Too Hot to Touch

by Louisa Edwards

  “Well, thank you kindly, pretty lady,” Max said, twisting his mouth into a grin. It wasn’t all that convincing, but Jules took it as a sign she’d done the right thing by stepping in. He blinked. “Wow, that came out creepier than I was expecting. Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” she replied, hauling him up the line. “I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the layout here. Danny’s at the pastry station in this corner. He’s the source of everything sweet that our team puts out.”

  “Gotcha. Baby bro, in charge of being sweet as pie. Check.”

  Danny rolled his eyes at them as they sped by.

  “This,” Jules said, pointing at her prep station with the hand she wasn’t currently using as a pincer around Max’s hard bicep. “This is Winslow Jones; he’s on prep, so it’s his job to make sure every ingredient is perfectly prepared before he hands it off to the other chefs to cook.”

  “We’re glad you’re in, Max,” Win said, bouncing a little. “You are in, aren’t you? You’re not just back to help with the restaurant, right?”

  “Hey, man, excellent to see you again,” Max said, holding out a hand to slap palms with Win, who turned it into one of those complicated patterns of fist bumping and hand wringing that had taken Jules a week to figure out. Max, she noticed, executed the routine as flawlessly as if he and Win had been practicing it for days. Not that she felt threatened, or anything.

  “And no, I’m not planning to serve any time on the line during normal restaurant hours. I’m not interested in expediting steak-and-potato dinners to the good people of Manhattan. I was told I’m strictly a ringer, brought in to lead the team to greatness.”

  Jules gritted her teeth against the urge to protest, for the zillionth time, that the last thing the team needed was another leader.

  Another minute shift of movement in the muscular man farther down the line distracted her, reminding Jules of the final member of the team. “Hey, one more guy to meet, Max.”

  “Your wish is my command,” he said gallantly.

  Jules towed him back to the corner where Beck liked to work. The muscular, imposing chef loomed silently over his pristine cutting board, every movement of his big, trim body swift and economical. He had dark brown hair, chin length, the long front strands pulled back from his stark face into a short tail. There was a forbidding cast to his large, deep-set brown eyes that always made Jules think twice about bothering him. He was a little scary. But in this case …

  She shoved Max forward. “Beck, this is Max. Danny’s brother.”

  Beck was silent for a long moment, his flat, cold gaze taking in every inch of Max, from the golden-brown spikes of his short hair to his hiking-boot-clad toes. Jules could practically see him cataloguing the easy, careless way Max held himself—it looked loose, thoughtless, but the way Beck’s eyes narrowed made Jules take a second glance.

  There was something battle-ready about Max’s stance, she realized. Something awake and aware in every line of his spare frame—something the rest of his persona seemed perfectly calculated to hide.

  The charmingly off-kilter twist to his sensually shaped mouth, the masculine beauty of his bone structure, the ever-present light of mischief in his cloudy–sky eyes—and above all, the devil-may-care attitude. All of it seemed deliberately designed to distract the observer from noticing that there might be more to this wandering chef than met the eye.

  “Boss says it’s good that you’re here.” Beck’s voice was quiet and deep. He never shouted; he didn’t have to.

  Max rocked back on his heels, hands heading for his pockets again, as his gaze darted from Beck to Jules. “You’re not buying it, though, huh?”

  Beck shrugged. “Not up to me. I’m just the new guy.”

  The knotted muscles of Jules’s shoulders ached with new tension at the reference to Beck’s recent hire, and from the quirk of Max’s brow, he noticed.

  But when he replied, it was to Beck. “Well, considering I’ve been out of the picture for the last six years, and only just got back today, I think that makes me the new guy. Okay if I watch you to learn the ropes?”

  For the first time since she’d met him, Jules saw surprise flash across Beck’s face. He didn’t do anything other than nod and go back to deveining a quivering lobe of foie gras for a mousse, but still.

  Jules pulled Max aside. “How did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Get Beck to like you! It takes him at least a week to warm up to people, usually.”

  Max glanced over his shoulder. “That was warm?”

  “For him? That was positively toasty. He’s been here three months, Max, and this is the first time I’ve introduced someone and not feared for their lives a little. Not that he’d ever really hurt anyone! I don’t think. He’s just taciturn.”

  “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Max smirked in a way that instantly had Jules palm itching to connect with his stubbled cheek. “I’m glad I got his stamp of approval, but Beck isn’t the one I’m hoping warms up to me.”

  The core of her body heated up as if someone had just lit her pilot, and the shock of it was enough to render her actually speechless for a moment … a moment Max took advantage of to lean in close, until his breath fanned the strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail to wisp around her ears.

  “Who could’ve guessed little Juliet Cavanaugh would grow up into such a gorgeous woman?”

  Jules jerked away from him, her blood going the temperature and consistency of boiling tomato paste.

  “I’m going to show you the layout of the pantry.”

  “I’ve seen the pantry in my parents’ restaurant. The kitchen I grew up in? Unless they moved it out onto the street, I’m almost positive I remember where the pantry is.” The amusement was back in Max’s tone, with a vengeance. Jules gritted her teeth and restrained herself from yanking him around the corner where the dry-storage closet was, a little apart from the rest of the workspace.

  “Well, it might have changed since the last time you saw it,” Jules ground out. “And being able to find and grab materials quickly is a major part of practicing for the timed challenges we’ll face at the actual competition. Here, go in. Don’t let the door shut all the way!”

  “What?” Max said as the door swung shut behind her, enclosing them in pitch-darkness.

  “The door,” Jules said, hearing her voice hit a new register. “It sticks.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dad hasn’t fixed that yet?”

  “Not yet,” she gritted. “Can you get the light? There’s a cord dangling from the bulb—oh, never mind, move, I’ll get it.”

  This isn’t happening. Please, God, please let me have hit my head in the kitchen—maybe a Dutch oven fell off a shelf and now I’m concussed, and this is all just a nightmare.

  As she prayed for a return to consciousness, her flailing hand finally made contact with the string connected to the light.

  She pulled it, and squinted against the sudden glare.

  Either this concussion is more like a coma and I’m going to be stuck in it for a while, or I’m actually awake and locked in a storage closet with the one man on the planet who makes me want to break my own rules.

  Jules honestly didn’t know which version of reality to hope for.

  Chapter 5

  Max’s day was looking up.

  “I approve,” he told Juliet. “I mean, the accidentally-getting-locked-in-a-closet thing is a little amateur, and I might’ve saved it for when the whole prospective East Coast team for the Rising Star Chef competition, including my kid brother and my dad, weren’t standing twenty feet away, but hey, whatever works. And this totally worked! Message received. I’m yours for the taking.”

  Those gorgeous brown eyes widened, giving the solemn oval of her pretty face an innocent cast. Surprise was a good look for her, he decided.

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That wasn’t a complimen
t!”

  “I know you didn’t mean it as one, Juliet, but when you think about it, what could be more glorious than to be too much, too out of the ordinary, to be believed?”

  She blinked again. “Well, out of the ordinary is right. And will you stop with the fucking ‘Juliet’!”

  Max cocked his head, studying the way she had her arms crossed over her chest, slender fingers digging into her arms and a look of horror dawning over her pretty face as she replayed her own last words.

  Should he? Naaah, too easy. “So why do you hate that name so much? I haven’t even had a chance to break out the Romeo jokes yet!”

  Some of the tension relaxed out of her shoulders when she realized Max wasn’t leaping all over her little verbal stumble. “Oh yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re definitely the first guy who ever made that connection.”

  “I bet I could come up with something you haven’t heard before,” Max said. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why the switch to Jules?”

  She shrugged, but couldn’t quite pull off the casualness she was going for. “Suits me better. Juliet…” She made a face, sort of a sneer crossed with a wrinkled nose, to convey her disgust—Max was afraid to tell her how unutterably adorable it was.

  “Juliet’s all flowery romance and coy seduction and deathless tragic passion. I don’t really go in for that stuff.”

  Max looked her up and down, at the long, toned length of her athletic body, the high, round curves of her breasts, the gentle swell of her hips—and admitted to himself that she wasn’t quite the awkward girl of his memories. He couldn’t believe this was the woman his mother had told him about, the perfect chef who was like a daughter to them, and who’d slid into Max’s vacant spot in the restaurant as if she’d been born to it.

  He’d heard all about Jules, but he hadn’t expected to like her. And he definitely hadn’t expected her to be so enticing.

  Maybe this visit home didn’t have to be all tension and stress and misunderstandings. Max didn’t have quite the girl-in-every-port mentality that Danny had accused him of, but he wasn’t against having a short-term fling with a cute brown-eyed blonde, either.

  And the challenge of her? The way she didn’t want to admit to the electric spark zapping back and forth between them? That lit Max up like nothing else.

  He’d never been able to resist the lure of exploring new territory.

  “Maybe you just haven’t met your Romeo yet,” he couldn’t resist saying.

  Jules opened her wide, generous mouth, but snapped it shut again. He liked the way her brown eyes flashed with gold, like sunlight through a glass of whiskey.

  “Nope,” she finally managed. “I’ve definitely heard that one before.”

  “I’m still getting warmed up,” Max protested, taking a meandering circuit around the pantry that brought him ever closer to Jules’s taut, tense form. He especially enjoyed the blush she couldn’t seem to control. “I can do better.”

  She cleared her throat, alarm widening her whiskey eyes. “No! I mean, don’t bother. Seriously. Not with the jokes, not with the flirting—just stop it all.”

  “Flirting?” Max pointed at his own chest and blinked innocently. “Moi?”

  “All that crap about wanting me to warm up to you,” Jules said. Tilting her chin aggressively, she pinned him with a fierce look. “Let’s be clear on this—I have absolutely no interest in you. All I’m interested in is leading this team in the Rising Star Chef competition.”

  “Hmm,” Max said, stalking his prey with slow, sure steps. “Is that what this is about? You think I’m trying to … what? Get in your pants to distract you so I can take your spot as leader of the team? Not a bad plan, as plans go, but no. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not quite that Machiavellian.”

  The sound of her swallowing was loud in the close, silent pantry. “You’re saying you’ll be happy to follow my lead. Take orders, do the work, and not get in my way?”

  “To tell you the truth, leading anyone’s not really my style. I’m less of a dictator, more of a collaborator. I’ve got ideas, sure—man, sometimes it seems like I’ve got more than my brain can hold, stuff I want to try out, new ingredients I want to play with and techniques I want to try—but I’m open. I like to learn.”

  And of all the shit he’d said, all the wiles and tricks and winks and flirty looks he’d thrown her way, this one simple truth was what got to her.

  Max saw it hit home, saw the way her chest rose and fell quickly as she absorbed the fact that he wasn’t a threat.

  Not to her career, anyway.

  Driving the point a little deeper, he leaned in and said, “You want to be queen of the mountain, you take that crown and wear it with pride. It’s gonna look great on you. Me? I’m more of a baseball cap kind of guy.”

  Her breath was hot and fast against his face, and when her gaze flicked down to his mouth for a split second, exultation spilled through Max’s veins like the homemade hootch he’d had in the Ukraine, searing through him and stealing his balance.

  He had her.

  “Okay,” she said, voice sounding strangled and husky. “Good. That’s … good. My first order is for you to back the fuck off, Max. I mean it, this isn’t happening.”

  She brought her hands up to his shoulders, but instead of pushing, she clutched at the fabric of his shirt, wrinkling it between her strong, slender fingers.

  “No?” Max licked his lips, watching as she dropped her gaze again. “I hate to contradict my fearless leader and all, but it looks to me like this kind of is happening.”

  “Okay. Maybe I used to have a crush on you,” she allowed, her fingers restless against his chest. “I guess that’s no secret. But that was years ago. I’ve grown up a lot since then.”

  “Yes, I see that,” he purred. He crowded her up against a stack of canvas sacks filled with flour. Her quick, short breaths pushed the slight, firm curves of her breasts against him. “Don’t you ever miss those days when we were kids? When everything felt so intense, like the world might end if you didn’t get that one … perfect … kiss…”

  Her eyes flashed, her cheeks blazed with color, her luscious lips opened—no doubt to deliver some scathing retort—and Max thought, To hell with it, swooped down and took her mouth in a fast, devouring kiss.

  The first touch of their lips was like the starting click sparking under a gas burner, and in the next breath, fire swept up and over both of them in a whoosh of crackling heat.

  The taste of her exploded over his tongue, lemon drops and cool, clean water, drugging and addictive. He speared his hands into the tumbling fall of her long honey-blond hair, messing up her ponytail, and gripped gently to pull her head back and expose the slim column of her throat. Max couldn’t resist diving down and tasting that, too, the warm, salty-sweet flesh so fragile over the beat of her pulse, the throb of her life under his lips and pounding into his head.

  She gasped, her hands fluttering up to clutch at his biceps. He wasn’t sure if she was pulling him closer or pushing him away—maybe she wasn’t sure, either.

  Max replaced his mouth with his hands, framing her neck loosely and rubbing his thumbs at the hinges of her sharp jaw. He had to take a moment to drink her in, red, kiss-swollen lips, flush riding high on her cheekbones, and her golden eyes half-lidded and dazed with pleasure.

  “God, but you’re gorgeous,” he breathed. “If you kissed me back to prove how over me you are, I’m going to need a little more convincing.”

  Jules blinked, then those pretty eyes went wide and aware, and Max stepped back regretfully the instant before she could push him away.

  “Damn it,” she said. “I am over you. What the hell am I doing?”

  “You’re going after what you want,” Max said helpfully. “I don’t see the problem here. Unless—are you married? Engaged? Seeing someone?”

  “No,” she ground out between gritted teeth. “We can’t do this because I’m the sous chef at your parents’ restaurant, and the hea
d of the Rising Star Chef team, which is competing in the qualifying round in two weeks, when we have to work together and be at our best, and also, you’re … crazy.”

  “Funnily enough, that’s not the first time I’ve been accused of having mental problems.” Max stuck his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to reach for her again. She was oddly tempting while rejecting him. “I’ve noticed that people almost never mean that I should be institutionalized or heavily medicated—it’s more like that I should set my sights lower. Do the boring, expected thing instead of whatever cool, new thing I want to try. But the way I look at it is, there are no guarantees in life except that it’s gonna be nasty, brutish, and way too fucking short. It’s up to you—up to me—to make something amazing out of it.”

  She stared across the pantry at him, and this time it was Max’s turn to blink. He hadn’t meant to say all that. “Pardon my philosophizing,” he said smoothly. “I’ve been studying Buddhist parables; you get sort of used to breaking the world down into stories with lessons attached.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “So long as the lesson you take away from this conversation is that this was a mistake. That kiss, just now … let’s chalk it up to satisfying old curiosity, and let it go. It’s over. I’ve moved on; you should do the same.”

  “I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like fate to you? I mean, I come home to help my parents enter some big cooking contest they’ve got their hearts set on, sure I’m going to be bored spitless the whole time I’m Stateside—come to find out, the ‘Jules’ my family’s been gushing about for the last six years is you, all grown-up, and oh by the way, we’re hotter than hell together. The way I see it, fate is definitely trying to get us naked. Preferably together.”

  Those pretty eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe in fate. And you’re the one who took off, as I recall, to Outer Mongolia or East Anglia or wherever. I’ve been right here the whole time, so it’s hardly an epic coincidence that I’m still here when you finally decide to come back.”

  “Ah yes. You’ve been here all along, haven’t you,” Max said, his gut tightening at the reminder of how completely he’d been supplanted. Bitterness scalded his throat, making his voice uncomfortably hoarse. “How convenient—and economical! No expense and hassle of a wedding, and my parents gained a daughter! I guess the fact that they sort of did lose a son was irrelevant. So long as someone’s there to keep Lunden’s going, that’s what counts.”