Yes, Danny had listened when Eva talked. And then he’d turned right around and used an intimate personal memory to manipulate the emotions of one of the three people who would decide the fate of his team.
She set her fork down, careful to keep her shaking fingers from knocking the silver tines against the dessert plate.
No. He wouldn’t. Would he?
Well, why the hell not? her inner realist snapped. It’s a competition. He’s not here to make friends—isn’t that what people always say on those awful reality shows? He’s here to win. And he just happens to know that you and your father—the new judge—share a deep and abiding love of French pancakes.
Eva forced herself to look at the situation the way her father would—with an emotionless, clinical eye that sorted through the facts and came to a logical conclusion, unclouded by silly tangents like the way Danny’s body moved against hers, or the way his intense focus during the act had made her feel things, real things, besides the sex things…
Stop it, she told herself, fiercely regulating her breathing, as Claire handed her empty plate to a server and reached for her notes to begin the deliberations.
It was time to put everything but the food out of her mind. She’d wait out the judging, and when it was over, she and Danny Lunden would have a little chat.
Chapter 21
“This blows,” Jules moaned, pacing the five steps in front of their team’s kitchen station before doing an about-face and stomping back in the other direction, hands wringing. “The waiting. I hate it! Why can’t they just say what they liked, what they didn’t, and put us out of our misery?”
“Come on, deep breaths,” Max urged from his lotus position on the floor. Every time Jules reached the end of the track she was wearing down in the rubber matting, she had to pivot to keep from stepping on her boyfriend.
“Don’t tell me how to breathe,” she growled. “Besides, you’re not as calm as you’re pretending to be.”
Jules had never liked being comforted. Danny remembered when they were kids, she’d show up at his parents’ apartment white as salt, shaking with anger over something her flighty, semi-neglectful mom had done—or failed to do—but he’d learned early on that Jules wasn’t like other girls. She didn’t cry, she didn’t want a hug, and she sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it.
So when Max unfolded from his meditative pose and intercepted her on the next pass, wrapping his long arms around her shoulders and holding her still against his chest, Danny fully expected her to open wide and take a giant bite out of Max’s cranium.
Instead she leaned her body into his, as if she trusted him to take her weight and hold her up. As if the circle of his arms was the safest place she’d ever been.
Feeling as if he were intruding just by standing there, Danny looked away to give them some privacy. And there was plenty of privacy to be had, since the other teams had all cleared down and gone back to their hotel rooms to wait it out before his crew was even done presenting their dishes. The kitchen was empty except for the East Coast Team.
Well, three-fifths of the East Coast team, anyway. Beck had headed back to the room for a shower; after working with shellfish all morning, it was really the only option. And with a wink and a fist bump, Winslow had taken off to find his buddy, Drew, who also happened to be Eva’s assistant.
He’d gotten them the scoop before by hanging out with Drew, because Drew tended to be one of the first to know everything that happened in the RSC. Danny hoped to hell that Winslow’s in with the skinny, black-haired kid was as solid as he said. From what Danny could tell, Winslow hooked up with a lot of people and managed to stay friends with them, so maybe.
Win needed to stay friends with Drew, Danny decided. Any way they could possibly get confirmation of whether they’d be moving on in the competition, they had to take it.
The illegal cell phone was heavy in his pocket, a rule-breaking line straight to the information he wanted. He could text Eva. Maybe if he begged her for a hint, some indication about how it was going…
Danny cut off the thought, forcing his fingers to leave his pocket without touching the phone.
What was the matter with him? He didn’t beg, he didn’t plead, he didn’t freak out. He was the patient one. The levelheaded one. The one who held everyone else together.
So why did he feel so messed up?
One word.
Eva.
He didn’t know where he stood with her, didn’t even know exactly where he wanted to stand with her, except that he wasn’t ready to let her go—not that he had a choice.
He wasn’t ready for this to be over, any of it. Danny wasn’t ready to go home yet, damn it.
The thought took him by surprise, nearly knocking him over. Danny loved his home. He loved his family and his parents, and the life they’d planned out for him. So why did it suddenly feel as if going home this soon would be like stepping back into a prison cell after a single afternoon of standing in the sunlight?
“Whatever happens is what’s meant to be,” Max said, and it seemed to soothe Jules, but it made red flash in front of Danny’s vision.
“Oh, bullshit,” Danny said, so suddenly that he blinked in surprise to feel the word leap out of his mouth.
“Danny!” Jules looked shocked, which made Danny lift his chin.
“What, I’m the only chef in the kitchen who’s not allowed to say shit?”
“No, of course not,” she stammered, looking to Max as if for an explanation of why his brother had lost his mind. “You just … you’re not usually so forceful in the way you express yourself. That’s all.”
Danny couldn’t deny it, but it didn’t make him feel awesome about himself. “Yeah, well. Just because I don’t always share my opinions with the whole world doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”
“Of course you have opinions,” Max said. “We’re just not used to you sticking up for them quite like that.”
Danny clenched his jaw. Jesus, what was he, some kind of doormat? Was that how they saw him?
Was that how Eva saw him? Maybe that was why she hadn’t introduced him to her father, or wanted him to stick around for longer than one night.
Looking at the way Max and Jules stood there next to each other, bodies brushing and leaning and supporting, comfortable and secure in each other’s personal space, he felt a wave of envy so strong, it nearly choked him.
Danny was sick to death of being the levelheaded one. Maybe it was time to take a risk, go all-out, put everything on the line…
“Look,” he said, one hand going back to his pocket almost unconsciously to toy with the hard plastic case of his cell phone. “If our number is up and we’re the ones who are sent home, you two still have each other. You’ve got Lunden’s, and a life together, and you know what you want from it.”
“You have Lunden’s, too,” Jules reminded him, alarm widening her brown eyes. “And you used to know exactly what you wanted from life. You were always one of the surest people I knew.”
“Yeah, well, things change.” I changed. “And I’m not as ready to give up on this adventure as you seem to be.”
They exchanged another one of those annoying, mind-reading glances. “Danny, no one’s giving up,” Max said, familiar older-brother irritation tightening his voice, before a frown from Jules had him smoothing it out into a soothing cadence. “But there’s nothing we can do now, anyway. It’s out of our hands. We played our plates and now it’s up to the judges to decide where we go from here. All we can do is wait, and accept.”
“God, is this what people hear when I talk?” Danny shook his head, disgusted. “You sound like a self-help tape.”
“No, you usually sound more like a kindergarten teacher,” Max shot back. “Sorry if you don’t like it when one of your little helpless chicks rises up and pecks you in the nose, but we are not, in fact, kids here, Daniel.”
Jules placed a restraining hand in the center of Max’s chest. “What he means is, you don’t alw
ays have to be the one taking care of us. We can return the favor, sometimes.”
Danny snorted to cover the bolt of fear that shot through him. “Right. Because this family’s been so successful at that.”
“We’ve done okay,” Max said, looking confused, and it just hit Danny like a frying pan between the eyes. Neither one of them had any idea what it was like to hold a family together with their bare hands, to feel as if one wrong word, one stupid mistake, would make the whole thing crumble into dust.
“How would you know how we’ve done?” Danny said, his voice almost unrecognizable to him, wrecked and hoarse. “You haven’t been here. For five years, you’re gone, off playing with your inner child or whatever all over Asia, and you have no freaking clue what it was like for us.”
What it was like for me, in that house, with our parents missing you every single day, wondering where you were, wishing you’d come home.
I was never enough.
Guilt screwed up Max’s face immediately. It was almost too easy. Danny almost felt bad about it.
“I’m sorry, Dan.” Max shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
He’d heard that before, and he knew it was real. Max felt bad, never meant to hurt anyone, blah blah blah. But he had. And Danny was the one who’d picked up the pieces, like always. Anger warring with his peacemaking instincts, Danny couldn’t decide whether to tell Max what he could do with his apologies or make nice.
The decision was taken out of his hands when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket, startling him.
It was Eva.
Heart hammering at his rib cage, Danny answered the phone, angling his body slightly away from his brother and Jules.
“I need to see you,” she said. No preliminaries, no hint of anything, and Danny’s gut clenched.
Did she know something about their chances of moving on? Something bad, maybe. Without thinking, Danny lowered his voice and made it as neutral as possible so as not to freak out Max and Jules.
“Okay. When and where?”
“Can you come up to my suite? I’ll meet you there in five.”
Danny agreed and hung up, mind racing with possible scenarios, none of them comforting. Well, okay, there was the one where Eva was just insanely hot for him and phoned him for a midday booty call and would greet him at the suite door wearing nothing but a glowing smile.
But Danny was a realist, so he put that one out of his head. Or at least to the very back, so he could look at it again later. Much later, when his brother and his oldest friend weren’t staring at him with identical quizzical expressions.
“What’s up?”
Danny didn’t question his instinct to protect them from whatever Eva had to say. “Nothing much, Beck just needs my help with something. I’m going to meet him in the lobby. Call me if we find out who won?”
“Sure, Danny,” Jules said, her worried brown eyes darting between the two brothers. “We’ll call if Win comes up with anything.”
“Hey,” Max called as Danny’s hand hit the kitchen doors. “We’re okay, right?”
Danny struggled for an instant with all the things he hadn’t said, the emotions he didn’t want to acknowledge. “Sure, Max. We’re fine.”
Fighting with his family always gave Danny a headache. Probably from grinding his teeth and clenching down on the words that wanted to spill out of his mouth.
Checking his phone to see if he had a signal, Danny’s fingers hesitated only an instant before pecking out his parents’ number.
“Hey, Dad,” he greeted the gruff voice that answered.
“Danny! I’ve been waiting to hear from one of you boys. How’s it going over there?”
Suppressing a huff of scorn at the idea that it would ever be Max who thought to call and give their parents the update, Danny said, “We’re done with the first challenge, still waiting to hear which team is going home. How’s your heart?”
“Fine, fine,” Gus said impatiently. “I feel great.”
“No pain, shortness of breath? When Mom tells you to take your medication, you’re not arguing with her, are you?”
“Oh, your mother’s taking great care of me,” Gus said, sounding grumpy. “Nothing but oatmeal, grapefruits, and hearts of romaine. She won’t even let me put lardons and poached egg in the salad! It’s a conspiracy. But tell me more about what I’m missing. First elimination, huh?”
“Yep. Someone’s going home today.” Danny felt again the pang of fear that it might be him, but he shoved it down.
“You’re not worried, are you? Good.” Danny could almost hear Gus Lunden rubbing his hands together, looking gleeful. “Let’s start narrowing the field. How do you think it went?”
“Well,” Danny said cautiously. “I know we put up some solid dishes. But it all depends on how we stack up against the other chefs.”
“You’ll be the best,” Gus said fiercely. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
Danny smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”
“How were your waffles?”
“Change of plans; did a mille crêpe cake instead. It was almost a disaster, but I think Win and I pulled it out. Didn’t have enough time to chill it properly, but it held together okay when I used the round dough cutter to dish it up, and the flavors were spot-on.” Danny frowned, thinking of all the things he could have done differently, done better, but Gus interrupted him.
“I’m sure it was great. You’d never let your team down, kiddo, it’s not in you.” Gus cleared his throat, going even more gruff as emotion overtook him. “We can always count on you. Always have, always will.”
“Thanks,” Danny said again, rubbing at his chest, where it felt as if someone had packed a ten-pound bag of flour into his rib cage. The pressure made it hard to breathe for a second, but then his mom got on the phone, and he had to go through the whole thing again for her.
He’d just slipped his phone back in his pocket when he got all the way up to Eva’s penthouse and knocked on the door. She opened it, and Danny had a brief moment of disappointment that she was wearing clothes, but he got over it.
It was shockingly good to see her up close, to look into her smoky gray eyes and have her look right back at him.
Despite everything, the distance they had to keep, the harshness of that morning’s dismissal with her father looking on—Danny couldn’t help himself. The mere sight of her made him want to smile.
Until she opened her mouth and froze him to the spot with the chill in her voice. “Come in, Chef. But please, leave any recording devices out here. There’s no point, anyway, I don’t plan to give you any further inside information you can use to manipulate my father.”
What the actual fuck?
Chapter 22
Eva left the door open for Danny to come in, pacing back toward the wet bar in the corner of the living room. She wanted bourbon, but her hands were already shaking. Probably not a good idea. But wasn’t alcohol a depressant? Wouldn’t that slow her down, dull the spiky edges of her mind, and let her be calm for a second?
Only for a second, so she could breathe.
“What’s going on, Eva?”
Danny’s sharp voice startled her hand away from the miniature bottles of liquor lined up in the wet bar cabinet.
She whirled to face him, clutching her arms around her middle in an attempt to keep from trembling with rage. “I asked you up here so we could talk about what you did today,” she said. The effort it took to keep her voice cold and dead was enormous, exhausting. “But now that you’re here, I can hardly stand to look at you. How could you, Danny?”
Brows lowering over eyes snapping with heat, Danny held up his hands. “Whoa. Hold the phones. What, exactly, am I supposed to have done?”
“The crêpe cake,” Eva hissed. She didn’t want to even say the words French pancakes—it would feel too much like a betrayal. “I told you that memory of my father, and you used it to get ahead in the competition.”
“That’s not what
I was doing!” Danny protested, taking a step forward. He stopped when she backed up, bumping into the bar and rattling the glass bottles on their shelf. Gentling his voice, he said, “Look, Eva. I’m sorry that’s what you thought, but it wasn’t what I meant.”
“No? Because it nearly worked. There I was, sitting there feeling all warm and fuzzy about you listening to me and getting to know me. Something so intimate and personal, a piece of my history that I’ve never shared with any—” She broke off, her voice cracking and pain leaking through.
Danny stepped forward again, but she couldn’t retreat because she was already practically sitting on the bar. “Eva. Listen to me. I didn’t use you. Okay, that’s not totally true—I did use your memory as an inspiration for the dish. But that’s it. I wasn’t thinking about exposing something personal about you, or manipulating your father’s emotions, or taking advantage of inside knowledge of his tastes. I just wanted to make the best dessert possible in the time I had left after my first idea tanked, and that French pancake story stuck in my head.”
He inched closer with every word, hands outstretched as if to gentle a wild animal, and Eva felt the calm that had been eluding her settle into her bones. The tremors in her hands had stopped by the time he stood in front of her.
“Now,” he said softly, close enough that the puff of his breath warmed her forehead. “Would you quit pretending to be pissed at me and tell me what’s really going on?”
Dropping her shoulders, Eva aimed a halfhearted smack at his broad, solid chest. “I am mad at you,” she maintained stubbornly, then sighed. “Or at least, I thought I was. God, you are good at this soothing thing.”
“Bet I can do even better,” he said, hooking one strong arm behind her neck and drawing her in for a hug.
Knowing she shouldn’t, that she absolutely had to move away, get some distance, put things back on a professional footing, Eva still sank into the embrace.
One last time, she promised herself, breathing in his scent of smoke and caramel, letting the heat of his body soak into her muscles and pull her head down to his shoulder.
Some Like It Hot Page 19
