“Win’s right. It’s bad tactics to form an opinion based on rumor and preconceived notions—you run the risk of underestimating someone.”
Winslow did a quick hip-shaking boogie. “In your face, Lunden!”
Unable to hold in a laugh, Danny conceded the point rather than continue arguing. “Fine, fine. Eva Jansen could quite possibly be the smartest, savviest, hardest-working woman in the restaurant industry for all I know. Happy? That doesn’t change the fact that none of us needs a split focus right now. The competition is all that matters.”
“Someone tell that to Max and Jules.” Winslow shook his head. “If either one of them can focus on something besides each other for longer than ten minutes these days, I’ll be freaking amazed.”
Danny sighed. “You’re not wrong. But they’re in love. They’re happy, which is a great thing, but they’re both professionals. I’m sure they’ll snap out of it when we hit the first challenge. Until then, we just need to pick up the slack for them, a little. It’s going to be fine.”
He refused to contemplate what he’d do if they didn’t snap out the haze of fluffy bunnies, twittering birds, and prancing unicorns that currently surrounded them in time to help the team kick ass in Chicago.
As Beck stepped forward, frowning, to jam his finger into the down button again—where the hell was the elevator, anyway?—Winslow sidled closer to Danny, his startling green eyes intent on Danny’s face.
“You know,” Winslow said softly. “It’s okay to feel a little shitty and left out when you see Max and Jules together. I mean, they’re not my BFF and my older brother suddenly sharing this deep forever twoo-wuv connection, and sometimes I want to yell at them to get a room and leave the rest of us poor singletons in lonely, solitary peace!”
“I’m happy for them,” Danny said. He was vaguely proud of that fact that it didn’t sound like he’d spoken the words through gritted teeth.
“Well, sure.” Win shrugged. “I’m happy for ’em, too. That ain’t the issue. But you and Jules used to be super close, and now she’s all wrapped up in Max. It’s normal to feel left out.”
Danny forced a laugh. “No one should be as in touch with his feelings as you are. It can’t be healthy.”
Win’s eyes narrowed on Danny’s face. “I’ll tell you what I think you’re interested in getting in touch with: the lovely Miss Eva-the-Diva.”
“You’re way off base,” Danny told him as the elevator bell dinged. “All I’m interested in is winning.”
Danny breathed a sigh of relief. This conversation was treading dangerously close to some of the shit he wanted to suppress and avoid.
Yeah, okay. The woman in charge of running the entire Rising Star Chef competition, one of the most successful restaurateurs in the country, was hotter than a pan full of caramelizing sugar. Which didn’t make her a sensible option for relieving the annoyingly persistent ache he felt when he looked at his brother cuddled up to his best friend.
Used to be super close, Win had said, and Danny couldn’t lie to himself. There were times when he missed being the man in Jules’s life, and having her be so present in his. But she deserved someone who could love her for real, not just as a friend, and Danny was happy for her. For both of them. He was.
And he definitely wasn’t lonely or pathetic enough for pointless, impractical fantasies about Eva Jansen.
“Just remember what they say.” Winslow threw an arm over Danny’s shoulders as the doors swished smoothly open, and hauled him inside. “All work and no play makes Danny a Cranky McCrankypants.”
Pulled off balance, Danny laughed and shoved at Winslow, who stumbled back into the immovable wall of Beck, who grasped his shoulders and set him gently on his feet.
“It’s like watching a Marx Brothers routine,” a lazy feminine voice said from the corner.
With a start, Danny realized they weren’t alone in the polished wood box. Standing there all gorgeous and sexy in her bluish purple mummy-wrap dress and that ever-present curl of a smile was Eva Jansen.
That figured. No wonder the elevator took so long to arrive. She’d probably had the doors held open for ten minutes, waiting for her to finish powdering her nose or something.
“Well,” Eva purred, tilted gray eyes slitting like a cat’s on the prowl. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Chapter 4
Completely against his wishes, Danny’s body responded to the low seduction of her voice. He shifted uncomfortably. Why did she always have to sound like she’d just gotten out of bed?
“Hi, Ms. Jansen!” Winslow stuck his hand out, all chirpy and bright-eyed, sure of his welcome. “Love the dress.” He slanted a look at Danny. “Michael Kors is the master of wearable beauty, I always say.”
“Do you?” Eva arched one perfectly arched brow as she shook Win’s hand. “Thanks. Where’d you get that T-shirt? If you say at a concert, I’m going to die of jealousy right here in the elevator.”
Danny did a double take. Yep, he’d remembered it right—Winslow had on a battered Rolling Stones shirt, the original black faded to gray after repeated washings.
“You’re a Stoner?” Winslow was beaming now, all but bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.
“What can I say? Mick Jagger is hot.”
There, he told himself. See? She isn’t the perfect woman—she’s every bit as shallow and superficial as you thought.
Which wasn’t as comforting as Danny would’ve expected, not when he was face-to-face with the slender curves of her unabashedly female body bound by that tight little dress.
Danny had his shallow and superficial moments, too.
Win got thoughtful. “I was always more into Keith, myself. That boy can really rock a head scarf.”
Beck cleared his throat, drawing Danny’s attention from the Stones lovefest in the corner. The big guy’s face was taking on that grayish hue under the olive skin, and in a flash Danny realized the elevator doors had closed, but they weren’t going anywhere.
“Hey,” he broke in sharply. “Now that we’re all best girlfriends, does someone maybe want to pick a floor?”
Suppressing his immediate guilt at the hurt that flashed across Winslow’s face, Danny turned to Beck.
Keep him talking.
“What floor is the kitchen on, man? Do you know?”
From his friends in the hotel restaurant biz, Danny knew that you couldn’t count on the kitchen occupying the same floor as the dining room. Worst-case scenario, they could go down to the lobby and ask, but Beck was starting to sweat.
“Oh, are you going down to Limestone to check out the kitchen?” Eva stepped smartly up to the elevator’s control panel and pressed the button for the second floor. “I’m on my way there, too.”
“Small world,” Danny muttered.
“Small hotel,” she replied, sending him a look from the corner of her almond-shaped eyes.
The rest of the ride down to the second level took about fifteen seconds, but they were some of the longest, most tension-filled seconds of Danny’s life.
Beck looked miserably stoic, Winslow was uncharacteristically subdued, and somehow Danny felt responsible for both.
He tried not to hate himself for the way he couldn’t drag together enough focus to do anything about it—not with Eva Jansen standing less than three feet away from him, the only person in the elevator who appeared completely at ease.
Every time Danny drew in a breath, the lush, complicated scent of her perfume teased his nose and kept his nerves on edge.
When the elevator slid to a smooth halt, Beck was the first one out the doors, followed closely by Winslow.
Cursing the manners his mother had drilled into him, Danny put an arm out to keep the doors open and stood aside to let the lady behind him pass. One heartbeat, then two, and he finally glanced back to see what the hell he was being kept waiting for this time.
However, Eva wasn’t fixing her hair or fiddling with her cell phone or any of the other obnoxious things he’d i
magined in that instantaneous flash of annoyance.
No, nothing so mundane. Instead, she was leaning against the brass rail that ran along the back of the elevator, arms spread out to the sides, red-tipped fingers curled gracefully around the horizontal rod and mile-long legs crossed at the ankle in front of her.
The elevator buzzed loudly, jolting Danny out of his paralyzed contemplation of the way Eva’s dark, dark hair swung against the milky paleness of her delicate jaw.
At his jump, the corners of her candy-apple lips tilted up even more. Pushing away from the wall, she sauntered forward. Danny braced himself for the moment when she’d brush past him, her body so close and yet so untouchably far.
But again, as if she’d made an advanced study of how not to do what Danny expected, Eva stopped just inside the elevator doors. She lifted one white hand to Danny’s tensed bicep—the thick waffle-print cotton of his sleeve did nothing to blunt the electric spark of the touch—and trailed those slender fingers along his arm until she’d managed to tug his unresisting limb away from the door.
The elevator stopped buzzing, although Danny hardly noticed what with the buzzing in his ears, and the doors slid shut, enclosing the two of them alone in the tiny, opulent box. With a soft whir, the elevator began to ascend, called by someone on a higher floor.
Never breaking eye contact, Eva leaned in. Danny’s heart kicked against his rib cage and his breath sped up, but she reached right past him and pressed some button that made the entire elevator jerk to an immediate stop.
The suddenness of the maneuver woke Danny out of whatever pheromone-induced coma she’d put him in with her perfume and her dress and her wickedly curved mouth.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. It came out less sharp, more hoarse, but he couldn’t do anything about that.
“I wanted a moment alone with you.” She never lost that look of calm, detached amusement, and just like on the plane, it set Danny’s temper on fire.
“Next time, you might think about asking.”
“I was pretty sure you’d say no,” Eva returned calmly, her gray eyes flashing silver with amusement.
As much as Danny might have wanted to refuse to spend a moment alone with this woman who shook his composure and made him forget himself … “You’re one of the most powerful people in the restaurant industry, plus you hold the fate of this competition in your lily-white hands. You really think I’m dumb enough to blow you off?”
Whoops. That came out a bit more aggressive than he’d intended.
One dark brow winged up. “I didn’t peg you for someone who cared a lot about authority,” she said, mildly enough considering the tone he’d been using. “And I know you don’t have much respect for me, regardless of how much power I supposedly have.”
Danny took a deep breath, trying to loosen the pressure in his chest, get back some semblance of his usual control. “Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you or whatever.”
That stung a little, but it was worth it if it kept her from forming some kind of grudge against his team.
Instead of looking grateful for the apology, however, the minx had the balls to laugh at him. “Nice. You’re not sorry you were rude—you’re just sorry I didn’t like it, right? Well, you can relax, Mr. Manners. I’m not that sensitive, and I’ve been looked down on by bigger men than you and come out on top in the end.”
It was more of an I-am-woman-hear-me-roar speech than a flirt, but somehow she said the words in that smoky honey voice of hers and all Danny could picture was the two of them laid out on the nearest available surface, with Eva straddling him like a pony.
He swallowed hard. “What, exactly, did you trap me in here to talk about?” With some extra jaw clenching, he managed it without sounding like a sex-starved teenager or something.
“Actually,” she said, with that half-smile that made it look like she was enjoying a joke no one else was in on, “I wanted to apologize again to you for holding up that plane. I noticed the way your friend—the fish cook for the team, right? I could tell he didn’t like being in the elevator, and it made me wonder if the airplane upset him the same way. And then I thought maybe, before, you were worried about him and that’s why you were so annoyed that I held up the departure. Because you’re the one who takes care of everyone on your team, I think. I bet if you were the one with claustrophobia, you wouldn’t have even come up to the front to complain to the flight attendant. Anyway, I wanted to say I was sorry for making it harder for you to keep your team calm and happy. But we got off track, somehow, and you ended up apologizing to me. Sort of. Sorry!”
Against his will, Danny stiffened. Her unexpected insight struck way too close to the bone and left him feeling raw and exposed. “So. That’s one for me, and one for you. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even now.”
Eva sent him a knowing look from under insanely long, curling lashes. “Are you sure you won’t let me make it up to you?”
Without conscious volition, Danny’s feet carried him forward, slowly closing the gap between them.
Eva didn’t move, just tilted her head, her steady gaze never wavering for an instant. This was a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go out and get it.
They were so close now, they were sharing the same air, passing one breath back and forth between them in a long, heated moment of suspended time. He could smell the heady sweetness of her perfume, but underneath it was something even more addictive—the warm, earthy tang of clean skin and woman. It went to his head like some sort of toxic, mind-altering smoke, blurring reality and fuzzing out his will to back off.
The desire he’d been repressing roared back to the forefront of his consciousness, voracious as a starved wolf and twice as unwilling to be denied. Eva’s stillness, her lifted chin, should’ve indicated submission, or at least acceptance, but instead there was something about her steady regard and curved lips that felt like a challenge.
Unable or unwilling to ignore it, Danny ditched the last vestiges of his common sense and reached for her with both hands.
Her mouth under his was soft, yielding, but Danny didn’t miss the flare of triumph in her eyes before she shut them and moaned, giving herself to the kiss. Her body molded effortlessly to his, her heat pressed firmly along the length of him. Those pretty white fingers of hers returned to his arms, this time trailing up, pausing to squeeze his shoulders before clasping at his neck.
Danny wanted to stop this, he really did, but somehow he couldn’t make his fists unclench from the sweet roundness of her hips. All his focus was on the meeting of their lips, the slick slide of their tongues, the ferocity of his need for her taste.
She made a sound deep in her throat, rough and unashamed, and immediately pure unadulterated high-octane lust flooded his system. He’d been hard since he’d seen her splayed out against the back wall of the elevator, but when she growled like that, the rush of blood through his body made his cock throb so thickly he was momentarily afraid he’d pass out.
Heart beating like it did at the top of the tallest roller coaster at Coney Island, Danny finally managed to pry his fingers loose and take a step back, gulping in some much-needed air.
Eva let him go easily, staring up at him with her mouth flushed and swollen from his kisses, but still, freaking still looking about half a second from a smirk.
“That was fun,” she said throatily, smoothing her perfectly smooth hair.
“That was idiotic,” Danny gritted out. His body, high on adrenaline and sex and the slight edge of danger, already ached to be mashed up against Eva’s softness again. “And risky. Eventually, someone in this hotel is going to notice this elevator’s not running.”
“The risk is part of what makes it fun.” Eva bent to snag her purse from the corner where she’d dropped it before making her big move. Shooting him an arch glance as she located a compact mirror, she said, “Oh, please. I hope you’re not going to try to convince me you didn’t enjoy that.”
Watching her reap
ply her lipstick sent a weird pang shooting through his midsection. It was so … intimate.
Turning away, Danny located the emergency stop button and punched it forcefully, releasing the temporary hold on the elevator, then hit the button for level two.
Without looking at her, he said, “Yeah, okay. I’m a guy. I enjoyed the hot grope. Sue me.”
Shit, part of him thought. I hope to God she doesn’t sue me. She can afford way more flesh-eating lawyers than my family can.
But Eva only laughed again, this time with an edge he couldn’t identify. “I didn’t mean the kiss.”
I will not ask her what she means, I will not ask her what she means, I will not ask her what she means…
The elevator stopped at the ninth floor, but whoever had called it must have long ago given up and taken the stairs or something, so Danny jabbed at the button to close the doors and send the car back down to the kitchen.
Danny kept his gaze on the light flashing through the numbers above the doors, counting down the floors. Just as the 2 button was illuminated and the elevator began to slow, a charged heat along his side warned him that Eva was next to him.
Her breath brushed his ear, tickled through the strands of hair at his neck, sending a shudder of savage, unquenched desire down his spine.
But it was her words that gave him the biggest chill.
“It wasn’t the kiss that turned you on,” she murmured. “It was the naughtiness of it. The fact that you broke your own rules and played by mine, even for a few seconds, got you hotter than you’ve ever been in your whole life. And there’s more where that came from.”
Danny’s lungs locked up tight. He couldn’t move, could only stare as the doors slid open and Eva walked past him and out into the golden light of the hallway.
“You coming?” She tossed it over her shoulder as if she didn’t even care, but even in his moment of shocked paralysis, Danny registered the slight stiffness of her slim, elegant form.
Some Like It Hot Page 4
