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Over the oven guy’s head, the pizza oven loomed, mocking Tad’s foray into the world of business ownership. Flatbreads were one of the cornerstones of his new wine bar menu—or had been—and now he was thinking about his back-up plan. The non-existent one. The joys of being his own boss.
“It’s not the regulator this time. There’s a—” He said something incomprehensible and Tad tuned out. Three semesters of engineering coursework under his belt didn’t really qualify him to talk pizza oven repair shop, but maybe if he’d stuck around college longer, he’d be on more of a conversational footing here.
“How long?”
Still in an ungainly squat, Oven Guy rubbed the back of his neck while he caught his serrated breath. “A week. More like two.”
Goddamn it. The man’s eyebrow shot up as if Tad had spoken that aloud. He hadn’t, but the pulverized bone dust blasting from his ears might have given anyone pause.
In less than a week, he was slated to open Vivi’s in trendier-by-the-second Wicker Park, just a stone’s throw from his family’s restaurant, DeLuca’s. Going from bartender to bar owner had seemed like a logical progression but fate hadn’t been on speaking terms with logic for a while.
His first location choice had burned to the ground before he signed the lease. He had been outbid on the second. Not to mention his chef had up and quit, leaving Tad without someone capable of cooking the spectacular tasting menu he had planned. But he couldn’t dwell on the roadblocks; now it was all systems go.
It had taken him a while to get here. Years of dwelling on his mistakes and making excuses had held him back. Letting people down was second nature to him, butthis—he looked around at the gleaming, polished surfaces of his new kitchen—would be his way back in. Making his mom, Vivi proud might get him there.
A menu of delicious snacks would definitely help.
“Penny for ’em, babe,” Tad heard softly in his ear. “Or should I justtellyou what’s going on in that charming head of yours?”
Smiling away his irritation at how shitty the day had gone so far, Tad turned to greet the girl-next-door blonde who could make it all better. Hair in a topknot, dark circles under her green-gold eyes, her shirt shapeless and wrinkled over baggy desert camo pants rolled to just below her knees. If it were anyone else, he would guess she had just tumbled from a warm bed where she had been well and truly serviced. But this was Jules Kilroy, his best girl who, as far as he knew, had never been on a date—or anything more—in the two years he had known her.
The smart upturn of her lips couldn’t disguise how tired she looked. Neither did it detract from her pale, fragile beauty, which had him itching to wrap his body around her and gather her tight to his chest.
Instead of focusing on all the reasons why he wanted to protect her, which inevitably led to the reasons why that was a terrible idea, he moved his gaze back to the safer territory of that smirk. When Jules wore that look, it was easy to remember why they had become friends in the first place. They had connected the moment she showed up in his family’s restaurant, knocked up, beat down, and in need of a pal.
Some pal he had been. He jerked his brain away from that thought and dialed up a friendly grin.
“You don’t want to know what’s going on in my head. It’s a whirling cesspit of debauchery that would make your hair curl.”
She gave a discreet nod to Oven Guy, who had once more descended to all-fours to poke around the appliance mechanics.
“You’re thinking there’s nothing more attractive than the sight of a generous arse peeking out of denim.”
He’d always liked that word.Arse.Or really he liked the way Jules’s lips shaped it.
Her British singsong accent hadn’t diminished one iota in the time she had lived in the States. It wasn’t one of those regal voices that sounded like her mouth was filled with plums, either; it was a good-time girl voice. A little husky, the kind of rasp you might get from screaming above the boom-boom bass at a club the night before.
Up until her baby bump had made her self-conscious about shaking her booty on the boards, they had been quite the team on the dance floor. Now she had her hands full with her eighteen-month old, Evan. The kid was adorable but those circles under Jules’s eyes confirmed he was also a handful.
His phone buzzed and he checked it discreetly, unable to hide his frown at the number of the last person in the world he wanted to talk to. When he looked back at Jules, there was no missing the blatant curiosity on her face.
“How’s the washed-up ballerina?”
Usually there was a more engaging proposition on the other end of the line and Jules liked to tease him about his flavor of the month.
“Retired Olympic gymnast,” he corrected, referring to the gamine hottie he had been seeing the week before and who had now been relegated to Tad’s past tense.
“Still pulling out all the stops on the floor exercise?”
That drew a laugh from deep in his gut. Jules and her cheeky mouth.
“It didn’t work out,” he said sadly.
“Oh, the poor thing. Marked down by the Italian judge.” A slender finger touched her lips. “Or maybe not as flexible in her old age. What was she? Barely eighteen?”
“Twenty-two. She just looked young.”
“Taddeo DeLuca, when are you going to settle down with a nice-ah plump girl and make-ah da bambinos?” she sang in a terrible stage Italian accent. For good measure, she pinched his cheek, an unapologetic nod to his Aunt Sylvia, who devoted her non-Mass time to matchmaking for her unattached nieces and nephews.
