King of the Kitchen (16 page)

Duncan had been too busy watching Beck work to stay on script. Luckily, someone had pulled the strained and chilled liquid out of the fridge for him.

“The brussels sprouts should be fully smoked now,” he said, lifting the lid. Fragrant smoke drifted out, and he retrieved the plate. “And we can fill our siphon with our cooled bacon liquid to finish it off. There’s a nitrous oxide cartridge in here, like we talked about earlier, and we’ll use that to give our foam its oomph.” He poured some of the liquid in and capped it. “Like I said, this foam isn’t going to be stable, so I’d wait until right before serving to do this.”

He held the siphon up and pulled the handle, layering the delicate foam on top of the brussels sprouts. Just because he could, he turned and held it up to Beck’s mouth, looking at him expectantly.

“You’re such a child,” Beck said, shaking his head. He opened his mouth anyway, and Duncan shot a bit of bacon-flavored foam into his mouth.

“Oh my God,” Beck murmured as he swallowed. “I had my doubts, but that actually tastes like bacon.”

“Cool, right?” Duncan grinned. He took one of the foam-topped brussels sprouts and popped it in his own mouth. They’d turned out pretty well.

“Okay. So now that we’ve plated,” Beck said, carrying both plates to the front counter so the camera could zoom in on them. “It’s time for us to sample each other’s creations.”

Duncan took a forkful of Beck’s brussels sprouts. The balsamic reduction was a great counterpoint to the soft flavor of the roasted tomatoes, and the brussels sprouts were flavorful in their own right. “’S good,” he said as he chewed.

Beck laughed. “So eloquent.” He took one of Duncan’s brussels sprouts, and Duncan actually held his breath for a moment when he ate it. He was pretty good at letting criticism roll off his back, but he really cared what Beck thought.

“It’s—I can’t quite….” Beck frowned. “I’m having a hard time describing it because I haven’t had anything with these textures and flavors before. It’s delicious, but I can’t quite find the words for the mouth feel. I taste bacon, and I expect to have the chewiness of the bacon, but it’s not there. And the crunch of the brussels sprout is nice, but the smokiness is almost meat-like.”

“That’s what molecular gastronomy is all about,” Duncan said, spreading his arms. “We take the normal and make it abnormal, and that creates a whole new flavor and texture profile your brain isn’t sure how to process.”

“Well, you succeeded on that front,” Beck said, elbowing him. “Now for the fun part. Which dish did you like the best, viewers? The information for my charity, Waste Not, Want Not, is on the bottom left, and the information for Duncan’s charity, Healthy U, is on the right. Remember, you’re letting your dollars cast your vote on this one. We’re asking for a one-dollar donation per vote, and you’ll be able to do that either by phone tonight or on the charities’ web sites up until Thursday.”

He shook Duncan’s hand, which took Duncan off guard even though it had been in the script.

“It’s been fun cooking with you today, Duncan. I definitely learned a few things, and I hope everyone at home did too. Thanks for inviting us into your kitchen. We’ll be back next week with the next challenge.”

Beck dropped Duncan’s hand the minute the red light went out on the camera. Duncan took a step back, a little stung.

“So that went well,” he said, frowning as the easy demeanor Beck had adopted during the show dropped and he tensed up again.

“It did. I didn’t expect to, but I really did like your dish.”

“Yeah, I—”

“I have to get to Brix. It’s my night to oversee the kitchen. We’ll have a meeting tomorrow to go over how things went and start prepping for next week. Lindsay or Campbell can give you the details.”

Duncan stared after him as Beck shot off the set.

Well, hell. Beck really
was
avoiding him.

Chapter TEN

“SO THE
audience ate you two up, just like I thought they would,” Lindsay said, perching on the end of Beck’s desk.

He’d missed the morning meeting, despite the heads-up he’d given Duncan about it yesterday. It couldn’t have been helped, though. The day manager at one of Christian’s boutique restaurants was out sick, and there had been a delivery to sign for at nine thirty. He couldn’t be in two places at once, so he’d opted to go take care of that since it was more important.

He hadn’t orchestrated it—Rachel really was sick. But he’d jumped at the chance to head down there and do it instead of asking someone else to, even though he’d known that was the coward’s way out.

And now he was going to pay for it.

Lindsay crossed her arms. “So spill. You never miss postproduction scrum. Never.”

He shrugged. “I had something else to do. Unlike you, I work more than this job.”

She shook her head. “Try again.”

He sighed. “Did I miss something earth-shattering? Are you here to tell me you really
did
need me at the meeting, and it wasn’t just the tech guys reporting on how editing went? There couldn’t have been much to do—we shot it like a live show. All they had to do was add in the graphics later and do the fades for the commercial breaks.”

“No, that went fine. But we also talked about the format and Duncan made a very impassioned plea to drop the script, which was accepted because you weren’t there to provide a counterpoint.”

Beck’s throat went dry. “Drop the script?”

She nodded. “He said you two were off of it more than you were on it dialogwise, which was true. I’ve never seen you ad-lib like that before. It was good.”

Beck rubbed a hand over his neck. “That was all him. I was just responding to his questions.” He pushed away from his desk and stalked over to the window. If he stretched and squinted, he could almost see the river. “Seriously, though? Christian let him get away with ditching the script?”

“Christian didn’t have much of a say because Bob jumped all over it. All he could do was gush about the chemistry you two had and how well it played with the focus groups. And he’s right. You two tore it up, and the audience loved it.”

“How’s voting going?”

Lindsay beamed. “Like gangbusters. Best idea ever, seriously. We’re getting so much good press out of pairing up with the charities that even if we didn’t raise any money for them at all, we’d be golden.”

He glared at her, and she backtracked. “Not that I’m saying I don’t care if we don’t raise any. I do. Obviously. And we are. So far there’s something like three or four thousand dollars in the pool between you two.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I think it could be big.”

“Any word on who’s winning?”

“Nope. And voting goes right up to next week’s show, so we won’t know till then. I don’t think Bob’s planning on telling you guys who won till you’re filming the next one.”

That did sound like Bob. Maximum dramatic effect.

He turned back to face her and leaned against the window. The glass was cool through his thin shirt, which helped a bit with the nervous sweat that had sprung up as soon as she’d mentioned ditching the script. “So what are we doing, if we don’t have a script?”

She waved away his concern. “You’ll have the actions scripted, so it’ll still have all the time counts and the switches planned out. But your dialogue will be ad-libbed.”

“Completely?”

“You can still write your own script for your stuff if you want. I know it’s a big part of your preparation for filming. But there won’t be any scripted banter between you and Duncan because the things you two come up with on the fly are tons better than anything our writers can do.”

Beck didn’t know if that was a dig at the writers or a compliment. He didn’t care.

“I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Take it up with Duncan. Oh, wait,” she said, widening her eyes. “You can’t because you’re not talking to him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She pinned him with an unimpressed stare. “He told me so himself, and I admit I thought he was making a mountain out of a molehill—I mean face it, you can be kind of an asshole, so it would be easy to make the mistake—until you didn’t show up for scrum.”

“I told you, I had somewhere else to be. I assure you I didn’t go give Rachel the flu just so I could miss a goddamn meeting.”

Her smile didn’t reassure him at all. In fact, he had the sinking suspicion he’d somehow unwittingly played right into her hands. “And now you’re getting defensive, which I know means you’re upset. Tell me what’s going on. Duncan said it was personal. Did you two get into a fight again? Tell me you at least had the good sense to do it in private.”

He choked on a laugh. It had been private, though only because it had been late enough that no one else was in the building.

“Of course we didn’t,” Beck muttered tersely. “And it’s none of your business.”

“It’s definitely my business since I’m in charge of managing your image. Remember? I need to know what’s going on between you two so I can take care of any rumors that pop up.”

Beck shrugged, nervous energy making him feel restless. He was still hung up on how Duncan had dismissed him after sex. Pleasant, but detached. Like they’d gone for a run together instead of exchanged orgasms.

“Okay, I get it. I’ll butt out,” she said, holding up her hands. “
Unless
it hits the press or you two fight on camera. Then we’re going to revisit this. Got it?”

He nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t seem to know why I was avoiding him?”

“No, he had no idea. Or maybe he’s a really good liar, I don’t know. But he seemed genuinely surprised when you left so quickly after we wrapped yesterday, and he was shocked you weren’t there this morning.”

Beck processed that for a moment. If Duncan didn’t know, then he could still make a friendship work between them. He just had to find a way to let go of his crush.

“So tell me what you’re making,” Lindsay said, leaning over and rifling through the papers on his desk.

Bob had called earlier with the next episode’s challenge, asparagus in hollandaise. It was a classic dish that was already simple; Beck had no idea how he was going to revamp it.

Usually, it would bother Beck to have someone look at his notes before he’d set a menu, but he was eager for feedback on this one. It wasn’t often Beck got to bring his own food onto the show—or into any of the restaurants. Even Brix, which was supposed to be his, didn’t feature the food he liked to cook.

“So you’re going with the slow food thing?” she asked, squinting at his scribbles.

Beck scowled. “It’s an actual food movement, you know. And I don’t know—kind of. I’d like to focus on seasonal food and local ingredients and maybe bring some of the principles of the movement into it. Simple food, high taste value, that sort of thing.”

Lindsay pushed the notebook back across the desk. “I like it. You’re thinking quiche?”

“It’s probably too trite.” Beck needed to be in the kitchen, not at his desk. But Duncan was down in the test kitchen right now. Beck heard he’d breezed by with Andre in tow after dropping off his contract for the next two shows an hour ago, headed for the kitchens to “experiment,” as he’d called it, until it was time for his shift at the bar.

“So figure something else out. What’s Duncan doing, do you know?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to know. Not until the recipes are final, at least. It’s a competition.”

Lindsay kicked him again. “It’s not
really
a competition. That’s only to garner a little more viewer interaction and interest.”

Beck raised an eyebrow at her. “So we’re not really having the audience call in and vote on which dish they think is the best?”

“We are.”

“So it’s a competition.”

She laughed. “In the weakest sense of the word, yes. You won’t get anything if you win. I think it’s fine if you and Duncan want to collaborate on recipes. It would be bad TV if the two of you were both making the same dish, you know.”

That wasn’t likely to happen, not with them being given free rein. It was true Duncan had a reputation as a bit of a culinary chameleon, since he was able to copy practically any style of cooking. But his area of interest was molecular gastronomy. The way he treated food was the polar opposite of Beck’s philosophy. He had to hand it to Christian and Bob; pitting the two of them against each other like this would make a good show. And he was curious about how Duncan would approach the rest of the challenge. Just because he didn’t use that particular cooking style himself didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to enjoy whatever Duncan came up with. The level of ingenuity required with molecular gastronomy was mind-blowing.

“You could make it interesting,” Lindsay said, her tone coy. Alarms went off in Beck’s mind. Nothing good came of Lindsay plotting. “Wager something between the two of you. I’ve already talked to Duncan, and he’s game.”

That didn’t sound devious enough to merit her pleased expression. “What, make ourselves a trophy?”

“No, whoever wins is getting one of those anyway on the show. Shh, don’t tell Bob I let you know,” she said sotto voce. “I think he’s hoping to make this an annual thing, actually. But I was talking about a private wager between the two of you for whatever you want.” Her grin grew when Beck groaned. “I’m sure you can think of something to make it interesting.”

“Let me guess. Duncan was fine with that part too.”

Lindsay hummed in agreement, looking far too smug for Beck’s liking. “I’ll leave you to decide those terms with Duncan on your own.”

“How kind of you,” Beck said dryly.

She laughed when Beck caught her kick to his shin and squeezed her toes through her shoes. She stuck her tongue out in retaliation. “Andre said he’s got your area prepped if you’re ready to go down and start testing. You’ll be on your own for recipe testing, but once you have a plan, you can give him your breakdown of steps so his people can get it all camera-ready.”

Andre spearheaded all the recipes and menu planning for the show. Beck gave input from time to time, but if he was down in the kitchens, it was as a grunt, not a chef. He liked the big open kitchens, though, so he went down to help out the prep staff often. He doubted Christian even knew where it was, despite the fact his name was the one on all of the recipes that came out of it.