King of the Kitchen (4 page)

“I’ll talk to Rollie. I’m sure a few rounds of golf and an afternoon at the club will change his mind.”

Beck leveled him with an incredulous look. “Felix called the company’s refusal to label which of its products use GMOs ‘irresponsible’ and implied Agneau’s entire line was unhealthy. Somehow I don’t think you playing golf with Agneau’s chief financial officer is going to be enough to convince the company to advertise with us again. I’d be worried about them dropping you as a celebrity sponsor, actually.”

He didn’t flinch under Christian’s scathing look, but it was a near thing. Only years of being the recipient of it kept him from cowering like most of Christian’s other employees did when he was dressing them down.

“I don’t need you to tell me how to manage my affairs, Beck.” One of his eyebrows twitched, and Beck braced himself. Christian definitely had a tell when it came to dropping the hammer, and that was it. Anytime there was eyebrow twitching, Beck knew he was in for a tirade. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about finalizing the menu for Brix.”

Beck’s muscles tightened, dread coiling in his stomach. Christian had promised him he was going to be the executive chef for the new restaurant in the King empire in more than name only; it was going to be his from the ground up. His concept, his menu, his management. He thought he’d been doing a good job, and the focus groups Christian insisted on using for everything agreed.

“I gave the menu to Sarah yesterday. She said she’d slotted in time on your calendar for you to review it.”

“And I did, but honestly, Beck. That wasn’t a menu. It was a schoolboy love letter to farm food. It was an embarrassment. I can only imagine what your instructors from Le Cordon Bleu would say if they saw it. You’re not a bored housewife, Beck. You’re a classically trained chef. Act like it. Sarah should be e-mailing you the changes today.”

Beck bit his tongue, trying to swallow down his impulse to snap back. No one ever won an argument with Christian King, even if they were right. Still, Beck couldn’t keep himself from responding.

“Cooking with simple ingredients doesn’t mean the food isn’t sophisticated.”

Christian snorted. “Pasta with butter?”

“Homemade pumpkin pasta with a sherry brown butter, served with sage and roasted pumpkin seeds.”

“At the end of the day, Beck, that’s still pasta and butter. People aren’t going to pay a premium to eat that.”

“You said this was my restaurant. You wanted a wine-focused theme with a casual, upscale atmosphere, and that’s what I’ve delivered.”

“It is your restaurant, Beck. But it’s my name on the door and my reputation on the line, and Christian King does not serve pasta with butter. Sarah will be in touch. Do make sure the menu gets to the printer by Friday. Send the final design directly to Sarah—she can sign off on it for me while I’m in Atlanta checking in on the restaurant there.”

That job was usually relegated to Beck, trekking across the country to do audits on the dozens of restaurants in his uncle’s chain. None of them were the same concept, but all of the menus shared one thing in common: They were all overwrought, too trendy by half, and priced accordingly. In other words, everything Beck hated. He’d been busy getting Brix ready for its soft opening in three weeks, though, and Christian had him doing extra hosting shifts on
King of the Kitchen
to up his own personal “brand awareness,” as Christian and Lindsay and her ever-present marketing team called it, so the actual running of the empire had fallen back into Christian’s hands, at least for the moment. Beck had no doubt that as soon as Brix was up and running, he’d be resuming his old duties as well.

Christian was obviously waiting for a response, so Beck nodded tightly.

“Yes, sir.”

No matter how much effort Beck put into the menu or how much backbreaking work he put into Brix, at the end of the day it was his uncle’s restaurant, not his. Beck fisted his hands at his sides as he watched Christian stride away, expertly dodging all of the camera equipment and not sparing even a second glance at any of the crew. None of them expected him to, of course. Christian was well known as a jovial, friendly personality on television, but everyone who worked with him knew he was a cold and calculating bastard most of the time.

Not like Beck, who even in his current funk took the time to nod to the boom operator as he walked past.

Despite wanting nothing more than to hole himself up in his office upstairs and sulk over the new menu, Beck didn’t take his anger out on the crew. It was the biggest difference between him and his uncle. Beck’s success was dependent on everyone who worked with him, from the executive producers and head chefs to the boom operators and the prep cooks who came in at six in the morning for thankless tasks like peeling garlic and chopping a metric ton of
mise en place
for the dinner service chefs to work with later in the day. Whether he was at the studio or at one of his uncle’s restaurants, Beck made it a point to at least have a smile and a nod for every employee he came across.

He was almost home free when he saw a cluster of people near the door to the stairs. He sighed and made sure he was smiling as he approached them, though he wanted nothing more than to burst through the door and run up the six flights to his office. He was tense and itchy from the pent-up energy he always felt during filming.

“Carlie, you’re a brave woman, bringing a baby onto Christian’s set,” he said as he greeted the child in question with a silly face that made the nine-month-old gurgle in delight.

“We stayed outside the sound stage until the filming light went out,” she said, shifting the baby on her hip when the girl started reaching for Beck. “I’m not suicidal.”

He didn’t reach out to take the baby since his hands were still covered in aioli from the sandwiches he’d made on air today—seriously, who still used aioli in this day and age? Christian’s pander-to-the-middle tastes were killing Beck—but he leaned in and let the child tug on his hair and pull his microphone off his collar.

“Benton will skin me alive if you gnaw on that,” Carlie chided her daughter as she grabbed the mic from her chubby little hands and tucked it in Beck’s breast pocket.

“Matt sick today?” Beck asked, making a face of exaggerated alarm when the baby tugged on his hair again, setting her off into peals of fresh laughter.

Carlie was Beck’s favorite set stager, and her husband, Matt, usually stayed home with their daughter since he was a writer for another network and could work from home. If Carlie had her kiddo on set with her today, it either meant Matt was sick or he was forced to go in for an all-hands meeting at his studio.

Carlie wrinkled her nose. “No, they’re up for renewal, and all of the writers had to go in for a brainstorming session. He’s been working ridiculous hours trying to get storyboards together for the next sixteen episodes. They’re afraid the show might be canceled.”

Beck hummed sympathetically. “So you’ve got Annabelle for the duration, eh?”

The baby squealed again when Beck said her name, and he stuck his tongue out at her.

“Well, I wasn’t supposed to be in today at all. But Christian called and was upset because he didn’t like the new curtains, so I had to come resurrect the old ones from storage. We changed them… what? Six episodes ago, and he’s only noticing now?”

Beck snorted. Christian probably hadn’t been in the studio to notice the new curtains in the last six weeks. When Beck had joined the show, he’d been in the background, but over the last three years, his uncle had slowly but surely been pushing Beck into the host role more and more often. He still made enough appearances and hosted enough of the specials and other important shows that the fans knew
King of the Kitchen
was still very much his show, but the day-to-day management and menial hosting was something Christian had passed to Beck and Christian’s daughter Lindsay.

“What did you do with the new ones? I liked them.”

Carlie pursed her lips. “That’s the thing. By the time I got here, he’d already decided he liked the new ones after all.”

Not surprising. Christian was pretty fickle. “So why are you still here?”

They’d been filming for three hours, and if she’d come in early enough to do a set change, then she and Annabelle had been hanging out at the studio for nearly four hours.

“Because he told me he wanted to have me on hand in case he changed his mind.”

Beck raised an eyebrow. “In case he changed his mind in the middle of filming? So what, we’d either have to reshoot the scenes with the curtains in them or deal with the continuity problem of having two different sets of curtains in the same episode?”

She offered him a tight smile. “Yup.”

Beck sighed. “Take your daughter home, Carlie. Make sure you put in for a full day’s pay today so you don’t waste a day of your vacation on this. Are you out the rest of the week?”

She nodded.

“If he calls again for anything, call me or Lindsay. He shouldn’t be asking you to come in on your day off, even if it does mean we get to see this cutie.” He pressed a smacking kiss to Annabelle’s cheek.

Some of the tension bled out of Carlie’s expression. “You’re a lifesaver. Normally I’d have told him where to shove it, but with Matt’s show on the chopping block….”

“You didn’t want to risk Christian firing you. I understand. And I won’t let that happen, Carlie. You’ve been with the show longer than I have. You ought to be able to tell him to have someone else deal with a minor set-dressing problem while you’re on vacation.”

He leaned over and pecked her cheek, much more sedately than he had Annabelle’s, but it made Carlie laugh all the same.

“Enjoy what’s left of your day, and I’ll see you when you’re back in the office,” Beck said, infusing his voice with the authority he used when he was managing a kitchen. It wasn’t a suggestion. He didn’t want Carlie to think her job would be in jeopardy if she refused to let herself be dragged in to work on her day off, her baby in tow.

“Thanks, Beck,” she said, both she and Annabelle waving at him as he pushed his way into the stairwell.

He let the door close heavily behind him before he dropped his smile. Filming was exhausting. Beck loved social situations and talking to people, but talking to a camera was infinitely harder. Most people hated live shows, but Beck would rather do one of those any day than have to spend hours going over the same lines and doing the same things over and over until they met Christian’s approval.

His on-screen charm might be faked, but in terms of actual interpersonal relations, charm was something Beck Douglas had in spades, and used ruthlessly when necessary. And it was a good thing too. If he and Lindsay weren’t so invested in the crew and their lives, most of them would have quit ages ago. They certainly weren’t staying out of loyalty to Christian.

King of the Kitchen
was a semiclever play on Christian’s last name, but Christian treated it like a mandate. He went out of his way to be abrasive and demanding, and it was getting worse as he got older and added products and restaurants to his empire.

Beck indulged in a moment of quiet in the stairwell before taking a deep breath and trotting up the first flight. No one else in the building took the stairs, so they were a bit of a respite for Beck. Especially when he hadn’t had a chance to hit the gym yet.

He cracked his neck and stretched, tucking his tie into his waistband before he started sprinting.

Chapter THREE

SADIE’S BROW
furrowed as she frowned at Duncan, who was fiddling with the edge of his bow tie. Like all close friends, they’d developed a silent language over the years, and at the moment hers was screaming disappointment.

Duncan knew it couldn’t be his suit—she’d helped him pick out the tuxedo years ago, and he’d even let her bully him into getting it cleaned for tonight’s opening. It was beautifully tailored, and since he’d bought it on Vincent’s dime and not his own, it was designer. Sadie had insisted on a classic cut that wouldn’t ever go out of style, something Duncan was grateful for now. The need for black-tie wear went with the job, unfortunately. If you wanted to cook with the big leagues, you had to party with the big leagues, and that meant monkey suits.

“Duncan,” she said with a heavy sigh, and Duncan followed her gaze down to his feet.

“Ah, come on, Sadie.”

Duncan wiggled his toes in his battered Converse sneakers. He’d even worn the green ones tonight, since they matched the emerald cuff links Vincent had given him when he’d been named to Zagat’s 30 Under 30 list a few years ago.

“I know you have a very respectable pair of Cole Haan dress shoes that match your tuxedo perfectly,” she said, her eyes narrowed.

“They are also perfectly uncomfortable,” he muttered. “It’s not like this is a big to-do, Sadie. It’s just a restaurant opening. It wouldn’t even be black tie if your boss wasn’t such a—”

Sadie’s hand shot out and covered his mouth. He licked it for good measure, grinning when she pulled away in disgust.

“It wasn’t his choice. He wanted to go with a more casual theme, but Christian insisted on keeping it formal.”

Duncan made a face but grudgingly toed off his shoes when she brought him the dress shoes from his closet. They were badly in need of a shine, and he took malicious pleasure in that fact as he caught the pair of dress socks she threw at his head. She could force him to put them on, but he’d smile all night looking down and knowing they were hardly more acceptable than his Chucks.

Not that anyone in the media would be surprised to see Duncan show up in Converse. He’d gotten himself a bespoke suit from a thrift store up in Madison, and he’d delighted in wearing it to events. The sneakers were a must with it, and half the time he wore a fedora.

Vincent hadn’t been amused the first time he’d told Duncan to dress formally and he’d showed up in the purple suit, complete with his gray Converse sneakers and an understated, but undeniably rainbow, tie. Duncan wasn’t sure which part of his outfit had been responsible for nearly making his father stroke out, but he’d put money on it being the tie that sent him over the edge. Of the many freak flags Duncan flew, the rainbow one was the one his father had the most trouble accepting.