Danny couldn’t have been more surprised if Beck had wrapped those big hands around Danny’s ankles and flipped him upside down. “I think that’s the most I ever heard you say at one time.”
The ghost of a smirk touched Beck’s hard mouth. He pointed his stainless-steel double-jaw shellfish cracker at Danny, saying, “And quit making faces at Eva Jansen. She’s on the panel tasting our dishes, in case you don’t recall. We don’t want to alienate her.”
With that, Beck was back at his own station, breaking down bright red, boiled lobster and scooping the sweet, tender white meat from the claws.
And Danny was left with a swelling respect and admiration for his teammate—and a need to tell Eva exactly what he thought of her.
Chapter 31
Claire found her in the empty judges’ room, sitting at the bare table and staring at the wall.
“Chérie? Your cameraman, that unpleasant Cheney person, says to tell you he can’t shoot the judging in here—there won’t be enough room. Come back to the kitchen, it’s almost time.”
Eva barely heard her. “Do you hate me? When did I become an awful person?”
Claire sighed and sat down in the chair beside Eva’s. “I don’t hate you, and you are not awful.”
Blinking furiously to clear her eyes of the tears that obscured her vision, Eva turned to her closest friend, desperate to make her understand. “I am, though! I wanted to get the RSC filmed for TV so badly.”
Pursing her lips, Claire said, “And why was that, exactly?”
“Um. To increase the exposure of the competition to get more money so that it could be more democratic, let more chefs in.”
“Eva.” Claire shook her head, the light catching red and gold glints in the auburn knot of hair at her nape. “I love you dearly, but you must be honest with yourself. If your motives were truly so pure, would you be feeling this guilt now?”
Eva paused. God. She’d been so self-righteous about this for so long, it was hard to dig deeper, down into the dark depths of herself. But Claire’s straightforward pragmatism, simultaneously stern and sympathetic, pinned Eva to her chair.
“I do want to be able to open the RSC to more chefs, the way my mother envisioned,” she said, uncertainty pinching at her, poking and prodding her to turn just a little to the left and take a good, close look at her own motives.
“I believe that. But you also want to impress your father,” Claire said gently.
A hard, complicated truth was welling up in Eva’s head, pushing aside everything that she’d thought she understood about herself and her choices.
She’d wanted to make a huge success out of the RSC, because on some level she thought it would prove to her father that she was capable of taking over Jansen Hospitality when he retired.
“Oh my God, I suck,” she moaned, dropped her head to the table with a thunk.
“That is just my point, chérie.” Claire laid a slender hand on the back of Eva’s neck. Its cool comfort against her shame-hot skin made it easier to breathe. “You don’t suck. You are human, with a human’s complex feelings and reasons for doing what you do. You are better than you think. I have faith in you.”
Those words, so simple and simply said, fell on Eva’s heart like rain on scorched earth.
She hadn’t lost everything. She still had at least one friend in the world—and that friend trusted Eva to do the right thing. Maybe it was time to try.
Maybe she’d surprise herself.
As the timer ticked down toward zero, everyone in the kitchen worked frantically to spoon up one final taste and adjust the seasoning before getting the plating details exactly right.
Danny snuck a quick glance at the other team. Under Ryan Larousse’s loud leadership, they’d chosen to collaborate on their dishes, and they were assigning the finished products to different chefs now. Skye Gladwell didn’t look happy about it, standing there with her arms crossed over her chest and a mutinous, pinched look around her mouth.
Danny sympathized. It seemed like a weird strategy to him, heavily weighted in favor of whoever was aggressive about picking the best dishes at the end of the day. Which, no doubt, would be Ryan Larousse.
Early on, when Winslow was still freaking out about every little thing, he’d leaned over and said, “Should we have done that? Are we nuts to each make our own dish?”
“No way,” Danny had assured him. “We talked enough to the southern contingent to know all our stuff goes together. Beyond that—we’re individuals. We each have our own style, and we should showcase that.”
Looking at the final results, though, plated up on the teams’ tables, he worried. Their team definitely hadn’t been quite as cohesive as the other, under Larousse’s iron fist. Ike Bryar and his people had done their thing, while Danny and his guys did theirs.
Not exactly a model of teamwork.
The three judges trooped in just as the clock wound down, and Danny kept his gaze trained on the table in front of him, where his take on a traditional wedding cake sat looking gorgeous and hopefully tasting halfway decent.
That was the problem with baking—it was hard to taste-test as he went. Danny sometimes envied the rest of his team and the way they went through a hundred clean spoons sampling every dish in every single phase of its cooking. But in the end, his heart was in the sweet stuff, so he stuck it out.
Their team’s dishes looked strong to Danny, with an emphasis on simple, homey classics. Maybe it wasn’t fancy or groundbreaking, but with the upheaval and tension of the morning, every chef on the team had naturally gravitated toward comfort food.
The incandescent anger that had lit him up from the moment he’d realized the depths of Eva’s betrayal had dimmed somewhat, cooled and calmed by the methodical, familiar process of turning flour and sugar and butter into something refined and delicious.
But there was an issue of self-respect here, right? He couldn’t just let this go without giving her a piece of his mind.
So why wasn’t he speaking up and denouncing her right now, before the judging even got started?
Danny snuck a glance at the judges, all three of them standing to the right of the bank of cameras, waiting for the signal from the producer. His eye skipped over Eva where she stood beside them, as if his subconscious wasn’t ready to deal with her yet, and landed on Kane Slater, who looked less stirred up than he had earlier. But mostly as if he’d lacquered a layer of rock star glitz over the turmoil, and was hoping no one would notice.
Claire Durand, on the other hand, possessed the froidest sang Danny had ever seen, because she appeared perfectly at ease, serene and even smiling at Kane’s side. Danny would be willing to bet he was the only person in the kitchen who could see banked fires of anger in her gaze whenever she looked at Kane and Theo.
Who had never seemed more smug, Danny noted, his dignified face registering nothing but approval of the proceedings, and confidence of his place in charge of it all.
Which only left Eva. She had her head bent, her ear close to Cheney’s mouth so he could give her instructions or whatever without the cameras picking it up, and Danny couldn’t see her face. It sent a shocking lance of pain straight through his chest, and Danny looked away again at once.
He wouldn’t say anything yet, he decided on the spot. That much drama and excitement on camera? Please. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. But after the judging, when they knew which side had lost and the judges went into deliberations on which regional team to send home—that’s when he’d say something.
Ignoring the inner voice that mocked him for backing down, Danny braced his legs apart and crossed his arms over his chest, settling in to watch the judging.
It was nerve racking to be last. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.
“Okay, chefs, time’s up,” Eva called, striding out into the center of the kitchen. “Knives down.”
The judges followed her, arranging themselves on one side of the empty table at the front of the room, whic
h had been cleared of the detritus of ingredients from earlier.
The dreadlocked guy from Skye’s team—Danny still couldn’t remember all their names—had done a vegetarian cream of parsnip soup with beet chips and saffron-scented crème fraîche. He was up against a more standard butternut squash soup with brown butter and fried sage from one of Ike Bryar’s boys.
The judges dipped their spoons and tasted both dishes.
“Good depth of flavor on the parsnip soup,” Theo commented. “You said this is vegetarian?”
“Totally,” Dreadlocks replied.
“You must have roasted the vegetables for your stock a long while to get that much flavor out of them,” Claire said, and the guy nodded. She looked pleased.
“I like the squash soup,” Kane said, “but it’s a little bland.”
“Brown butter usually makes everything better,” Theo agreed, “but in this case, it feels too heavy, like it’s weighing the soup down.”
“I like the fried sage, however. It elevates the dish,” Claire said.
Danny couldn’t believe how hard his heart was pounding. He hadn’t expected it to be like this, hearing the judges’ thoughts and reactions as they tasted.
He held his breath, waiting for the verdict as the judges conferred in low voices.
“The point goes to Midwest/West,” Eva announced, a subtle flush staining her cheeks.
She still hadn’t glanced in Danny’s direction, not once since she came in. Not that he cared.
Across the kitchen, the other team exploded in a cheer as Dreadlocks grooved back to their table with a wide grin splitting his cheeks. The unhappy kid from the Southern Team slouched back into line.
“Next up?”
It went on like that, every single matchup filling Danny with tension and anticipation. He had to work hard to keep the score in his head—the other guys won the next point for their second soup, an awesome-looking roasted tomato that beat out Winslow’s not-super-inspired English pea and lettuce puree.
And the Southern Team’s shaved fennel salad couldn’t beat out the West Coast’s stunning little number, baby gem lettuces with avocado and grapefruit tossed in a sweet sharp sherry vinaigrette.
But when Beck went up with his salad course, Danny crossed his fingers, almost positive the East Coast/South Team was about to score its first point. It didn’t even matter what Ryan Larousse’s boy brought—nothing could beat Beck’s famous lobster salad.
It was a simple plate of greens dressed up with exotic mushrooms, tossed with champagne vinaigrette, and studded with perfect morsels of butter-poached lobster claw. And then the whole thing was drizzled with tarragon hollandaise. It was killer; whenever they had the stuff to make it back at Lunden’s Tavern and offered it as a special, it was sold out within minutes.
The judges reacted pretty much the way the Tavern regulars did—with orgasmic moans and unconcealed pleasure. As Beck returned with his point for their team, fist pumped in the air, Danny felt pride swell his chest.
Yeah, Winslow was off his game, and he’d lost his point, but he hadn’t given up. And Beck, who’d been jerked around even more, had powered through and won one for his team.
They were still behind, down two points, but for the first time, Danny let himself believe that this might turn out okay.
They might get to go on to the next and final round, and he should be freaking thrilled about that—so why did he feel so empty?
Points flew fast and furious through the next few rounds, the match wins passing back and forth. The other guys dominated with their first entrée, but Jules and Max both did well, the judges heaping praise on their creations. Ryan Larousse’s picks put up a couple of good dishes, too, and it was clearly anyone’s game.
In the end, Max won his point with a fancy Frenched chicken leg, roasted and presented with a perfect little slaw of crisp tender brussels sprout leaves, and a square of fried chicken skin to provide the perfect contrast of crunchy salty texture. And Jules took hers with a duo of beef tenderloin medallions, one in a reduced port sauce, the other touched with a mustardy béarnaise, rich with butter.
Ike Bryar was the one to pull the East Coast/South side out from behind, with his light, crispy salmon croquettes, studded with English peas and big, juicy chunks of tender, pink fish, served on a bed of creamy grits with a side of sautéed kale.
When the judges awarded him that point, the one that brought their teams even for the first time, everyone around Danny roared with delight.
It was down to the desserts. If they could just keep their momentum up, the other guys wouldn’t stand a chance.
As the kitchen calmed for the presentation of the last course, Danny realized that Ryan Larousse, himself, hadn’t presented a dish yet, which made him nervous. He seemed like the kind of leader who would put himself in the best possible position for praise by choosing the strongest dish as his own. Did that mean they had a decent dessert to show?
The casual slouch of Ryan’s body said he wasn’t worried. Clapping a hand to the shoulder of the last West Coast team member to present, he sent a smug smirk in Danny’s direction.
Alarm shot through Danny. He clenched his fists to stay rooted to the spot, even though everything in his tired, aching body wanted to launch across the kitchen and either punch that sneer right off Larousse’s face, or run up to the front and have his cake judged instead.
But they’d decided the order ahead of time, and there was no good way to switch it up now without insulting their southern teammates. And what did Danny know? Maybe the pudgy southern kid’s honey custard cupcakes were out of this world. Maybe they’d rock the socks off the … shit.
That was one adorable little plate of profiteroles the West Coastie was holding in her hands.
Holding his breath until he nearly passed out, Danny waited for the judges’ responses.
“The cupcakes, for me, are not so good. A little too sweet,” Claire said, wiping delicately at a smear of frosting.
“I like them,” Kane muttered, defiantly finishing his off. Danny wanted to plant a big fat kiss on his stubbled rock star cheek.
“The profiteroles, though,” Claire said, a frown of concentration drawing her brows together. “So interesting. And I like that both teams played with the idea of individual desserts, but the profiteroles seem less commonplace to me.”
Come on, come on.
Danny’s silent plea went unheard and unanswered, because the minute the judges stopped conferring and turned back to face the contestants, Danny knew what they were about to say.
“Point to the West/Midwest.” Eva finally, for the first time, looked up and met Danny’s gaze. In her eyes, he could see the same knowledge that had just poured over his head like a bucket of icy water.
It was all up to Danny.
Chapter 32
Summing up without taking her eyes from Danny, Eva said, “Team West/Midwest now has five points, while Team East Coast/South has four. The final point will either give a decisive victory to West/Midwest, or we’ll be forced into a tiebreaker round. Chefs? Are you ready to present your last dish?”
Danny looked down, unable to bear the weight of emotion in Eva’s gaze. He didn’t know what she was feeling, what she wanted from him.
He couldn’t think about that now. He had to concentrate on keeping his hands from shaking so he didn’t drop this fucking cake on the way up to the judges’ table. Feeling as if he were marching up the gallows to his execution, Danny made his way forward, the cake stand balanced between his hands, every step keeping pace with Ryan Larousse.
Who was also presenting … cake. Cake that looked like a strange piece of avant-garde sculpture, snowy white with flaked coconut and glittering with what looked like diamonds.
Shit.
“I see you opted not to cut the cake before judging,” Theo said, nodding at Danny’s platter.
He sounded neutral about it, but Danny’s defenses shot up. “I wanted you to get the full effect of the decorations on i
t,” he said. “Wedding cakes are at least half about what they look like.”
And his cake looked damn good, if you asked Danny. Even considering his hypercritical eye, he was pleased with how it had turned out. The fondant gleamed like raw silk, smooth and gorgeous as it wrapped around the two tiers. Flashy for a wedding tasting, maybe, but this was the RSC. Danny had pulled out all the stops.
He’d spent precious hours fussing with spun sugar and food dyes, crafting tiny sprays of blossoms that looked almost too real to eat. Using more of the fondant, he’d pulled a satiny ribbon of white to cascade down the sides of the cake. The whole thing glistened in the bright lights of the kitchen, a pure, perfect piece of art.
“And it is lovely. But this is a culinary competition,” Claire reminded him. “So taste will be important, too.”
Swallowing down the heated response that jumped into his mouth, Danny said, “I’m aware of that.”
Danny didn’t think he’d ever been as aware in his life. Every heartbeat shook his chest and pounded through his body. His breath was shallow, as if the room were low on oxygen and his body was trying to conserve it. A single drop of sweat trickled behind his left ear, sending a shiver down his spine and lifting the individual hairs on his arms.
“And what do we think of Ryan’s cake? It’s certainly striking.” Eva looked at the Larousse inquiringly.
“It’s coconut mango,” Larousse said smoothly. “We all came up with ideas together on our team, very collaborative, and we wanted to do something out of the ordinary. Not the standard, boring white cake with vanilla frosting.”
He shot a deliberate glance at the white frosted cake sitting in front of Danny, waiting to be judged.
“That’s why I went with a coconut-inflected cake, very thin layers, with a beautiful mango filling. Enjoy.”
Some Like It Hot Page 27
