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Apparently she didn’t just suck soccer balls at flirty, she sucked spectacularly. The great Jack Kilroy had just dismissed her and her family’s livelihood as no longer worthy of his inestimable attention and boy, did that stick in her craw.
“If you think it’s that easy, perhaps you should stop by for dinner tonight. I think you’ll find my father can melt cheese to rival any idiot box chef. Oh, a hotshot like you probably won’t learn anything about food, but you might learn something about hospitality.”
He opened his mouth to speak then seemed to think better of it. Good call. Stepping around her, he thrust a piece of paper at Cara. “Here's what I need. I'll start testing dishes tomorrow.” Pronouncement made, he stalked out of the office with all the flourish of a Shakespearean actor marching off stage.
Lili shook her head in disbelief. “I know he’s your boss, Cara, but that guy’s got some nerve walking in here and proclaiming Italian cuisine is easy. And you should have heard him dissing the kitchen and our equipment. Just who does he think he is?”
Cara picked a speck of invisible dust off her low-cut blouse and tousled her perfect, platinum blonde hair. “That, baby sister, is your birthday and Christmas presents all rolled up into one sexy, hunk-shaped package.”
Four
Lili grasped her sweater so tight it was starting to resemble the Baby Jesus’ swaddling. Quietly, she pressed the office door shut, the hushed snick a marked contrast to her thunderous pulse.
“Hunk-shaped package? Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
“All that snarky back-and-forth, the sexual tension dripping in the air…” Cara fanned herself. “I’ve got goose bumps over here. I just knew you two would hit it off.”
Hit it off? Well, she certainly had the “hit” part right. Jack Kilroy was the most arrogant, superior, arrogant—wait, she’d already said that—guy Lili had ever met, and she worked in the restaurant business where that personality type was as common as tiramisu on an Italian dessert menu. He also happened to be the hottest streak of male she had ever clapped eyes on and unfortunately her nipples as well as her other body parts agreed wholeheartedly.
Bad body.
Take away the glittering green eyes, the scimitar-curved cheekbones, and the accent that made her knock-kneed, and he’d be nothing. Nada. Just a slab of beefy charisma with a few well-appointed muscles and a so-so smile. Okay, a gorgeous smile that hinted at good humor behind the amateur dramatics. Oh, hell, there was something about Jack Kilroy that turned her crank. If her life wasn’t so complicated, if her family’s business wasn’t a breath away from collapse—if she wasn’t such a coward—she’d be tearing open the wrapping on that hunk-shaped package before you could say ‘Happy Birthday, Lili’.”
Cara stood to lean against the desk, drawing Lili’s envious gaze. Her sister had great thighs, directly attributable to her diet of coffee, power bars, and a borderline manic devotion to the treadmill.
“The show tapes Monday night, Jack has to do a spot-check on the new place he’s opening in Chicago, and then he flies out to London on Tuesday for business. Now, I know you’re out of practice, but I reckon that should give you enough time to get the job done.” She added a conspiratorial wink. Lili suppressed a compulsion to pop her one in the ovaries.
“Cara, are you ill? On drugs?” She pressed her palm to her sister’s forehead. No obvious signs of fever, but her eyes were wide as saucers. Oh yeah, she was high on smugness.
Cara lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lili, in case you haven’t heard, Jack Kilroy is a complete man whore. He’s so freaking needy he’ll jump at any opportunity. Even you could manage to hit that.”
Even her? So she wasn’t the most adventurous sort when it came to men, but that one hit lower than she expected. “I’m not some charity case, you know. I have options.”
Cara gave a dramatic eye roll, which made her look much younger than her twenty-nine years. “Riiight, options. How long has it been since things finished with Marco?”
Lili shifted uneasily. Since Marco had called time on their fling several months ago, her sex life had been on life support. The battery-operated kind. A night with a hot guy might be just the ticket, but Jack Kilroy? No amount of advanced yoga could get her in shape for a guy like that.
“It’s been months and Jack is more than up to the task,” Cara continued blithely.
“Cara, I’ve seen the type he hooks up with.” Ashley van Patten, soap diva, was enough to strike fear into the nether regions of any woman. Lili might have a voluptuous body type that a lot of guys went for, or claimed they did if she was to believe Cosmopolitan, but sex royalty like Jack Kilroy did not usually deign to slum amongst the little people.
“Lili, you’re real and gorgeous and ten times hotter than the likes of Ashley. Best thing he ever did was dump her, though she got him back good in those interviews.” Her sister chuckled. “‘Jackrabbit nights with Kilroy’. He went into DEFCON Divo for that one.”
Other tawdry tabloid headlines popped into Lili’s head. Duracel Jack. Kinky Kilroy, and her favorite, Red Hot Kilroy Peppers. Headlines that summoned up wicked thoughts of Jack’s hard body wrapped around her like a luscious lick of fire. Quickly, she dowsed that illicit blaze with a sobering wet blanket from her memory banks, the one about how he took a paparazzo to task with his fists for daring to record Jack with his model-of-the-week.
“I’m sure beating the living daylights out of that poor photographer got him back on track. And the Victoria’s Secret angel he hooked up with the week after would have kissed it all better,” she said, feeling a mite ridiculous that she knew so much about a perfect stranger.
“Listen, who cares about the details? All you need to worry about is crooking your finger and watching how fast he comes running. And you heard what Ashley said. Wizard in the sack,” Cara added, laying it on like a thick layer of cream cheese frosting.
Lili was sure he was the Voldemort of all things down and dirty, but he’d need several more blows to the head before he would take an interest in her. However, just before he dismissed her with that coal-dark look and cool put down about Italian cuisine, there had been a moment when…
“Wait a second.” Bone-chilling panic sloshed over her. “Does he already know about this brand of crazy you’re selling?”
“Of course not. What do you think I am? Some sort of pimp?”
“I think in your case, it would be a madam.”
Cara curled her cupid bow lips into that saputa smile Lili knew so well, the one that said that she was privy to some great wisdom that a pleb like her younger sister could never hope to attain. “Lili, you’re only twenty-four. You should be out clubbing, hooking up with guys, and deleting their filthy text messages the next day.”
