Some Like It Hot (8 page)

This new group? Put them all to shame.

Clearly they’d never met a tattoo or a piercing they didn’t like, but even more than that, they gave off an almost palpable air of
different.

From the lean, whippy Asian guy with orangey red dreadlocks down to his waist, to the gypsy-skirted, bangle-ankleted strawberry blonde with the killer curves filling out a faded blue T-shirt emblazoned with a stylized crying sun and the word sublime, they didn’t look like anyone Danny knew.

And coming from New York City, he thought he’d met all kinds.

“I’m so sorry we’re running behind,” Strawberry said, hurrying toward Eva with her hands outstretched. “It’s totally my fault. I slept right through the alarm on my phone—I must’ve been exhausted!”

A loud, derisive laugh shot from the back of the room, and Danny put a cautionary hand on Beck’s arm, just in case.

“I take it that’s her,” he said under his breath.

Beck didn’t answer, but the granite tension of the muscles under Danny’s palm spoke for him.

Confusion crumpled Strawberry’s pretty face for a moment as she sought the source of the cruel laughter, but that sunny smile came back out when Eva distracted her with a bright, “Don’t worry, you’re not too late at all! Nothing officially starts until eight o’clock. And the judges aren’t even here yet!”

With a quick, warning glance at Danny, Eva took the woman’s arm and started to lead her, and her band of misfits, to the open row.

I’ve got it under control,
Danny tried to tell her with his eyes, something in his chest warming at this moment of silent communication and teamwork.

But, as it turned out, Danny had nothing under control. Because from the minute the pretty hippie-lady chef passed by the Lunden’s table and turned her head far enough see Beck, all hell broke loose.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Danny could do to stop it.

Okay, so far so good,
Eva told herself, tugging at the arm of the executive chef of the Queenie Pie Café and resolutely keeping her gaze away from the cameraman in the corner.

All chefs were finally present and accounted for, and presumably ready for action. Now if the judges would just show up before Ryan Larousse had the chance to continue his campaign to turn every single one of Eva’s hairs gray.

She had no idea what had caused the bad blood between Larousse and the teams from the East and West. Coastal envy? She didn’t know, and she didn’t care, so long as she could get her competition off the ground without any further drama taking the focus off the—

Eva looked down at her empty hand, then back a few paces to where Skye Gladwell, the final addition to the pool of contestants, stood staring, openmouthed and wide-eyed, at the Lunden’s Tavern team.

“Henry?”

Eva didn’t miss the way every head at the East Coast table swiveled to take in their teammate. “Hold up, who the hell is ‘Henry’?” Winslow demanded, but no one looked at him.

Skye Gladwell lifted one trembling hand toward Beck, but didn’t touch him. “Is that really you?” Her voice was disbelieving, as if she couldn’t trust the evidence of her own eyes.

Eva took a suspicious inhale and frowned at the West Coast chef nearest her, a stocky man wearing a canvas artist’s smock and eau-de-marijuana. If Skye had been hitting the hash pipe as hard as her sous chef here, she was probably right to doubt what her wide, shocked eyes were telling her.

Except that the tall, dark chef Skye stood blinking up at happened to be the same one who’d gotten into a fistfight the day before—and the stony look on the guy’s face couldn’t quite hide the flash of recognition in his black eyes. Recognition and something more dangerous, Eva thought.

“Skye.” The tall chef acknowledged her with a nod.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Skye said, sounding dazed.

“Surprise.”

Eva’s gaze snapped back to Skye, making her realize that she, along with everyone else in the kitchen, was following the tense exchange like a match point at Wimbledon.

Uh-oh. Is the camera already rolling?

“Oh my God,” Skye muttered, red spreading up the back of her neck, all the way to the tips of her ears. “This is unreal. I can’t believe you came.”

A sly voice from the back of the room called out, “I bet that’s not what you were saying last night! Boo-yah!”

Eva had seen Beck in full fighting mode the day before, but it was still startling to watch the berserker rage take him over.

“You piece of shit,” he snarled, turning and lunging toward the back table as if he’d hurdle all the tables and chefs between him and his prey.

The Midwest guys followed Ryan Larousse into a round of loud, jeering laughter, while the chefs at the front table exploded into action, trying to keep Beck under control, and the tables in the middle erupted with excited chatter. In the blink of an eye the entire kitchen was in an uproar.

“Stand down, Beck, come on,” Danny commanded, getting one arm around his teammate’s straining chest to hold him back.

Eva took a moment to appreciate the way the muscles and tendons stood out along Danny’s hard forearm before shaking herself and sticking two fingers in her mouth. But her usual earsplitting whistle barely made a dent in the fracas.

Just as Eva was wondering whatever happened to that air horn her father had insisted she keep in her purse when she went off to college, the three judges walked into the kitchen, and the torrent of conversation stopped as if some giant hand had brought down a cleaver.

Skye Gladwell and her crew scurried to their places, not making eye contact with anyone, and Eva telegraphed a warning to Danny Lunden, who managed to unobtrusively wrestle Beck to a standstill in the front row.

Intensely aware of the cameraman, who was suddenly standing behind his camera and avidly filming rather than slouching around looking bored, Eva let her biggest TV-ready smile spread across her face, checked to make sure her mike was hot, and stepped forward to greet the judges.

Time to get this situation under control, before the Rising Star Chef competition turned into a three-ring circus.

Danny met Eva’s gaze and for one blazing moment of connection, he knew they were thinking the exact same thing.

Let’s get this show on the road
.

Apparently, the judges were of the same mind-set.

“Welcome to the seventeenth annual Rising Star Chef Competition,” said the celebrity chef judge, Devon Sparks, to a round of applause. He flashed his gleaming grin, dimple winking into view, and vamped to the camera a little bit. Even though he’d recently quit his mega-hit TV show, playing to an audience was clearly second nature.

“You’ve all worked hard to get here,” Sparks continued, warming to his theme. “You beat out hundreds of chefs in your regions of these great United States for the honor of competing today. This is the chance of a lifetime—the chance to prove yourself the best of the best. And make no mistake, Chefs, that is the true prize.”

“Although, let’s be honest,” the other male judge, Kane Slater, drawled with a winning smile. “The actual prizes are pretty much made of awesome.”

Kane Slater wasn’t a chef or food professional, of course, but he was one of the most famous amateur foodies around. Given the teeniest opening, Winslow would rattle on for hours about the rock star’s legendary feasts and food-themed costume parties.

Some people had questioned the choice of Kane as a judge, but Danny didn’t have a problem with the guy. He’d certainly seemed to know his stuff at the regional competition finals.

Although when Eva threw the blond-haired, blue-eyed rock god a wink and a wave out of the camera’s sight line, Danny thought he might have to revisit that opinion.

Smoothing the frown out of his expression took so much energy, Danny barely heard the actual recitation of the prizes. The sack of cash from the sponsors would be nice, and Danny wouldn’t turn down the brand-new car, although he wasn’t sure where he’d park it in the West Village.

But the personal chef write-up and restaurant review in internationally renowned food magazine
Délicieux
? Now, that was a prize worth fighting for.

Danny perked up his ears as soon as Claire Durand, the editor in chief of
Délicieux,
spoke.

In her lightly accented voice, Claire began, “
Bonjour.
I hope you have slept well, because last night was perhaps your last chance to do so.”

Danny’s muscles tightened in anticipation, his shoulders stiff enough to snap, but there wasn’t a peep from the hecklers in the back row. Guess even Ryan Larousse was smart enough to keep his ugly gob shut when Claire Durand was talking.

“The next few weeks will be grueling as we begin to winnow out the losing teams. A series of culinary challenges await you, and you must do your utmost to meet them. Those who fall behind will be eliminated. Those who rise above will advance to the next round, and the opportunity to cook … how do you say?”

Her elegant brows drew down over her regal French nose.

“Mano a mano?” suggested Kane Slater.

She shot the younger man a look Danny couldn’t decipher.

“Head-to-head,” Devon supplied, crossing his arms over his chest meaningfully. “The final round will be one chef from each of the two teams left standing.”

A ripple of excitement passed around the room like a high-stakes game of telephone. This was a new development—past years had seen the final challenge continue on in much the same vein as the earlier rounds: teams competing against one another for a whole-team win.

“In this moment, however,” Claire said, seizing control of the conversation once more, “the team is key. Yes? You will find teamwork to be vital to all the challenges in this round of the competition—and the way you work as a team will tell us much about you as chefs. Good luck.”

She looked back to Eva, who was clearly continuing in her role as mistress of ceremonies.

Tucking a sleek wing of dark hair behind her ear, Eva turned to the chefs. “The United States is a country as diverse in fabulous local foodways as it is in cultures, languages, and ethnicities. But a few cities stand above the rest as leaders in the culinary world. The rivalry between New York and San Francisco is well established, but we chose to begin the competition in Chicago for two reasons.”

She paused dramatically, giving Danny time to notice the way she filled out that red dress. Style-wise, it probably shouldn’t be that sexy an outfit, he thought. It wasn’t particularly low-cut; the sleeves went down to her elbows, and the hem was somewhere around her knees. But somehow, every time he looked at her, he could barely breathe for wanting her.

Eva wasn’t showing a lot of skin, but what skin she did have on display was choice.

As if she could hear his thoughts, Eva’s eyes fastened on Danny’s face. They’d taken on that special sparkle he was already becoming familiar with—the one that said she had him right where she wanted him.

“The first reason we came to Chicago was because, out of all the teams who won the right to compete, the Midwest Team from the restaurant Limestone, right here in the Gold Coast Hotel in Chicago, scored the highest in the final round of judging.”

A stir swept through the kitchen as chefs on every team glanced at one another and reevaluated their competition.

Danny kept his gaze straight ahead, locked with Eva’s, while his mind raced to assimilate the new information. He couldn’t help feeling as if she was throwing this out there as a personal challenge to him, even though he knew, rationally, that wasn’t true.

Obviously, this was something they’d planned out way in advance. Long before Eva had set her sights on him, for whatever reason. And it made sense, from a publicity standpoint—if Eva wanted the Cooking Channel to broadcast the competition, she had to give them some drama.

Casting the Midwest Team as the front-runners and everyone else as underdogs was a good start.

“And the second reason,” Eva continued, a cat-in-the-cream-pot smile on her face at the stir she’d caused, “is that we wanted to celebrate the exceptional diversity and exciting freshness of the Chicago food scene.

“There are several foods and techniques Chicago is famous for. In your first official challenge, we’d like each team to prepare a three-course meal that best represents your team’s talents—Chicago-style. You have two hours to plan and shop this morning, then four hours to prep this afternoon. You’ll have two more hours to cook tomorrow, before the judges come back to taste your food. Oh, and Chefs? One more thing.”

The air felt electrified, and Danny’s heart was beating hard enough to shake his whole chest. What kind of curve-ball was she about to throw at them?

“This will be our first elimination challenge,” Eva said gently. “The team the judges choose as their least favorite will be going home tomorrow night. The other four teams will progress to the next round. So, with that said, are you ready?”

A chorus of voices shouted yes, the adrenaline of the room spiking hard as every contestant tensed, poised for action. Danny could feel his muscles twitching, his hands almost shaking with the need to be cooking, stirring, measuring, plating.

Eva swept one red-clad arm to the side, pointing at a digital timer mounted on the wall beside the clock. “Go,” she barked, and the timer flashed on, red numbers counting down the seconds and making Danny feel as if he were already behind.

Everyone scrambled to put their heads together while the judges trooped out of the kitchen, leaving the chefs behind with Eva and her camera crew.

Because he couldn’t stop himself and his focus was for shit, part of Danny’s brain tracked her as she efficiently unclipped her microphone from the back of the shiny black leather belt cinching her slim waist and snagged the rumpled camera guy for another intense discussion.

“Are we boring you?” Max’s laughing voice in his ear brought Danny back to earth.

Cheeks stinging with embarrassment, Danny cleared his throat and resolved to ignore Eva Jansen, no matter how unreasonably hot she was. “Sorry. What’ve we got so far?”

“So far we’ve named two things Chicago is known for,” Jules said, pencil poised above the notebook she carried around in her back pocket for jotting down menu ideas. “Steak and hot dogs.”

“Sausage, in general.” Beck crossed his arms over his chest. “Chicago is the hog butcher for the world.”

The line caught Danny by surprise, made him give the guy a closer look. Somehow, he hadn’t expected big, scary Beck to be quoting from a Carl Sandburg poem.

“Pizza, too,” Winslow added. “That weird deep-dish kind.”

Chicago-style pies—with their thick, doughy crusts and mountainous piles of toppings—were so different from the typical New York slice of floppy, deliciously greasy pizza, they hardly seemed like the same category of food at all.

“I’m not confident about our ability to get a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza right,” Danny said. “What else do they have going on in this town?”

“There are a few places—Limestone is one of them—where Chicago chefs are taking experimental cooking to the next level,” Beck said, his gaze fierce and intent on the notepad in Jules’s hand. He seemed to be working extra hard to concentrate, and Danny felt a brief, searing moment of admiration for the guy.

Whatever unresolved mess existed between Beck and that San Francisco chef, Skye Gladwell—Beck was handling it like a pro.

Better than Danny was dealing with his unwelcome attraction to Eva Jansen, at any rate.

Focus, asshole.

“So the Midwest Team is likely to stick to what they know and do something avant garde and crazy with garlic foam, basil ice cream, and tomato water, or whatever,” Max said. He’d always been good at strategy. It used to drive Danny crazy when they played board games, but now he was glad of it.

What Danny was good at was research. “I’ve been reading up on Chicago, actually,” he said, carefully avoiding Max’s eye. Max liked to give him shit for it, but it had saved the team’s ass on more than one occasion. “And the current big trends here are brunch and comfort food. Smaller restaurants in the hot neighborhoods like Bucktown and Wicker Park get lines out the door and around the block for fancy waffles and a good omelet, and everybody in town has their own version of chicken potpie and mashed potatoes.”