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“Aren’t there health codes against drinking and cooking?” She placed the whisky bottle down on the counter with a disgusted nose wrinkle.
“I cooked, then I drank. No chefs were harmed in the making of this mess.” Much.
With her sandaled foot, she gave his thigh a gentle shove. “I remember you used to stay up all night cooking when you were hacked off about something.” Before you left, she didn’t add.
He had no desire to take a trip down memory ditch. Besides, more recent events took precedence in his overcrowded brain. “How bad is it?”
“Not so terrible. You’re top of the video charts, but this time, someone got your good side.”
Unfolding to a stand, he stretched the pins-and-needles away, wishing it were that easy to shove aside the pain in his head, his chest, his…hand? He turned over the palm of his right hand in response to the throbbing call of a burn. How the hell had that happened? Michelin-starred chefs, or the executive chefs of restaurants that earned Michelin stars, weren’t immune to the odd burn here and there, but usually he remembered how he acquired a raw welt that stretched from pinkie to thumb. The memory-numbing effects of alcohol, he supposed.
He took a sip of coffee, surprised that it was just how he liked it. That was immediately replaced with guilt. He had no idea if his sister even drank coffee.
Spanning his forehead with his injury-free hand, he shielded his vision for a needed moment, and tried to recall the events of last night. All day, he’d been pissed off—at Laurent for his know-nothing Frenchness, at Tony for his lack of trust, at Jules for the mixed nuts messages, at his useless lawyer who had no legal solution to the online bullying. Mostly at Lili, and going Jack-smash on the first person to look at him crooked seemed like a marvelous idea. The details were foggy. His gaze drifted to the bottle. He was fairly positive the fireworks had culminated in property damage but no fisticuffs. For months, his policy had been to let it ride so it didn’t acquire power but he refused to stand by while someone took pot shots at his woman.
And then to have her use his ham-fisted heroics as an excuse to bail, well, wasn’t that just the funniest cosmic joke? Protect her. Ignore it. Damned if he do, damned if he don’t.
Everything he was feeling must have been visible on his face. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself locked in Jules’ tight, and frankly unfamiliar, embrace.
“What’s that for?” he asked, ruining it.
“You looked like you were about to drop,” she said, making up for his crankiness as only family can do. “Heard about Lili. She didn’t like Tough Guy Jack?”
He drew back. “Don’t stop there. She doesn’t think all that highly of Bully Jack and can definitely do without World-dominating Jack.”
When Jules didn’t jump to his defense, he stared. And waited.
Unfazed, she gave the slimmest of shrugs. “Well, you can be a bit over the top.”
He remained silent. There might have been glowering.
“That’s all well and good with your kitchen slaves but it can be tough for the rest of us.”
“So, I’m a bully?”
“Not exactly. It’s more—” She pulled a breath from somewhere deep. “You’re like this force of nature, this bright star. Everyone wants to please you and you know that and expect it, so when they don’t, you get disappointed. You’re a fierce optimist, the most optimistic person I know, actually. You see all this promise in people and when they don’t live up to your expectations, it frustrates you. A lot.”
Stunned, he blinked at her because that was about the longest speech he had ever heard pass her lips. “But, just to be clear, I’m not a bully?”
That earned him an indulgent smile, a blast of sunshine as rare as steak tartar. He loved when she turned it on for him. “Bully. Optimist. Perpetually disappointed. Which do you prefer?”
He preferred whichever one got him Lili, but there was only so much his overworked heart could withstand. Teasing her to distraction when she wanted sex and he wanted more was one thing. Bullying—no, convincing—her to date him was another. But he was damned if he was going to beg her to love him. He was flat-out, knock-down in love with a woman who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, match his raging appetite for her.
Fucking depressing.
And now Jules. How much of that sharp observation applied to their hell-in-a-hand-basket relationship? The perpetually disappointed tag, on both sides, sounded most apropos. Even though he felt like tiny people with tiny hammers had taken up residence in his head, and his heart sat in his gut like a lead balloon, there were still enough caffeine-activated neurons to recognize that Jules and he had just had a moment of honest-to-God communication.
“Thanks for checking in on me,” he said, meaning it. Needing it.
At this, her face crumpled like she’d just tasted vinegar. He pointed. She bolted. Looked like Baby’s spidey senses recognized the imminent threat of sibling candor and kicked off. He considered following her to the bathroom and holding back her hair while she threw up, but they weren’t quite at that level yet.
On the nearest counter, his phone lay in the shadow of a bowl of shitake mushrooms and he turned it on for the first time since he’d parted ways with Lili last night. Seventy-three messages. Forty-four from Evie. Thirty odd from Cara, Jules, and assorted well-wishers. Zero from Lili. That about summed up his life.
He bit the bullet and made the call. She answered on the first ring. “Jack,” she dragged his name out to ten syllables. “You’re killing me.”
“Pretty sure your three-packs-a-day habit will get you first, Evie. Worried about your fifteen percent?”
A lung-stripping cough rattled the line, and for some reason, it cheered him. The world might be collapsing around his ears but Evie was still Evie.
