King of the Kitchen (7 page)

At least, it didn’t matter to Beck. Even though he’d needled Duncan about his lack of formal culinary education, Duncan had a pedigree. He wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t a line cook, no matter how much Beck liked to imply he was.

In fact, Beck was a bit jealous of Duncan’s education. He’d never even considered college, not seriously, because he knew Christian expected him to attend culinary school. He’d spent a year working insane hours as every kind of prep chef imaginable in Christian’s kitchens before he’d been deemed ready for the next level and promptly enrolled in his uncle’s alma mater, Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Beck would have preferred studying at the Culinary Institute of America, which was almost as prestigious, but Christian had been footing the bill, and he’d shot that down before Beck had even printed an application.

Beck knew he allowed his uncle to have too much influence over his life. The few close confidants he had told him that again and again. But as much as he chafed under Christian’s expectations, Beck wanted to be there. He wanted to work with him, with the goal of working
beside
him someday, where he could substantially change the King empire.

Although he hated most of what they made on the show, working on
King of the Kitchen
gave him a platform to educate America about food, and he loved that. And yes, most often he was cooking things that weren’t his passion, but every once in a while he actually got to do some good, like not cutting Felix Cartwright off when he’d started talking about GMOs, the way Christian would have if he’d been hosting. Beck had taken some heat for that, yes, but it was worth it. Just like it was worth it whenever he got to cook one of his own recipes on the show.

What would it be like, Beck wondered, to have Vincent as a father and mentor? He was committed to classic cuisine, but from what Beck had read, Vincent had never balked at the unconventional way Duncan approached food. Duncan’s passion for molecular gastronomy was worlds away from Vincent’s technical and precise French cooking, but Vincent had nothing but praise for his son’s innovations when he was interviewed in the press.

Beck hadn’t realized Duncan was the chef from the Sunrise Cafe until last night, but he’d followed Duncan’s professional career from a distance for years. Truth be told, he was envious of Duncan’s ability to fade into the shadows when he wanted and cook at a greasy spoon like the Sunrise Cafe. Beck had no such opportunities; he was always on, always watched by both Christian and the culinary world. Beck had expectations to live up to, and heaven help him if he didn’t. He couldn’t even imagine having the freedom to cook the way Duncan did, from manning cooktops in a diner to experimenting with molecular gastronomy in ways that both puzzled and delighted even the harshest critics. If a dish Duncan was presenting got a bad review—and with the niche he cooked in, it happened more often than not—Duncan shrugged it off with a smile, leaving the culinary world admiring his resilience and his dedication to experimentation.

But if Beck got a bad review, it was completely different. The stakes were higher for him, not only because Christian was his boss and mentor. Beck didn’t cook innovative food like Duncan did; Christian wanted the King empire to focus on the classics, veering modern for trends but only after they were time-tested and general-public approved. There were no solid sauces or juxtapositions of temperatures or flavors in the food Beck cooked. Not that he’d want there to be. He could appreciate Duncan’s ingenuity and the true talent it took to come up with the off-the-wall things Duncan made in the kitchen when he was indulging in his molecular gastronomy, but that wasn’t Beck’s cup of tea. Neither were the foods Beck did get to cook, though. Duncan had called Brix’s menu boring and predictable, and he’d been right.

Beck didn’t necessarily want to use liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze sauces or experiment with chemical reactions as a means of cooking food. He was happy to leave that sort of kitchen alchemy to Duncan and his colleagues. But Beck did want to cook innovative food. He wanted to be at the forefront of cuisine, blazing a trail away from trendy, ridiculous dishes and toward actual food. He’d never categorized himself, since it seemed pointless to attach himself to a specific food movement when he knew full well Christian would never allow him to do anything outside the norm, but Beck did have a special affection for the Slow Food movement.

When Cartwright had expounded against GMOs on the show, Beck had silently been cheering him on. He didn’t like cooking with genetically modified ingredients, and he avoided them whenever possible. Christian hated what he called Beck’s “micromanaging,” but whenever Beck started up a new restaurant in the King empire, he always paid special attention to sourcing produce as locally as he could. If he was truly opening his own place, Beck would serve as many locally grown products as he could, from organic vegetables to artisan cheeses, meats, and breads. Food was meant to be savored slowly, and Beck firmly believed it should be cooked that way, too, with reverence and care and attention to bringing out the natural flavors, not covering them up with heavy sauces and seasonings.

The ping of a new e-mail had Beck looking up at his laptop, grimacing when he realized he’d gotten yet another message from Christian. This time it had been important enough to come from Christian himself, without the help of his secretary, which couldn’t mean anything good. Beck opened it, wincing as if he were hearing the words in his uncle’s scathingly condescending voice. In a few terse sentences, Christian managed to get his point across very clearly. Beck hesitated before following the link to the popular online magazine his uncle had included. It was a well-respected site, which meant anything it reported would be taken seriously.

Jocular rivalry was one thing, but Beck had no doubt his and Duncan’s exchange had crossed the line—he’d known it when it had been happening, and he was pretty sure Duncan had too. That’s why they had both ended up apologizing. With Duncan’s general good humor—toward anyone other than Beck, that was—and big cow eyes, Beck could tell the apology he’d gotten from Duncan hadn’t been knee-jerk. Duncan had an incredibly expressive face, and guilt had been written all over it after he’d landed the sharpest jabs.

Those apologies hadn’t made it into the article, though a few quotes from their hostile banter had. Christian was demanding to know whether or not they were true—and threatening to unleash the legal team if they weren’t. But Beck knew they were without glancing at them a second time. He came off as an incredible ass, and Duncan didn’t fare much better. The most damning part, however, was the accompanying photo, which had been captioned “Food fight? Culinary empire heirs nearly come to blows at Brix opening.”

The picture wasn’t from a camera phone. It didn’t have any of the grainy blurriness of the others Beck had seen; instead, it was professional in its clarity, probably snapped by the web site’s photographer, who had been on hand to cover the opening. Beck supposed he should have expected this. There had been several professional photographers at Brix last night; he doubted this would be the only publication to run with the story.

And whereas the camera phone shots had been from odd angles and blessedly fuzzy, this one left no question that Beck’s hand on Duncan had not been friendly. The picture was so clear Beck could count the wrinkles on Duncan’s sleeve if he wanted to, and there was no way anyone who looked at it would think they were friends exchanging banter the way most of the gossip sites had played their confrontation.

From the tight expression on his face, Beck looked about ten seconds away from hitting Duncan, though the slighter man looked every bit as irritated and angry. They were relatively matched in height, but Beck had to have twenty pounds of muscle on Duncan, so even though they were equally culpable, Beck was the one who came out looking like the bully.

“Fabulous,” Beck hissed when his phone rang on the counter. It was either Christian or Lindsay—everyone else he knew would still be sleeping off their hangovers, like he should be doing. Deciding that knowing his fate wouldn’t make it any harder to take, he answered without looking at the caller ID.

“Beck Douglas.”

There was a muffled laugh on the other end, then a beat of silence. “Of course you answer your phone like that. Why wouldn’t you? You’re Beck Douglas, after all. Why would you bother with a greeting or pleasantries like the rest of us mere mortals?”

Beck blew out a breath, his stomach jumping with something that felt perilously close to excitement.

“Do I want to know how you got my number, Duncan?”

“Beck, you do realize we share a lot of the same friends, right? I was there at the opening as a guest of several of them, remember?”

Beck swallowed, uncomfortably reminded of Duncan’s jab from the night before. “I thought I didn’t have friends. They’re all just employees, right?”

Duncan made a frustrated sound, and Beck heard him muffle the receiver with something and hold a brief but fierce whispered conversation in the background. Beck couldn’t tell what Duncan was saying or who he was talking to, but it wasn’t a pleasant exchange.

“Stop sulking and come to brunch,” Duncan said when he’d lifted whatever was muffling the phone. “We need to talk about how we’re going to deal with all this media attention.”

“I wasn’t aware we were going to deal with it at all,” Beck sniped, inexplicably stung that Duncan was only inviting him to brunch so they could talk about how to salvage their reputations as media darlings.

“Well, we are. Campbell thinks it’s best if we talk to each other before we talk to my father and your uncle, and I agree.”

Beck frowned. Duncan couldn’t mean
his
Campbell, the Campbell who had been his best friend since they’d been in diapers. He’d know if Campbell was friends with Duncan, wouldn’t he? He’d complained about Duncan to Campbell enough times to have given Campbell the chance to pipe up with that information.

“Campbell? Campbell Grange?”

“How many Campbells do you know? It’s not exactly a common name. Yes, that Campbell,” Duncan said, exasperation clear in his tone. “He’s already heard from Christian about a dozen times since he’s been here—shut up, Campbell, it’s not really an exaggeration—and my father has left me about four messages, all of which I’ve deleted without listening to them. Campbell says we need a strategy, and I trust Campbell.”

“You know
my
Campbell?”

“Oh my God, Beck, yes! Campbell Grange, middle name Allen. Employed by the King Corporation as a producer and business analyst but spends most of his time down in the test kitchens flirting with the sous-chef, Joanna.”

Beck heard Campbell’s unmistakable growl, followed by a sharp squeal from Duncan.

“That was uncalled for,” Duncan muttered, presumably at Campbell. Beck could sympathize; he and Campbell had both grown up with Lindsay, spiteful pincher extraordinaire, and Campbell had learned retribution at her knee. His pinches were brutal.

“So let me get this straight. You want me to come have brunch with you and Campbell, who is somehow a close enough friend of yours that he’s already at your place on a Saturday morning, and talk about what we’re going to do about these articles?”

“I’ll have you know I am Campbell’s top choice for a dog sitter when he goes out of town. Snuggles stays with me whenever Campbell has to traipse across the country checking the books at all of Christian’s restaurants, which he’d do well to remember is
often
, so he needs to stay on my good side.” Duncan paused, and Beck assumed he was staring Campbell down, probably still smarting over the pinch. “Also, it’s not morning. It’s almost one thirty. And he’s here because he always has breakfast with me on Saturdays, even when we’re eating it in the afternoon because we got horribly, horribly drunk the night before.”

“Wait, Campbell has a
dog
?”

Duncan sputtered incredulously, and Beck let him hang for a beat longer before he laughed. Teasing Duncan came so naturally, Beck found it hard to resist. Rendering the usually talkative Duncan speechless was a bonus.

“Yeah, you got me,” Duncan said, sounding resigned. Beck could hear Campbell laughing in the background. “Just come over. I’m going to text you my address, and you’re going to show up in forty-five minutes. Otherwise the frittata is going to be overcooked, and I’m going to be even crankier than I already am.”

Chapter FIVE

“HE’S ON
his way.”

“I told you he’d come,” Campbell said, snorting with laughter when Duncan’s only reply was to stick his tongue out at him.

Duncan hadn’t been exaggerating when he told Beck Campbell came for breakfast almost every Saturday. They’d met through Corbin three years ago, bonding over a deep and abiding love of breakfast foods. Campbell was one of the only people he’d met who, upon hearing he enjoyed working as a line cook in a diner, had truly understood why. Campbell wasn’t a chef by any means, but he did love to cook. He’d nodded, sagely said “eggs are awesome,” and promptly been named Duncan’s friend for life.

They usually ate at Duncan’s, but only because he bemoaned how poorly stocked Campbell’s kitchen was. It wasn’t Duncan’s fault if he was accustomed to certain luxuries, like the restaurant-grade espresso machine he was currently petting fondly as it brewed, while Campbell looked at him like he was insane. Not that petting appliances was anywhere outside the norm for Duncan; Campbell really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Even though the majority of Duncan’s friends were chefs, Campbell was the only one he allowed to cook in his kitchen. No one else understood that Duncan stepping back and letting someone else manhandle his beloved pots and pans was a privilege, but Campbell always treated them with the respect they deserved. He was also the only person other than himself who Duncan trusted to make him a fried egg, which in Duncan’s estimation was just about the most perfect food on the planet—if it was done right. Sadly, even most of the Michelin-rated chefs he knew couldn’t consistently get the yolk to achieve that moment of not-quite-a-liquid, not-quite-a-solid Zen, but Campbell could.