Some Like It Hot

by Louisa Edwards

  Bemused by her constant desire to nurse him, Danny obediently held out his hands and enjoyed the gentle, meticulous way Eva unwound the white gauze to reveal his reddened, blistered palms.

  She sucked in a horrified breath, but Danny flexed his hands and said, “Hey, no. They’re better than they look. A little of that magic hand lotion, and I’ll be ready to cook.”

  “Don’t they hurt?”

  Danny shrugged and snagged his jeans from the floor. “Well, yeah. But it’s workable. I can push through.”

  “I don’t like it,” Eva said.

  Jesus, civilians.

  “This is what chefs do,” Danny told her. “Come on, you’ve been around chefs all your life. You must have seen this kind of thing before. We get injured—put a hand down on a burner, chop off a fingernail, what have you—and we keep cooking. My dad once dropped a hotel pan piled with twenty pounds of lamb shanks on his foot and busted four bones. He swelled up like a balloon, but he limped his way through the rest of that dinner service and never once fell behind or complained.”

  Eva sat up in bed, pulling the sheets to her chin and resting her elbows on her raised knees. With her tangled, messy hair and perfect makeup-free skin, she looked like a little kid.

  “You love him a lot, don’t you?”

  Danny had lost the thread. “What? Who?”

  She made an impatient noise. “Your father. The way you talk about him—you’re proud to be his son.”

  “I never thought about it that way, but yeah.” Pulling on his jeans took some time, the denim harsh against his stressed hands, and Danny used the extra moments to duck and hide from Eva’s too-perceptive gaze. “He’s a good man and a great chef. He’s always had a lot of faith in me.”

  “Must be nice.” The bitterness in Eva’s voice made Danny glance at her swiftly, but her mouth was curved in a soft smile. “My dad and I are close, too. It’s been just us, for a long time—I mean, if you don’t count his legion of girlfriends, hookups, and one-night stands. Which I don’t.”

  Danny was beginning to get a picture of Eva’s childhood, and it wasn’t a particularly pretty one. His parents might drive him nuts, on occasion, but he’d never doubted that they loved each other and their kids more than anything—with Lunden’s Tavern running a close second.

  Before Max left home, he’d accused their father of loving the restaurant more than his own children, but Danny knew that wasn’t true. He’d seen the way his father grieved for those lost years with his eldest son, and no amount of Danny picking up the slack at home and at the Tavern could quite erase the shadow of pain in the old man’s eyes.

  Thinking about his brother got Danny worried about the time again. He checked the clock beside the bed.

  Shit. Later than he’d thought.

  Tick-tock went his internal timer, and he knew he needed to get back to his team and get ready to face the day, but damn it. He was not the guy who could leave Eva Jansen huddled alone on her bed, looking like she didn’t have a friend in the world.

  Also, she was naked. Really, there was no way he was going anywhere. What was he, superhuman?

  Knee walking back over to her, Danny wrapped his long arms around her and pulled her tight to his chest. She came easily, burying her face in the crook of his neck, and Danny tried not to let his heart squish too much at the trust the gesture implied.

  Max was right.

  Danny was a sap.

  Chapter 15

  Eva buried her face in Danny’s broad chest and wondered when, exactly, she’d turned into a snuggler. Not that she was usually into the wham-bam-see-you-around type of encounter, but she did prefer to have control of the situation, so she usually invited guys she liked back to her place or her hotel room.

  Like last night. Nothing unusual there. What was unusual was the fact that Danny was still here the next morning. Eva didn’t kick her dates to the curb or anything, but there was usually a pretty mutual sort of understanding that, post-condom-removal, it was easier to just go their separate ways.

  When Danny tried to leave last night, though … Eva shivered, remembering the tense roil of panic in her gut when she’d seen him gathering his things. It was weird, she reflected as she breathed in his scent—wood smoke and warm cotton and that ever-present hint of powdered sugar—but then, this whole thing was weird. Different.

  Remembering the conversation with Claire on the plane, Eva thought her friend might even approve of the way things were going with Danny Lunden. It was possible that up till now, Eva had let herself get into a little bit of a rut.

  It was just that sex had always been so easy. Fun, meaningless, no muss, no fuss. She enjoyed men, she enjoyed the attention they gave her. And she’d never been ashamed of that, although there were moments when she remembered how things had been between her parents, before her mother’s death.

  She knew there could be more between two people than fun and easy.

  But why would anyone want anything other than fun and easy? She’d never met a man who shed any light on the answer to that question.

  Danny tucked his knuckles under her chin and tilted her head up for a soft, closed-mouth kiss, just a silken glide of warm lips, and Eva had to clutch hard at his shoulders to keep her sudden attack of vertigo from pitching her off the bed.

  Danny Lunden made her wonder what she’d been missing all these years.

  Before she could catch her balance, leap from the bed and brush her teeth, or forget about morning breath and just wrestle him back down under the covers, she heard a tiny, tinny beep emanating from the other room.

  Eva instantly identified it as her phone’s voicemail alert—and as soon as she registered the sound, she realized it had been going on for quite some time. Ever since she’d rolled over and opened her eyes to the beautiful morning sight of a naked Danny Lunden shaking his tail feather around the foot of her bed.

  “Shit,” she said, scrambling out from under the covers. “I didn’t charge my phone last night. I always plug it in next to the bed, always! I can’t believe I forgot.”

  “Then we’re even,” Danny said, going back to looking for his clothes. “You distracted me from calling my team last night and finding out how they were doing.”

  “No, we are not even,” Eva yelled over her shoulder as she jogged into the living room to retrieve her phone from her purse. “Because your team is safe and sound in their hotel rooms. But my team, by which I mean the enormous staff running this whole competition, has been up since before dawn working and putting out fires and wondering the where the hell I am. Balls, look at this. Seven missed calls.”

  “I’m sure everything is fine,” Danny said, appearing in the bedroom doorway in his jeans and nothing else. Padding on bare feet to the kitchen, he bent to cast a critical eye over the meager contents of the fridge. “Man. I was thinking about cooking you breakfast, but there’s not a whole lot to work with.”

  “Breakfast?” Eva melted a little. “That’s my favorite meal of the day.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Danny sent her a smile to rival the early-morning sun peeking through the blinds. “What’s your favorite breakfast treat?”

  “Crêpes,” Eva said instantly. “Or, as we used to call them in my family, French pancakes. When I was little, my dad made them every Sunday morning, and he had to double the recipe to keep up with me. Five years old, and I could pack away eight or ten at a sitting, rolled up around strawberry jam and sprinkled with powdered sugar.” She closed her eyes, remembering the sweetness of those lazy mornings.

  “Damn. Now I’m starving.”

  Her phone beeped again, and Eva’s eyes popped open, her heart racing once more.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  She didn’t realized she was repeating her mantra aloud until Danny came over to put his hands on her shoulders and say, “Sweetheart, it’s okay. You’re fine.”

  “Stop it,” Eva said, shrugging him off and picking up the bathrobe still lying next to the sofa, where she’d discarded it last nig
ht. “Stop doing that thing you do.”

  “What thing?” He did the wide eyes at her, as if he didn’t know.

  “That soothe-the-wild-beast thing,” she said, pulling on the robe. “It’s very nice, especially when you do it to your teammates. But it makes me feel like your little sister or something, which, I think you’ll agree, is gross in light of last night.”

  He arched a brow and put his hands on his lean hips, abandoning the search for his underwear. Eva’s breath sped up. Hot damn, but he was fine.

  “Jules Cavanaugh, on my team? She’s like a little sister to me. And, you know, maybe a sister-in-law someday pretty soon. Either way, I can categorically state, for the record, that I’ve never had a night like last night with her.” He shook his head, the one tuft of golden brown hair sticking up funny on the side of his head glinting in the light of the rising sun. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever had a night like last night before. With anyone.”

  Eva couldn’t help but grin and waggle her hips at him. “We were pretty phenomenal weren’t we?”

  “If I’d been wearing socks,” he told her, “you would’ve rocked them.”

  Feeling herself start to melt, Eva shook her shoulders and set her face in a stern expression. “Enough! I see what you’re doing, mister. You are not as sneaky as you think.”

  “Oh?” He dropped his arms and started stalking toward her like a big cat after his prey.

  “No.” Eva backed away, holding her still-beeping phone in front of her like a shield. “Regular soothing didn’t work, so you’re trying to sweet-talk me out of my panic attack. But I refuse to be calmed! I will be frantic and upset and worried and—”

  Danny rushed her and Eva ended her half-laughing diatribe in a shriek that turned to a muffled squeak when he swung her up into his arms and kissed her.

  A knock on the door broke them apart for long enough for Eva to call, “Come back later, please!”

  “You don’t want housekeeping to come in?” Danny asked. “Your sheets could probably stand to be changed.”

  “It can wait,” Eva said, threading her fingers into his hair and angling her head for another kiss just as the doorknob rattled and the electronic lock beeped.

  Several things happened at once. The door opened, Eva squawked and clamped her naked legs around Danny’s denim-clad waist, and Danny turned his back to the door to shield her from the eyes of the maids. Or maybe to shield the poor, unsuspecting maids’ eyes from the unexpected sight of Eva Jansen’s lily-white ass hanging out in the breeze.

  Which was a lovely sight, Eva was sure, only it could be considered a bit much for first thing in the morning.

  Laughter bubbled up uncontrollably and Eva had to hide her face in Danny’s shoulder to keep the hysterics contained.

  Still facing the wall, Danny said, “Can you please come back later?” in his calm, polite way, which only made Eva laugh harder.

  Until a familiar voice replied, “No, I most certainly will not come back later. We’re in crisis mode, and it has to be dealt with immediately. Who the hell are you? And … is that my daughter clinging to you like a barnacle?”

  Oh, shit.

  Eva lifted her head and stared over Danny’s bare shoulder, directly into the snapping steel-gray eyes of Theo Jansen.

  “I’m guessing that’s not housekeeping,” Danny said.

  “Somebody better start talking.” The voice was gruff, growly, clearly belonging to an older man very used to giving orders.

  “Hi, Dad,” Eva said, confirming Danny’s worst fears. “You want to give us a second? As you can see, we were right in the middle of something.”

  Danny stiffened, some part of his brain waiting for the cold press of a shotgun barrel between his shoulder blades, but all he heard was the sound of the hotel door closing.

  “He’s gone, you can let me down, now,” Eva said blithely, as if she weren’t embarrassed at having been caught climbing him like a vine by her very own father.

  Then she exploded. Not embarrassed, evidently, but righteously pissed. “Damn it, damn it, damn it! What is he doing here?”

  She moved fast to grab the bathrobe and swirl it around her, but Danny still had time to notice that she wasn’t blushing. Not even a little. The only red on her cheeks looked like pure anger, and it was the light of battle that brightened her eyes from gray to silvery blue as she marched over to the door and threw it open before Danny had a chance to retrieve his shirt from the floor.

  “That was quick,” Theo Jansen said, eyes still on the phone in his hand.

  Apparently, Eva had inherited her attachment to electronic devices from her father.

  “You know me,” Eva said, hooking an arm through her father’s elbow and guiding him over to the couch. “All work and no play, isn’t that what you used to say?”

  Danny found it best to look up at the ceiling while carefully blanking his mind of any and everything that might have occurred on that couch the previous night.

  “I’m glad to hear you absorbed some of what I tried to teach you,” Theo said, bypassing the couch for one of the throne-like chairs flanking the coffee table. “And a bit surprised, since I can only assume you’ve been letting work slide completely, based on the crisis situation we now find ourselves in.”

  Eva flinched, and without thinking Danny moved to stand behind her, drawing Jansen Senior’s gaze for the first time.

  Theo scowled, his trim dark beard making him look like a statue of a Roman warrior Danny had seen at the Met on a school field trip when he was a kid, all rough-hewn jaw and flinty gaze.

  If Roman statues wore charcoal pin-striped suits and carried handmade leather briefcases.

  The man was intimidating, not only because he was a legend in the restaurant business, with a reputation for making and breaking chefs’ careers with a single stroke of his fountain pen, but also in his person.

  He wasn’t particularly huge, although he looked to be in pretty good shape for a business-type in his late fifties, but his presence loomed large enough to take up most of the hotel suite. Danny was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his pants were unbuttoned and threatening to slide down his hips at any moment.

  Clearly having zero desire to let on that she had no idea what this crisis situation was all about, Eva dodged. “Want some coffee, Dad? Danny and I were just about to order room service.”

  Somehow, Theo Jansen conveyed sardonic disbelief with only a slight smile. “Is that what they’re calling it these days? Yeah, sure, coffee would be great, and while you’re at it, how about a little privacy? We have business to discuss.”

  Wow. Danny had never been dismissed so thoroughly in his life, and he’d been through school only two years after his brother, Max the Magnificent.

  “Give it a rest, Dad,” Eva said, rummaging around on the desktop. “God knows, I’ve had to sit through enough excruciatingly polite breakfasts with your one-night-stand morning-afters.”

  That hurt more than he thought it would. Danny fought to keep his face impassive. Forcing his movements to be smooth and unhurried, he leaned down and snagged his T-shirt. He thought he’d feel better with more covering, but the chill that had settled under his skin wouldn’t dissipate.

  Collecting his dirty, flour-streaked chef’s jacket, he said, “You know, I’ve got to be going, anyway.”

  Eva looked up from the room service menu she’d been perusing, eyes wide, but Danny didn’t give her a chance to protest. He needed to be gone, away from this crazy, rich, entitled family with their offhand, no-big-deal attitude about sex.

  Danny had never been able to work that way. Last night with Eva … that had been a big deal to him. He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t feel the same way; he hadn’t gone into it expecting more than a single night of pleasure. Leaving it at that was turning out to be tougher than he’d planned, that was all.

  Maybe one day when Danny learned how to be cool and uncaring, he’d give Eva a call. Until then, th
e only smart thing to do was to get the hell out, before he got himself in any deeper.

  “Eva. I’ll see you around.”

  Since he hadn’t been introduced to Theo Jansen—and really, wasn’t that better? He didn’t need a guy like that associating his family name with bed-hopping booty-call boy toys—Danny didn’t bother to say good-bye to the man.

  Heading for the door, he was surprised when Eva slipped into the hallway after him, grabbing for him with the hand that wasn’t holding her bathrobe closed.

  “Wait,” she said urgently, remorse tightening her voice. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Danny shook her off gently. This wasn’t her fault, not really. They came from totally different worlds. Glancing over her shoulder into the opulent suite, all marble and gilt and antiques, his stupid heart clenched.

  Eva lived in a fantasy, where everything was beautiful and she could have whatever she wanted delivered to her doorstep with a simple phone call. And she was a woman who knew what she wanted, and went after it. Danny could respect that. He respected, too, the fact that she’d never hinted at wanting more. She’d made no promises, and if one night wasn’t enough for him—well, he had no one to blame for that but himself.

  Really, the only surprising part of all this was that she’d been interested in a guy like him for even one minute.

  Trying to be grateful for the time they’d had, and not blame Eva for the way he’d misunderstood—or willfully ignored—the rules of an encounter like this one, Danny kept his voice gentle.

  “Go back to your dad. Sounds like you’ve got some kitchen fires to put out, and I’ve got to go find my team. This was fun, but it’s time for me to head back to reality now.”

  She reared back as if he’d slapped her, a pang of something flashing through her eyes so quickly, Danny couldn’t read it before she recovered her balance as gracefully as a dancer.

  “It was fun,” she echoed, expressionless and bland, as if they were talking about a trip to the zoo or a walk through Central Park. “Of course, that’s what I’m known for. The original Good Time Girl, that’s me. Well, playtime’s over, babe. See you in the kitchen.”