FEEL THE HEAT by Kate Meader
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT . . .
Photographer Lili DeLuca spends all her time working at her family's Italian restaurant, instead of following her dream of getting an MFA. When famous British chef Jack Kilroy unexpectedly challenges her father to a cook-off, Lili decides she's tired of playing it safe and vows to seduce the tempting Brit. But once a video of her and Jack kissing goes viral and her luscious (if voluptuous) butt starts trending on Twitter, Lili fears she's cooked up a recipe for disaster . . .
Jack Kilroy's celebrity has left him feeling used and used up. While Lili's oh-so-sexy moans when she tastes his delicious creations turn him on, he's even more aroused by how this beautiful, funny woman is unimpressed by his fame. He knows they could be amazing together, if she could only see past his rabid-bitch, fork-wielding fan base. Now as he's about to start a new prime time TV cooking show, can Jack convince Lili to realize her own ambitions-and turn up the heat in his kitchen?
Book Excerpt:
Leaving behind the safe hum of traffic,
she crept toward the door. The garbage stench stung her nostrils. Something
furry scurried behind one of the Dumpsters.
A raucous riff from
the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” swelled and filled the space around her.
Insanity had its own soundtrack.
You
might be dressed like Wonder Woman, but that doesn’t mean you should play the
hero. Just take a look, then call someone.
She sneaked a peek around the door.
Expensive kitchen
equipment—her equipment—lay strewn with serving dishes, pots, and pans on the
countertops. Renewed alarm streaked through her. This didn’t look like the
handiwork of Marco, who thought a bain-marie
was the name of a girl he’d like to date.
So much for the plausible
explanation. Some shithead was burglarizing her restaurant to the strains of
Jagger and Richards.
The next move should have been
obvious, but her cinder-block feet and racing brain warred all the same. Call
someone. Anyone. Her father. Her
cousin. That cute chocolate-eyed cop who stopped in for takeout on Fridays and
insisted she give him a buzz at the first scent of trouble. She swallowed hard,
desperate to stop her heart from escaping through her throat. It settled for
careening around her chest like a pinball.
A cautious sniff caught an astringent
blast of bleach that competed with the lingering basil aroma of Friday night’s
dinner service. Trembling, she nestled her camera, an eight-hundred-dollar
Leica, inside her Vespa helmet, then squeezed her phone out of the tight pouch
at the side of her shorts. She started to dial. Nine. One...
Her twitchy finger paused on hearing
something more eerie than heart-stopping. From inside the walk-in fridge, a
voice bounced off the stainless-steel interior. Highpitched. Indeterminate
gender. Singing at the top of its lungs. It was also completely out of tune.
She repocketed her phone, pulled open
the screen door, and quietly stepped inside. Damn feet had never known what was
good for them.
Frantically, she searched for a weapon,
and her gaze fell gratefully on the cast-iron frying pan resting on the butcher’s
block. She swapped it out for her helmet, appreciating how the new heft almost
worked to stop her hand from shaking. Almost. Her blurred and frankly
ridiculous reflection in the fridge’s stainless steel should have given her
pause; instead it emboldened her. She was dressed for action. She could do
this.
Rounding the walk-in’s door, she took
stock of the enemy in a millisecond. Built like a tank, he had his back turned
to her as he reached up to the top shelf for a container of her father’s ragù.
For the briefest of seconds, the incongruity gnawed at her gut. A tone-deaf, ragù-stealing
brigand? So it didn’t exactly gel, but he was in her restaurant.
In the middle of the night.
Any hesitancy to act was wiped away by
his stutterstep backward and the corresponding spike in her adrenaline. She
hurled the pan and allowed herself a gratifying instant to confirm his head got
the full brunt. Wolfish howl, check. Then she slammed the door shut on his thieving
ass.
It had been quite a nice ass, too.
Good grief, where had that come from? It
must be relief because a drooling appreciation of criminal hot stuff was so not
appropriate. She loosed a nervous giggle, then covered her mouth, trying to
smother that wicked thought along with her chuckle. Naughty, naughty.
Now what, Shiny Shorts? Time
to call in the cavalry, but as she pulled out her phone again, another thought pierced
her veil of giddy triumph. By now, Fridge Bandit should have been making a fuss
or bargaining for his freedom, yet a full minute had passed with not a peep.
Confident that the broken safety release
on the walkin’s interior would keep him at bay, she laid her head and hands
flush to the cool fridge door. Somewhere behind
her, the music’s boom-boom
bass meshed with the walk-in’s mechanical hum. Both now
vibrated through her body while the thump-thump of
her heart tripped out a ragged beat.
Still nothing from within that cold
prison. New horror descended over her.
She had killed him.
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the
panic of that dread conclusion was dislodged by the fridge door’s sudden jerk
outward, sending Lili into a rather graceless meet-cute with the kitchen floor.
Butt first, of course.
So someone had fixed that safety lock,
then.
Her former comrade, the frying pan,
emerged like a mutant hand puppet, soon followed by a wrist and a hairy arm
before the whole package materialized. Vaguely,
something big, bad, and dangerous
registered in her mind. He held the pan aloft to ward off an imminent attack, but
he needn’t have worried. Still grounded, superpowers severely diminished, she
blinked and focused. Then she wished she hadn’t bothered, as the tight knot of
fear unraveled to a cold flood of embarrassment.
“Jesus Christ, you could have bloody killed—”
Fridge Bandit said. His mouth dropped open. Scantily clad superheroes flat on
their butts often have that effect.
Thick black hair, green eyes flecked
with gold, and a face straight out of a Renaissance painting were his most obvious
assets. Lili postponed the full-body browse because she knew she was in
trouble. Big trouble.
It was him.
He touched the back of his head, a
not-so-subtle reminder of her transgression, and placed the pan down with all
the care of someone disposing of a loaded weapon. His casual wave at the
countertop behind her cut the music abruptly. Probably a skill he had acquired
during an apprenticeship with the dark side of the Force.
“You all right, sweetheart?” he asked in
the casual tone of one who doesn’t really care about the answer. He pocketed an
iPod remote and made a halfhearted move toward her. She held up the okay-hand. Too
late, buster.
Lowering her eyes to check the girls,
she exhaled in relief. No nip slips. She jumped to her feet, surreptitiously rubbed
her sore rump, then cast a glance down to her red knee-high Sandro boots for
inspiration. Nothing doing.
You’re wearing a Wonder Woman costume
and you just went all-out ninja on one of the most famous guys in the Western
Hemisphere.
At last, she raised her eyes to his
face, now creased in a frown.
“I’m Jack.”
“I know who you are.”
ALL FIRED UP by Kate Meader
Her sweetest mistake . . .
Cool as a Chicago winter, private events planner Cara DeLuca is a model of self-control . . . until she meets the one temptation she can't resist: Shane Doyle. The sexy, Irish pastry chef is too hot, too sure, too young, and after a crazy night in Vegas—her new husband. While at first Cara wants nothing more than a way out of her sham marriage to Shane, she soon finds that beneath his farm boy demeanor lies a man who can match her drive, both in and out of the bedroom. How can the wrong guy feel so deliciously right?
. . . Tastes so, so good
Shane has carefully structured his career and life around one goal: connecting with the family that doesn't know he exists. Marrying a woman with more issues than a magazine stand wasn't part of the plan, but melting Cara's icy exterior is so worth the detour. Now as the annulment date nears and long-buried secrets are revealed, Shane will have to fight for the one thing guaranteeing the perfect life he craves . . . the current Mrs. Shane Doyle.
Bio:
Kate Meader writes contemporary romance that serves up delicious food, sexy heroes, and heroines with a dash of sass. Originally from Ireland, she now makes her home in Chicago, a city made for food, romance, and laughter—and where she met her own sexy hero. When not writing about men who cook and the women who drool over them, she works in an academic library. Visit her website at
http://katemeader.com and follow her on Twit
ter @kittymeader
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