All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (3 page)

“Oh, that’s not good,” Jack said, and for not the first time in the last couple of weeks, Shane wanted to work over that
GQ
magazine cover face of his. Because he agreed and Shane loathed being in agreement with Jack Kilroy on anything.

There was no way Cara could have known Shane’s position about thirty feet kitty-corner from the main action, but somehow her ice-blue gaze found him like a heat-seeking missile, binding his chest in knots tighter than the hold she had on that bouquet.

No, not good at all.

The ladies groaned, a rather mean-spirited response to a supposedly fun end to the wedding festivities. Cara’s expression changed from pissed to pondering as she turned the flowers over in her hand, her chilled gaze no longer on Shane. A gaze he now missed.

Gina cocked her hips, all bridezilla spunk. “Probably wasted on you, Cara. Should I throw it again?”

The shadow that crossed Cara’s face was impossible to miss, but it was immediately displaced by a slice of sun. Cara had a gorgeous smile, even when it was forced.

“Sure, cuz. Go for it. Though there’s probably some bad luck associated with throwing it twice.”

She crushed the bouquet into Gina’s hands and stalked off. Looked like a case of bygones that were never gone. Cara’s connection to her family had struck Shane as being a little warped, not that he could claim bragging rights in that area. His own history was proof enough that families were fundamentally untrustworthy.

“Christ, these women. Weddings turn them into crazy people,” Jack muttered, which, reluctantly, Shane found amusing given how gung ho Jack was about joining the ranks of the smugly married.

“What’s that about?” Shane asked. “Cara not big on marriage?”

“Cara’s not big on relationships.” Jack leaned against the bar and rubbed the weathered grain before meeting Shane’s eyes, his expression flinty. “She’s very career-focused,” he added, as if that explained everything.

Shane kept his peace. Silence usually got better results.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very fond of her,” Jack continued. “But she’s so tightly wound that I pity the guy who takes her on, even for a short-term thing.” There was steel behind his words, sharp as a blade in that accent that made everything sound like an order. His eyes softened slightly, once he decided his message had made an impression on Shane.

Message received all right, but not in the least bit understood.

*  *  *

He found her in the foyer near a large potted plant, her smooth, golden back diagonally bisected by that classy dress. Her shaking shoulders could mean only one thing: she was crying.

Before he could touch her, she spun on her killer heels and the look she speared him with said she’d been expecting him. He’d got it wrong, though. As upset as she was, there were no tears, just frost turned to fire.

“You took your time, Paddy.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, which plumped them up from B to double Ds, or that was his best guess.

“Are you all right?”

The morning after their night together, she’d been more embarrassed than annoyed. Too busy calling for a cab despite the never-ending train of taxis outside the hotel. Too busy looking for her shoes so she could put as much distance between them as possible. Now anger shimmered off her in waves, leaving a mottled swatch of pink across the exposed skin of her chest.

“No—no, I’m not all right,” she hissed. “We have to fix it. It’s bad enough Jack thinks I’m some sort of man-eater with my claws embedded in your hot Irish ass. If my family finds out about this, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Hot Irish ass? Huh, he kind of enjoyed that. He opened his mouth to make a joke, then closed it because it didn’t seem like the wisest course of action. Besides, she was right. They did have to fix it. Put it behind them and return to normal or whatever the hell passed as normal in his lately complicated life. The animosity prickling the air around them sizzled, making a nice counterpoint to a distant, low-rumbled rendering of “I Am…I Said,” one of Neil’s schmaltziest numbers. Guilt that he had dismissed her so cavalierly ten minutes ago constricted the space around his heart, because now he wanted nothing more than to lead her to the dance floor and hold her tight.

Jesus, Doyle. Get your head out of your hot Irish ass and focus.

Taking a firm step forward, he placed his palms on her golden shoulders. Might have let his hands wander over a few inches of her soft, sleek skin. Just to stop her trembling. The raw rash on her chest was fading now along with the wild-eyed fury, but her eyes were still as big as headlights. He gathered her close, willing her stiff, slender frame to soften.

“Cara,” he said. Quiet. Soothing. As if dialing the volume down might keep her from bolting like a wounded doe. “It’s all going to be okay.”

She lifted her head and those sapphire blues knocked his heart out of his stomach and into his mouth.

“Yes, it is,” she said, her chin strong and proud. “As soon as we get a divorce.”

Chapter 2

Lake Shore Drive was a smooth ride this morning, but Shane still cursed the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit that stopped him from opening up the Harley full tilt. Man, he loved this machine. The vibrating hum between his legs, how the low center of gravity kept him within kissing distance of the road, the life flashing by and through him. Pastry chefs, even great pastry chefs, didn’t make much in the way of readies to start out, so blowing close to ten grand on a used Dyna Super Glide had seemed like crazy cakes, but he’d never regretted it. Needing all his money for his future business endeavor, he couldn’t afford a brand-new top-of-the-line Harley and the low rider with its wrinkled black paint and lashings of chrome made it as close to factory custom as someone in his position could get.

Neither did it hurt that it was a PM of the highest order. Pussy Magnet.

Angling the bike deftly, Shane narrowly avoided the danger accompanying a zippy roadster’s last-minute signal change and quickly got back on track. The last thing he needed was to be laid up for six weeks with a broken arm or worse. His oscillating sanity would not be down with that.

Sanity was definitely at a premium these days, as was focus. Hard to focus on the road when all he could think of was Jack’s text message, which was a welcome respite from dwelling on Cara. When it rains, it pours equatorial-strength torrents on your sorry arse. He was trying to keep his cool but it was becoming ever more difficult considering the bucket load of dilemmas in his possession.

He’d finally achieved his goal: get a job in Jack Kilroy’s restaurant. That became a reality almost a year back when he’d rolled up his pastry mat and practically begged for a pâtissier job at Thyme on Forty-Seventh in New York, the flagship of Jack’s restaurant empire. Taking a pay cut from his position under the great Anton Baillard at Maison Rouge had been a given and provoked a healthy scintilla of suspicion, but his credentials—several years in increasingly more responsible positions as pastry chef in Ireland, the UK, and beyond—had swayed Jack’s notoriously hard-to-please sous-chef Laurent Benoit. Only when he’d been hired on did he find out the bad news.

Jack was leaving New York to move to Chicago.

So breathing the same kitchen fumes as Jack was put on the back burner. No matter, Shane was used to simmering on the fringes. For more years than he cared to admit, he’d followed Jack’s explosion of popularity as he escorted stunning actresses to film premieres and struck male model poses on glossy magazine covers. He’d read every single interview and sopped up every juicy morsel of gossip, all with the goal of knowing more about Jack than the great chef knew about himself. Starting with the public face of Jack Kilroy was the best Shane could manage until he had a chance to personally learn about the man behind the image, which had finally come with this transfer to Jack’s Chicago restaurant, Sarriette.

Over the last two weeks, Shane had been tossed like a rag doll inside a tornado. Working his first dinner service with Jack, he’d been so nervous he got three pastry orders wrong and suffered the pointed gaze of his boss. Intimidating for sure, but he held his own. Then for some unfathomable reason, Jack had invited him along to the stag do for his future cousin-in-law in Vegas, had even paid for it. “Team building” he’d called it, though that idea had taken a hike as soon as they hit the wall of Nevada heat. Not much team building when you’re slamming grappa all night while you wait for your girl to arrive with the rest of the
famiglia
.

Jack had definitely landed on his feet with the DeLucas, all right. They were one of those typically close-knit Italian clans and Jack’s passion for Lili clearly extended to the rest of them. Family life seemed to suit him, especially now that he had Jules and Evan under his wing. Giving them his protection.

Protection. Ha! Shane dropped a gear and hit the accelerator, leaping ten miles over the speed limit.

As a kid,
protection
and
family
were alien words to Shane. A drunkard father who showered him with fists instead of love. A system that was supposed to protect a child but couldn’t see the signs spelled out in the language of broken bones. He hadn’t even known the meaning of family and now he was connected to Jack’s new family by marriage. Oh, the irony.

And it was all because of Cara DeLuca.

Her name had been bandied about the restaurant during Shane’s first week, spoken in hushed tones by the servers or derisive jibes by the guys on the line. It didn’t take long to figure out that the mysterious Cara had turned all the chefs down for a date, a crime enough to label her as either stuck up or lesbian, usually both. Nicknamed Lemon Tart by the brigade, she not only refused to mix business with pleasure, but apparently thought herself too above the crew to sit down and share family meal, the communal gathering that brought the full complement of staff together before service. She had taken the week off to work on her cousin’s nuptials, so he hadn’t been ready for that tall streak of sunshine to blow into the casino bar in the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and knock him off his stool.

Cara DeLuca was the most beautiful woman Shane had ever seen.

Strange to think such a thing when he’d worked in Paris, London, and New York, cities where you can’t jerk off without hitting a gorgeous woman, but Cara was something else. Structurally flawless from platinum blonde head to designer-shoe-clad toe (he didn’t know shit about designer shoes, but he felt it in his bones), legs a mile past eternity, narrow hips that still managed to sway with menace, and breasts that looked like they would fit his palms just right.

She had looked at him. Well, not really looked, more like an assessing arc that took in the whole room, including the murder of dark-haired cousins she was leading like a very patient chaperone. Standing apart, her aloof pose might have been taken for snootiness, but then she did this lip snag thing with her teeth. A move more nervous than erotic, it changed her from a cool Hitchcock blonde to someone who didn’t fit in quite as easily as her beauty promised. Her gaze made the return trip and settled on him, and the empty seat he had vacated for her. And that was all it took.

He wasn’t supposed to be drinking, not after the promises he’d made to himself, but Jack’s gift to the happy couple was a nonstop booze cruise down the Sunset Strip. Another round was always there with alarming frequency and Cara’s shotgun blues were usually raised in challenge. His first mistake.

Shoving those memories to the back of his brain, he hauled back to his current problem. The signaling ping of Jack’s text message had awoken him from a restless sleep on Tom’s sofa, an old chef pal who had put him up for the last couple of weeks.
Meet me at DeLuca’s restaurant, 11
A
.
M
.,
it said. No why, please, or thank you. Must be nice to know your word is God.

The cool May air made for perfect bike weather on the thirty-minute ride from Chinatown to DeLuca’s Ristorante in Wicker Park, one of those trendy neighborhoods where every other business was a wine bar or a dog groomer. Jack owned a share of the veteran Italian restaurant, and the rest belonged to his future in-laws, or more specifically his future father-in-law, Tony DeLuca. Now Shane’s father-in-law, since a guy in a Hawaiian shirt had presided over his nuptials to the man’s eldest daughter.

Nope, not weird in the slightest.

Jack leaned against the hood of his car, some black deal that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a presidential motorcade. His eyes were peeled to his phone, his thumbs moving feverishly. Shane had never met anyone who worked as hard as Jack. When he wasn’t at the restaurant, he was checking out his other places in Europe and the US. He still showed up most mornings to receive the deliveries and he was the last one to leave at night after close down of service. No, Shane couldn’t fault him on his work ethic.

The boss looked up and shoved his phone into his jeans pocket. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” he said, the tone one of not really giving a fuck.

“I usually like to take a ride on my day off. Coming to this neighborhood is as good as any.” Shane busied himself removing his helmet and tearing open the zipper on his leather jacket while Jack just stared. Alrighty, then.

“So what’s up?” Shane asked after the uncomfortable pause had joined forces with a downright awkward one.

“You should have told me,” Jack said, his expression still grave.