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That made her smile. “Marco.”
“Whatever.”
She shook her head. “He's practically broke himself. He spends a lot of time in Vegas and he has the worst poker face. My eight year-old cousin, Freddie could run rings around him.”
Huh, just one more reason why Marco needed to be high-fived in the face with a chair.
Taking her hand in his, he rubbed his thumb along her palm. “Do you mind me asking how much?”
“Marco loaned my father fifty grand for my mother, but we’re bleeding money every week and the lines of credit are drying up.”
His mind whirred. That was doable but after her reaction to his butting in over grad school, any offer to help might not go over so well. He had a feeling Don DeLuca wouldn’t appreciate it, either, but that wasn’t the real problem. Throwing money at it was just a band-aid. Her eyes, big as blue headlights, found his again and it felt like minutes passed in her gaze. He released her because it was starting to feel a little too good.
“You’ve got something to say,” she said, reading something altogether different into the fact he had practically shoved her from his embrace.
“It’s not really my place.” A chef’s kitchen was sacrosanct which is why Jack despised those makeover shows where some mouthy big shot overhauled another chef’s menus.
“No, go on. I’d like to hear your opinion.”
He thought about diplomacy, then figured she was a big girl.
“You’re overstaffed, overpriced, overstocked, and your menu’s too big. You have at least one line cook too many, maybe two, and your father would probably be better off running the kitchen instead of ambushing poor, unsuspecting, brain-injured chefs at the bar.” He tried to soften it with a smile. “But I think you know all that.”
Her throat bulged on her swallow. “My father is old school. There are so many changes we could make to economize and draw in new customers but he won’t hear of it. And he likes to keep his hand in everywhere.”
Iron fist, more like, but Jack held his tongue and sucked in a speech-countering breath. Besides, he understood that instinct to control your environment. The position was called head chef for a reason.
She smiled. “At least you don't have to work with your family. As much as I love them, it can be trying as all get out.” The words were hardly on the air before discomfort marred her features. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”
“It was?”
A flush of red crept up her chest. “Yesterday, you mentioned trouble with your sister and something about your biological father. About how he wasn’t interested.”
He’d forgotten he told her that. Next time he had a concussion, he needed to refrain from the vino while knocking back the narcotics. Despite being a chatterbox, as Jules was fond of telling him, Jack didn’t usually lay out his life story on the first date. But hey, this wasn’t a date and the likelihood of it developing into one was slim to crapola because after the taping—in oh, three hours—he was never going to see this woman again. Why then was his mouth itching to spill? Maybe because she had cracked open that steadfast façade of hers and he knew that had been difficult for her. More likely, he wanted to make the moment last and ride this wave of intimacy until he wiped out.
He must be starting to enjoy the hospitality in the ninth circle of hell.
“Until I was ten and my mother married my stepfather, it was just the two of us. She was Irish and she emigrated to England when her family threw her out at sixteen for getting pregnant. She went into labor with me on the Liverpool dock.”
Her eyes enlarged in surprise. “A dramatic beginning. How apt.”
He smiled, appreciating her effort to make it easier. “She never talked about him. Maybe she thought she’d have more time. She was only twenty-eight years old when she died.” A brief, painful memory of her brassy personality deadened by a faded hospital gown and an ill-fitting wig flashed across his mind. He blinked it away. “When I started getting spots on British morning TV about nine years ago, he came out of the woodwork looking for money.”
“Oh.” She rubbed her neck. “What did you do?”
“I paid up. Then I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
The low whine of a drill made the perfect soundtrack to the maudlin atmosphere. She stepped close and slotted her hand into his. “What happened exactly?”
“Exactly?” He squeezed, taking strength from her warmth. “I’d hoped to show him my new restaurant in Covent Garden, but he had a same day return ticket to Dublin and didn’t have time. Instead, we met in a bar at London Paddington.” The clarity of that day struck him anew. The bustle of the station, the departure announcements ringing reedy over the PA system. Jack had arrived a half hour early and knocked back a double scotch, then shredded countless napkins while he waited for the express train from Heathrow. A flying visit, his father called it, flashing that smile, a funhouse mirror image of Jack’s. No time to tour his pride and joy. No time to talk about his mother or why the man whose genetic material he shared had been absent all these years. Only a few rushed moments to clink whiskey glasses (both rounds on Jack -sláinte) and cut to the meat course.
“He led with ‘Jack, son, I’ve had a run of bad luck…’ He called me son. It was a nice touch, I suppose.” Learning his father’s true intentions had crushed him, but better he know than holding onto childhood fantasies of star-crossed youth ripped apart by their censorious families.
“He’s rung a few times since but I never call him back.” The most recent time six months ago. His assertion of illness hadn’t moved Jack in the slightest. He met Lili’s glossy blue gaze, challenging her to judge him. “I know that must sound harsh to someone for whom family is everything.”
Her hand tightened in his. “You did what you had to do, Jack. Sometimes you have to cut out the toxic elements. For your own sanity.”
He couldn’t help but read doom into that. It’s what Lili had been trying to do since that video came out. Weed him out before he poisoned her life any further.
