All Fired Up (Kate Meader) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the warm, approving one the brigade waited on the balls of their feet to get every dinner service, and Shane knew then the fuzzy feeling a puppy must get when petted by his owner.
    Shit, he did not want to feel this way. The sooner Shane extracted himself from this murkier-by-the-minute situation, the better, because after only two weeks in Jack’s kitchen, the worst had already happened.
    Shane was starting to like his brother.
    He could tell him now. Spill it out while they were having this little moment. Two chefs—no, two friends—enjoying a laugh about sports and nut-job art. Two brothers from different mothers finally united after years of not knowing the other one existed. Well, one of them had known. Shane had found out twelve years ago that he had a half brother nine years his senior. And not just any brother.
    Jack fucking Kilroy.
    Already a big fish in his small British pond, Jack was about to take New York by storm when Shane’s father had dropped the bomb. He’d knocked up Jack’s mother twenty-odd years ago, leaving her no choice but to hop the night boat to Liverpool and raise her kid the best way she could. The eerie similarities to his own situation had gripped Shane’s thirteen-year-old psyche. John “Packy” Sullivan hadn’t married Shane’s mother either and only acknowledged Shane when she died five years after he was born. The old bastard was no more interested in Jack than he was in Shane, at least not until he saw an opening. An opportunity to make an easy Euro.
    His father had laughed about how much of a pushover Jack was, how he’d forked over the cash without a word, but Shane knew there was more to the story. Not long after, when deep in his cups, a version closer to the truth emerged. Jack had paid up on the condition his father never showed his weathered, whiskey-pored face again. A bitter and twisted man, Packy had corkscrewed the knife into Shane’s heart, making it clear that Jack wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the man or his no-goodnik family. Any hope Shane harbored about finding a real connection with one of the men who shared his genetic code had died during that revealing conversation.
    Yes, their father had sullied any possibility for a heartfelt union of brother and brother. Every interview Jack had given after he surrendered his TV shows had told Shane the same thing. The man didn’t appreciate being used for his fame. An ex-girlfriend had sold him out to the tabloids and there was no end to the hangers-on looking for a piece of him. He never came out and said it directly, but Shane read between the lines how jaded Jack had been by that whole scene, what a relief it had been to get out of it and make something real with Lili. To get back to what he cared about—the food. His real family. If Shane spoke up, Jack would see shades of Packy Sullivan all over again. Just another guy on the make. Another user with an outstretched hand.
    Shane didn’t need Jack’s help to succeed and he sure as hell wasn’t here to ask for a handout. He had traveled the world, worked with some of the best chefs on the planet. He had earned his kitchen stripes, and damn, he deserved his place on Jack’s brigade. So what the hell was he doing here trying to prove something to a guy who, even if he knew Shane existed, wouldn’t give a flying fart about him?
    Simply put, he was curious. Packy was dead now, which made Jack Kilroy Shane’s only living relative and Shane interested enough to put his life on hold for a while because what he didn’t know was likely to kill him. He had to know what Jack was like without all the noise of the tabloids and interviews.
    He hadn’t reckoned on Cara, but then that was his father’s dominant genes coming up trumps. Shane didn’t look like the man, but apparently he had inherited his worst traits. The drunken, selfish, impulsive ones. Once he’d sorted out the Cara problem, confirmed his brother was an arsehole, and made the wedding cake to end