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She stood, fists at her waist, her stiff posture drawing his gaze to the flare of her hips, the slope of her breasts. Christ, she was a lot of woman.
“What?” she asked, still pissy.
“I’m surprised you’d take the time to give me a personal update on my first course.” Though close to twenty-five minutes for appetizers was a bit much.
“I just want you to eat them how the chef intended. Hot instead of cold.”
He blew out a breath. “Look, I’m sorry about insulting Italian cuisine this morning. I’m sure your father’s a great cook and the meatballs are fantastic.” It came out sarcastic, so not his intention. As well as being a great leveler, grappa turned guys into morons.
“He is a great cook. You won’t eat better in Chicago.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He flashed a conciliatory grin.
“Okay then,” she said, clearly thrown. Hey, it worked on housewives. She hovered for a moment, then turned heel and split.
“I am sorry about that,” the grappa-pusher said, his brow lined with concern. “She is not normally so rude.”
Jack waved the apology away. “No worries, mate. That's how she usually talks to me—or that's how she's only ever talked to me.”
Another shot appeared before him. The man knew how to work it.
“She is right though. The food here is quite good,” Ol’ Blue Eyes said, pouring a shot for himself. He clinked Jack's glass. “Salute.”
Jack slammed it and peered at the man before him. It was time for this guy to step up and do what bartenders do—listen inattentively to some drunken digressions while dispensing old-world wisdom.
“Have you ever met a woman who annoys the hell out of you?” He paused to judge his next words carefully, his muddled brain already ascribing high-level importance to them. His head both pounded and spun like wet sneakers in a dryer. Drinking was not the cleverest of ideas.
“I mean, you just want to touch her and if she's mouthy, kiss her to shut her up.” He turned the shot glass over. When the idiotic rambling started, the night was pretty much kaput. Time to halt the crazy train at this station.
The bartender’s face darkened and he spouted something in Italian that reeked of wisdom and portentousness. Now we’re cooking. Jack lifted an eyebrow and waited to be wowed.
“It means ‘Wine, women, and tobacco reduces one to ashes.’ So my Liliana has made an impression?”
My Liliana? Jack’s body wrenched in sobering alert, then his self-preservation instincts kicked in and he thrust out his hand. “I'm Jack Kilroy. Pleased to meet you.”
The bartender laid down his towel and considered the outstretched hand for a heartbeat before taking it in his firm grasp.
“Tony DeLuca. Cara's, and Liliana's, father.”
For fuck’s sake, that’s just sneaky. Tony’s grip crushed him. Jack let his hand go slack because he might be tipsy, but he wasn’t stupid. He studied the cherry wood bar for five seconds. Ten. When he looked up, he found Tony regarding him closely, his expression unreadable.
“Any chance I can see your kitchen in action?” Jack asked, throwing in a hopeful grin that the code of courtesy among professional chefs might drag this into the draw column. Not only that, but the craving for action that might break his skin into hives at any moment needed to be assuaged. And if he couldn’t get it with a woman, or one particular woman, then he’d take the next best thing—a visit to the kitchen of the man who would be his cooking rival for the next two days.
Tony’s lips curled up into a not-quite-smile. “Si, naturalmente.”
Eight
It seemed everyone and his brother had decided to stop into O’Casey’s, the after work hangout for the DeLuca crew. As the smallest Irish bar in Chicago, its cozy dimensions did an admirable job of accelerating intimacy in case the beer wasn’t flowing. Not that it wasn’t flowing tonight. Jack was running a tab for the gang who were knocking it back like they had to report to Cook County Correctional Center the next day.
Lili glanced over her shoulder to where her ex, Marco was engrossed in conversation with the man himself, who had the glassy-eyed look of the condemned. She tried not to notice that Jack was a few inches taller than Marco, or that he was broader, and generally more...space-filling. She also tried not to notice the way a light dusting of chest hair poked above the V of Jack’s shirt or how the now-rolled up sleeves of his white button down contrasted scrumptiously with his tanned forearms.
Jack Kilroy had it going on.
Sighing, she returned to the other man of the moment. Laurent had waylaid her the second she stepped through the bar door and was now on his third White Russian. Addled as he was, Lili still felt flattered to have such a quality charmer touching her bare arm and looking down her shirt at every opportunity. Her curiosity about Jack got the better of her though, so she steered the conversation around to his friend.
“You and Jack have worked together a long time, then?”
“Oui. We met in Paris many years ago during our apprenticeship, but we didn’t work together again until a few years later when he needed a sous chef for his first restaurant in London. I have been with him for all his restaurant openings, but I am now based at Thyme on 47th in New York.”
