Chapter Fourteen
The kiss is to love as lightning is to thunder.
—Italian proverb
Jules was in a killing mood, and Cara DeLuca was first on her list. Next would be her online dating profile because that needed to die a quick death. Frustrated at what Cara perceived as Jules’s distinct lack of progress in the dating arena, the bloody busybody had set her up on a date.
He runs his own construction business, Cara had said. But he doesn’t get his hands dirty; he orders people around. She had a glint in her eye when she said that, as if Jules was supposed to get all stirred up at the thought of a guy ordering people around. Bet he’s bossy in the bedroom, her innuendo made clear.
Worst of all was the location for the date: Vivi’s. That was Cara’s idea, too—or Cara posing as Jules. She sent an e-mail trying to cancel to Construction Dan but he didn’t respond and now she didn’t want to leave him hanging. She would pop her head into Vivi’s at zero hour, or 6:30 p.m.—rather early for a date, perhaps he was used to eating with his elderly mother—and tell him it had all been a dreadful mistake or she had a headache or her cat had died.
Then she would strangle Cara slowly and gleefully.
Thankfully, Tad wouldn’t be there until 7 p.m. He was taking part in a wine tasting event on the other side of town, so she could slip in and out, take care of business, and move on without muss or fuss.
Bella smiled a little dimly at her when she came in, still no light bulb of recognition. Either she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed or it was a calculated move to dismiss the competition. Not that Jules was competition for anyone, but she had seen how the girl looked at Tad. It was the same way all women looked at Tad—a cross between wet-your-panties lust and something more feral, where the likelihood of fangs-bearing increased with every second.
“Hey, B,” Jules said, enjoying immensely how Bella’s eyes narrowed at the faux intimacy. Jules scanned the room quickly. Three of the fifteen tables were occupied with couples and the bar was lousy with overdone, underdressed women. Charter members of the Hod Taddies club, by the looks of it. They were making do with bartender Reuben who, while handsome in a blank sort of way, was in no way a legitimate substitute for the owner. Early eating Dan had yet to arrive.
“How many?” Bella asked, still with that vacant look where Jules couldn’t be sure if she had connected the dots.
“Zero,” Jules replied, her eyes drawn to Kennedy, who had just exited the kitchen. Her body language spoke to extreme agitation, or perhaps it was the fact that she whipped off her apron and beelined right for Jules.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said to Jules with a toss of her auburn fall of hair, her blue eyes wide with worry.
“What’s up?” Jules asked.
“Come with me. Now.” Kennedy was already steering her through the tables toward the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Jules urged again. The actress in Kennedy was in full throttle, shaking her head dramatically without actually parting with any information. “Kennedy, you need to spill.”
The spitfire threw open the swing door to the kitchen and pointed. “That’s what’s going on.”
The kitchen was small enough that she could take the details in with a single glance and a slight sniff: half-finished prep at the counter, a plume of smoke wafting from the troublesome pizza oven, and one big bear of a chef slumped over the sink, losing enough blood to make him pale as his starched chef whites.
“Derry!” She raced to his side and turned over his huge hand to reveal an ugly gash bisecting his palm.
“Fine,” he muttered. “First-aid kit.”
Kennedy produced the red box and rummaged around in it, removing a couple of scrappy bandages that would barely cover this man’s pinkie.
“We’ve only got these small ones.”
The slice looked deep enough to have damaged a tendon or some nerves.
“You need to get to the emergency room,” Jules said, grabbing a clean kitchen towel and wrapping it around his hand. “I’ll take you.”
Derry grunted. She knew enough about his flavor of guttural communication to discern that was disagreement.
“I’ve already told him that,” Kennedy said in exasperation. “The big oaf won’t budge.”
Jules held his cloudy gaze squarely. “That hand is your livelihood, Derry. Even if you could stop the bleeding, there might be permanent damage.”
She shared a glance with Kennedy, who shook her head solemnly.
“Need—a chef,” he ground out.
Around his tree-trunk forearm—her fondness for forearms didn’t quite extend to Derry’s—Jules’s gaze curved to the prep station, where colorful yellow peppers were dotted incongruously with drops of blood. It was a sanitation nightmare.
Her mind searched frantically for a solution. “I’ll call Jack and get him to send someone over.”
“You could do it,” Kennedy said blithely as she unpeeled a finger bandage from its wrapper and held it over Derry’s hand. Her forehead crimped in annoyance; she tried another one. “I’ll take him to the ER. It’s so dead out there that you should be able to manage until Tad gets here in thirty.”
“I—I can’t,” Jules said, bobbing between Derry and Kennedy, neither of whom seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Derry was bleeding out, Kennedy was planning to leave them server-less, and Jules Kilroy was the one to save them all?
Ignoring Jules’s clear distress, Kennedy tucked a guiding hand under Derry’s elbow. “All right, Dare-Bear, do you need me to carry you or do you think you can walk to my car without fainting like a little girl?”
Derry’s grunt this time sounded slightly less disapproving. The bastard was going to leave her.
“We’ll go out back,” Kennedy said, steering him toward the alley door. “Don’t want to make the customers gag on their Chardonnay. Well, no more than usual, right, Julia?”
Talons of panic clawed at Jules’s innards. “Seriously, you guys, I don’t think I can do this.”
Kennedy was already shoving Derry out the door. “It won’t get busy for another hour so Bella can serve in between seating guests. I’ll text Brooke and Tad on the way to the ER and tell them to get their tushes over here lickety-split.”
Derry spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You’re ready, Jules.”
The door closed behind them with a condemning whoosh.
Shit.
She whipped out her phone, still cracked from when she’d smashed it after Simon called. It worked just fine, but immediately she questioned whether a call to Jack or Tony would actually save the day. By the time anyone arrived, customers would be fainting with hunger and composing their nasty reviews on Yelp.
This was important to Tad.
It was important to her.
She had wanted to do this and now was her chance. Through the window to the dining room, like a porthole onto another world, she surveyed the restaurant that needed feeding. Bella had just seated a table of four and another party hovered at the hostess podium. Who the hell were these people and why were they eating so early?
She looked down at the hands that fed her son, rubbed his tummy when he was ill, soothed him when he was teething. She was more than a mom, a sister, a friend. One day, she would be a chef and it looked like that one day was now.
Time to brief her staff on the new world order. She was headed to the front of house to tell Bella who was running tonight’s show when in walked her date.
Bollocks.
* * *
Jules was actually enjoying herself. The menu was so small that she knew it by heart. Food was getting out in a somewhat timely fashion and nothing had been sent back. Bella was struggling but Jules was usually on hand to recommend a cheese or charcuterie and wine pairing.
She had installed Dan at the bar and asked Reuben to give him whatever he wanted. Having to work at the last minute was actually the perfect excuse to send him on his way, but he had seemed so forlorn when she started in on her story about the scheduling snafu that she didn’t have the heart to cut the night short.
Besides, he looked no more than twelve and was sporting a bow tie. That indicated a certain level of sadness that she didn’t want to pile onto.
Ten minutes to go before Tad got here and rescued her, except she realized that she didn’t need rescuing. She had always thought that she had, from the moment she stood in class to read and felt the cruel stares of the other children before she had opened her mouth. They had all known what was coming. The stuttering, coughing delivery of an imbecilic schoolgirl, light years behind her peers. She had wanted the cheap linoleum tile of her classroom to open up and swallow her because rescue was inconceivable. It had taken the life-changing event of Evan for her to meet Jack halfway. To let him rescue her. And he had been doing it ever since.
Well, no more.
Blimey, what a great night! Except for Derry losing five pints of blood, that is.
Bella popped into the kitchen to pick up the cheese and charcuterie for Table 3. Jules had suggested a nice creamy Camembert and a smoky duck prosciutto that she was very fond of. It went so well with that medium-bodied Chilean Pinot Tad had introduced her to last week.
“I think it’s her,” Bella said as she picked up the plates. She could only manage two at a time, bless her.
“You think it’s who?” Jules asked absently. She smeared golden-toasted ciabatta slices with her artichoke and mortadella spread. Pride swelled her chest. My food is on the menu.
“Her. You know.”
“Going to need more deets, B.”
Bella put one of the plates down, then picked it up again, getting a better grip. “The woman from Tasty Chicago. I just seated her at Table 8.”
Jules bounded over to the kitchen window on a cloud of panic and verified her worst nightmare. Monica Grayson, über-critic. was in the house.
7:15 and no sign of Tad. Dread curled around every positive thought and choked it dead, not unlike the malicious weeds that tried to steal the life from her garden’s produce. But it didn’t have to be that way. Jules knew the menu—maybe not the wine menu as extensively as a knowledgeable server would, but she knew it better than Bella.
“Bella, go check on your tables.”
“But, what about—?”
“I’ll handle this,” Jules said with steel in her tone. Ooh, she liked how that sounded.
Bella’s usually blank face registered surprise, but she merely nodded and went back out front.
She’s just a critic. A sharp, all-knowing, intimidating critic. Imagine her naked. Imagine her soft, porcelain skin… and soft, porcelain hands tracing Tad’s lean musculature.
Maybe don’t imagine her naked.
Untying her apron, she hauled an edifying breath and walked out to Monica Grayson’s table.
“Hullo, how are you this evening?” she asked, only to be ignored by Monica, whose sharp, asymmetrical sweep of hair made her jaw jut ominously.
Her male companion looked up, then down again. “Perrier for now. You do have Perrier, don’t you?”
She had no idea. “I’ll check. Will another brand of H2O suffice if we don’t?”
That garnered her a pointed look from Monica. Perhaps the words had been tinged with sarcasm.
“The owner not here tonight?”
“He’ll be in later. I’ll give you a couple of moments to look over the menu while I get your water.”
At the bar, Reuben was unmoved by her plea for the natural spring water of the Gauls. They had San Pellegrino.
“It’s water,” he said in the same ironic tone she would have used if it suddenly hadn’t taken on far more importance than it should. She knew how crucial it was that Monica Grayson’s review reflect Vivi’s at its best. Tad had worked so hard and he needed this night to go without a hitch.
Back to the table she went with the bottles and glasses filled with ice. (We didn’t ask for ice.)
“Do you have any questions about the menu?” Jules asked after her return trip minus ice cubes.
Two sets of eyes snapped to hers. Monica’s bore all the hallmarks of a lioness about to take down her prey while her companion’s shone with amusement. Clearly, Monica’s evisceration of servers was a familiar spectator sport for her eating buddies.
“What can you tell me about the Chakana?”
Chaka-cat! It must be a sign.
“Well, like all the Argentinian Malbecs, it’s robust and earthy with a nice acidity. Goes great with the meatier smears on the menu and the harder cheeses. The Wisconsin reserve cheddar is a good match.”
Monica looked unimpressed while her friend radiated disappointment. He leveled Monica with a gaze of, Try again, dear.
She flipped a few of the pages, cutting brutally through the French reds, viciously past the Italians, before coming to rest on… agh… the Germans.
“How about the—?” She tossed off something unrecognizable.
A cold shiver of sweat trickled down Jules’s spine. “Sorry, the…?”
“This one,” Monica pointed impatiently at the menu with a sharpened claw.
“I’m afraid I’m not as familiar with the German wines. I could ask Reuben at the bar.”
Monica raised an eyebrow so far it threatened to unhitch her scalp. “It’s Greek.”
Jules’s heart sank to the hardwood floor. “G” was one of her favorite letters because it started off some of her favorite words: Gorgeous (Tad). Gape, gawk, gawp (all things she liked to do at Tad). Gelato (Tad substitute). She had made out the “G” on the wine menu page but the rest of it was well… Greek to her.
There was still time to salvage this. “If you have particular food items in mind, it might be easier to recommend a wine.”
“I’d prefer to choose the wine first. This is a wine bar, is it not?”
No argument from Jules there, just that swamp of dread in her stomach at being found out for the fraud she was.
“If you told me what you’d like, perhaps I can come up with a few options.” Something jammy, perhaps, that Jules would happily jam down this bitch’s throat.
“What about this? Or this?” Monica pointed at a Lord-knew-what entry and the words blurred, not because they were incomprehensible but because Jules’s eyes were filling. What had she been thinking? It was like trying to teach a pig the clarinet.
Don’t cry, idiot.
Monica made a sound of exasperation. “Good grief, it’s right there. The pinot.”
“Monica, lovely to see you. How are you this evening?”
Jules cranked her neck a few inches, not that she needed a visual to verify Tad’s arrival. All that male spice and testosterone transmitted directly to every hair on her body, now standing on end.
“I’m surprised, Tad. I’d expect your staff to be better trained,” Monica said sharply. “Hard to get good help, I suppose.”
“We had an emergency and Jules stepped in, but she’s more than capable.” He turned to her with a smile, his blue eyes glittering his gratitude and affection. “Thank you.”
Jules nodded dumbly. Tad placed a hand at the small of her back, a gesture at once intimate and possessive, and not lost on Ms. Grayson, whose gaze widened at how close Tad was standing to the help.
“Now what can we get you?” he asked politely.
“Just a waitron who can rub two brain cells together.”
Jules felt Tad’s body turn rigid beside her. “I hope you’re not insulting my staff, Ms. Grayson. They work too hard to be on the receiving end of that sharp tongue of yours.”
Her gray eyes tilted up. “To succeed in this business, you have to have at minimum a staff who can understand what they’re trying to sell to the customers. She’s pretty, I’ll grant you, but not a lot going on upstairs.”
Jules’s heart sank to the floor, and not just because Monica’s words struck hard in her breast. Mostly, she felt awful because she had let Tad down when he needed her and now he had to cover for her ineptitude.
“Monica, Monica, Monica.” His voice was soft and persuasive, and while normally she loved that sexy tone, the fact he was using it to appease Monica killed her. She knew why he had to do it, she just hated that she came out of it the loser.
He continued. “I recognize that all your visits to Vivi’s have ended in profound dissatisfaction, so I’ll assume that’s your disappointment showing its ugly. I wouldn’t sleep with you and now you’re feeling frustrated. I have that effect on women.”
Oh, snap.
Monica’s companion had been in the middle of a sip of his San Pellegrino, but started coughing hard when it went down the wrong way. Tad gave him a healthy slap on the back, propelling the guy so far forward his nose almost dipped in the olive oil saucer. An ugly shade of red bloomed from Monica’s half-exposed chest all the way to the tops of her cheekbones.
“I’d be very careful about how you finish this conversation, Tad.”
“Only one way to finish it, Ms. Grayson. The management reserves the right to throw your bony ass out on the street. And your little dog, too.”
“Tad,” Jules warned, though it was too late and her heart was cheering like the Cubbies had won the World Series.
He turned his back on Monica’s furious expression and any chance he had of getting a good review in Tasty Chicago. Smoothly, he steered Jules in the direction of the kitchen.
“You just shot yourself in the arse, Tad DeLuca.”
“Never mind that. Tell me how your night has been,” he said, his eyes sparkling like beautiful blue jewels. Not a moment’s regret lived in their depths.
“Except for Derry having the worst meet-cute with a chef’s knife, the pizza oven being on the blink again, and you just screwing yourself over, not bad. Not bad at all.” She shook her head. “You didn’t have to do that. I can defend myself just fine. In fact, I’d just been congratulating myself all night on how I didn’t need rescuing.”
“I know, but that’s what friends do.” He inclined his head and whispered, “I’ve missed you.”
Oh. “I’m right here.”
He ran a finger along her jaw. “But for how long?”
Lost in the emotion of what he had just done for her and what he was now doing to her, all she could do was stare into his handsome face.
“Speechless, Jules? That’s not like you. Gonna have to take advantage.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her softly, tugging on her lips in a way that was not in the least bit friendly.
He finished the kiss with a smile. “I didn’t have to do that, either, but it’s just one of those nights.”
* * *
Like champs, they got through the rest of the night and sent the throng home happy.
After Tad had returned from walking Bella to her car a block over, he took a moment to enjoy the sight of his savior wiping down the stainless steel counter in the kitchen. Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” was on the iPod and the fluid back-and-forth swiping motion rolled her hips in a sexy sway.
A fun memory snuck up on him. “Remember when we used to go dancing?”
Stopping her body rock—so not his intention at all—she turned and smiled that disgracefully sexy grin. “I used to go dancing. You used to go into some sort of body fit.”
“I’m an excellent dancer. Unique.”
She cocked her shapely hip, then tilted her head in the other direction like that could even it up. “You had a tendency to blind people within a ten-foot radius with your flailing. I do miss it, though. The dancing, that is.”
He missed it, too, and he had a not-so-sudden urge to get down with her again. In every way. It took him a lust-dazed moment to realize she was saying something.
“Uh, what’s that now?”
“Derry’ll live. Kennedy called to say he had to get seventeen stitches but there was no nerve damage.”
He nodded, hoping it might cover the green tinge of jealousy that was likely shading his cheeks.
“Glad to hear it. Derry’s a good guy.” So his knife skills weren’t quite up to the level Tad would expect from a chef of his stature, but he was solid and dependable and—
“So you really like him, don’t you?”
Surprise at his directness crimped her brow. “Sure. Talking to him is like conversing with your dodgy pizza oven sometimes but he’s a decent bloke.”
“Have you introduced him to Evan yet?” He swallowed, feeling like an idiot but needing to know. “I mean, officially.”
She stared at him for a few heart-pounding seconds before breaking into a raucous laugh.
“Oh, Tad, you are too much.”
“I am?”
She covered her mouth, then decided it was pointless and let rip with another boisterous laugh.
“I am not interested in Derry and even if I was, he would not be interested in me.”
Relief flooded him. “You’re not? He wouldn’t?”
She shook her head slowly, pulling her grin wider with every return. “Derry’s gay.”
“No f*ckin’ way.” Derry Jones? The Derry Jones? “How do you know?”
She threw a wet towel at him. “I know.”
“Does he know?”
“He’s not shouting it from the rooftops but he knows what he is.”
Well, well, well. He had never been so thrilled to hear about the sexual orientation of another human being. Weird, but it had been a weird few weeks.
“I owe you a drink for all you did tonight,” he said, unable to keep a grin from conquering his face. Brilliant. Get her smashed.
His little head was trying to call the shots as usual. Showing it who’s boss, he took a leisurely stroll out of the kitchen toward the bar. So leisurely he should be whistling.
She followed, her lush sway undulating in his wake, or that’s how he imagined it with those gluttonous eyes in the back of his head. He didn’t need eyesight to know the glorious line of those hips or how the swell of her breasts filled her blouse. Lucky him! He had memories.
This leisurely thing wasn’t cutting it so he removed himself behind the bar where the evidence of his raging attraction to her could be shielded.
“Forget the drink, you owe me a bottle,” she said.
“Okay, take your pick.”
Her eyes widened. He may as well have offered her the world. He wanted to do just that.
“Anything?”
“If it’s on the menu, we’ll open it.”
“Boo.”
“Boo?”
“Boo. Hiss. I know there’s better stuff off the menu. Secret bottles in the cellar.” She nodded to the wall of glass behind him—the window on the world of wine.
He felt the beginnings of a smile. “And how would you know that?”
She leaned over the bar, her breasts settling like lush pillows on the cherrywood. Madre di Dio.
“The list you gave me doesn’t tally, my friend. There are strange things afoot in there.” She looked around as though she didn’t want anyone to hear her. “Bumps in the night. Clanging chains. Very suspect.”
Mirroring her, he did the fake shifty thing. “So, I keep a couple of special bottles there. It’s no big deal. I can stop anytime.”
She grinned and he felt an odd lurch in his chest.
“I’ve been meaning to build a cellar at home but I haven’t gotten around to it. Which means, I need to cellar my own stuff here.”
“What’s so special about these bottles, then? Are they worth a lot of money?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
He led the way to the Cavern, the name he had christened the cellar in honor of the Beatles’s first big club venue back in Liverpool. Better than calling it Bob, he supposed. With a name like that, the space should have been dank and dreary but that was so not the case. Encased in glass, it displayed his stock to perfection and made a stunning counterpoint to all the dark wood in the bar. The temperature controls were state of the art and the walls were pocked with bottles that formed a pleasing, logical grid. In here, he could see everything happening out in the bar and further into the street.
Gently, he removed one of the bottles: a Chateau Pavie Bordeaux from 2000. One hundred points—the maximum—from Wine Spectator. Unlike the others, it was sheened with eleven years of dust though the streaks told him it had been drawn out of the nest lately.
“My father knew a lot about wine and he gave me this when I got my offer from the University of Chicago.”
A wash of guilt softened her face. “Oh, I’m sorry. You can probably tell I looked at it. I was nosing around last week.”
“It’s fine. I was supposed to open it when I graduated.”
“You have. You’ve done all this.” She waved her hands around the cellar.
“This isn’t really what he had in mind.” He looked around the wine racks he had built from scratch. “I’d always liked building things so engineering was a logical choice for me. He would have preferred doctor or lawyer, but he was willing to compromise there.” About the only thing the old man would compromise on. Opening the bar would have pleased Vivi, but not his father.
“Frankie said you got a full ride. That you’re some sort of genius.”
From anyone else, it might have sounded snarky but Jules’s voice held an unwelcome reverence. He preferred her bite. Sliding the bottle back into its slot, he raised his eyes to hers.
“You know me pretty well. Do you think I’m a genius?”
“Let me see.” She held up a hand and touched the tips of her fingers in a count. “You date zombified bimbos, you drive that bike far too fast, and you have an unhealthy appreciation for Jason Statham.” Her devastating grin fell away. “And I happen to think you’re a whole lot smarter than you let on.”
“That makes two of us.”
Her pupils flared in acknowledgment. As far as he was concerned, she was on the money. Smart as he was, he didn’t want a challenge when it came to his sex life. He preferred the simplicity of turning off his overactive brain and sliding inside a woman who had no expectations. Hooking up with someone he might actually be interested in on an intellectual or emotional level would be skating a little too close to the drop.
Hell, he had been tottering on that edge since the moment he laid eyes on one Juliet Kilroy. Making love to her was the most real thing he had experienced since his parents had died. So real he sometimes felt he might die if he didn’t hold her in his arms one more time.
But he needed to be her friend. And as much as he hated the fact she was dating, he hated even more how she was going about it.
“Speaking of dating below our level, Lili said you wanted certain types of guys. Guys who didn’t seem too well endowed”—he arched an eyebrow—“in the brain department.”
She blinked rapidly and her swallow was pronounced. “I promised Cara that Cinders would be home by 11 p.m. She’s probably got a search party out already.”
Arresting her move to the exit, he reached out and gentled her back against the glass. The shimmer from the low-lit bar candles reflected off the transparent wall, giving her a halo effect.
“Why are you shooting so low, Jules?”
“I’m not.”
He crowded her, interrogated her with his body. It felt good to wrap himself around her. To own the space between them for these brief moments.
“Boring, unimaginative guys. Guys who can’t possibly appreciate you.”
Discomfort darkened her pale beauty. “I’m not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Just ask Monica Grayson.”
“Oh, but you are.” He cupped her chin, surprised even now at how the softness of her skin electrified and soothed him at once. Touching her was his drug, wanting her was his addiction.
“You’re so sharp, it hurts to be around you sometimes. You have the quickest wit of anyone I know and I come from a family of smart mouths. Don’t ever think you’re not good enough, honey.”
What he saw in her eyes devastated him and suddenly he got it. How could he have been so stupid?
“Maybe you’ll find this boring paragon you can walk all over, who bores you to tears, and makes sure you never feel what you must have felt for Evan’s father. Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? Whoever this guy was, he hurt you so badly that you’d rather hook up with a corpse than feel again.”
“You don’t know a thing about it,” she said through trembling lips.
“I know you and believe it or not, I know me. I’ve been there, Jules. Loving someone and losing them. Hurting so much that it’s easier to block out the possibilities that are staring you right in the face.” This wasn’t the time to indulge in a pity party wankfest, but he needed her to know she was not alone.
Her eyes shone like glossy green buttons. She splayed a hand over his heart, which jumped in acknowledgment of the imminent threat. “Is that what you’ve been doing since they died, Tad? Every year, adding another row of bricks around your heart? Looking for solace in sex?”
See? Smart as a whip. He was supposed to be making her feel better about this lousy ex situation and here she was cutting to the heart of him with her razor-sharp insight.
“We were talking about you.”
“You were. This sharing business works both ways. Tell me why it still hurts so much, Tad. Why you haven’t cooked since they died. Why the mention of your parents sends you to a place I can’t reach you.”
She rubbed his chest, comforting him like he imagined she did with Evan when he was cranky. Those hands of hers were lethal and healing at once.
He sucked air through his lips, making a hissing sound. “I had a fight with my father the night they died. One of those fights where you say things you can’t take back, even if he was around to hear it.”
Her eyes flew wide. “What was it about?”
“What it was always about. School, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was the end of freshman year and I told him I wouldn’t be going back in the fall. I wanted to go to Italy and apprentice with a butcher in Fiesole. That’s where the DeLucas came from. He was furious. He told me I wouldn’t be welcome in his house if I gave up that scholarship and—” He held her gaze with more boldness than he felt, challenging her to judge him. “I told him to go to hell.”
She cupped his jaw and he resisted the urge to fold into her hand. “That was the last time you spoke to him?”
He nodded the head that felt too heavy for his neck. His father’s rage still felt like a tangible thing and Tad had internalized it and made it his own. A messed up way of honoring his memory.
“The accident happened later that night and I never got to fix it. You don’t know what I’d do to have one more minute with them. One more moment to tell them how much I love them.”
This was just the original sin, the foundation brick in the wall. Telling her the rest might break him and he would rather die than face the disappointment in her eyes should the entire sorry tale come out.
“We all carry regrets around with us, Tad, wishes that we had played the cards differently. Keeping it inside and letting it eat away at you isn’t healthy. Don’t hide from me. From the beginning, it’s always been you and me. Simpatico.”
The truth of that punched a hole in that wall.
“From the first moment, it’s been”—she placed her hand over his stomach—“in here.
“A gut thing,” he rasped.
She watched him with those green eyes that cut through all his crap.
“A gut thing. A connection from the beginning. No matter what happens between us, we’ll always be in each other’s gut. I’ll find my safe, boring husband and you’ll keep screwing your way through Chicago. But at the end of the day, this connection between us will still be here. Gut connection. You and me.”
Another few bricks collapsed, exposing his heart for all to see. She could reach inside and grasp it. Hold it close or stomp it. It was hers to own and he didn’t care what she did with it.
“Gut connection,” he whispered.
“You and me,” she said, tilting moist green eyes up to his.
She shrank against the glass, still with her hand on his side. The movement caused her fingertips to slide down to his belt and brought him close enough to share her sweet breath. Hooking a finger behind the buckle, she traced the metal slowly.
Kiss her, every part of him urged.
So he did.
Just a tickle at first because he wanted to give her a chance to move away. He needn’t have worried. Immediately, her hands clutched at his shirt collar and pulled him close. The inch of space separating them was too much. His blood surged. His balls flamed. The heaven of her mouth claimed him.
He was going with his gut and every other body part cheered in agreement. She unclasped his belt. He peeled off her shirt. Next went her skirt, landing in a puddle at her feet. They played catch up with the rest of his clothes, both of them desperate to get each other naked. He tore at her panties, just ripped them from her body. No finesse, no seduction. Just what it was.
Gut connection.
Soul connection.
She fell back against the cellar’s glass wall, the low bar light shimmering behind her and framing her with a honey-tinged corona. Those perfect, creamy breasts drew his gaze, which he followed down to the soft curve of her belly and the thatch of dark blond hair between her thighs. He would never tire of the beautiful lines of her body.
He nudged her feet apart and ran a finger through her gloriously slick heat. Ready for him. Always ready for him.
“You’re so wet.”
“All night,” she moaned. “From the minute you told that bitch off.”
Stroking through the swelling folds of her p-ssy, he punctuated with a brush of his finger over her nerve-strung *. She sighed her pleasure and pushed back against his hand.
“You’re turned on when I protect you,” he murmured, not a little turned on by that idea himself.
“I’m turned on when you breathe.”
He curled his palm behind her head and crushed his mouth to hers, plundering her with possessive thrusts of his tongue that matched the finger-strokes through her saturated heat. Her moans were loud and throaty, and he swallowed them greedily. She was already close but he knew he could make it better for her.
“Turn around.”
“What?” It came out in a sexy quiver.
“I want you to watch the street while I make you come. I want you to know anyone could see you while you’re screaming my name.”
Without hesitation, she turned toward the transparent cellar wall, and that obedience turned him to granite.
“Feel how cool the glass is against your nipples, mia bella.”
Covering her with his body, he pushed her flush against the smooth glass, leaving just enough room to slip his hand into the slippery nirvana between her legs.
She moaned, the sound reverberating off the glass, the bottles, his groin. He stroked again over her nerve-packed flesh, gratified when she jerked against his hand. She rocked against him, sawing her body, controlling her pleasure. Her back arched as she pushed back and took what she needed.
It was the hottest thing he had ever seen.
His dick throbbed, pushing against the cleft of her gorgeous ass like it knew what it needed. Like it knew what he needed. The heat and musk of her arousal amplified his own, hiking it to a sharp ache. Over her shoulder, the streetlights shone arcs of light against the windows of the bar, illuminating the odd passerby. A curious glance their way would reveal quite the show.
Wild and uninhibited, she rubbed her breasts against the cellar’s glass. Low-lit pools reflected off the transparent wall, bathing her features in soft, ethereal light. She was lost in her own world, a world where she was Goddess.
Worship her. Over and over those words echoed in his Jules-fried brain. The message was received by his knees, which jackknifed and sent him to the ground.
Where he belonged.
Roughly, he pulled her hips toward him and delved between her legs with first his fingers, and then his mouth. She tasted… oh, Christ, he would need to invent a whole new profile for how good she tasted. Spice, sweet, pepper.
Jules, Jules, Jules.
Again, she bowed her back and spread her thighs to allow him to suck deeper. Her moans echoed through the Cavern, ricocheting off the dick that was about ready to blow.
“Tad,” she screamed just as her thighs clenched and her body juddered in orgasm.
Standing like a drunk who couldn’t hold his liquor, he used her hips as his anchor, only breaking the connection to roll on a condom. Thankfully, she understood what was coming next and she turned to face him.
“Please. Now.” Hot, desperate, and all for him.
He lifted her off the ground and slid into her, hard and fast. How could she be so wet, yet snug enough to wrap him in this torturous, velvet tightness? Holding her in place against the glass, he watched his glistening cock drive into her deeper.
“Look, mia bella. Look what you do to me.”
Her lust-stoked gaze fell to where their bodies joined and she made a rough sound in the back of her throat.
“That’s so—oh, Tad. You feel so good inside me.”
He withdrew, every inch outside her body killing him, but honing his desire. Hers, too. No doubt about it. She grasped at his shoulders, and her thighs tensed. Her satin muscles gripped his slick erection.
“Don’t stop,” she moaned. “Don’t ever stop.”
Never. In this moment, there was only the two of them. There was only this time. This room. This everything. The moment bloomed to clarity. He saw clearly for the first time.
He’d always given short shrift to those loved-up idiots who said sex was a million times better when you had a deeper connection with a woman. Sex was sex. There were degrees, for sure, but it was no great mystery. He happily admitted that sex with Jules was the best he’d ever had.
Everything with Jules was the best he’d ever had. Somehow, losing himself in her felt like the surest way of finding his way back.
Biting his lip, he watched as he slid in and out, in and out. Heaven at the Cavern. He continued to thrust until he felt her clutch and compress. Heard her scream his name, again and again. Then his own orgasm exploded, but not in a single burst of relief. This was more like a rolling blackout that hit different parts of his body microseconds apart and ended with a power surge that knocked out the grid that used to be his brain.
* * *
“So here we are,” she said, coming to a stop outside her apartment building.
“Here. We. Are.” Tad squeezed her hand and it gave her just as much of a thrill as what they had done back at Vivi’s. She never imagined he could be so sweet after taking her so hard and raw.
On the five-minute walk home, they had been unusually quiet, both lost in their thoughts. Was he regretting how he’d opened up about his father and what it had led to or was he contemplating how they could figure out what was happening between them?
Reluctantly, she let go of his warm, male grip to fumble in her big-ass purse for her keys. Purse law said they were hiding at the bottom.
“Thanks for seeing me home.”
“Well, I’m not sure your date would have been allowed to stay out this late.”
Her date. She had forgotten all about Bowtie Dan with cheeks as smooth as a baby’s bottom. He had left with one of Tad’s fans about an hour before closing. She wasn’t sorry.
She silently prayed she wouldn’t be sorry for the next words out of her mouth.
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. For as long as we have this whatever’s-happening-between-us, we’ll act on it. As soon as one of us wants to move on, we stop. As soon as our bloody families find out, we stop because I am not dealing with the special brand of crazy sauce that rains down on my head when Jack and Shane get involved. To be honest, I’m not sure that handsome face of yours could withstand Jack’s rearrangement of it.”
The longer she spoke, the squeakier her voice got until by the end, she was rocking Alvin & The Chipmunks decibel levels and standing nose to chin with him. A burn of a grin spread slowly over his face but she was so desperate to get the words out in one breathy gush that she didn’t thump him the good one he deserved.
“What’s so funny?”
“I love when you get all up in my face, Juliet Kilroy.”
She splayed a hand across his chest. The erotically charged memory of where his face had been thirty minutes ago sent her hormones into overdrive. “You wish I was all up in your face.”
He growled and pulled her in for a kiss that would have knocked her off her feet if he wasn’t also ravaging her arse with his hands.
“So, should I sneak in like a horny teenager now or after you’ve picked up Evan from Cara?”
She poked him in his rock-hard chest. “No overnight stays and no hanky-panky when Evan’s around. And nobody else while we’re doing this.” She had been about to say “together,” but it sounded wrong in the back of her throat. Too needy. Too permanent.
“Same for you. I’m imposing a moratorium on your dates.”
Thanks be to God. She’d have to come up with some excuse to keep the girls at bay; she’d gladly do it.
Tearing herself away from the warmth of his body was so hard but it had to be done. Tad was the kind of treat that had to be rationed. Unlike the last time she had tried to open her door with this perfect specimen by her side, she was able to manage the lock with a minimum of fuss.
“I’ll call you when I get home,” he said, his voice husky in her ear.
“Think I’m worried about you, Tad DeLuca?”
“No, but I’m going to need to hear your voice while I get off. Only way I’ll be able to sleep.” He sucked on her ear lobe, inducing the most delicious shivers.
Tonight as he’d told her about his last conversation with his dad, a new window onto their relationship had opened. Before, he was the strong one with those broad shoulders made for leaning and those sure hands made to catch her when she fell. Now the subtle shift had revealed new depths to this amazing man and how much he needed this sensual comfort. Neither of them had said it outright, but their bodies knew the score. They could do for each other what no one else could, if only for a short time.
“One more rule,” she said, turning to face him.
“Uh huh.” He nipped at the soft spot where her shoulder met her neck. Stay strong.
“You can’t fall in love with me, Tad. This is just us fulfilling a temporary need for each other.”
Pride in her businesslike tone summoned the usual internal chatter.
Nicely done, said Good Girl Jules.
Bad Girl Jules remained eerily silent.
The look he gave her was strangely intense, but then his expression unfurled with a smile.
“I’ll do my best.”