Hot Under Pressure (7 page)

Northern California’s growing season extended well into November, and the vendors’ tables were piled high with tail-end-of-summer goodies, mounds of sun-warmed nectarines and opulent globes of Italian eggplant glowing deeply purple in their baskets. The air smelled exciting, full of the ripe scent of fresh fruits and vegetables, the rich soil still clinging to them.

Beck’s mind was conditioned now to see the potential in ingredients like this. He wandered closer to a forager’s stall, where a blackboard easel sported amazingly detailed chalk drawings of chanterelles and maitakes.

Mentally calculating the meatiness of a sautéed mushroom against the delicate brine of a seared diver scallop, Beck scrolled through possible accompaniments. A ginger butter sauce? Or maybe something with more acid, like a brown butter and lemon vinaigrette. He put out a thoughtful finger to the overflowing basket of grayish brown fungus, relishing the grit of the dirt under his fingertips.

“When did you start liking mushrooms?”

Chapter 6

Beck froze with one hand outstretched, his broad, blunt fingertip pressed to the smoothly rounded silken head of a dark portobello.

The chill brilliance of afternoon sunlight reflecting off of San Francisco Bay whited out his vision for a long moment—or maybe that was the swift blow to the head of hearing Skye Gladwell’s sweet, bright voice directly behind him.

Turning to face her, Beck steeled himself for the sight he was pretty sure he’d never get used to: Skye as a woman, not a girl. Her hair was a cloud of strawberry-blonde curls around her pretty, heart-shaped face—so familiar and at the same time, so changed.

The face he’d once known better than his own was the face of a stranger now.

Still, it didn’t take the familiarity of years to read the mocking note in her casual tone.

“I learned to like a lot of things, the last ten years,” Beck replied. “Learned to hate a lot of things, too.”

It wasn’t hard to keep his voice even and calm. He’d had lots of practice, in way worse circumstances than standing in front of a vegetable vendor’s tent, staring down the first person he’d ever loved.

His wife. Who wanted a divorce.

Good thing he didn’t love her anymore, or that would probably hurt.

Curiosity sparked in Skye’s changeable blue-green eyes, colors shifting like waves out at sea, but she didn’t ask what else he’d learned.

She’d changed, too.

One swift glance was enough to take her in from head to toe. Clearly, Skye still favored comfort over style. Her ankle-length, gypsyish skirt was the color of denim but made of something much softer. She had a sweatshirt tied haphazardly around her curvy waist, rucking up the hem of her loose, flowing top and exposing a tantalizing sliver of tanned, smooth belly. She shifted and silver flashed in the sun, catching his eye.

Belly-button ring
, his stunned mind processed, even as his mouth dried out and his heart rate increased to battlestation conditions.

A little mental discipline, please.

Forcing his mind away from the image of himself dropping to his knees and tonguing that new, taunting bit of jewelry and the warm, salt-sweet body beneath it, Beck studied the rest of her, taking in the details he hadn’t had time to assess at the relay challenge the day before.

Her cheeks were pink with more than whatever emotion swamped her at the sight of the husband she no longer wanted, and her red-gold curls were escaping from the knot on top of her head in wild corkscrews. The fact that she had the sweatshirt at all when it was easily seventy-five degrees in the sun …

“Just come off the ferry?” he asked casually, and didn’t even try to keep himself from enjoying the surprised dilation of her pupils.

“How did you—?” She faltered, glancing over her shoulder to the large transport craft still bobbing gently on the water. Swaying to her left made the bangle bracelets around her wrists jingle like bells. “Yeah, I’m meeting my team in Chinatown.”

Wait a minute. “Your restaurant is in Berkeley.”

She lifted her chin, “Queenie Pie Café,” she said. “Corner of Shattuck and Bancroft.”

Beck took a deliberate step to his right, more for show than because she actually impeded his view. Yep, he’d been right.

The orange lettering on the side of the boat spelled out “Golden Gate Ferry.”

“That ferry didn’t come from Berkeley,” he said. “The Golden Gate line makes runs from…”

If her little chin got any higher, she’d be staring straight up at the clouds. “From Sausalito,” she confirmed. “That’s right. I’m living there now.”

In spite of Beck’s personal vow not to try to predict emotional reactions, he was still surprised by the sudden wash of disappointment that soaked through him.

Sausalito. The quaint, picturesque artist colony where Skye’s free-spirited, radical parents lived, painted, wrote political rants disguised as plays, and kept their daughter gently but firmly ground under their vegan shoes.

Skye had hated Sausalito, had danced a wild, spinning circle around their first, tiny, crappy apartment over a grocery store in Chinatown, swearing she’d never go back. And now, here she was, a Sausalito resident—even though it meant an hour and a half commute every morning and night.

Maybe Skye hadn’t changed as much as he thought, if she was still living her life to please her parents.

*   *   *

Goddess of the stars, could this get any worse?

Feeling the tickle of her stupid red hair frizzing around her face, Skye impatiently yanked her hands over her head and tucked what she could back into the rubber band securing her bun.

She was windblown, exhausted from the trip home from Chicago, pissed about the loss yesterday, stressed after dealing with her parents on about three hours of sleep, and now this.

Henry Beck, standing here before her, in the huge, handsome, judgmental flesh.

He looked … big. Had he always been so tall? So broad through the shoulders? The heather gray of his cotton T-shirt stretched taut across his chest, his biceps straining the sleeves. The baggy fit of his jeans did nothing to hide the leanness of his hips or the strength of thighs.

And she might not have a good view of it at the moment, but Skye could draw up a mental image of his deliciously tight, muscular backside just by closing her eyes.

He was harder than her memories, though, in a lot of ways. There were creases in his angular face, lines beside his dark eyes that hadn’t been there ten years ago. Probably from squinting into the blazing sun reflecting off an ocean on the other side of the world.

Henry’s eyes, so dark brown they were almost black, had always been impenetrable. Impossible to read, unless he wanted to let you in on what he was thinking. Which was almost never, with most people, but Skye used to have an all-access pass to the inner workings of Henry Beck’s brain.

Not anymore. She had to remember he wasn’t her Henry any longer—he was Beck.

When she’d first seen him again, in that competition kitchen in Chicago’s Gold Coast Arms Hotel, she’d nearly been sucked right into the black hole of those deep, shadowy eyes.

She’d stuttered and stammered, stumbled all over herself and acted like a complete fool. As per usual. While Henry—no, Beck—had stood and watched, as calm and impassive as if they’d never met.

Never laughed together. Never kissed. Never promised to be there for each other, no matter what.

As if he’d never abandoned her, left her alone in their studio apartment with nothing but a check that covered the next month’s rent, a shiny new insurance card, and a baby on the way.

Swallowing down the familiar, careworn surge of grief, Skye reminded herself she didn’t need Henry Beck and his Navy salary and benefits to get by anymore.

And she had living, breathing proof that he wasn’t the only man in the world who could ever bring himself to care about her.

Bringing an image of Jeremiah, with his dark blond hair and twinkling green eyes, to the forefront of her mind calmed her down considerably.

Holding her head high enough to put a crick in her neck, Skye told herself she didn’t give a damn what Beck thought about her living situation. He’d given up the right to comment on it a decade ago.

“So how are your parents, anyway?”

It was amazing how quickly it came back to her, that old sense of caution whenever the subject of her family came up with Beck. “They’re fine,” she told him. “Peter’s got a new play up at the Royal, and Annika’s experimenting with plastics. You know, business as usual.”

He nodded and that was it. Awkward silence dropped over them like a blanket, muffling the sounds of the market. For pretty much the first time ever, Skye wished she wore a watch, so she could check it and have an excuse to get out of this awful conversation.

If she stayed here much longer, and she’d be in serious danger of letting Beck see everything she hoped to keep hidden—namely, that he’d ripped her heart out when he left, and she’d never quite managed to get it back.

“Sounds like nothing has changed.”

His voice was flat, heavy with the weight of a hundred arguments, but even through the blankness, Skye could hear his contempt.

“Not true,” she countered, tossing her head in another attempt to get the wind-whipped hair out of her mouth. “I’m ten years older, ten years wiser, with ten years of restaurant experience under my belt. And no matter what our history is, I am going to wipe the floor with you in this competition.”

The black arches of his brows shot up toward his hairline. “You
have
changed. You didn’t used to be so direct. Or so competitive.”

Yeah, well, I didn’t used to be responsible for the livelihoods of an entire staff, not to mention my parents. And I didn’t used to know that there was any way to be happy without you.

But all she said was, “Get used to it. We’re almost to the finals, Beck.” Unable to help the wave of excitement that crashed over her head when she thought about it, Skye grinned. “I mean, can you believe it? We started out competing against four other teams, and now it’s just your team, my team…”

“And that asshole, Ryan Larousse,” Beck growled.

Skye’s thrill evaporated like fog over the bay. “Can’t you let that go?”

Shock erased the blank expression from Beck’s face. “He tried to trip you when you were carrying a pot full of scalding hot liquid.”

Wincing, Skye pointed out, “But he apologized! I’m sure he just didn’t think his actions through. He didn’t really mean to hurt me—he was trying to get a rise out of you. And he succeeded!”

Beck’s mouth firmed into a hard, straight line. It was the look that told Skye, without words, that nothing she said was going to change his mind. “I won’t apologize for protecting you.”

And Skye felt it again, that strange, conflicting welter of emotions she’d thought long behind her—the softening of tenderness spiced with gratitude bumping up against the tense, coiled unhappiness at being the cause of violence in the world.

Not only generalized, capital-V Violence, either, but violence done and risked by this familiar stranger standing in front of her.

Well, no more. “I’m not asking you to apologize,” she said, dragging calm into her chest along with a cleansing breath. “Because I know that would be a waste of time. But I am asking you to respect my wishes. Once the final round of the Rising Star Chef competition starts, I don’t care what Ryan Larousse pulls, you stay out of it. I’m a big girl, Beck. We might technically be married, but that’s just paperwork. You’re not my husband in any way that matters. And it’s been a long time since I needed a street-tough kid in my corner to fight my battles for me. I meant what I said yesterday. I want that divorce, Beck.”

His expression of cool detachment never faltered. “No argument from me,” he said, without any inflection at all, and suddenly the tiny, faltering, brainless spark of hope Skye had harbored collided with a rage she thought she’d long ago come to terms with, igniting a stinging, burning fire in her chest.

“No, no arguments,” she agreed viciously. “God forbid you should show enough emotion to fight for what you want.”

“I thought you hated fighting.” Beck arched one brow. “At least, that’s what you said when I enlisted.”

“What I hated was being alone in every fight. What I hated was never knowing how you felt—about anything! I hated…”
That you were leaving me
. Skye stopped herself before she could say it, breathing harshly.

There it was again. Hate. She didn’t want to be someone who threw that word around lightly.

Trying for calm, she said, “This is pointless. You never understood, never even tried—you’re not going to start getting it now, after ten years apart.”

“Why do you want this divorce? I mean, why now?” he asked suddenly. “You could’ve brought this up back in Chicago.”

Because last week in Chicago, she hadn’t gotten that cryptic email from Jeremiah, promising her a brand-new future.

Panic buzzed through her. Should she tell Beck the truth? Would that make him more likely to give her what she wanted?

No way. Beck didn’t get any more of her than he’d already had.

“I don’t understand why we’re even having this discussion,” she hedged. “I’m trying to make it easier for you to do what you do best. Walk away.”

Her words dropped into the pause between them like ice into a glass of water. When Beck spoke again, his voice was dangerously soft, and Skye tensed all over before she’d even registered what he was saying.

“You know what? No.”

Her jaw dropped. “No? No, what? No divorce? You don’t get to say no!”

“And yet, here I am, my mouth shaping the word and … huh, yeah, seems like my vocal cords are working okay, because no. Uh uh. Forget it.”

Shock tightened her throat until she was the one struggling for words. “But you … you left me! A decade ago.” A thought occurred to her, and she poked a triumphant finger into his wide, solid chest. “I don’t need your consent! I’ll claim abandonment.”

Looking down at her from his great height, Beck seemed to loom until he blocked out the sun, and the sky, and the crowds around them, until it was almost like they were alone, the only two people on the planet. “A no-contest divorce would be so much faster, so much simpler.”