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He smiled. “Could we talk while you work or would that upset your focus?”
“Oh, sure.” With a quick breath, she raised her camera again and restarted the assault. “How's your new restaurant coming along?”
“Good. Most of the basic construction is complete. I'm hoping to get started on design in a couple of weeks after I get back from London and the next shoot in New Orleans.” The excitement of launching a new venture sent a surge through his blood. It had been two years since he'd opened his place in Miami and he longed to bury himself under that weight again.
“The life of the jet-setting chef. Sounds glamorous,” she said with that same teasing disdain she used when talking about his sought-after sperm. An image of slowly throttling Cara flitted agreeably through his brain.
“It's not so glamorous. There are media junkets and parties but it’s more business than pleasure. I spend most of my time traveling to a show shoot or checking up on my restaurants.”
“But it has its compensations, right? The places you go, the people you meet, all that hob-nobbing with the rich and famous.”
Still with the attitude, but he couldn’t deny his enjoyment when he’d got his first taste of that scene. The parties, the people, the adulation. Hanging on the arm of a beautiful, successful woman. It had been quite the head rush, until his career started to overshadow Ashley's and her tantrums increased in direct proportion to the interest of entertainment reporters in the Jack Kilroy brand. Thinking on it now filled him with embarrassment at his embrace of that phony world.
“Sure, but it gets old. To be honest, I’d prefer to be in my restaurant cooking.”
Lowering her camera, she regarded him speculatively. “Did you cook for Ashley?”
Promising, promising.
“Not when we were together.” As if that would have ever happened. “Ashley came into my place in New York once before I knew her. Someone told me she took two bites, said it was divine, and that she couldn’t possibly manage another morsel.”
“Oh, how dare she? So you got your revenge by dating her and pushing her into that swimming pool.”
“Don't believe everything you read.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, back behind her camera. “That didn't happen? Ashley was very vocal on the subject in all those interviews after you broke up. And then all the details about how insatiable you were in the bedroom. Don't disappoint me and tell me that wasn't true.”
He deep-sixed his irritation. “Ashley was bombed and standing too close to the edge. Do you really think I would do something like that?”
Her camera mask never moved and the futility of persuading her otherwise sat like a jagged boulder in his belly. So much for thinking the photographer-subject experience might be conducive to intimacy. Instead, he got this alien feeling of being invaded and probed, and found wanting.
Minutes later, the siege had ended. They checked the photos together, arm against arm, skin blistering skin. She had captured his variable moods—wariness at first, then reluctant acceptance, before the big finish with him taut as an arrow. Almost reverently, her fingers traced the images on the small playback screen. He knew better than to take it personally.
“But you definitely hit that photographer. It was all over the news,” she said, picking up where her internal checklist of his crimes had left off. Determination to prove he was a blot on society was etched in the grim set of her mouth. “I’m sure your date appreciated the macho defense, though.”
Every cell in his body ignited into rage, though he was unsure if it was because of what happened that night four months ago or because of the casual way she tossed out her conclusion. Anger clogged his throat, stifling any effort to speak.
He knew what she was doing. She wanted him. He’d seen it when they cooked together. He’d seen it in how her lust-stoked gaze raked him, lingering like a kiss on his mouth. How that body-made-for-pleasure beveled his way when she talked about her father’s disapproval. The DeLuca family rock needed to be touched and ravished and held, and she needed someone to tell her that she didn’t have to do it all on her own. And evidently, that someone wouldn’t be him.
She’d decided to create a wall for her own protection, a wall that bruised when he banged up against it. If she couldn’t fight him off with logic, she’d construct her own truth to push him away. He was a fame whore, a star fucker, a juicy cut of tabloid meat. Placing him into these shallow categories was a hell of a lot easier than trying to see what lay beneath.
“You don't think much of me, do you?” Draping it in the casual wrap she was so expert in weaving didn’t work; it still came out bitter. He picked up the bowls and marched into the kitchen, defeat and need cramping his chest.
Maybe she was right. Maybe Jack Kilroy, superstar chef was as deep as it got.
Twenty
“Jack,” she called out softly as she followed him into the kitchen. Mountain-strong, he stood, those broad shoulders she had longed to sink into an hour ago immobile with anger. Was this what she wanted? To poke him with her camera and harsh tongue until satisfied that he was less than the man she knew him to be?
“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said to the countertop, decked out with her nonna’s vibrant cookie jars, “but I was having dinner with my sister in London and this photographer prick got up in her face as we left the restaurant. I politely asked him to stop and he didn’t.”
Oh God, his sister? A vague memory of some shaky cell phone footage filtered through her haze of shame. A lissome blonde being pushed around while Jack shielded her from a vampire’s prying lens. Capturing his first date post-Ashley had been quite a tabloid coup and Lili recalled that furtive, vicarious thrill she had felt because of Cara’s new connection to him. She even joked with Gina about Cara needing hazard insurance if she was ever seen in public with her hotheaded boss.
But the devil was in the details, and the details had been lost in the aftermath of yet another tawdry example of Celebrity versus Paparazzo. Just one more round in the ever-escalating appetite for intrusion into lives over which the public feels some measure of ownership. Here she was, as bad as those blood-suckers. No, worse, because she had seen it from the other side. She had been called horrible names, insulted to the point of tears, and she had still thought it fine and dandy to look down her nose at him. All because she was afraid of how off kilter she felt around him.
“They never said it was your sister. I didn’t realize.” Every word felt like a mouthful of cement, dragging her under like a mob-weighted body.
“No, you didn’t.” He spun about to face her. “To people like you, I'm just a collection of sound bites and video grabs and prurient headlines, all grist to the celebrity industrial complex. Admit it, you assumed I'd sleep with you because apparently I'll shag anything that's not pinned down. You can’t even fathom the idea of dating me because I’m not a real person to you. I’m just a player on your fantasy fuck list.”
