King of the Kitchen (12 page)

“This is the perfect move to dispel all the gossip,” Christian said.

“Until you and Beck start flirting on screen,” Lindsay added. Beck elbowed her, but she grinned. “Oh, get over yourself. You’re both consenting adults. Have a little fun. It’ll be great for ratings.” She pointed at Duncan and gave him a stern look. “Don’t break his heart in the next month, okay? That’s bad for on-screen chemistry.”

Christian’s lips twitched, and he shrugged when Beck turned to him, outrage all over his face. “You’re a grown man. Outside of filming, what you two do is up to you.”

Campbell gave Duncan’s shoulder another squeeze before he and Lindsay filed out, taking Christian with them. Duncan looked around and realized he and Beck were the only ones left in the conference room.

“So that happened.” Duncan pushed back from the table and gathered up his contract to stuff in the satchel he’d brought.

Beck waited until he was ready to leave the room before speaking. “I know you don’t owe me anything, but I’d really like you to sign on for the show.”

Duncan ducked his head to pull his satchel on. “I thought you couldn’t stand the idea of working with me? You were sure quick to voice your disapproval there at the beginning.”

Beck made a frustrated noise as they walked out of the conference room. “I just—I don’t have anything against working with you, okay? But television isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s a lot of work.”

“So it was concern for me wrecking your show’s reputation, not a problem working with me?”

“Something like that,” Beck muttered. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving the usually immaculate strands standing on end. Duncan liked the look on him. But that wasn’t a surprise—Duncan liked
every
look on Beck.

“And what Lindsay said about us flirting? Is that something that’s going to continue?” Duncan stopped, and Beck made it a few more steps down the hallway before he realized Duncan wasn’t next to him anymore. “I’m on board with that, by the way.”

“I’m not.”

“Really?” Duncan drawled. He didn’t buy it for a second.

“Really. You can barely stand me. You’ve already got the job—you don’t need to pretend to be into me, no matter what Lindsay said.”

Duncan frowned. “I really do like you, Beck. You’re fun under all that propriety and snobbishness.”

Beck huffed out a laugh. “You’re a real charmer yourself.”

Duncan sighed. There was no middle ground with Beck; they were either fighting like cats and dogs or sharing inside jokes, which was ridiculous, since they hadn’t known each other long enough to have those. At least, they shouldn’t have them, but Duncan had to acknowledge they definitely did. Something about being with Beck was instinctively easy. Duncan found himself enjoying the snark, even though it was sharper-edged than the banter he exchanged with John and his other friends.

“Look, I get that this is a great opportunity,” Duncan said, hoping Beck could hear the sincerity in his voice. “I’m not doing
anything
to screw this up. Do you have any idea how much this will piss Vincent off? That alone is gold, and on top of it, I’m getting paid a freaking fortune compared to what I’d be making in a kitchen. So yeah, I’m all in. I’ll sign the contract right now if that convinces you.”

Duncan met Beck’s gaze, the challenge hanging heavily between them, and Beck cracked the tiniest of smiles. He looked down and busied himself with packing up the notebooks and papers he’d brought, fidgeting with a pen.

Normally, he wouldn’t pursue someone like Beck. Duncan preferred guys—and women—who were as averse to strings as he was. He’d only really known Beck Douglas for a week, but he could already tell Beck wasn’t one of those easy flings. Beck was the kind of guy who wanted relationship discussions and Sundays in bed instead of quick fucks and nebulous promises to call later that neither Duncan nor his partner of the moment ever intended to follow through on.

Duncan was always given to dramatic moments, so he grabbed the contract out of his satchel and snatched the pen out of Beck’s hand. He flipped to the last page and started to sign, but Beck’s hand closed over his wrist, stopping him.

“Don’t.”

Duncan looked up questioningly, his heart thrumming in his chest. Don’t what? Sign the contract? Flirt with Beck? Maybe Beck was right. Getting involved with him right now would be messy, and this contract would tie the two of them together for at least the next month.

Beck squeezed his wrist and let it go. “Don’t sign it until you’ve read it. Have Campbell or someone else go through it too. Your father probably has lawyers on retainer. Use one of them. The network is looking out for itself, not you. Make sure it’s a deal you want to take.”

The tightness in Duncan’s chest eased, replaced with a warm feeling. Beck was looking out for him. This was definitely a side of Beck he’d like to know. Beck was his own person, not the stereotype Duncan had cast him as. The more he got to know him, the more Duncan wanted to peel away layers and find out more.

He dropped the pen in Beck’s breast pocket and leaned into Beck’s space, hovering there for a long moment, silently asking permission. Duncan could be an aggressive dick sometimes, but he wasn’t going to take this choice away from Beck. He also knew Beck wasn’t the type to act impulsively or take chances, and this might be the only way to shock him into taking things to the next level. Duncan put the ball squarely in Beck’s court.

He was close enough to see Beck’s pupils dilate and his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Just when Duncan was about to back off, Beck closed the last bit of a gap between them and kissed him.

It wasn’t the light, teasing kiss Duncan had been expecting. Beck’s lips were firm and insistent, and there was no trace of the vulnerability or hesitancy that had shown on his face moments before. Apparently when Beck decided to do something, he was all in. Duncan could relate to that.

A nearby office door opened with a bang, sending the two of them flying apart. Duncan felt a hot blush spread across his cheeks. He hadn’t let himself get caught in a compromising position like this for years. He’d managed to forget they weren’t alone. They were standing in Beck’s workplace, and it was likely going to be his own soon, too. Temporarily, at least. Duncan needed to remember that…. He wasn’t here to make out with Beck. He was here to work.

Duncan whirled around, but the person who’d come out hadn’t seemed to notice anything was amiss. The janitor was going around the rooms emptying the trashcans. He headed into the conference room and started clearing the debris from the breakfast Duncan and most of the other meeting participants had been too keyed up to eat.

Duncan took a breath and chanced a look at Beck, who was flushing even worse than he was.

“Let’s not do that on the air,” Duncan joked weakly.

“Ratings would soar,” Beck said hoarsely, and both of them burst into laughter.

They headed toward the elevators. Duncan assumed Beck was at work for the day, and he himself was planning to go home and catch a few hours of sleep.

“Listen, maybe we should—” Duncan began.

“Do you want to get lunch?”

Duncan blinked at Beck’s interruption. He’d been about to tell him they should be careful about workplace flirting, especially since Beck seemed so hung up on being proper and professional all the time. But this was good. Better than good.

“Later, I mean,” Beck said, and he sounded nervous. Was Beck nervous? The thought made Duncan grin as Beck continued to babble. “Obviously. It’s barely breakfast time. But do you want to meet up around one or so? I’m in meetings until then, but I don’t have to be at Brix to start signing for deliveries until three.”

“Sure,” Duncan said, his lips curved into a lazy grin. “Somewhere around here, or do you want to hit up a place near Brix? Or I could whip something up at my place.”

Beck’s expression soured, which was the opposite of what Duncan had been going for with the teasing invitation.

“Duncan, I—maybe you got the wrong idea.”

Duncan raised an eyebrow at him. “You mean when you kissed me? What sort of idea was I supposed to get out of that?”

Beck rubbed a hand over his neck and looked away for a second before meeting Duncan’s gaze again. “Can you be serious for once?”

“I wasn’t aware lunch was a serious meal. My mistake. No more joking here.”

Beck sighed. “Forget it.”

This time Duncan was the one reaching out and grabbing Beck to stop him from walking away, a juxtaposition of the first two times they’d met. “Wait. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this, okay?”

Beck looked unimpressed. “I should have known better. It’s not like I hadn’t heard about your reputation.”

“My reputation?”

“For sleeping with food groupies. I thought this might be different.”

It was. God, it was. Duncan never mixed business with pleasure. He’d learned that lesson the hard way, and he’d been scrupulous about it ever since. The culinary world was pretty small, truth be told, and he couldn’t afford to make enemies or alienate potential coworkers or employers because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.

But this was different. He was attracted to Beck. Ridiculously so. But getting to know him and hanging out with him was more important than sleeping with him, and Duncan didn’t want to mess that up.

“Beck, stop. I wasn’t inviting you to my place for sex.” Duncan blushed harder than he had when the janitor had walked in on them.

That stopped Beck dead in his tracks. His mouth hung open a little. “You weren’t?”

“No! I thought we might have more fun eating in because it means we can just be us. We don’t have to worry about cameras and rumors. I swear, that was it. I’m not going to jump your bones the second you walk in the door. Give me some credit here. Besides, I don’t fool around with people I work with. It’s too messy.”

Beck still looked skeptical, but he nodded. “All right. I’ll see you at one. No bones will be jumped.”

Duncan couldn’t help himself. He snickered at the turn of phrase, and Beck cracked a smile, too, before waving and heading off down the hallway.

He looked at his watch and grimaced. It was barely eight thirty in the morning, and instead of going back to bed like he’d planned, he was going to have to pry Sadie and Corbin out of bed and put himself at their mercy for advice about how to ignore this growing crush of his.

He’d better stop for coffee and donuts on the way.

Chapter EIGHT

A TWELVE-HOUR
workday was a long one no matter what your profession. But twelve hours on your feet in a hot and often crowded kitchen? That was a special kind of torture.

Especially with Duncan by his side. Beck had done his best to curb his too-long glances and flirting, but it seemed like Duncan was doubling his efforts in response. He’d been driving Beck crazy all day, and Beck doubted Duncan even realized it. That was the worst part. It wasn’t just Beck he’d been joking around with—he’d been that way with the entire prep kitchen staff. Kiss or no kiss, his interest in Beck didn’t seem any different from his interest in everyone else at the network, and that stung.

He watched Duncan pull his sweaty T-shirt away from his skin, revealing a trail of dark hair leading down to his obscenely tight jeans. Duncan sniffed at it, making a face. “It’s going to be a fun El ride home,” he said darkly.

Beck snorted. “We have showers in the staff locker room. There’s a supply of chef’s whites down there too.”

They weren’t the first chefs to burn the midnight oil at the studio. Beck had made use of the showers downstairs multiple times, mostly when he was too exhausted to make it home after a day of episode planning and messing around in the test kitchen until the wee hours, like today. A lot of the celebrity chefs let their sous-chefs do all the testing and recipe development, but Beck was dead set against that. He’d helped plan the majority of
King of the Kitchen
’s recipes for the last four years, and he’d be damned if he was going to stop now he was getting to cook the kind of food he actually wanted to.

Cooking the prop food for filming? That was different. He was happy to let some culinary drone do all the work on that. But the recipes? Even the ones he wasn’t proud of—which would be most of the things they cooked on the show, actually—were 100 percent his. He took his job seriously. Beck had never really wanted to be in the television business, but he was damned if he was going to settle for being the talent. He was more than a pretty face. Maybe after this set of challenges with Duncan, viewers would get to see that.

“Chef’s whites?” Duncan asked, scowling. “Why the fuck do you wear those here? It’s not like you have to worry about health code violations or what diners think of you in the test kitchen.”

“A lot of the sous-chefs are right out of culinary school,” Beck said with a shrug. “I think it makes them feel more comfortable if they’re dressed in the traditional whites.”

He didn’t wear them when he was testing, but he understood why people would want to. Cooking was a messy business, and he’d ruined many a set of clothes thanks to grease spatters and splashing sauces. There was only so much an apron could cover.

Duncan snorted and shook his head. “I wouldn’t figure a cooking channel would be so formal. I mean, they don’t even make food for people to eat! It’s like the tree falling in the forest. If you don’t feed people, are you actually a chef?”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are. Don’t be an ass.”

Duncan followed him down the dark hallway, laughing. “That’s pretty much an admission that I am, you know. Funny,” he elaborated when Beck raised an eyebrow in question.

Beck didn’t have the patience to wait for the elevator, and the locker room was only three floors down anyway. They could take the stairs.

He and Duncan hadn’t had any time together that wasn’t spent working since their lunch a few days ago. He was beginning to curse himself for not falling into Duncan’s bed when he’d had the chance. This whole waiting thing was crap. If Duncan was really only interested in a one-night stand, then all Beck was doing was delaying the inevitable. He needed to trust Duncan—if he said he was all in and he wanted to try dating, then Beck should take him at his word. He wasn’t doing either of them any favors by doubting him.