Some Like It Hot (7 page)

“Well, bye, see you tomorrow, Ms. Jansen,” Win chirped abruptly, his delighted gaze darting back and forth between them as he grabbed Beck by the sleeve and started towing him toward the door. “Danny, take your time. No rush!”

Danny winced. The little shit must’ve watched
Yentl
on the plane or something.

And then he was alone with Eva Jansen for the second time in a single hour, and honest to God he wasn’t sure his heart could take the stress.

“I like that,” she said, running the tip of her pretty, pink tongue along her plump Cupid’s bow of a bottom lip. “It suits you.”

Dazed, wondering if he’d missed something crucial to the conversation while zoning out on the many uses to which he’d be happy to put her tongue, Danny said, “What does?”

“Danny.”

How did she manage to make the name he’d been called since kindergarten sound like pure, filthy sex?

Shutting down that thought, hard, Danny attempted to get his brain back on track. “Thanks for being so cool about the fight. We’re here to compete, period. Everything else is just meaningless distraction.”

Arching her brow and giving him a who-are-you-trying-to-convince look, Eva said, “This wasn’t the first time Ryan Larousse crossed a line. But he’s a brilliant chef, so up till now we’ve put up with it.”

Slinging that purse up onto her shoulder, she sauntered past him, hips twitching and fucking mesmerizing in that tight little skirt.

“A couple pieces of advice?” she offered languidly over her shoulder. “Keep your eye on Ryan. He’s a prick, but he
is
talented, and after today he’ll be very motivated to kick your ass in the competition.”

“Already planning on it,” Danny said. “What was the other piece of advice?”

Flashing him a sultry grin that made his heart kick at  his rib cage, she said, “Don’t discount meaningless distractions—sometimes they’re just what the doctor ordered.”

And then she was gone, leaving a cloud of perfume and a very conflicted pastry chef behind her.

“Which one is Ryan Larousse again?” Max asked out of the corner of his mouth as they trooped into the kitchen, fumbling with the wireless microphones the production assistant in the hall had handed out. “Man, I can’t believe you guys got into a scrap. You should’ve waited for me!”

“It wasn’t fun,” Danny said for what felt like the hundredth time. “It was stupid and pointless and could’ve gotten us disqualified from the competition.”

What he held back, for the hundredth time, was the observation that Max would have been there if he could tear himself away from sucking face with his new girlfriend long enough to actually lead the team he was supposedly in charge of.

Or maybe Jules was supposed to be in charge. Who could keep track, at this point? Danny felt the Rising Star Chef title, the competition, his family’s restaurant, and his father’s legacy slipping out of their grasp, and while he was clinging desperately with his fingernails, Max and Jules were billing and cooing in their love nest like a pair of mated swans.

Or something.

It was possible Danny had some issues to resolve, once this whole thing was over.
But see?
he wanted to say.
I’m a fucking professional, damn it. I put my personal shit aside until the cooking is done, because that is what it means to be a freaking chef.

And people thought pastry chefs were wimps. They had no clue.

“Aw, Dan-the-Man. You never would’ve let that happen to us,” Max said, with his usual cheery disregard for the limits of Danny’s supposed superpowers.

Jules gave him a sympathetic look, but before she could say anything Danny gritted his teeth around a smile. “Maybe we’d better get everyone situated? I think the judges are going to be in soon to talk to us about the first challenge.”

“Good idea,” Jules said, standing taller. “Guys, huddle up. Max?”

Winslow bounded over like a young basketballer moving down center court, Beck following more slowly. Beck had been slow, in general, since the fight the day before, and it had Danny worried. Not about lingering injuries or anything—Danny hadn’t seen much of the fight for himself, but by the time he’d stepped onto the scene, Beck had been pretty much wiping the floor with that snot-nosed band of jumped-up wannabe badasses.

But Beck seemed to lack his usual laser focus; the impenetrable fortress of calm surrounding him had definitely been penetrated.

As Max started his inspirational speech about what a great team they were and how much it meant to him to get to cook alongside such talented blah blah blah, Danny swept the other teams gathering in the kitchen with a critical gaze.

There were the Limestone guys, competing for the Midwest region, leaning against the stainless-steel countertops along the back wall like a gang of roughneck kids staking out a street corner. Their various black eyes, cut lips, and bruised cheekbones only added to the look. They had the home-field advantage, and they knew it.

And it was not nothing, that advantage. As Danny took in the massive size of the kitchen, which he hadn’t really had a chance to do yesterday, what with one thing and another, he realized how helpful it would’ve been to have familiarized themselves with the layout.

Much less to have cooked in it every day for years—to know it better than their own apartments, the way the Midwest Team did.

Keeping one ear open for the pauses in Max’s speechifying that might signal a cue to nod or cheer, Danny studied the wide, rectangular room. It was set up with five rows of freestanding prep tables, one row for each team. Five large white cutting boards per table interrupted the spotless gleam of stainless steel.

The back wall, behind the lounging Midwest Team, was all corner-to-corner convection ovens, black and serious looking. A bank of refrigerators occupied the wall to Danny’s left, while a line of gas cooking ranges under enormous ventilation hoods marched along the wall to his right.

An opening in the back right corner must lead to the dry-goods pantry, where things like sugar, flour, honey, and rice lived, and the walk-in coolers that housed eggs, milk, proteins, and veg.

Three of the Lunden’s Tavern kitchen could fit in the main room alone, easy. Maybe four if you counted the pantry and walk-in areas.

Danny’s guys, used to the complicated choreography of moving with one another in the cramped confines of a Manhattan restaurant kitchen, weren’t going to know what to do with all the extra elbow room. He worried that it would be a major stumbling block. He worried that they’d get lost, lose their drive and intensity, in the open air of the high-ceilinged room.

But most of all, he worried that the unblinking lens of the video camera glaring from the front of the room would spell disaster.

So much could go wrong. Danny pressed his lips together and rolled his shoulders, cracking the tension from his neck. He’d just have to make sure to keep everyone together, pointed in the right direction, and going strong. The same thing he did every night at dinner service back home, basically, only this time in front of three renowned celebrity judges, a camera crew, and the woman whose flashing gray eyes and delicate floral scent haunted him.

That perfume she wore was the only delicate thing about her, Danny mused, finally letting his gaze fall on the one person he’d been studiously avoiding ever since entering the room.

Eva Jansen stood at the front of the kitchen in deep consultation with a schlubby guy with a mustache, wearing a wrinkled short-sleeved button down, and a headset. She’d already been here when the teams started filing into the competition kitchen, giving marching orders to that slight, willowy assistant of hers, Drew something with the black-rimmed Ray-Ban glasses and even blacker hair.

Danny remembered Drew from the regional finals, because Win had struck up a friendship with the guy. Maybe more than a friendship, Danny remembered thinking, although Win denied it now, said it was all casual, just for fun, shrug, no Big deal.

Eyes sliding from assistant to boss, Danny watched the way Eva moved, purposeful and powerful in a dress red enough—and tight enough—to stop the traffic on Michigan Avenue.

With the memory of that superheated kiss playing through his mind, Danny had a hard time understanding how to turn anything that felt like this into casual fun.

Fun? Hell yes. Casual? Not unless the definition had recently expanded to include the unquenchable desire for more—more touch, more kisses, more skin, more breathy little noises panted in his ear. More of Eva.

And that was exactly the problem, wasn’t it? Danny had no idea how to be casual, but he suspected that when it came to matters of the bedroom, Eva “The Diva” Jansen was rarely anything but.

Not that she looked all that casual at the moment. That body-skimming dress was cinched in with a shiny black belt that matched her shiny black shoes with the pointy toes and even pointier heel. With her glossy dark hair and flawless face, she looked ready for that camera to zoom in on her at any second.

Although she should probably take a minute to replace the aggravated scowl with one of those big, toothy smiles people on TV were so fond of. She had nice teeth, Danny had reason to know.

He didn’t have time to consider what might be going on with the television guy to put that wrinkle between her perfectly arched brows, because at that moment Max reached the conclusion of his motivational rah-rahing, and Danny had to tune back in long enough to clap him on the back and shake hands with everyone.

“Yeah, what he said,” Danny put in, with a wide smile. “We rock. We got this. Let’s go out there and show them New York City is home to the best chefs in the world!”

Max blinked. “Or … I could’ve saved my breath with the ten-minute cheerleading session and just gone with that. Thanks, Danny.”

“But it’s not in the bag yet,” Jules warned. Always a worrier, his Jules, Danny thought fondly, before Max looped an arm over her shoulders and Danny remembered, oh yeah, she wasn’t really his Jules anymore. Not that she ever had been.

“Aw, Jules,” Winslow whined, nearly levitating out of his sneakers with excitement. “I’m all pumped now, can’t we save the reality check for later, after we kick some ass?” Danny shot him a tense, narrow look, prompting Win to hold his hands up in surrender and add, “Culinarily speaking, of course. Metaphorical, hypothetical, allegorical ass. Whatever—not the real deal. Because fighting is all kinds of wrong and violence solves nothing, and all that jazz.”

Danny relaxed back onto his heels, glad Win remembered their little chat from the night before. It was one thing to defend his guys against outsiders, but when it came right down to it Danny wasn’t putting up with any nonsense that might get them kicked out. He just couldn’t have it. And now both Beck and Win understood why.

“No, reality can’t wait,” Jules said, impatience in every line of her tall, athletic body. “This is the big times, and we’re up against the best of the best from around the country. Come on, what do we know about them?”

Under normal circumstances, Jules Cavanaugh would’ve made sure the Lunden’s team did a background check on its competitors that would rival the best FBI profilers. She’d always been a big believer in knowledge as a source of power; she loved information, learning knew things, and putting them to good use.

In the weeks since the Lunden’s crew had been named the East Coast Team, however, she’d fallen down on the job a little. If Danny were forced to guess—and if it weren’t a gag-inducing image—he’d have to say that his old friend was probably learning a lot of new stuff and putting it to use. It was just that she was mostly learning new ways to make Max even more ridiculously smitten than he already was.

Ever since the other chef contestants had been announced, Danny had intended to look up more about them than the widely publicized names of the restaurants they hailed from, but in the frantic rush to get Lunden’s Tavern staffed for the absence of its core group of chefs, there hadn’t been time.

Family lore held that Max had inherited their father, Gus’s, passion and drive, while Danny took after their mother, Nina, whose infallible judgment about people made her the family’s de facto head of hiring.

With Max and Jules distracted, Gus out of commission after recent heart surgery, and Nina spending more time than usual taking care of him—to the extent the grouchy bastard would let her—most of the prep for this adventure had fallen to Danny.

Yeah. Even in his head it sounded like a lame excuse for not knowing more about the chefs they were about to pit their skills against.

Shame licking at his insides, Danny scrutinized the other teams arrayed against the rows of tables.

“The row behind us has got to be the Southwest Team,” Win muttered out of the corner of his mouth, eyeing the colorfully striped fabric of their knife rolls and the sun baked tan of their skin.

Danny nodded in agreement. “All I know is that their restaurant’s called Maize, they’re from Santa Fe, and Paulina Santiago is the head chef.”

The only woman on the Southwest Team was short and plump, with a pleasant, round face and kind eyes at odds with the battle-scarred thickness of her broad fingers as they competently arranged her knives along the side of her cutting board.

In a sudden flash, Danny wondered if this was the woman whose name Beck had been unable to bear hearing trash-talked by Ryan Larousse. But a quick study of Beck’s dark, impassive face made Danny think Paulina Santiago wasn’t the reason behind the fight. Although, the way Beck stood, with his feet apart and his arms crossed, he did sort of appear to be bracing for impact.

“I know the guy heading up Team South,” Max said, nodding at a tall, lanky chef with a buzzed head and striking blue eyes standing two rows back. “Ike Bryar. He’s fierce, I went up against him once in a head-to-head at the Edinburgh Food and Wine Festival. Good guy. Good knife skills.”

In kitchen lingo, that was almost redundant.

Danny considered the other players on the southern squad. Couldn’t be anyone on that team who’d lit that fire under Beck—no female chefs filled out their ranks.

The fourth row of tables, in front of the bored, leaning Midwest crew, was empty.

“Guess the West Coasties are late,” Jules observed. She had her eyes on the wall clock ticking down the minutes to eight am, their appointed kitchen call time, so she missed Beck’s minute flinch.

But Danny’d been watching for it, hard enough and close enough that he jumped like a popcorn kernel hitting a hot pan when it happened.

Okay,
he told himself.
Calm down. This is good. Now at least you know what direction the storm is rolling in from.

He snuck a peek at Eva Jansen, who was also watching the clock. Making a little pout with her mouth—Jesus, was that the best she could do with a frown on those plumply curved lips of hers?—she checked the time against the slim watch on her wrist.

The click of her heels was muffled against the cork flooring as she strode to the center of the oasis of empty kitchen space between the camera and the chefs’ tables.

“Does anyone know where the West Coast Team might be?”

A nasty chorus of laughs from the back of the room had Danny tensing right along with Beck and Winslow.

“Maybe their team captain had a … rough night.”

Danny didn’t need to turn around to know that sly, insinuating voice belonged to Ryan Larousse. For one thing, he slurred the
p
in
captain
a little, as if his mouth were too sore to make the sound properly.

For another, he’d seen that exact same look of exasperated impatience on Eva’s face when she was dealing with her star chef yesterday.

Instead of addressing Larousse, however, she put her hands on her hips and scanned the room. “Does anyone have anything
useful
to contribute?”

A clatter at the kitchen door had every eye—including the camera—turning to catch the entrance of a ragtag band of chefs unlike any Danny had ever encountered.

Most kitchen crews were rough around the edges. They tended to be made up of outsiders and outcasts, people who didn’t make good office drones and didn’t care too much about conforming to “normal.” Of the chef contestants standing in the Limestone kitchen at that very moment, at least ninety percent of them sported body art of some kind.