmother before dropping a kiss on his lips.

“You’re so cheeky,” Jack said, though there was little heat there. “Engaged for almost a year and still no joy. I’m told I’m very eligible, you know.”

“Been reading your old
Vanity Fair
fluff pieces again, Jack?” Cara asked. There was a time when you couldn’t turn around without seeing Jack’s handsome mug on a magazine, billboard, or TV screen. Cara wondered if he missed it. Achieving her goal of becoming Chicago’s Events Queen depended on him missing it.

“Most women are dying to walk down the aisle—” He ran a hand along Lili’s thigh, clearly appreciative of her va-va-voom figure. Even in the bridesmaid dress from Hades, Lili looked like an advertisement for real women with those generous curves. “But this one has no interest in the fairy tale. Complete with Prince Charming.”

Lili rolled her eyes. “I’m happy to go quietly to city hall, but if you insist, I’ll indulge you.”

“Sweetheart, indulge me a little now,” Jack said, and pulled her in for a kiss.

Cara loosed a sigh and tried to reel in her envy at how Lili and Jack stared at each other to the exclusion of anyone else, the secret messages that needed no words, and their unmistakable joy at being in each other’s company. Just seeing how much Jack loved her sister made Cara’s cynical heart grow larger. Not three times, but maybe one and a half.

If anyone deserved the fairy tale, it was Lili. Her younger sister had carried the weight of family obligations during their mother’s battle with breast cancer while Cara had folded up like a Pinto in a head-on collision with a semi. Cara owed Lili, and she was going to repay a fraction of that debt by planning her dream wedding down to the finest detail.

“How’s the cake?” Lili asked Cara once Jack let her come up for air. Her gaze slid to the slice, lying listlessly on the scallop-edged dessert plate.