Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (41 page)

“Not so great,” Cara said. “Don’t worry, we’ll have something much better for your big day.” She already had an artiste in mind, and if he was good enough for Oprah’s farewell do—

“Cake’s sorted,” Jack announced.

“What?” Cara asked, but the tingle she felt as the word spilled out told her she should be asking, “Who?” She didn’t even have to hear his name; her traitorous body was already on board.

“My secret weapon.” Jack chuckled and nodded to the dance floor.

Cara followed his gaze, and by some Moses-like miracle, the tangle of bodies parted to reveal the weapon himself.

Shane Doyle. He of the Irish eyes, devastating dimple, and incredibly dorky dance moves.

The Sweet Carolines were playing the eponymous tune, and Shane was waving his hands in the air, alternating between an interpretive dance featuring a tree and Marcel Marceau trapped in a box. Maisey, a server at Sariette and Shane’s dance partner, was holding tight to her side because apparently Shane wasn’t just bustin’ moves—he was bustin’ guts as well. From twenty feet away, Cara could hear him hollering about how good times never seemed so good.

Don’t look. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

She was gearing up to drag her eyes away—any moment now—when a rather daring pivot landed him in a face-off with their table. One eyebrow arched. He held her stare. And then he winked. Which he had no damn right to do after what had happened between them a week ago in Sin-Freaking-City.

“No,” she said firmly, turning away from those chocolate-drop eyes set in that ridiculously fine face. Not just fine, but friendly and cheerful and oh hell, mostly fine.

“No, what?” asked Jack.

“No, we can’t use Shane.” When Jack’s expression turned curious, she hastily added, “He’s too new and he’s got far too much on his plate trying to get up to speed at the restaurant. Let me remind you that you’ve given me a very tight timeline here. Less than two months to plan the kind of shindig you want means I can’t leave anything to chance.” Though Jack and Lili had been engaged for close to a year, Lili had only recently pulled the trigger on the wedding planning now that she was well and truly settled into her MFA program at the School of the Art Institute. Jack was champing at the bit like a prize racehorse to make Lili “Mrs. Jack Kilroy,” but her sister refused to be pushed. That summed up their relationship in a nutshell.

Jack and Lili shared a meaningful glance. Cara hated when they did that.

“Something happened in Vegas and it clearly hasn’t stayed there,” Lili said. “We all know you slept with him.”

“I didn’t know.” Jack’s brow knitted furiously. “Cara, tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s not true,” Cara repeated, sort of truthfully. She hadn’t slept with anyone in over a year, and even then, she—or he—never stayed overnight. It was one of her rules, or it had been until a week ago when she woke up with a screaming hangover and a big lug of an Irishman twined around her body.

“You destroyed my last pastry chef,” Jack said, his tone frosty. “Shane’s been here only a couple of weeks and you’ve already got your hooks into him.”

“Now, now, Jack,” Lili chided, flipping on the calm. “You can’t tell your employees who they can and can’t be with.”

“Oh yes, I can. She made Jeremy cry. The poor guy left because Cara stomped all over him.”

Cara bristled, then covered with a languid wave. “Don’t be ridiculous. Jeremy and I went on one date and it didn’t work out. I can’t help it if you employ weak-willed, mewling kittens just so you can surround yourself with yes men who’ll bow down and kiss your ring.”

He
had
cried, though, the wuss.

“Well, Shane’s off-limits,” Jack said, still peeved. “That guy’s a genius with a pastry roller and I’m not losing him. Don’t make me choose.”

Cara caught Lili’s eye and they both fought back laughs. Jack’s dramatics were a source of great amusement for the women in his life.

“So if you didn’t do the deed with him, what happened? You hightailed out of the hotel like you were auditioning for Girl Being Chased.” Lili’s unearthly blue eyes zeroed in on Cara, making her shiver with their perspicacity.

“Nothing happened. We just had a few drinks and that’s it. Nobody got stomped on.” Much. She felt her head cant slightly in Shane’s direction. It completely sucked to have no control over her body.

And then as if she had summoned him out of thin air, he was there. The distance from dance floor to table should have given her a decent interval to adjust, but Shane had bounded over like a big Irish setter, throwing Cara off-kilter. Any farther and she’d be listing like the
Titanic
in its final moments. His hip-shot loll against the table’s edge made his ancient-looking jeans cleave fondly to his thighs, prompting Cara’s own thigh muscles to do some involuntary flexing of their own. Never too early to start the exercise. That unfortunate mouthful of cake wasn’t going to disappear by itself.

Who wears jeans to a wedding? While everyone else was rocking tuxes and dark suits, Shane was embracing the American Dream with button-fly Levi’s, weathered cowboy boots, and a sports jacket that stretched a little too tight over his annoyingly broad shoulders. Only after that snide thought had formed did it occur to her he had probably borrowed the jacket, likely from one of the other chefs.

Inexorably, her eyes inched up, up, up, taking in overlong, mink-brown hair that just begged to be raked. The melty brown eyes with a hazelnut corona ringing the iris. The jaw scruff that hadn’t made acquaintance with a razor in a couple of days. The…Oh, she could go on and on.

So she did. Down, down, down, she traveled that granite-hard body before coming to rest on his large hands. Not that she needed visual verification. She distinctly remembered their size because she had awoken with one spread possessively across her stomach a week ago. She knew just how devastatingly erotic Shane’s hand felt on her bare skin.

“Sure, I’m looking for a new dance partner,” Shane said with that Irish musical lilt that did wondrous things to large segments of the American female population. Cara liked to think she was immunized against all that “faith and begorra” malarkey, but she reluctantly acknowledged Shane’s accent was one of his most appealing features. Like the guy needed more help to sell the goods.

Shaking off her appreciation, she tried to draw on all the reasons she was mad at him. “What happened to your last one? Wear her out?” She looked to see where the cast-off Maisey had landed, but the poor girl was nowhere to be found. “Did you make her ill with all that jumping around?”

“Ah, I’m just too much for one woman,” Shane said, exploding into that cheeky smile that had caught her attention the moment he’d stood up to offer her a seat in the bar at Paris, Las Vegas. A memory of the numerous drinking establishments they had crawled through flashed through her querulous mind. In every one, the guys had got there before the girls. And in every one, Shane Doyle had been first on his feet, motioning to his seat as soon as the lady mob arrived to meet up with the bachelor’s posse for the tandem shenanigans.

A nice mama’s boy, she had decided. Polite and mannered, the kind of guy she usually liked to date because they let her call the shots. Where to go, what to do, how to please her. A few tears might be shed when they parted, not by her, of course, but so far it had worked out swimmingly.

How had she messed up so spectacularly with Shane?

The band took a break and the music switched to DJ-determined wedding classics. First up, the oom-pah booms of the Chicken Dance, and Cara found herself just a tiny bit curious to see Shane’s interpretation.

“We were talking about the cake,” Jack said, defaulting to his one-track mind. Marriage to Lili or bust. In telepathic communication, both chefs’ gazes slipped to the slice of maligned cake now insulting everyone by its mere presence on the table.

Shane scoffed. “Whoever made this rubbish should be shot for crimes against pastries.”

That pulled a deep laugh out of Jack and a juvenile eye roll out of Cara. Ah, chef humor.

“So I’ll expect something amazing for my wedding.” He squeezed Lili’s waist. “We both will. You up for it?”

A weird look passed over Shane’s face, clearing his cheer. If Cara didn’t know better, she would have thought he was annoyed. Even angry, which made no sense considering what an honor it was to have Jack choose the new guy for such an important commission.

“I thought you’d want to bring Marguerite in from Thyme,” Shane said, his voice as tight as the set of his mouth. “She’s your best pâtissier.”

Thyme, Jack’s New York outpost and Shane’s stomping ground until two weeks ago when he transferred to Chicago, sported any number of culinary stars, and Marguerite was the brightest of them all. Cara was in full agreement with Shane. It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if Jack wanted to fly her in for the occasion.

Shane’s mood change appeared to have passed unnoticed by Jack. “Yeah, she’s great, but I want you to do it. You’re a wizard with desserts and after chasing me around for months trying to get a job, I think you’re ready for the big leagues.”

Shane looked both pensive and oddly uncomfortable. There
was
something. “We could do angel food and pistachio cream, or maybe a rosemary-lemon to keep the Italian theme.”

“I like how you think,” Jack said, smiling broadly. “Keep it up and we’ll talk next week.”

Shane smiled back but it was as if the effort might result in the death of a puppy.

Lili hummed and flapped a hand at Gina’s cake. “Oh, that’s disappointing. For a moment there, I thought you were going to form a lynch mob to track down the criminal baker and water board him with fondant.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Shane said with a dimple wink at Cara that was wholly unrelated to torturing unsuspecting sugar hacks. Back to charming, sunny Shane. Flustered, she felt her hand move to the still-full champagne flute she had been avoiding since the toasts, but before her fingers made contact, he cocked his head. One of those,
Really, Cara? After what happened last week?
head tilts that decelerated her brain. Damn the man and his caramel-hued eyes, now narrowed and holding her captive.

“Back to the dancing,” he said with a sly smile.

Cara had important things to say to Shane. Very important things. And avoiding him wasn’t going to get it done. After years of unhealthy denial, she had vowed to meet her problems head-on, so she wasn’t sure why she had let a whole week go by without pulling Shane aside and telling him how it was. How it will be. She’d put it down to how busy she was ensuring Gina’s wedding wouldn’t be a complete debacle. Declining to examine that closely was about the only thing preventing her from losing her ever-loving mind.

Before she went off on him, it might be easier to soften him up on the dance floor. Besides, there was something just so adorkable about his enthusiasm. She uncrossed her legs and flexed a perfectly pedied foot clad in a Jimmy Choo peep-toe. Her feet looked stunning in fuchsia.

“Lili, would you do me the honor?” Shane’s gaze brushed fire across Cara’s skin as he reached for her sister. “That’s if you don’t mind, Jack.”

Lili slid out of Jack’s lap and Cara’s heart slid into her stomach. “Oh, you wouldn’t catch Jack dead on the dance floor,” Lili said. “He’s much too image conscious.”

“I’m not afraid of looking foolish. You’ve heard me sing,” Jack said blithely. “I draw the line at the Chicken Dance, though.”

“It’s ironic,” Cara said, aiming for levity after being snubbed by Shane, because there was no doubt that’s what had just happened here.

“Ironically stupid,” Jack replied. “Just make sure I see daylight between you two.”

Laughing, Shane led a willing Lili out onto the dance floor and jumped into flapping his arms with gusto. Lili fanned her hips with both hands, then moseyed into the fray.

“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?” Jack asked, his eyes glued to Lili, who was jerking her feet to the music like she’d just been Tased. “I don’t want to upset her.”

“You won’t upset her, Jack,” Cara said, her heart in a mad gallop as she struggled to recover her aplomb. It was easy to see why Shane would prefer to dance with Lili, who was never afraid to get into the spirit of things. Unlike stuck-up, no-fun Cara, who needed to drink her weight in vodka to go a little bit wild.

“You know how she feels about being the center of attention,” Jack continued, his tone flat. “Sometimes I think she’s serious about getting it over and done with at city hall. I just want her to be happy.”

Cara worried her lip. Jack and Lili’s relationship had been almost derailed by the merciless teasing Lili had suffered on the Twittersphere when they first got together. The online hordes, as capricious as twelve-year-old schoolgirls, had ragged on everything from her big Italian hair to her generous curves, and Jack’s hotheaded propensity to punch anyone who insulted her had loomed large between them. Even now, with Jack in the bosom of semiobscurity, he guarded his privacy and Lili like a Doberman pincher trained to kill at the first sign of trespass.

But there was still that side of him that loved to put on a show.

“Every girl wants to be the center of attention on their big day,” Cara said casually, the irony that Jack was the attention-seeker here not lost on her. “And we’re talking about the DeLucas. Relatives from both sides of the pond will be there, and they’ll expect the usual pageantry.”

Jack’s lips curved up in a brazen grin, the one that still sold cookbooks and had once earned him millions. Cara knew how much he enjoyed the spectacle, but more than that, how he loved being part of the DeLuca clan. In-laws get to choose their family, to a certain extent, and Jack was eager to be a part of her big Italian one almost as much as he wanted to be Lili’s husband.