Page 39 of Hot and Bothered

“I’m sort of busy right now.” He gestured to the paperwork in front of him on the bar.

The last thing he wanted was a lecture from his uncle; there was enough self-recrimination simmering in Tad’s gut as it was. “Thanks for stopping by. I hope you can make the opening next week.”

“Of course. Your aunt has talked of nothing else.”

Tony left, leaving Tad to ponder the old man’s question.Why would you want to beseparate from your family?

If he really wanted to be his own man, he should have stayed away from Chicago for good, but those years in the wilderness after the accident had wound him tight as a spool of wire. He had missed his sister and cousins, and it was time to rejoin the land of the living, even if it was only a half-life. Everywhere there were reminders, but it was preferable that he endure them here with the people he cared about. His family, for better or worse.

Each year he thought it would be better. That time would make his skin looser and his heart less tight. Grief was supposed to pass, or at minimum, mutate into something less sharp. But as he got closer to the anniversary of their death, the same old responses clawed at his internal organs. The need to crawl inside his own body and wait it out with the help of hard liquor. No upscale cellar choices for this bender. Just a prayer that he could control, alt, delete his way into a reboot of his life to get him through the next year.

What a selfish bastard he was. Here he was contemplating a possibly friendship-ending affair with Jules, grasping at the messed-up notion that losing himself in her curves would give him the peace he needed. Last year, when he’d turned her down, he had known his reasons. He couldn’t give her what she needed, the long-term commitment that a woman like Jules deserved. He already cared so much about her and Evan. If he let it go any further, if he tore down those guardrails around his heart, he would be a goner. And if something happened to them…if he was to lose them…

No, it was good that Jules would never have to see how low he could go. No one deserved that.

Fifteen

While working in the garden at Jack and Lili’s was one of her favorite pastimes, there was nothing Jules liked more than strolling through Green City Market in Lincoln Park to buy the produce and herbs she couldn’t force out of the soil. Beneath a warm May sun set in a storybook blue sky, a sea of white canopies beckoned, each one host to a self-contained world of new tastes. The largest market of its kind in Chicago usually never failed to inspire her. This morning, though, she had a different source of inspiration.

The memory of Tad’s soft lips and the taste of his tongue as he licked the corner of her mouth then tangled with hers had kept her awake all night and fueled a less than satisfactory session with her vibrator. Once you’ve had close to the real thing, battery-operated couldn’t cut it.

It was craziness. He was feeling protective. Okay, a weird way to feel protective but perhaps there was something to Lili’s theory that Italian men felt territorial even with women who weren’t strictly in their sights as a sex object. But that kiss hadn’tfeltprotective. It had been possessive and sexy and more than a little friendly.

He was her friend. The friend she had a massive lady boner for.

Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.Stop thinking about the lady boner youhave for your friend.Vegetables. Focus on the crisp, fresh vegetables. She loved talking to the farmers about their products, learning how to cook vegetables she had never heard of, and coming up with new recipes in her head. Seeing the raw materials up close, touching them, imagining the possibilities. Parsnips and tomatoes and carrots.

Long, lovely carrots.

Oh God, she really needed to stop thinking about carrots. Think of anything— anyone—else. Ah, there he was. Farmer Joe.

Of course that wasn’t his real name; she didn’t know it and the mystery was all the sweeter. He wasn’t like any farmer she had ever imagined when she lived in Camden Town where the markets were full of cheap tat and bootleg CDs. Farmer Joe put the brawn in brawny and with his big shoulders and barrel chest—covered in plaid!—he was the kind of guy who made mud-streaked rain boots look good.

Usually, she had Evan in tow, but Cara had offered to look after him this morning so Jules could move faster. Farmer Joe always had a pepper for her toddler. Good for his teeth, he’d say, and Jules would conjure a ridiculous fantasy of wearing wellies and getting up at four in the morning to milk the cows, then crowding round the Aga like something out of a Jamie Oliver cookbook.

“Mornin’.”

He wasn’t one for small talk either. He always got straight to the point in that blunt, flat voice of his that made her think he didn’t really like her. But the last few visits she’d come home and found a little extra in her bag, such as a bunch of beets or a nice bouquet of kale. Wooing by vegetable.

“I brought you some of thecaponataI made with the aubergine from last week.” She pulled a Mason jar of the sweet and sour side dish out of her cloth shopping bag and handed it over to him.

“Eggplant,” he grunted.

“Pardon?”

“Here it’s eggplant, not aubergine.”

Hmm, the oldtwo nations separated by a common languageline. Was he flirting with her? Was this how farmers flirted? He scrunched up his face and studied the jar, then put it down on the table. He gave a terse nod of…thanks?

Okay.

“A bunch of cilantro, two of basil…” She scanned the array, stopping to rub the leaves of a plant she didn’t recognize between her finger and thumb. It looked like Italian parsley, but the word on the tag whirled before her eyes. “What’s this?”

His eyebrow raise signaled his impatience and scuttled her heart to her stomach.It’sright there in front of you, dummy.

“Chervil,” she heard in her ear, as if it were a secret message. “Great over eggs, and with soups and fish.”

“You stalking me?” she said to Tad, not turning around.Playin’ it as cool.

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