Feel the Heat (Hot In the Kitchen) (31 page)

When she looked up, his burning gaze met her head-on, all artifice stripped. Only Jack and those eyes that held no secrets.

“Lili, when I want something…well, you’ve probably noticed I can be a bit intense. I know that scares you. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely registering in the cavernous suite.

“Good. Scared is good.” He nodded a few times, and then a few times more. She wouldn’t have thought it possible for him to be more attractive, but here he was, naked and vulnerable in every way. It toppled her.

Three days ago, Jack Kilroy had been the designated fling. The sexy rut to get her out of her boring rut. The guy to turn her on and turn off that blinking “Service engine soon” light. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, a temporary mantidote to her problems, yet here they were, scaring the hell out of each other. And oh, was she terrified.

Lili had made some big decisions these last couple of days—hitting on
Bon Appetit
’s Sexiest Chef Alive, agreeing to date a guy who should have been all wrong for her, coming after him because the idea of losing him made her physically ill—but even those crazy moments paled in comparison to what she needed to do. Tell him that he slayed her, too. Completely, utterly.

“Jack,” she whispered.

No response. She raised her head and lapsed into a smile.

The rise and fall of his warm chest and the steady soughing told her the afterglow soul-baring would not be happening tonight. After several sleepless nights and a very satisfactory orgasm, Jack Kilroy had finally fallen asleep.

So, mortal after all.

*  *  *

Jack was trying not to shout at his sister partly because being pregnant gave her a pass, but mostly because Francesca and Tad were hanging on his every word not ten feet away in the DeLuca family kitchen.

Out on the patio sofa, Jules folded her long legs under her body and set her jaw. “I told you I’m not coming to London with you.”

“You can’t bury your problems, Jules.”

She gave him an oh-yes-I-can smirk. “Francesca and Tony have offered to let me stay for a while,” she said, unable to keep the triumph out of her voice.

Irritation notched his throat, though he was already privy to her scoop. On his arrival, Francesca had laid her hand on his arm and said, “She’s safe with us,” and he almost tackled her to the ground in a hug of gratitude. Now he was having second, third, and fourth thoughts.

“You can’t stay here. They’re complete strangers.”

“Really, Jack? Complete strangers? I’d say you know one member of the family quite well.” Her eyes glittered like golden coins, a light that spread to her smart-arse smile. She was enjoying this. Pregnant in a strange city with people she met five minutes ago and she was enjoying it.

Still didn’t stop him from smiling back. Yes, he knew Lili quite well and the memory of her coming apart for him so many times would have to fuel him for the next few days. She had wrung him dry and left him boneless. He would sleep well on the plane.

“So Lili seems nice. Did you have fun?” she asked, still with the impish grin.

“None of your business. Back to you.”

“I’ll be here when you return.” She left this suspended between them, the implication being that he would whisk her away to New York in some fairy-tale resolution to all their problems.

“You know how busy I am. How much I travel. Wouldn’t it be better to stay with Pete and Daisy? They can look after you.” He sure as hell couldn’t. So proven multiple times over.

“I know you think I’m a burden,” she said, scoring a direct hit on the guilt center of his brain. “But I can get a job.”

“You’re not even legally able to work here. And you need to stay off your feet.”

Her mouth wobbled. “Jack, I’m not a little girl anymore. I can look after myself, but I have to get out of London.”

Again, that ominous dread trickled through him. “Why?”

She looked shifty. “I just do. I need the change.”

“Is the father—” He gestured to her stomach, still not quite believing the magnitude of her situation. If he said it a million times out loud, it would take him an age to comprehend it.
Pregnant
. His baby sister was going to have a baby. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

“I haven’t told him.”

Of course she hadn’t. “Who is it?”

“I told you it’s no one you know.”

“Jules,” he warned.

“He’s married,” she pushed out quickly, then held up her hand in a calming motion that had the opposite effect. “And before you ask, I didn’t know.”

“Married? Oh, Jules.” His skin prickled at the thought of his sister with a taken man and this piece of shit getting off scot-free. “Married or not, he needs to take responsibility.”

Her face shuttered to blank, a vacuous expression she’d perfected when she was a teen. When she pulled that one out, he knew the conversation was over. Maybe she’d be okay here with a generous, loving family who could do for her where he was incapable. The bitter tang of failure oozed from his overheated skin. Rage seething through him, he stood to leave and barely restrained himself from kicking a large potted plant on the deck.

“Let’s talk in a few days, Jack,” she said, sounding like the mature one. That was just perfect. “And bring back some decent tea. The stuff here tastes like cat piss.”

Chapter Twenty

Lili’s eyelids were stuck together, but finally they cracked apart. A flick to the clock on her nightstand. Late again.

She searched for clean panties, but nothing was doing, not even the old-lady ones she usually shoved to the back of her underwear drawer. That’s what happened when you ignored laundry for three weeks. Wrenching on a crumpled tee and skirt, she bounded to the door and almost collapsed with pleasure.

Mouthwatering scents filled her apartment. Wow, that gorgeous Brit knew how to hit her where she lived. He’d gone all out this morning with not just her favorite lemon-ricotta pancakes, but also the apple-smoked bacon she’d picked up at Green City Market yesterday morning. Delish.

Rounding the corner, her breath caught as it did every time she found him standing at the stove. While there was nothing sexier than a man who knew his way around a kitchen, this was just ridiculous. Faded blue denim, slung dangerously low on his hips, skimming the floor around his bare feet. Back muscles rippling—not too much, but rippling all the same—while working the bacon. And just about the sexiest ass she’d ever seen on a man.

She would never get sick of the view.

Though he could only manage a couple of days in between tapings, the last two weeks had lived up to their billing. Mornings were spent like characters in a sixties New Wave French movie. Eating, making love, planning bank heists. Well, not the criminal conspiracy part, but it was just as thrilling and more than a little terrifying.

He wanted to hear all her stories, from anecdotes about her embarrassing relatives (a bottomless well) to her inspiration for her upcoming art projects (he thought sexualized vegetables had a certain je ne sais quoi). On his trips away, he called, smugly announcing he had won the
Jack of All Trades
challenges in New Orleans and Austin. Seemed only the Italians played dirty. And while the phone sex was off the charts, it couldn’t replace the man himself. Waking up with Jack sliding into her was the hottest alarm call a woman could want.

The singing still left something to be desired. The man had to have some fault. Now his voice cracked as he stretched for one of those notes that even a Bee Gee would have trouble reaching. Squashing a giggle, she grabbed her phone off the cracked granite countertop. Just the twentieth voice mail in the last two weeks from Shona Love, entertainment correspondent at the local news affiliate, but otherwise, nothing.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said without turning around.

“I missed the meat delivery. Sal’s going to kill me.” The meat guy was the least of her problems. That honor went to her father if he found out about her tardiness.

“Sit, Lili. I already took care of it.”

“You did?” Last week he’d risen at six and lolled beside her, sleepy, bed-headed, and so damn sexy, while she inspected the meat and signed for it. Now she knew why.

Tears threatened and she blinked to force them back, conscious of how easily she’d fallen into relying on him for her comfort and well-being. Her startling need for him was bad enough; she didn’t have to turn into minestrone soup over it.

Covering her sudden wave of emotion, she snaked her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against the smooth planes of his back. At her fluttery breath, his body sighed back, and yet again she marveled at his reaction. The same every time, like he was surprised and would never tire of her touch. She wondered if that was true or even possible.

“I must have been good in a previous life.” Her throat felt raw and scratchy.

He turned and gathered her close. “Yeah, ’cause you’re certainly not good in this one.”

She breathed him in, absorbing the beat echoing like a drum beneath his skin. Fast and vital, like her own. He smoothed her hair helmet, a futile gesture given the time of day and the heat of the kitchen.

“You may not be aware of this, but I’ve accepted a few deliveries in my time. And it shouldn’t always be down to you. Tad should do more, your other cousins.” The unspoken,
your father
, hung in the air. Competition between Jack and Tony had picked up where it left off at the taping. When not trying to one-up each other with tales of who had eaten the most disgusting thing to date—Jack was leading with fried water bugs, a Thai delicacy—they continued to square off in the DeLuca kitchen, pushing each other to create as Jack waited for his Chicago kitchen to be finished and planned his new menu. And while they kept their interactions painfully civil, Lili sensed Jack itching to be her champion in everything, including her strained relationship with her father.

“Jack, it’s my job. It’s my family.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And we’re not taking your money,” she added, knowing that was next. Jack had broached the idea of helping out financially, but Lili had instantly shut down that line of thinking. Accumulating more debt wasn’t the solution, and they both knew it, not while her father refused to make the wide-sweeping changes necessary. Neither did she want her rich and famous man bailing them out; her list of online soubriquets was insulting enough without adding “gold-digging whore” to the mix.

Thankfully, interest in Lilack—her girlhood dream to be one-half of a celebrity couple mash-up checked off the list!—had simmered down in the last couple of weeks, largely because they were being discreet. Not hiding, just not shouting it out to the hills. They’d hit a summer street festival in Old Town and attended a DeLuca family picnic at Grant Park for a free performance of Puccini’s
Tosca
, a favorite of her father’s. In between grumbles that it was two hours he would never have back, opera-hating Jack had kept her entertained with his own bawdy translations of the libretto.

Gently, he shoved her toward the table with, “Just let me take care of you. I want to.”

She wanted that, too, but wanting wasn’t going to make the fantasy into reality. Jack in her life for a couple of days a week was so much more than she could ever have wished for and she had to constantly remind herself that he was a loaner. Just a supernova fling. At this stage, checking her heart at the door was a downright impossibility, but she was trying to be cool about it. Any day, his network deal would be inked, beginning the countdown to the end of Lilack, but for now she just wanted to relish this unspoiled bubble of sex and comfort.

Gladly, she sat and relieved her jellied legs. A cup of coffee materialized, and Jack glided in by her side, distracting her with his monumental chest. He insisted on cooking breakfast shirtless even though he risked grease burns and singed chest hair. He said it was worth the sacrifice to keep her in a constant state of sexual red alert.

They dug into scrambled eggs with fragrantly wafting truffle shavings and expelled a soft “hmm” of unified satisfaction. Lili sipped her skim-muddied coffee. One and a half Splendas. Perfect.

“Jack, thanks for the delivery. For this.”
For everything,
she wanted to say. For coming into her life and making her realize that life is so much better when someone has your back, like he had hers.

He bestowed on her one of those Special K stares that was hot enough to burn calories. “Come here,” he said, his tone sexy-serious.

She’d given up protesting whenever he insisted she sit in his lap and just let herself enjoy how his body reacted to her weight. He liked how her butt spooned against his crotch and she liked how his breathing started to come in jagged jerks.

“Did you get a chance to look at the prospectus I brought back from Parsons?” he whispered against her neck after she’d settled in.

Reluctantly, her gaze veered to the glossy booklet on the counter near the sink. She had yet to decide if his act of picking it up on his last visit to New York was sweet or manipulative. Knowing Jack, probably both.

“Those brochures support the murder of trees,” she said, smiling. “You know there’s this thing called the Internet and it’s got all the information you could ever want on it.”

“The Internet. What’s that ever done for anyone?” Given her adventures over the last month, that was true to the last drop. He gave her waist a gentle squeeze. “Sometimes, holding something solid in your hand makes it seem more real. More within reach.”