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Two
“What do you mean he quit?”
Jules lifted her head at her brother’s sharp tone. Jack was going with the dark and disapproving thing he used to great effect, and laying it on even thicker because he also happened to be an investor in Tad’s business. She knew Tad would have preferred to go it alone but it was either bring Jack on board or wait another three years to accumulate enough seed money. Sometimes dreams involved compromises.
Her brother, Jack Kilroy, was one of those incredibly successful restaurateurs with a household name even Pygmy tribes in New Guinea had heard of. In the last couple of years, he’d scaled back his multinational food empire and eliminated his TV commitments to focus on his grand passions: his Chicago restaurant, Sarriette, the go-to foodie destination in the West Loop and his wife, Lili, who was Tad’s cousin.
“He was offered a job on a cruise ship,” Tad was saying about Longface, the AWOL chef. “Theidiotawants to see the world. I hoped you could spare Derry for a few weeks while I work on getting someone else in.”
Jack’s forehead crimped. Lending Sarriette’s sous-chef to Tad for a month was not trivial. While Jules suspected her brother wouldn’t even cross the street to piss on her friend if he were on fire, she also knew Jack would do what he needed to make sure his investment succeeded. There had always been tension between them, most of it stemming from her brother’s disapproval of her closeness to Tad.
“We’ll sort something out,” Jack said after a long beat. “So we’re not eating, but what are we drinking?”
Tad twisted the bottle in his hand to face the rest of his audience—Lili, her sister Cara, and Cara’s Irish husband Shane Doyle, who was also Jack’s half-brother on their father’s side. Long story.
“Doggie!” Evan struggled in Jules’s arms, reaching for the bottle with a picture of a friendly overgrown terrier on the label. Her precious boy, the center of her world, was a touch obsessed with dogs lately. The label’s letters leapfrogged over each other, making little sense to Jules’s literacy-challenged brain. Dyslexia could be a real pain in the arse.
Tad launched into his wine spiel. “This is a Chilean Pinot. Plummy, lashings of fruit, full-bodied. Goes well with zin-braised short rib flatbread.” He met Jack’s pointed stare. “Or it will when we have someone to cook it.”
Tad poured tasting samples of the purple-red wine into stemware and passed them around. A small smile shaded his lips as he took a seat on the plush, chocolate velvet sofa, just one of three sofas ringing a low-to-the-ground stone table near the entrance. He had been planning this place for so long that Jules knew he couldn’t help himself. His pride at how the bar had turned out was clear. It was beautiful.
The flickering votive lights sitting on the window ledges bathed the room in an ethereal glow, casting a shine over the cherrywood furniture. On the exposed brick walls, Lili’s beautifully tasteful nude photos with nods to wine culture—models holding bunches of grapes in provocative poses, others with slashes of terracotta mud on their skin—were like a love letter from Mother Nature. Sun, earth, life.
The kicker was the glass-walled wine cellar, which brooded behind the bar, a window onto the world of wine. Or at least that was the sales shtick the guy who built it had given Tad when trying to convince him to go with that design. Jules was glad he had. The shock of floor-to-ceiling glass staved off that air of pretension that often shrouded these types of places. There was an accessibility about being able to see right into the cellar from out here.
He caught her looking around and shared the secret smile with her. It was his dream, but he had talked about it for so long that she felt a small measure of ownership over it as well. He was unafraid of seeking her opinion and she was unafraid of giving it. Usually about the supermodel he was dating and how she didn’t much like that (lilac) shirt he was wearing anddamn it, Tad, could you not walk into every room like a herd of Africanelephants? I’ve got a kid trying to sleep here!
Underneath the sarcastic quips and snarky comments, the deep affection was unmistakable. Simpatico, that’s what they were. It had been like that from the beginning.
Cara leaned in and sniffed Shane’s glass, her hand falling naturally to her swollen belly. Five months gone with twins and already big as a house. She should have looked tired and worn, but this was Cara, who always managed to project disgustingly radiant.
“God, I miss this,” Cara said, burying her nose below the lip of the glass.
Shane snatched it away and took a healthy slurp before pulling his wife close for a hearty kiss.
“Don’t say I never do anything for you, Mrs. DeLuca-Doyle,” he murmured against his wife’s lips, the pleasure in his voice at being able to publicly claim her as wife impossible to disguise. Jules turned Evan in her arms and lay his fussy head against her shoulder so she could take a sip of the wine. Yes, she was a terrible mother.
“What do you think, Jules?” Tad asked as the aroma of berries filled her nostrils.
“Warm, a bit spicy.”Like your lips.
No, no, no.Where the hell had that come from? She had been getting along just dandy, planting her head in her life as a busy mom, and trying not to dwell on that horrible night a year ago when she had almost destroyed her friendship with Tad. One kiss, three seconds of horror, a lifetime of regret. She had harbored illicit hopes fueled by a lack of sleep and new mom hormones, but he shot her down.
The right decision, she acknowledged now. Thankfully, they had recovered and got back on the friendship track, but every now and then a stray, wanton thought popped in to say “hello” courtesy of her inner bad girl trying to front a saucy charge.
Now, now,Good Girl Jules admonished.
Bad Girl Jules giggled naughtily.
Within seconds, she felt the telltale signs of baby drool on her shoulder. Excellent.
There was nothing like a cut to the reality of motherhood to remind her of her obvious unsexiness.
She had left the house in a hurry. Nothing new there. People had told her that once she had a child, getting out the door would be the biggest challenge, between the need to remember everything and the last-minute tantrums of your kidlet. There was no time to take a shower or put on any make-up. People had told her that, too. Forget about running a comb through your hair. All that is secondary to the needs of your child.
Usually she didn’t mind, but since she had moved to her own place the burdens of motherhood had started to weigh more heavily. For the last two years, she had been living a blessed existence in her brother’s town house, with all the human and financial support she needed. Early on, Jack had shared the childcare duties, getting up in the middle of the night no matter how late he trailed in from the restaurant, and feeding Evan from the milk supply she had pumped earlier. When the blues came to visit, her sister-in-law Lili was there for her, listening to her griping and moaning. She had the best extended family in the DeLucas that any girl could ask for. She knew she was lucky.
She also knew she was lonely.
