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Jack loathed opera.
But Tony's kitchen meant Tony's rules, so Pavarotti or whoever the hell was shredding Jack's nerve endings while he prepped his mise-en-place would be the musical accompaniment for the day and probably the entire evening. Laurent had muttered something about how it lent a sorely needed gravitas after Jack’s seedier exploits.
He was running on a couple of hours of ragged sleep, his every cell consumed with Lili and his aching need for her. He could still feel her kiss on his mouth, the imprint of her nipples on his tongue, her slick warmth coating his fingers. Holding her last night while she shattered against his hand had been so arousing that even a flickering thought to it made him hard enough to pound nails.
Calling her out on her bullshit had seemed like such a smart idea until his dramatic exit had been cut short by that disclosure about her high-school suffering. His heart hurt that she would ever have to endure that pain. Then it thundered furiously that she would allow it to create this barrier between them. Wasn’t it enough that no other woman could hold a candle to her hotness, that he wanted her more than was truly good for him?
Right, because his opinion was all that mattered. Fathead.
He had always considered his life as public property the necessary saddlebags to his goal of taking his brand to the next level. Any woman in his life would need a thick skin to withstand the gale force winds of twenty-first century fame. He couldn’t ask Lili to upend her existence for him and the express train to his next conquest, network television, had already left the station.
Still, even if they had no chance, he wished she could see herself the way he saw her. Funny, loyal, beautiful, sexy. Christ, so sexy. He rubbed his lip, still marked with her passion. When she bit him, he had almost come in his pants for the first time since he was a pizza-faced teen. That’s how she made him feel. Like an infatuated teenager with perma-wood.
“What are you smiling about?” Cara’s brittle voice arrested his fantasies while her glacial eyes screened him carefully. He needed to stop grinning like a half-wit. It would not do.
“Nothing.”
He snatched one of the menus she’d brought and scanned for errors. He had decided to open with a bruschetta trio—mini–helpings of three toppings served over his own toasted, rustic bread: tomato-basil-fresh mozz, the braised rabbit stew, and prosciutto and lobster crème fraîche. Working with the contest twist, Tony had chosen a risotto for Jack and gnocchi for his own menu. Not being able to serve pasta had immediately put Jack at a disadvantage—risotto could be tricky—but he had been more concerned about the choice of entrée. If Tony had picked something that needed to be slow-cooked for hours, Jack would have been screwed.
Thankfully, the host chef had gone easy on him with lamb chops, leaving Jack to choose a sauce. Jack had spent the entire morning creating something new and he was pleased with the outcome, a salsa verde that brought out the meat’s flavors to perfection. The finishing touch was another mini trio, this time of sweet—a Valrhona chocolate torte, salted caramel gelato, and zabaglione with fresh seasonal berries.
All good, but he’d be hard pressed to beat last night’s feast and the sweet taste of Lili’s plump, luscious breasts. He bet she tasted amazing all over.
“Listen, we need to talk,” Cara cut in. Hands cupping slender hips, she balanced her slight weight on one precarious heel and eyed him like she’d caught him looking at smutty photos.
“Shoot.”
“I don’t know what you think your end game is.”
His brain stutter-stepped, baffled at her choice of words. “My end game?”
“I was watching you last night at dinner, how you couldn’t take your eyes off my sister. I won’t have you screwing Lili over. When I suggested she indulge in your services, I never expected you’d get all...” With an arc of her hand, she swiped the air near his face in a threatening manner. “Smitten.”
“Back up a second,” he said, scooting uncomfortably over the ‘smitten’ bit. “When you suggested she indulge in my what?”
She tapped her foot. “Jack, did you, for one second, think my very young, very inexperienced sister would go for you without a little encouragement? She’s had a bad year between my mom and Marco and slaving away at this place for my father. I promised her you’d be up for some fun and games.” She looked to the ceiling and shook her head in disbelief. “And you couldn’t even do that.”
Well, he was with her on the disbelief front. In fact, he was more surprised that he was surprised at all. Lili had made it clear from the beginning that she was interested in one thing, and it wasn’t what was going on between his ears, but last night, she had shared an important part of herself. Her fragility had blazed through his veins and clamped his heart in a vise.
Shit. Three days in and his heart had entered the equation.
Luckily, he didn’t have time to inspect that because Cara was bringing her rant home. “I don’t know what you expect to get out of this but you are not good enough for my sister, Jack.”
Cold fury grabbed him by the throat. “But I’m good enough to service her?”
She blanched. “She’s not like us, Jack. If you hurt her—”
“Cara, mind your own business.” He and his producer had butted heads before, but it had never gotten personal. Hey, it still hadn’t. In her eyes, he was a meal ticket, a vessel she could pour her ambitions into, not a real person with God forbid, feelings. Had it occurred to no one that he might be the one at risk of getting his supposedly bulletproof heart stomped flatter than a veal cutlet?
Again with the heart stuff. That needed to stop. Stat.
“You hurt her,” Cara repeated, the ice coming through clear. “And I’m going to cut off your coglioni and feed them to tree squirrels,” and with that, she strode out of the kitchen in a tornado of indignation.
What. The. Fuck.
All he wanted was a date. Just a little quality time to get to know this woman. He shook his head, trying to clear the shock. Didn’t work.
He needed to forget about loco DeLuca women and nails-on-a-chalkboard arias, and get his mind in the game. A run might clear his head. Or a consistent whack of said head against the dumpster in the alley for an hour.
