Soufflés at Sunrise (10 page)

“This week we had three low scores. Aaron, your cheesecake had good flavor and lovely texture, but we didn’t know where you were going with it. It had no identity, no unique qualities. Louis, your cheesecake was beautiful, but the flavor wasn’t there. You have to have both style and taste to avoid the flames. Dreya, we didn’t know
what
to make of your dessert. Sometimes taking a risk pays off, but your savory jalapeño cheddar cheesecake did not. The judges felt that it tasted like bad nachos. They didn’t know how to eat it or if they even
wanted
to. Dreya… I’m sorry. But you’ve been
Burned
.”

W
ELCOME
TO
Burned
, where we find fresh new cooking talent… and a few culinary disasters!

Last week everyone adored Kai’s fresh and fruity tropical cheesecake, but we lost Dreya when her savory jalapeño cheesecake confused our judges more than wowed them. Sometimes creativity is a hit. In her case it was a miss, or should we say a burn? We’ll miss Dreya and her unique style, but there are fabulous prizes to be won and still eleven contestants left to win them!

This week it’s about to get a bit more difficult…. Our chefs will be making a dessert featuring choux pastry. It’s tricky and finicky, but our chefs are up to the challenge. We know they’ll knock it out of the park. And if they don’t? Well, we all know what happens then….

Remember, our grand prize winner gets a year of pastry training in Paris, a whole kitchen’s worth of top-of-the-line commercial tools and appliances, and a hundred thousand dollars for his or her own business.

With stakes this big, we ask the one question on everyone’s mind: Do these chefs have what it takes to rise to the top? Or will they get
Burned
?

C
HASE
COULDN
’
T
decide if he was sad to see Dreya go or not. Her crazy hippy attitude and style could be a little overwhelming, but she was a nice person. Unlike a few of the others. It was still early days of the competition, though it seemed that with each week that passed, the pressure got turned up a little higher.

He didn’t have the final in his sights—not yet, at least. Chase was focusing on getting through one week at a time, taking each challenge as it came, and giving it his all. There were other distractions, of course; he missed his family, missed the home he’d made for himself and the comfortable life with his business and his friends and his cat. Then there was Kai. Kai who kissed him and laughed with him and, apparently, dated him—if going out a few times could really be called dating.

Kai, who had already won a challenge, and certainly did have the final, and the
Burned
champion title, firmly in mind.

While they were kissing and touching, it was easy to forget Kai was, technically, his competition. He didn’t feel like competing, though, not when Kai’s hands were rubbing slow circles on his back and Chase felt more relaxed, boneless, than he had in a long time.

All of their kissing had led nowhere. It was almost an unspoken thing at this stage—they couldn’t have sex in their own beds, not when they were sharing a room with two other guys. And they wouldn’t have sex in the back seat of Kai’s car, or in the bathroom, or in a storage closet at the studio. Chase wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t a prude, he just had standards, and there was no way they could take their time and thoroughly seduce each other if they were worried about someone walking in on them.

Kai had sublet his apartment too, so there was no chance of sneaking out and taking their relationship to the next level somewhere more private. No, Chase was forced to endure the ongoing torment of having the sexiest man in LA sleeping in the bed next to him—so close and yet so very, very far away.

So sex would have to wait. Even if Chase really, really didn’t want to wait. Not when Kai tasted so fucking good.

He pulled back from the kiss with a laugh.

“Gimme a moment,” Chase murmured, pressing his forehead to Kai’s shoulder.

Kai laughed and ran his hand over the back of Chase’s head, ruffling the hair up then smoothing it out again. “How you doing, there?”

“Hard,” Chase blurted, then groaned again as his brain to mouth filter failed him. Kai just laughed and pressed his lips to Chase’s temple.

They were on the roof terrace of Bryant Tower, the moon high above LA and casting its glow over all of California. Chase thought it must be close to one in the morning. All the others had made their excuses and, one by one, drifted back downstairs to bed. He and Kai were left alone with the potted palm trees and the noise of the water in the pool gently lapping against the tiles. It was a balmy night, the air was thick. It made Chase want to just tug Kai’s shorts down and… no.

Not gonna happen
, he told himself. Not with the final challenge of the week tomorrow.

Their two challenges previously in the week had all involved tricky pastries—on Tuesday it had been boutique breakfast pastries, a challenge he’d done well in, coming in second behind Kai. That had given him plenty of opportunities to snipe and bitch at Kai on Wednesday, when they had to make phyllo parcels. Phyllo pastry was Chase’s worst nightmare and Kai seemed to excel at it, which had, at the time, been genuinely annoying.

Their on-screen tension was only broken in the evenings when they snuck into whatever space was free to make out and grope like teenagers.

“We have shooting tomorrow,” Kai said remorsefully, as if Chase didn’t know. He floated his hand down Chase’s back.

“I know. They’re not picking us up until midday this time, though.”

“Wonder why.”

It would likely mean working into the evening instead of being out in time for dinner. There was probably some production meeting going on, another thing they weren’t privy to. They just got the results of those little meetings when they got to the set.

With a genuine grunt of displeasure, Chase hauled himself up, adjusted his cock, then reached a hand down to help Kai up off the lounger.

“You’re killing me here,” Kai grumbled as he reached for the bulge in Chase’s shorts, then pulled his hand away again. “Killing me.”

They held hands loosely, fingers entwined, as they made their way back downstairs into the shared bedroom. They changed in silence, not wanting to wake Aaron from his epic snore-fest, then ducked into the bathroom to share a sink as they brushed their teeth.

Kai had let his hair loose, and Chase admired it in the mirror as they scrubbed. The dark hair skimmed the top of Kai’s shoulder blades, all kinked up from where he’d tied it up earlier in the day. Chase wanted to touch and held himself back, worried this might be too intimate for their still-new relationship. If it was even a relationship at all. Maybe they were just two guys who made out with each other.

Before they headed into bed, Kai caught Chase’s wrist and planted a soft, minty kiss on his lips.

“Good night,” he said softly.

Chase nodded. “Good night.”

T
HE
NEXT
morning, despite his best attempts to sleep in, Chase was dragged out of bed at eight thirty and told to put some clothes on. TV-appropriate clothes.

There was a rush for the shower, of course, and Chase was handed a shirt by Sara from the wardrobe team. Then they were all ushered into the living room of the condo, where Diego and Nicolette were waiting for them along with the full camera crew.

“Sorry for the early start,” Diego said. They were all perched on sofas and chairs, and Kai was on the floor, his long, strong legs stretched out in front of him. “We wanted to give you a heads-up about the challenge this afternoon.”

“That’s right,” Nicolette continued. “You see, this week we want you to dazzle us with….” She paused dramatically. “A stunning choux pastry dessert.”

Chase schooled his face into a blank mask. He’d tried making choux once before and it had been an absolute disaster. The stuff was his nemesis.
Damn it
.

“Because of the complexity of this challenge and exactly what we want from you, you’re all going to have the morning to do some research online,” Nicolette said, and one of the production team started to hand out iPads. “You will also have an hour in the kitchen to perfect your recipe before the challenge starts. Remember—we don’t offer extra time like this for no reason. Use it wisely.”

The director called, “Cut,” and there was an immediate buzz of conversation around the room. Nicolette was talking to the director, and Diego had leaned in to answer something Big Al had asked him. Chase turned the iPad over and over in his hands nervously.

During the challenges in the week, they’d been given simple recipes to follow to make good, basic puff and phyllo pastry bases. Their execution of that had been judged, but it was more about what they’d put inside the pastry, how creative and tasty and beautiful that final product was. Of course, for the final he had to come up with a recipe of his own.

Tommy called for their attention again and started to run through the additional rules for the challenge that would be explained to the TV viewers in a voiceover. They weren’t allowed to steal any ideas from the Internet. Instead their morning was to be spent looking for inspiration, designing their dessert, and figuring out what flavors they would be using. The cameras would follow them, so there was no chance for Chase to grab Kai and beg for his help.

Even as they were dismissed to go and find a comfortable spot to do their research, Chase knew he wouldn’t actually go to Kai. He didn’t have much, so his pride was important. He could get through this.

Deciding to go back to bed, Chase hoped the cameras would at least give him a respite for a while as someone from the production team frantically cleaned the room around him. That gave him a chance to search “tips for making sublime choux pastry” and made scribbled notes to himself on how to achieve that.

It proved to be a useful exercise—he learned where he’d gone wrong last time, at least. By the time the cameras and the director tracked him down, Chase was doodling a big pile of circles in an inverted triangle shape.

“We’ll get you to do a voiceover to explain what you’re thinking at the moment,” Diego said. Chase nodded. “Just carry on with what you’re doing.”

By the time they’d left, he’d decided on a croquembouche for his dessert to dazzle the judges. It was a classic French dessert: a large cone of spherical choux pastries filled with a pastry cream, piled up on top of each other and held together with chocolate and caramel. For his
Burned
twist, Chase decided to add pistachios to his pastry cream filling and press the little green nuts into the caramel too, giving it a beautiful, visual twist.

As long as he could conquer the pastry itself, he felt confident that this week might finally go his way.

K
AI
SAT
up straight, stretching out the cricks in his neck and back that had developed as he’d hunched over the breakfast bar, working on his design for this big challenge. The production team clearly wanted them to produce something incredible, grand, and stunning, and Kai knew a variation on a classic croquembouche was exactly the thing to stun the judges.

He had a twist planned, naturally, to use more chocolate than caramel and dark cherries to give the dessert an almost Black Forest sort of feel. He’d made this before, without the variation, and was pleased with the concept.

Nicolette swept into the room after having spent the past fifteen minutes talking to Chase in their bedroom. Kai grinned, ready for this, and turned on his charm and enthusiasm as he started describing his plan to the judge. Tommy was just behind the camera, and Kai noticed his eyes widening, then his grin, then how he stepped away and started muttering into his iPhone as Kai talked Nicolette through his plans.

“Great,” Tommy said as Kai finished talking and the cameras stopped filming. “Kai, we’re going to film the next part of the show in groups, so I need you to come with me now.”

Kai nodded, a little confused but willing to do what he was told. They’d never done this before, splitting everyone up. But then they’d never been given extra time to plan before either, so maybe it was all to do with their big twist that was clearly going on this week.

Kai, along with Polly, Aaron, Clarissa, and Big Al, was hustled into a shuttle bus that took them over to the studio. The others were chattering excitedly about their plans, their concerns for the afternoon, how long they’d have to create the dessert. Kai had figured he would need at least two, nearly three hours to create the whole thing. Any less than that and he’d need to scale back on the size of his dessert, which he didn’t want to do.

“How’s Chase doing?” Polly asked, startling Kai out of his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I haven’t seen him since the announcement this morning.”

“He’s performed well all week,” Polly mused. “I bet he’ll be fine.”

I hope so,
he thought, and forced himself to smile at Polly in response.

They were kept in the three smaller groups while they rotated through the voiceover studio, lunch, and the ordering deck where they could request any ingredients the show didn’t already have in stock. One of the poor interns would then be dispatched to go and get them before filming started at one in the afternoon.

By the time they were led into the studio, Kai’s head was already in a whirl from everything they’d been put through today so far. It was rare to do so much before a challenge, and he had to force himself to relax, take some deep breaths, and focus. He spaced out a little during Diego’s customary introduction speech. He’d heard most of it before, prizes, yada yada, introduce the judges, tell the audience who was burned the week before, and how many ways they could get screwed this week. He looked at the ceiling, then the judges’ table where Emilio, Basil, and Nicolette were chatting. He knew what he was doing. He just wanted to get it over with.