“Yeah, but see, we’ve all been doing exactly that for the last twenty minutes, and the plane’s still parked at the gate. What, exactly, are we waiting for? I mean, you’ve already made, like, four pots of coffee. I bet you’re getting sick of the smell of burnt coffee beans.”
The flight attendant’s gaze flickered, and Danny pressed his advantage with a smile.
“I don’t really know,” the kid finally said. “I got a call from ground control to hold the plane for a late passenger; she’s supposed to be on her way.”
Danny stared. “You’re serious. You weren’t lying, trying to keep us calm while we waited to find out there’s a pigeon in the engine or something?”
“We’re pigeon-free, as far as I know.”
It obviously wasn’t this kid’s fault, but Danny was starting to get pissed. One of his guys was stuck feeling like shit for an extra half hour, and as far as Danny could tell there was no legitimate reason for it. “Is this standard practice, holding up a whole plane full of people for one passenger?”
Earring glinting as he shook his head, the kid shrugged helplessly.
“It is when the passenger is me,” purred a low voice from behind them.
Danny whirled, nearly clocking himself on the jutting refrigerator cabinet, to see a svelte woman dressed in something complicated and elegant that wrapped around her slim body like some sort of chic lady mummy costume, only in dark blue.
The color set off her pearly smooth skin, making her a study in rich jewel tones, from the scarlet curve of her smirking mouth to the shiny brown hair angling bluntly down to her chin. She looked as if she were on her way to opening night at the Met or something, not a commuter flight to Chicago.
Recognition fired one instant after the instinctual spark of visceral desire, and Danny clamped down on the dizzying combination.
Clenching his teeth, he faced the woman whose millionaire restaurateur father had founded the Rising Star Chef competition twenty years ago.
“Thanks for waiting,” she was saying to the flight attendant. “God, Daddy getting on the airline’s board of directors is the best thing that ever happened to me. Unlike everything that happened this morning! I had to avert a professional disaster, then there was a mix-up with the car service and I had to take a taxi. My assistant is so fired. Well, not really, I’d be a mess without him, but I’m cutting his chocolate budget. No more candy on his desk until he figures out how to get me to the airport on time!”
She smiled, perfect white teeth flashing. Before the dazzled flight attendant could gather his wits off the floor, Danny had stepped between them.
At a deep gut level, all he could think was mine.
And, close on the heels of that thought, Uh-oh.
Chapter 2
“Nice of you to finally join us,” said the hottest pastry chef Eva had ever seen—and she’d seen plenty.
This one, though? Was pretty memorable.
“Where’s your seat?” His sensual upper lip curled in a slight sneer that sent a zing through her nervous system. “I’m assuming it’s one of these empty ones in first-class.”
She resisted the urge to tuck her hair behind her ear and struggled not to let on that she was out of breath from her mad dash through the airport.
Holding out a hand she desperately hoped wasn’t sweaty, Eva gave him her most brilliant smile and said, “Daniel Lunden, right? I remember you from the East Coast finals. Is your whole team here? What a wacky coincidence!”
Lunden narrowed his gorgeous blue-gray eyes at her, his firm, chiseled mouth flattening to a straight line.
Whoops, looks like someone’s a little ticked.
“Um. Maybe we could save the joyous reunion for after we’re in the air?” The young blond guy who’d held the plane for her suggested it with the air of someone used to being ignored.
Eva turned the brilliant smile on him, since it didn’t seem to be working on Lunden. “You’re absolutely right”—she peeked at his name badge—“Patrick. I apologize. I’d like to make it up to everyone. How about mimosas for the whole plane, on me?”
“But that’s … five dollars per person for everyone in coach,” Patrick stammered. “Even not counting the minors, it’s going to be at least five hundred dollars!”
Cheap at twice the price, Eva thought, feeling her embarrassment at being late ease. “That’s totally fine. Do you want my credit card now?”
Patrick beamed at her, apparently undaunted by the task of opening fifty half-split bottles of mediocre sparkling wine, but Eva could feel the stiff disapproval radiating off the man at her right shoulder.
Or maybe that was his body heat. The guy must have converted his body to some sort of furnace, with the amount of warmth he was putting out.
Eva wasn’t short, especially in her favorite five-inch bronze patent-leather platform Louboutins, but Daniel Lunden was taller by at least three inches. Leaner and harder, too, she noted, casting a practiced eye over the way his black Henley shirt pulled across his broad shoulders and gaped at his sturdy collarbones, showing a tantalizing slice of smooth, tanned chest, and his faded blue jeans hung low on his narrow hips.
Nice.
“As far as I’m concerned, the apology alone would’ve done it,” Lunden said. “That, and an acknowledgment that your time isn’t more valuable than everyone else’s.”
Not so nice.
“Look,” she said, spreading her hands. “I said I was sorry. And I’m happy to pay for my crimes! I’m a businesswoman—let’s put a dollar amount on the time everyone’s spent waiting here at the gate for me. Less than an hour, correct?”
“About thirty minutes,” Patrick put in.
“Minimum wage would be seven twenty-five for the full hour.” Eva furrowed her brow, pretending to count on her fingers. “So … how about five dollars per person, in the form of a nice glass of champagne and orange juice? I think that’s reasonable for punitive damages.”
“More than reasonable!” Patrick was starting to lose patience with the negotiation.
Lunden cocked his head. It was entirely unfair that even in the harsh, unforgiving fluorescence of the airplane lighting, he looked golden and perfect, from the tips of his spiky light brown hair to the hint of a cleft in his well-shaped chin.
He clearly wasn’t buying it, but all he did was turn to Patrick and say, “My team and I are in row fourteen. You can skip the mimosas for us, thanks.” Giving Eva one last stern glance and an ironic twist to that decadent mouth, he said, “Enjoy first-class,” and stalked back up the aisle.
Lowering her lashes over what she knew was probably a smoldering look, Eva paused for a moment to enjoy the view.
It was distracting enough that she almost didn’t notice her best friend, Claire, giving the group of them one of her patented wry looks from the window seat in the second row.
Not for the first time, Eva envied Claire Durand her smooth air of sophistication and maturity. Nobody did suave like a forty-something Frenchwoman.
Which Claire proved once again by responding to Eva’s bounce down the aisle with a mere arched eyebrow and a laconic “If you’re quite finished ogling one of your contestants?”
“One of your contestants,” Eva was quick to stress. “Unlike some people, I’m not a judge—merely the lowly panel moderator, there to set up a nice patter and keep the action moving. I’m the Vanna White of the Rising Star Chef competition! There are no rules about me keeping my hands off the chefs. And I should know. I was there when Dad wrote the rules.”
Claire snorted. It was another one of those things she could only get away with by being French. “Yes, I’m certain of that. Your father would never make a rule that disallowed him from chasing after any segment of the female population.” Skewering Eva with an ice-pick glare, Claire continued, “That doesn’t signify that you are obliged to emulate him.”
Eva pouted. She couldn’t help it, even though it hadn’t worked on Claire since Eva’s nineteenth birthday. Despite the gap in the
ir ages, it had been years since Claire had bothered to treat Eva like a child.
“Thank you, Patrick,” Eva said while the flight attendant fell all over himself to help her stow her beloved Louis Vuitton tote bag in the overhead compartment.
She settled into the deep leather comfort of her first-class seat, head still full of the stern set of Daniel Lunden’s indescribably luscious mouth, the firmness of his clenched jaw.
As Patrick stepped smartly into the aisle to do his safety dance, the plane pushed back from the jetway and the passengers in the back started a cheer that only got louder when he paused in his demonstration of the oxygen masks to tell them they were all being offered complimentary mimosas to make up for the delay.
Satisfied that she’d compensated for at least some of the annoyance she’d caused with her tardiness—and ooh, her assistant, Drew, was in big-time trouble—Eva picked up the conversation where she and Claire had left off.
“There’s just something about a male pastry chef,” she tried to explain.
“Pastry chefs are like any other man in the professional kitchen.” As editor in chief of Délicieux, an internationally renowned food magazine, Claire knew from chefs. “The successful ones are arrogant, overbearing workaholics with egos large enough to crush innocent bystanders. If you’re as smart as I’ve always thought, you will not allow yourself to be sucked into it.”
Eva, who’d started learning the business of opening and running restaurants at her father’s knee, knew a lot of chefs, too. “In my experience, people who deal with the delicate chemistry of desserts tend to be perfectionists. Regular chefs have their charms, of course—creativity, passion. But pastry chefs…” Eva smiled. “They take their time. They’re meticulous. Thoughtful. Focused.”
And those qualities sometimes spilled over into … other aspects of their lives.
Allowing herself a delicious little shiver as she recalled the electrifying moment when his body had brushed hers as they maneuvered in the cramped confines of the airplane, Eva tried to remember the last time she’d had a pastry chef in her bed, with all his delightful thoroughness aimed at her. It had been a while.
Maybe it was time to remedy that.
“I know that avaricious look in your eye.” Claire clicked her buffed nails on the armrest, sounding resigned. “It’s the same expression you get in the Bergdorf’s shoe department. My little crazy person, don’t you have enough stress and drama to suffice you already? Running the most prestigious national culinary competition on your own for the first time isn’t enough?”
“Oh please.” Eva waved a dismissive hand. “A little seduction is a stress reliever, Claire, everyone knows that. The thrill of the chase, the joy of the hunt—it’s invigorating! And the fact that, at this moment, Daniel Lunden thinks he doesn’t want to be caught? Well. That just adds an extra spice to the whole thing. And you know how much I love spice.”
“I do. I also know how single-minded you are when in pursuit of what you want. Do you expect this particular pursuit to at least go quickly and smoothly?”
“Probably not.” Eva sighed. “He doesn’t like me one bit. He thinks I’m a spoiled brat who kept a whole plane full of people waiting, just for funsies.”
“Why were you late, incidentally?”
Slumping back, Eva experienced again the sickening vertigo that had dizzied her the moment she took that panicked phone call from one of her RSC judges.
“Devon Sparks’s new wife is pregnant. They just found out, and now he’s freaking about leaving town. Even though she’s not due for months! Men. He actually tried to back out of being a judge. Can you believe it?”
Claire blanched, satisfyingly horrified. “You managed to talk him out of it, surely! It would be a nightmare to replace our celebrity chef judge at this late date.”
“Yes, thank goodness, I did, although it took some fancy footwork and a lot of soothing—Devon’s kind of drama-rama, isn’t he?—but finally I convinced him that, you know, women have babies all the time and everything would be fine for the next couple of months. It helped that I could hear Lilah laughing at him in the background.”
She’d also had to promise that Devon would have several long weekends off to fly home to New York for visits, which would take some intensive schedule juggling and might cost some money in terms of production time with the television crew, but that was okay.
She’d make it work. She had no other choice. She couldn’t risk losing her biggest Cooking Channel draw, especially if that might mean the television producers deciding not to film or broadcast the RSC.
Her father had been very clear when he handed over the reins of the competition this year. It was her job to increase the RSC’s visibility, and getting on TV was a big part of that.
Eva tightened her fingers on the stem of her champagne flute. She refused to let him down. Whatever it took to convince the Cooking Channel that they wanted to air the RSC, she’d do it.
“Thank God,” Claire said fervently.
“Yeah. Major catastrophe averted.”
Narrowing her eyes, Claire asked, “So why did you not explain these circumstances to your handsome pastry chef? It was certainly in his best interests as a contestant that you keep all three judges happy and willing to work!”
Eva screwed up her face. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to tell him! It would’ve sounded like making an excuse, or something.”
“It would’ve been a good excuse!”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Eva set her jaw. Her father hated excuses, and Eva had learned early on that the best way out of almost any infraction was to own up to it.
Claire shook her head, the overhead lights glinting off the threads of silver just starting to appear in her luxuriously thick chestnut hair. “It worries me, this fondness you have for men who disapprove of you.”
“What can I say? I enjoy a challenge.”
In fact, the challenge Daniel Lunden presented fired her nerves with more energy than she’d felt in the last two months, months she’d spent traveling from New York to Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin, and Chicago to oversee the qualifying challenges that had decided the teams of chefs who would represent their regions in the Rising Star Chef competition.
It had been more grueling than she’d anticipated, the endless traveling, and Eva wasn’t normally one to stay put for longer than it took to unpack a suitcase. Maybe it was the eliminations—it was a lot tougher than she’d ever thought it would be, telling hundreds of chefs they wouldn’t be moving on to the next round.
Crushing dreams was hard work, as it turned out.
And then there was the second-guessing, trying to convince herself she’d made the right call when she’d picked the judges, that the judges were choosing the best chefs, that the ever-present tension between Claire and her fellow judges was still at a low simmer rather than a dangerous boil, that the television producers weren’t going to back out on their promise to film the competition for the first time … really, Eva felt as wrung out and twisted up as a discarded string bikini, and the RSC hadn’t even started yet.
But when she’d seen Lunden standing in the doorway of the plane, long-fingered hands on lean hips like an avenging warrior, all the exhaustion and nervousness and self-doubt went up in a firestorm of excitement and lust.
The way the chill of condemnation clashed with the unmistakable glitter of instantaneous hunger and sparked his eyes to a bright, sizzling blue called to the fighter in Eva. She wanted to stoke the fire of that hunger, feed it craftily and carefully until it flamed up and overwhelmed the disapproval.
Until he couldn’t help himself, and he had to let go and enjoy her.
Claire’s quiet voice burst the happy bubble of Eva’s fantasy. “That’s what Theo always says. Take care, Eva. You are your father’s daughter … in more than one respect.”
Neither the azure-blue Michael Kors wrap dress nor the delicate lace unmentionables beneath it were armor against Claire’s warning. Her oldest frie
nd and mentor never seemed to have trouble finding the tenderest spot on Eva’s well-defended underbelly.
Eva loved her father madly, had explicitly modeled herself after him—but Claire had been pretty vocal over the years after Emmaline Jansen’s death about Theo’s parenting skills.
Or lack thereof.
“So?” Eva demanded, snatching the latest issue of Restaurant USA from her white leather satchel purse, her movements jerkier than she liked. “I don’t see why that’s a bad thing. My father is wildly successful, both personally and professionally. Why shouldn’t I try to be like him?”
“Hmm. Perhaps because he’s miserable?”
That brought Eva’s head up, but when she found Claire’s gaze, it wasn’t mocking or sardonic, despite her tone.
“What makes you think Dad isn’t happy?” Eva asked, her silly heart jumping into her throat.
The softness in Claire’s gaze made her look tired, and a little sad. “I have known many men like your father, none of them happy. When I came to America at twenty, I worked for a man very much like Theo—powerful and confident. Older than I. He was my first affair of the heart … and very nearly my last.”
From the way Claire’s mouth turned down at the corners, Eva didn’t think it was because the guy was so wonderful that he ruined her for all other men. “It ended badly?”
“It ended predictably. The man was married; I was nothing more than a bit of fun, something to brag about, a demonstration of his prowess to the other men at the magazine.” Voice sharpening with her need to make Eva understand, Claire turned in the seat to face her more fully. “That is why I caution you about starting something with this pastry chef, Eva. Romance is distracting, at best … catastrophic and humiliating at worst.”
Eva sat frozen, starting at her oldest friend. A zillion questions zipped through her brain, too many to ask. “You never told me any of that before.”
“About the affair? But no, it was not my finest hour. I tell you now only so that you may learn from my mistakes.”
Some Like It Hot Page 2
