She crossed her arms over her chest. “Like what?”
The hint of belligerence in her tone made him want to smile. She was expecting him to flirt, to say all he could think about were her sweet lips and firm, luscious curves or something unimaginative like that. And she wasn’t entirely wrong, but it went against everything in Max to do the expected thing.
“Like Italy,” he sighed, stretching his arms over his head and watching as her gaze tracked the hem of his shirt pulling up over his stomach. “The little village in Le Marche where Vincenzo Cotto’s studio is—it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. I can’t wait to go back.”
Jules dropped her arms, a spark of interest lighting her eyes. “You’ve been there before? I thought a rambling man like you was always wanting to see new places, have new experiences.”
He laughed. “Well, it’s not like I’ve taken a vow of wandering, or something. I’ve gone back to lots of places, to visit the friends I made or check in on projects I started while I was there. But the thing with Cotto is different. When I went two years ago, I didn’t stay long, hardly got to explore the town at all. I was trying to get him to see me—to agree to let me study with him.”
“Two years.” There was an odd quality to her voice, something he couldn’t place. “That’s how long you’ve been waiting for the chance to learn from Cotto?”
“Yep. I’ve been working toward this opportunity for a long time.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
The question hovered in the air between them, unexpectedly personal and strangely hard to answer. Unsure what to say, Max let his gaze slide to the side. “I’m interested in Italian food—the culture of the cuisine is so much about comfort and simplicity, making the most of simple, pure ingredients, letting them shine. People think that means it’s easy, but it’s not. There’s as much technique to it as any other cuisine. It’s not just about throwing tomato sauce over boiled pasta—the Italians have a million ways to build deep, layered, complex flavors. I want to learn them all.”
“And you couldn’t learn from a book. Or from any old random Italian cooking teacher.”
Max shrugged sheepishly, his shoulders scratching against the woolly fibers of the rug. “As you may have noticed, I’m not a big book guy. More of a doer than a reader. Things don’t make sense to me until I have my hands in them. And Cotto’s the best. I try to only learn from the best—saves having to unlearn bad techniques later on.”
“There’s a pretty extensive Italian-American community in New York,” Jules observed, carefully neutral.
“Yeah. But Jules, there’s nothing like immersing yourself in the culture you’re studying—living and breathing it, every day and every night. The language, the architecture, the incredible faces of the old people in the marketplace, doing their regular shopping and living their regular lives. Everything is specific to the place, and every place has its own magic. But Italy…”
Max breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, imagining the sweetly pungent tang of roasted garlic and tomatoes, the mouthwatering sour fruit of the bold, unlabeled local wine, the softness of the breezes rolling down the Sibillini Mountains and into the valley where Vincenzo Cotto’s studio nestled like an egg in a basket.
“You love it there.”
Jules’s quiet comment opened Max’s eyes. He looked up at her and smiled. “I haven’t spent enough time to really be sure,” he hedged, “but I think I might.”
She was silent for a long moment, her face unreadable as she scrutinized him. Then, with a light kick to his ankle, she said, “Come on, get off your ass, we’ve got practice.”
“I’d love to,” Max told her, flexing the foot she’d tapped, “but, sadly, I seem to be paralyzed from the knee down.” Folding one arm up to cushion his head, Max sent her his most disarming smile. “Want to come keep me company while I wait for the pins and needles to stop poking me?”
She glanced behind her as if his brother were standing in the hall, arms crossed disapprovingly.
God. Danny. The thick, scratchy cloak of betrayal and anger he’d wrapped around himself when Max left was another major meditation buster. It wasn’t like Max hadn’t been aware of Danny’s resentment, and he tried to accept it, but being face-to-face with it every single day was wearing him down until each muttered aside and disgruntled look scraped over Max’s raw nerves like the flat of a knife scraping the seeds from a hot pepper.
Jules always took Danny’s side, Max had noticed.
“Just get up,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting.”
“Don’t you want to inspect my room?” Max said, knowing he was being a shit but unable to stop while he had her all to himself. “Who knows, it might give you some fodder for mocking.”
“I’m familiar with the room already,” she murmured, taking a few hesitant steps inside. Max’s gaze followed the high, round swell of her ass, the long tail of hair twitching just above it.
She stopped a few steps into the room and turned, almost catching him in the act of ogling.
Startled, Max rapidly replayed the last few seconds of conversation in his head. “Wait. What?”
Chapter 9
Jules regarded him silently for a moment, and the lack of expression on her face could only be on purpose. “When I was about seventeen, I had to leave home. Your dad offered me a job, and this room to stay in until I could find my own place. I thought they would’ve mentioned it—I lived here for about six months, right after you left, until I turned eighteen and got my own place.”
“You’re kidding.” That was … bizarre. Max wasn’t sure how he felt about Jules having full access to his childhood stuff. And his adolescenthood stuff, cripes. His mind immediately zoomed to the stash of dog-eared skin mags hidden under the box spring.
Then something else she’d said filtered through the red tide of embarrassment, making him frown. “What happened that made you leave home?”
Her eyes went kind of shifty. “It’s a long, very boring story, and we need to get back to the kitchen. Get up, your leg’s fine.”
Whatever happened back then, she clearly didn’t want to talk about it with him. Interesting. And also okay, because Max had more questions about this woman who’d taken over his old life, like some kind of hot, blond identity thief. “You said my dad offered you the place to stay?”
In his family, Nina Lunden was indisputably the hospitable one. It was Nina who met a nice young man who helped her with her groceries in exchange for a couple bucks, and brought him home to sleep on the couch while he sorted himself out. It was Nina who invited the entire kitchen crew for holiday dinners, knowing their families were in other countries and they’d otherwise be alone.
It was always his mother whose open heart and sharp eye for the goodness inside others prompted her to bring home strays. Never his dad.
But Jules confirmed it. With a defiant toss of her head, no less, as if she expected him to accuse her of lying.
“Yes. Your dad was closing up the restaurant one night, and I wandered in. I was looking for Danny, but he wasn’t home. And Gus and I got to talking, and when he found out I needed somewhere to stay, things just sort of … fell into place.”
There was way more to this story, Max knew. But he wouldn’t push it right now, he decided. She was skittish enough without forcing her to spill all her secrets out onto the scuffed hardwood floor next to his childhood bed.
“Cool,” he said, giving her a smile to let her know he was backing off. “I’m not complaining, okay? I’m happy you’re here.”
“Oh, stop it.”
Max frowned. “Stop what?”
She threw up her hands. “Stop acting like there’s something between us! We work together, that’s all. And even that’s only temporary. As soon as this phase of the competition is over, you’ll be in the wind again.”
There was something in her voice, something Max couldn’t place. Relief? Regret? He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.
&nbs
p; Testing his tingling foot, Max thought he could stand on it. He pushed off the floor and straightened, looming over her for an instant before she scowled and stood, too. She went toe to toe with him immediately, and Max felt his blood quicken. Was that anger? Or something else?
The first step to letting go of your emotion is to allow yourself to feel the emotion. Harukai-sensei’s soft voice floated through Max’s head. Know what it is you feel, acknowledge it, then release it on a breath.
That was his problem, right there. Max never knew what the hell he was feeling these days.
Losing himself in the whiskey-gold depths of her eyes, he said, “Aw, that’s sweet. You saying you want me to stick around?”
“Of course not. I didn’t think it was necessary for Nina to call you home in the first place,” Jules replied.
Her words said “No, no, no,” but the way she leaned in toward him, the pulse jumping in her neck, the heated flash of awareness in her amber eyes—that all said “Yes, yes, yes!”
Max was so intrigued, he could hardly stand it. Feeling his way along, he said, “Well, you’re here now, and so am I. Who knows? Maybe it was fate. Or my dad. I guess I owe him a thank-you. I know it wasn’t Danny who convinced him to call me.”
“Would you shut up about Gus and Danny?” Jules spat suddenly, chest heaving with the force of her breath. Her hands were clenched in fists at her sides; she looked ready to deliver a serious beat-down.
Max felt as if she’d already slapped him, the mixed-up desire of moments before resolving itself into simple anger. He backed away from her, muscles jumping. He needed to move, so he paced. “Are you kidding me? You can’t honestly think all the friction between my family and me is entirely my fault.”
She shook her head. “Not the point.”
“Oh? Then what is?”
“The point is, not everything is about you,” she growled. “Your father’s had a lot on his mind the last few weeks. Hell, the last few years! It’s been hard on Danny. And where were you?”
Everything in Max’s head went pure red for an instant. “I was anywhere but here,” he said through clenched teeth. “Which you know perfectly well, since apparently you were on the spot the whole time, keeping it warm for me.”
Her mouth trembled. “Every day I stayed in this room, I kept expecting you to show up and kick me out. But you didn’t. After six years of phone calls and e-mails, the least you could do is cut everyone some slack.” She turned away, giving him that perfect profile again. “Do you even know how lucky you are?”
Guilt scoured Max’s throat with a taste like bitter orange peel, making his voice rough and grating. “I love my family. But we can’t coexist, Jules. Since I was a teenager and started having my own ideas about what kind of restaurant Lunden’s should be—it’s been one long fight, punctuated by periods where we don’t talk. At all. Dad on one side, me on the other, and poor Danny and Mom stuck in the middle.” He swallowed hard against the knot that rose from his chest and jammed his hands into his back pockets, staring at his feet. “I don’t know, maybe you’re right. Maybe the fighting is better than nothing, and I should’ve been here, duking it out every night over dinner.”
He risked a look up at Jules, who was watching him with her arms wrapped around herself, as if she felt a chill. Max forced himself to continue. “I would’ve stayed, but it was killing Mom. And it wasn’t that much fun for the rest of us, either, if you want the truth.”
Understanding softened the line of her mouth, turning it upside down into an unhappy curve.
“Nothing’s simple when it comes to family,” she said finally. “I get that.”
She didn’t look ready to slug him anymore, but she sure didn’t look much happier. Max found himself in the odd position of wanting to hug her, comfort her—not that it was odd that he should want to touch her, since he’d wanted that since the moment he walked back into his old life and saw her again.
But he wasn’t used to feeling so many competing, conflicting emotions, along with desire for a woman. Then again, Jules Cavanaugh wasn’t a bored waitress at a falafel shop or a grad student backpacking across the Pyrenees. She wasn’t someone who would flit in and out of his life, brushing up against the outer edges of him and never getting any deeper. Jules was someone his family loved. She had a place here—more of a place than Max did, really.
He looked at her now, though, and he didn’t see his father’s disappointed hopes for his eldest son to run the restaurant, or his brother’s resentment that Danny, who’d rather devote his time to pastry, might be forced to step up.
Max saw a woman who’d been hurt, who’d chosen to be strong, who gave her heart with fierce loyalty … a woman who made him want to go deeper. Max took a step closer to her, then another.
Jules watched his approach with the stillness of a wild creature in the woods, eyes dark and wide, chest heaving a little with the force of her breaths.
Max reached out his hand and gently clasped her shoulder, angling her body in to face his. They were lined up, hips and belly and chest, and he loved that she was only an inch or so shorter.
It made it so easy, effortless, to dip his head and cover that sweet, pink mouth with his.
He wasn’t holding her except with one hand on her shoulder, and he half expected the shock of the kiss to break the moment; he thought she’d stiffen against him and pull away.
Instead, she surged into him, her body moving hard against his and knocking him back a step before he caught his balance and wrapped his arms around her back.
And suddenly, his emotions were as clear to him as the crystal lake water beside the mountain temple where he’d first learned his meditation techniques.
He wanted her. Badly.
* * *
Prickles of heat washed up and down her spine, racing along her nerve endings and puckering her nipples into hard points pressed tight to his chest.
It felt amazing. Also amazing? Max’s mouth.
That honey-smooth, wickedly grinning mouth devouring hers, licking into the depths of her as if he’d never get tired of the taste.
Dimly, Jules remembered that she wasn’t supposed to touch him. Wasn’t supposed to look at him, flirt with him, give him the wrong idea …
But was it the wrong idea? Being in this room again, where she’d thought about him so often, imagined so many things—and then talking to him, yelling at him, which made her want to cringe now, but the way he talked back … the openness of him.
Jules was so used to guarding her heart; she’d forgotten what it was like to be around someone who had no shame, no fear about what he wanted.
And Max wanted her. She could feel it in every sweep of his tongue along the roof of her mouth, tickling and making her squirm closer to him. She could feel it when he pulled her closer so he could get his hands on her hips and dig his fingers in just enough to let her know how desperate he was.
She could feel it most of all in the thick, hard length of his erection, hot even through all their clothes, notched high against the vee of her thighs.
With the strength of every night she’d lain in this room, thinking about Max and wondering where he was, Jules wanted to rip open his pants, sink to her knees, and swallow him down.
The very urgency of that desire was what shocked her out of the dream of heat and push and thrust and clench, and back into the world of reality, where their teammates were waiting for them downstairs, and they had a competition to qualify for—one that would prove to the Lundens, once and for all, that Jules was the best choice to run Lunden’s Tavern when Gus retired.
And the one person standing in the way of all that currently had his tongue in her mouth.
Jules had to be smart about this. She couldn’t afford to be like her mother, allowing her sex drive to steer her entire life.
Sex was dangerous. It blinded you to the truth, made you do awful things … She had to be stronger than this. She had to control this.
Jules let her weight fall back ont
o her heels with a thump and untangled her fingers from his short, silky hair.
It was harder to let go than she’d anticipated; she had to slump over and rest her forehead on his collarbone for a minute, just a second, so she could catch her breath.
“Hey,” he whispered above her head. “You good, sweetness?”
His arms were still around her, pressed flat to her shoulder blades, so comforting and strong and warm. She let her face fall against his chest, let him cuddle her close, even though she knew it was asking for trouble down the road.
“I’m good,” she whispered back, aching deep in her throat. “But we can’t stay up here much longer; someone’s going to come looking for us.”
His chuckle reverberated through his chest and into her cheekbone. “Yeah, you’re right. And I really don’t want that someone to be my dad. Ew, or my brother. Yikes.”
They separated slowly. Jules thought Max was as reluctant to pull away as she was to let him go, but eventually they managed.
Okay. So that didn’t go quite the way I imagined it.
In Jules’s experience, getting up close and spit-swappy with a guy was a surefire way of letting that guy know he didn’t have to respect her or care about her anymore.
One look in Max Lunden’s bright, open eyes, however, and Jules felt the truth like a ball of raw dough expanding in her stomach.
Max wasn’t like other guys. He wouldn’t mean to hurt her … but he would. By leaving in a month, if nothing else. The way he talked about Italy—so much longing and desire for a country, it was enough to make Jules jealous. And sad, because she knew she couldn’t compete. Didn’t even want to, if it would mean standing in the way of Max’s dream.
So it was up to Jules to protect her heart. No one else was going to do it for her.
Chapter 10
Once they’d finally managed to get downstairs, and waded through the obligatory commentary about how long it took and what they might have been doing up there, complete with grossed-out faces from Danny and total glee from Winslow, Max retreated to the station he’d set up for himself in the corner and started playing with the set of chopsticks he liked to use instead of a whisk.
Too Hot to Touch Page 8
