Some Like It Hot (21 page)

As it turned out, there was no need to worry about her willpower, or lack thereof. What Eva hadn’t counted on was how much everything was about to change.

She was still producing the show, which meant that all decisions and crises having to do with the actual day-to-day of getting the contestants where they needed to go, getting the challenges set up, making sure the kitchen remained stocked and cleaned and ready for action, fell to Eva.

Not to mention the surprisingly heartbreaking task of sending the losing teams home.

She’d had a taste of how awful it felt to let a group of chefs who’d cooked their heart out know that they hadn’t made the cut, back during the finals. As producer and emcee, she was always the one who had to deliver the bad news. And it had always sucked. Every time.

But suddenly, now that there were cameras everywhere, black lenses like unblinking eyes focused on catching every snippet of human drama and suffering possible, it became a thousand times worse.

It started that very first day. After the hottest, most urgent, and intensely satisfying twenty-minute good-bye sex of her life, Eva had rushed to put herself back together and run downstairs to the kitchen where all the chefs and judges were waiting.

Holding her head high and pretending she hadn’t just been rolling around on the floor with the East Coast Team’s pastry chef was a lot easier when she didn’t look said pastry chef in the all-too-handsome face.

So Eva had scanned the rest of the room, taking in the hopeful, fearful anticipation and dread, the heart-pounding, cold-sweating agony of not knowing, and she’d felt her own skin begin to prickle with a chill of unease.

God. I have to tell them their dream is over.

And their reaction would be filmed by Cheney and his damn camera, captured for the entertainment of anyone who happened to flip past the Cooking Channel.

Gulping, Eva grasped for the right words and wondered when her life got so freaking emotionally complex and hard to deal with.

No. Fun.

This first elimination hadn’t been all that tricky to decide on, back in the judges’ chamber. With relatively little back and forth or arguing among Kane, Claire, and her father, they’d picked a loser. She knew it would get tougher as the competition went forward and they narrowed the teams down to the best of the best.

But it was hard to believe that any elimination announcement could be more difficult than this one.

“It was a very tough decision,” Eva lied, clasping her hands behind her back to stop their fidgeting. “And I know no one wants to be the first team to be sent home, but unfortunately, the competition is over for some of you.”

An electric current of tension zipped through the room, and Eva dug her nails into her palms.

“After a lot of deliberation, and some dishes and flavors that truly astonished us from each team, the judges have decided that the four teams moving on in the competition are the chefs from the Midwest, the South, the West Coast, and the East Coast.”

A stunned silence met her pronouncement, followed by absolute chaos as the kitchen erupted into whoops of joy and celebration.

Amid the relieved high-fives and the backslapping, Chef Paulina Santiago and her crew quietly trudged back to their table and started packing up their knives and other gear, and Eva couldn’t watch them, didn’t want to see the way their shoulders slumped and their faces crumpled with disbelief, or the way they comforted each other with arms around each other’s backs.

But she forced herself to keep her eyes up and on them. She owed it to them to bear witness to this final moment on their journey toward a dream that she’d had a hand in snatching away.

Kane and Claire congratulated the continuing chefs, said good-bye to the Southwest Team, and left.

Probably to go have fun, happy, sexy times together, since nobody cared if two judges were boinking. Damn it.

Eva, however, had the first of many long nights ahead of her. Summoning her assistant, Drew, to her side, she’d immediately started laying out the battle plan for taking care of getting the Southwest Team back to New Mexico, having the kitchen reorganized with four team tables instead of five, to give the remaining chefs more space, and settling up the hotel bills.

A quick glance at the front corner of the room showed Cheney packing up his camera, and a bolt of panic shot through Eva.

From across the room, her father caught her eye, and it didn’t take a lifetime of struggling to live up to his expectations to read the clear message in his tight expression.

She had to keep Cheney interested. They hadn’t had any luck coordinating schedules with their potential celebrity chef judges, so far. What could she say to make him stay and give the RSC another shot?

The partying gaggle of chefs was beginning to disperse, calling suggestions about taking it out on the town, finding a chef-friendly bar or pub, and throwing back a few drinks to unwind from the insanity of the last few days.

Her attention was caught when she overheard her own name. “I’m going to ask Eva Jansen to come out with us,” Ryan Larousse muttered to the chef next to him.

Eva stilled, but kept her eyes on Drew’s inky black hair bent over the iPad where he was entering items in his ever-expanding to-do list.

“Dude.” Ike Bryar, the head of the Southern Team, frowned, cutting his eyes at her. “What are you doing? That’s like inviting the dean of students to a kegger.”

“There wasn’t an official winner of this challenge, but I bet if we get her liquored up, we can squeeze some good info out of her on who the judges really liked best.” The smug edge to Ryan’s voice made it clear which team he thought would’ve won, if points had been awarded.

“And why the hell would she tell you any of that?” The voice came from behind Eva, who couldn’t turn around to see the speaker without letting on that she was eavesdropping, but she didn’t need to.

It was Danny.

Mostly, she wanted to smack him—he really wasn’t a good actor, if this was the best he could do at pretending nothing had ever gone on between them—but there was a soft, silly, hard-to-deny part of her that wanted to melt when he leaped to her defense.

Especially when Ryan snorted and said, under his breath, “Because Eva Jansen knows how to party, man. Just look at her.”

It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. Chefs were a raunchy, irreverent, testosterone-fueled group. But something about Ryan’s comment caught Eva on the raw edge of her emotions, and she flinched.

Visibly flinched.

Drew looked up, eyebrows raised quizzically. And probably no one else would’ve noticed anything, except Danny was obviously as attuned to her as she was to him, because she could hear the pure rage in his voice when he snarled, “You take that back, Larousse.”

The entire kitchen paused, and Eva couldn’t keep pretending she wasn’t aware of what was going on.

Casting a quick look at Danny, who was a vision of protective anger, legs braced apart and scorched, blistered hands clenched into tight fists that must have hurt unbearably, Eva’s gaze swept past Cheney’s corner of the room and snagged on the camera still set up there.

Cheney had gone back to filming.

And in that briefest of moments before the other East Coasters leaped on Danny and held him back, before Ryan laughed that harsh, grating laugh of his and swept from the kitchen, Eva knew what she had to do.

Cheney wanted drama. He wanted hot chefs and kitchen fights and maybe a little romance, to bring the female viewers in.

If Eva wanted to make the RSC the biggest, best competition it could possibly be—if she wanted to open it up to every talented chef in America—she had no choice.

“Drew,” Eva said, her eyes never leaving Danny, who was whispering furiously with Beck, flailing hand gestures threatening to take out the rest of his team. “I’ve got a new job for you, one that should take priority over the rest of that list.”

“Go,” Drew said, fingers confidently poised over the touchscreen pad.

Eva hesitated, stomach roiling with indecision.

The RSC was her mother’s legacy. Emmaline Jansen’s dream was to found a competition that would elevate and draw attention to the work of amazing chefs around the United States. And when Eva had agreed to take it on this year, she’d done so partly because she wanted to get back to the roots of her mother’s original idea.

Eva wanted to discover and encourage the efforts of all chefs … not just the high-profile ones, or the ones who’d already achieved success. And the best way she knew to do that was to raise the profile of the RSC itself, to get bigger, better sponsors with deeper pockets, so that they could expand the competition to be more inclusive.

But was she really prepared to go this far to get what she wanted?

Yes. It was the only way. Everyone would benefit from the RSC gaining greater exposure on the Cooking Channel. She was doing this for everyone, not only herself.

There was more at stake than her career, or her conscience.

“You’re friends with that chef on the East Coast Team, Winslow. Aren’t you?”

Drew’s eyes got big behind his glasses, but he nodded, and Eva felt a slow curl of determination in her belly.

If Cheney wanted drama, then by God she’d give it to him.

The week following the first elimination was one of the hardest of Danny’s life. They all felt the loss of the Southwest Team; Paulina Santiago and her crew were nice people, solid competitors. And the fact that they went home brought it into sharp relief—this was a competition. They were playing for real stakes, and screwups had real consequences.

The chefs were given a few days off to rest up from the previous challenge, but most of them spent the time in the kitchen, anyway, shooting the shit, doodling ideas, and just generally staying amped on anticipation.

Danny didn’t do downtime. In fact, he sort of sucked at it.

So he practiced his soufflé technique, experimented with caramels, and watched.

He watched Max and Jules emerge from their lovebird haze and get their heads in the game. He watched Beck studiously not watching Skye Gladwell, who swirled across the kitchen in a dance of flowy skirts and jingly bracelets and curly clouds of strawberry-blond hair. He watched Winslow getting cozier with Drew Gallagher, Eva’s assistant.

But most of all, he watched Eva.

Eva, who flew from one task to another as if her stiletto heels had wings attached. Eva, who hadn’t stopped moving since the full camera crew arrived the day before. She was in motion from the moment he first caught sight of her across the crowded Gold Coast lobby as he came in with a sack full of light, flaky croissants from the bakery across the street for the team’s breakfast, till she bid everyone a distracted good night and went back to work.

Eva, who was starting to look worn and fragile, like pastry dough rolled out so thin it was see-through in places, and far too easy to tear.

She had a lot to do—the production team was gearing up for the next challenge starting tomorrow, and coordinating everything with the camera crew seemed to be quite the hassle. From what Danny could tell, the preparations involved a lot of phone calls, permits, and wrangling around.

While he and the other chefs had been taking in a little of Chicago—okay, mainly scouting out the local bar scene, but still—Eva had been running herself into the ground.

He didn’t like it, but what could he do? He kept his distance, not wanting to give that asswipe Ryan Larousse any more ammunition than he already had, after that stupid blowup over him calling Eva a party girl.

Which maybe she was, or had been, but you couldn’t prove it by her behavior during the past week. In fact, tonight was the first time anyone had been able to entice her out to the current favorite drinking spot, a refurbished speakeasy in Wicker Park, Chicago’s young, artsy neighborhood.

Danny liked The Blind Tiger because it was unpretentious, serving solid drinks made with high-quality liquor to an eclectic mix of patrons, from off-duty firemen still smoky and soot-stained to older couples sipping from their own beer steins to scarf-and-skinny-jean-clad hipsters out on the town.

It reminded him of Chapel, their favorite after-hours bar in New York, and Danny wondered if this was what it was like to travel the world—no matter where you went, you found something to make you feel at home.

Of course, back home, no one would’ve hooted and cat-called when Eva ordered a Manhattan. But here in Chicago, even though Danny could see a perfectly good bottle of American rye whiskey behind the scarred oak bar, the bartender shrugged and told her to pick something else.

The Chicago versus New York rivalry ran deeper than Danny had ever realized.

Eva looked the bartender in the eye and said, “I’ll have a double shot of rye, a shot of sweet vermouth, and a glass with ice. Oh, and toss in a maraschino cherry. Thanks.” Then she turned back to Cheney, the camera guy she’d invited along—without his camera, thank Christ—and said, “What’ll you have? I’m buying.”

God. Was it any wonder Danny was head over heels for this woman?

Eva accepted her shots and mixed up her own Manhattan right under the bartender’s nose, then led Cheney to a couple of stools at the corner of the bar where she casually reached across the dull gleam of wood polished by generations of elbows to snag a couple more cherries from the canister behind the counter.

And … it was time for Danny to stop watching her now. He took a pull from his bottle, a local craft beer the bartender had recommended, and checked around the bar to see how his guys were doing. Winslow and Drew were off in a corner, heads bent together, giggling over their drinks like a couple of kids too young to be tossing back tequila.

Max was shooting pool in the back with Beck, while Jules kept Danny company, her knowing stare reminding him of just how long they’d been best friends. And how hard it was to keep a secret from her, when she wasn’t distracted by songbirds and pink-winged cupids flying around her head.

“You like her,” Jules said, tipping her beer bottle in Eva’s direction. “Don’t you?”

Danny planted his arms on the bar to steady himself. “Doesn’t matter,” he grunted.

“You always do that,” Jules accused, shaking her head so hard, her messy blond ponytail lashed at Danny’s shoulder. “What you want matters, Danny. Your happiness matters, just as much as anyone else’s.”

Rolling his eyes, Danny slouched down on his barstool. “Spare me the psychoanalysis, Jules. Just because you’ve been clocked upside the head by Cupid doesn’t mean the rest of us are panting for the chance to get all googly-eyed.”

“That’s not the point,” she argued. “I’m not saying you’re stoked about it, or that you wanted it to go down like this, but that’s not how it works. Maybe you didn’t mean for it to happen, but you like her, a lot, or you wouldn’t be picking a fight with me about it.”

“Fine,” Danny conceded. It loosened something in his chest just to admit it out loud to one of his oldest friends, but it didn’t change anything. “So what? Maybe I like her, but there’s nothing I can do about it. So why torture myself thinking about it?”

“Because you can’t stop yourself.”

“Can too.”

Now it was Jules’s turn to roll her eyes. “Danny. You haven’t been able to keep your eyes off her since she came in.”

Realizing his attention had drifted to the corner of the bar where Eva sat making an impassioned speech to the cameraman, looking more animated and energized than he’d seen her in days, emphatic hand gestures and decisive nods and all, Danny whipped his head around. He took too big a gulp of his beer to cover it, and ended up in a coughing fit with Jules whacking him on the back.

And she was a chef, a damn good one, which meant she had some serious upper-body strength for a girl.

“Ow, damn it, quit that,” he gasped as one particularly hard smack nearly toppled him off his bar stool.

Okay, make that serious upper-body strength, period, the end. Girl, nothing. Geez.

“So, you gonna be okay?” she asked.

“Aside from my cracked rib?” he groused, clearing his burning throat.

Giving him her patented Boys Are Dumb look, Jules said, “Not about that. About her.”

Danny told himself the ache in his throat was left over from inhaling that mouthful of micro brew. “I’ll have to be, won’t I? I can’t do anything about the fact that she’s decided it’s too risky for us to be together while the competition is going on.”

“And after?”

Danny tensed so hard, when he shrugged his shoulders it felt like he was breaking his own spine. “Who knows? We don’t exactly travel in the same circles.”

“You come from such different worlds. How could it ever work?” Jules said, sighing in an exaggeratedly romantic way that didn’t suit her at all. “Yeah, it’s pretty Romeo and Juliet. Star-crossed lovers, and all that. Not that you’ve slept with her or anything … Danny!”

“What?” Danny ducked his head, intensely aware of the heat scorching his cheeks and neck. “Don’t make a thing out of it, we stopped a while ago.”

“I can’t believe I missed it,” Jules moaned. “I mean, not that I wanted to watch, or anything.”

“Okay, now you’re creeping me out.” Danny shuddered.

“Oh, shut up. I just mean, God, Danny. All this big life stuff was going on with you, and you never said a word. Never let on for a second.”

“You didn’t notice because you and Max were off in the Honeymoon Suite, doing whatever it is you do that I absolutely do not ever, ever want to know or hear anything about, or, oh sweet Jesus, you’re paying for my lobotomy.”

Jules made an unhappy noise. “I’m sorry, Danny. I know we’ve both been preoccupied, not really pulling our weight…”

“It’s okay,” he said automatically, then blinked. “It really is. I mean, yeah, it was problematic, but I get it. You and Max fought hard to get where you are, and you deserved some time to enjoy it. But no, we had to get on a plane and fly out here and cook our butts off. Whatever bonding and togetherness you managed to sneak in, I’m glad about it.”

And he was, he realized as Jules thanked him with a quick hug, her familiar cinnamon and salt smell tickling his nose. He’d never understood it before, but now, with this insane addiction to watching Eva Jansen tugging at the back of his brain, trying to make him turn his head to catch a glimpse of her waving her hands in the air and making her point, Danny really did get it.

“I’m just so happy,” Jules sniffed, sounding alarmingly waterlogged. “I want you to be happy, too.”

“Hey, no.” He patted her shoulder. Tears killed him, just slayed him dead. “Jules, come on. I’m happy. I’ve got you and Max settled, Winslow’s got a maybe-boyfriend, and Beck hasn’t punched anyone in a few days. Mom and Dad are healthy, and I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re doing pretty good so far in this Rising Star Chef deal. What else do I need?”

Don’t look at Eva, don’t look at Eva, don’t look at Eva…

“Love,” Jules snapped, sitting up and scrubbing at her eyes with a huff of annoyance. She hated crying.

“Look, someone on this team has to keep his head,” Danny said, pulling his mouth into a teasing smile. “Between you and Max coming down with chronic lurve, Winslow flirting nonstop with that assistant kid, and Beck performing the strangest mating dance known to man with that West Coast chef, we’re full up on interpersonal drama over here.”

“Fine, fine.” Jules laughed. “I’ll back off. For now. But Danny, think about this—we’re not going to be in the RSC forever. And when the competition is over, you’ll be free to pursue … whoever catches your fancy. This isn’t Regency England or something—where you come from doesn’t have to define who you are. Or her, either, for that matter. So just … don’t give up hope.”

Danny gave her the smile she wanted, but as she squeezed his shoulder one last time and hopped down from her barstool to go check out Max and Beck’s pool game, he wondered if that was true.

If they lost, would he ever see Eva again? Jules could joke all she wanted, but he and Eva
didn’t
move in the same circles. The restaurant world was small, but it wasn’t that small, and Danny didn’t go to a lot of star-studded openings and gala parties. He probably wouldn’t go even if he was invited.

But if they won, would it be any better?

He’d have more time with her, sure, doing post-competition interviews and whatnot. But would either of them want to risk a relationship that could look, to the outside world, like a reason for favoritism?

While he nursed his beer and thought dark thoughts, his eyes were drawn back to Eva. There was a complicated expression on her face as she said good-bye to Cheney, who got up and left after handing her a thick sheaf of official-looking documents. Obviously, whatever she’d been trying to convince the Cooking Channel rep to do, he’d agreed. So why didn’t she look happier about it?

Before he could talk himself out of it, Danny was off his stool and making his way down the bar to Eva’s side.

“Buy you another round of Manhattan ingredients?” he said.

She straightened her shoulders immediately, as if alarmed that she’d let herself slump over the bar like a broken-down drunk. Or a broken-down, exhausted heap of culinary competition coordinator, Danny thought, watching the way she could only keep herself perfectly upright for a few seconds before wilting like butter lettuce left out overnight.

Come to think of it, that dress she was wearing was sort of greenish, and wrapped around her body with a lettuce-like ruffle down the V-shaped neckline in front, where it tied at her waist.

Danny stared at the bow. Was this seriously one of those dresses where all he’d have to do would be to pull that string, right there, and the whole thing would fall apart, leaving her naked?

“I don’t think so,” she said, dragging his attention back to her strained expression. “But thanks. If I have another drink, I’m going to keel over right here and fall off this stool. And I don’t have time to go to the emergency room for a broken ankle.”

“What if I promise to catch you?” Danny squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry. Forget I said that. I just … wanted to see how you’re doing. You look tired.”

Eva pouted at him, which was at least as unfair as Danny flirting about catching her.
Touché, Ms. Jansen.

“Never tell a woman she looks tired,” she advised. “We cracked your super secret code a long time ago; we know you mean we look old.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Danny slid onto the stool next to her, careful to keep his legs and arms from brushing against hers. He wasn’t sure what would happen if they touched, but he was pretty sure it could get them thrown out of this bar and arrested for public indecency. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been going nonstop since that camera crew got here.”

“There’s a lot to do.” Her eyes went unfocused as if she’d zoomed in on some long, scary to-do list in her head. She sighed. “In fact, I should probably get back to it, now that Cheney’s all squared away.”

“What about Cheney?” Danny asked quickly, mostly to keep her sitting still for another few minutes. She needed the break, he told himself. It had nothing to do with the electric charge he got out of being this close to her.

Satisfaction crept into her tone. “He’s finally convinced he did the right thing, sending for more cameras. We’re going to turn this competition into the next big Cooking Channel sensation!” She waved the documents in her hand like a celebratory flag.