She glanced over to where Eva was conferring with her assistant before mounting the steps at the side of the stage and heading for the microphone situated in the center.
“Good morning, chefs!” Eva’s voice rang out over the crowd like a happy bell, calling everyone toward the stage. “In just a few short hours, we’ll know which four teams will continue on to the cooking challenge in two weeks. Out of the hundreds of you gathered here today, only four groups will get the chance to seduce us with your culinary skills into allowing you to represent the entire East Coast in this year’s Rising Star Chef competition. Are you ready to get started?”
One beautiful, articulate woman to host the festivities and keep things moving? Check.
A cheer went up as Claire and the other judges took their seats. After a moment of hesitation over who should sit where, Claire lifted her chin and yanked out the chair on the far left. She was the head judge, damn it. She could sit where she wanted. And she wanted to get into a position where it wouldn’t be impossible to ignore both of the male judges, if she had a mind to.
Quick as a pan of milk boiling over, Kane Slater slipped past Devon and snagged the middle seat, giving Claire a slight grin as he sat down and proving, yet again, why Claire would need every advantage possible if she were to block the presence of the other judges from her mind.
One horrifically ill-timed, ill-conceived, ill-fated attraction to a completely unsuitable, much younger man?
Claire sighed.
Double check.
Chapter 14
Max was honestly starting to worry that if someone didn’t sit on Winslow, the kid was going to jitter right out of his basketball sneakers.
“For serious now, man. Take a deep breath in through your nose, let it out through your mouth. We really can’t afford any medical mishaps. If you stroke out, we’re sunk.”
“I’m all good,” Win gasped, eyes wide and fingers clenched around the opposite elbows. His gaze skittered around the packed floor of the convention center, never landing on any one sight for longer than a second. “I mean it, I’m cool. I’m just getting my head together.”
Max raised a skeptical brow and left him to his head gathering. The rest of the team wasn’t looking much better. It was the first large-scale competition for most of them, and everyone except Beck looked vaguely nauseated.
An air of forced, brittle calm hovered around Jules, as if she’d shatter if anyone so much as spoke to her. Not wanting to push his luck any further than he already had, Max turned to his brother. Danny had his grimmest face on, as if he were about to be stripped naked and rubbed with fish guts before being tossed to the lions, rather than answer a few questions about food.
Gus hurried up just as Max was about to try distracting Danny from the crowds of people. “Okay, we’re all registered and ready to go. We got lucky, our slot is in a couple of hours, so we’ll have plenty of time to watch and get a feel for the judges and the other competitors.”
“Where’s Mom?” Max asked, looking over his father’s shoulder.
“She’s back in the stands with the camera, going to try and get a good group shot when you boys go up on stage.” As official team coach, Gus was allowed to stay on the floor with the contestants, but there were bleachers set up at the back of the room for the few people in the audience who weren’t there to compete.
“Maybe you should go sit with her,” Danny said. Max caught his brother’s worried stare over their father’s balding head, which was already flushing pink with heat and excitement. He did look a little tired.
“And miss all the fun? No way!” Gus bounced on the balls of his feet a couple of times. “I only wish I could go up on stage with you.”
Max knocked his fist against Gus’s shoulder. “We’re going to be fine, Dad. I’ll get everyone centered, maybe go through some deep breathing exercises, before we go on. Hey!” Max smiled as if he’d just thought of something. “I bet it would help if you did those with us, make everyone feel like you’re really rooting for us.”
“That’s not a bad idea, Maxwell,” Gus said, scrutinizing the pale, sweaty faces of his crew with a critical eye. “Come get me when you’re ready. In the meantime, I’m going to see if Jules turned up anything new on that Kane Slater guy.”
“Thanks,” Danny said reluctantly, as they watched their father stride over to Jules and nearly shock her into collapsing with an unexpected slap on the back. “It’s good to get him to stay calm. He’s been off the charts, lately.”
“Yeah,” Max said with a rueful laugh. “I don’t know why Mom called me back here, really; all I’ve ever done is get Dad worked up by fighting with you.”
“That’s not true.”
Max stared, startled by his brother’s ferocity, no less intense for how quiet he was. As if realizing how he sounded, Danny flushed a little and glanced away. “You being here … it helps, Max.”
It was the first time Danny had even hinted that he was glad to have Max back home and on the team. The past couple of weeks had been too frenetic and busy for Max to worry much about it, but he’d found himself, in odd moments, wondering if he’d ever be able to repair all the damage he’d done when he took off and left his family behind.
He and Danny used to be so close. And to have his brother acknowledge that now, even in a small way, gave Max hope for the future. He rubbed his stupidly burning eyes and swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat. “Thanks, man. I’m trying. Falling short a lot, that’s for fucking sure, but I am trying.”
“I know,” Danny said, shaking it off and giving Max a small grin and a thump on the shoulder. “Now, if we’re done with our bromance moment, let’s go watch the competition. I want to see what we’re up against.”
* * *
Jules’s hand was cramping. She hissed a little, shaking it out, then clenched her pen in her fist and kept filling her composition book with lines of cramped, scrawled notes.
She’d been sitting to the left of the stage and studying the competition for the past two hours, and she’d learned a lot.
Two teams at a time faced off across the stage from each other, lined up behind tables equipped with actual buzzers. The judges asked three questions each, in rotating order. At the end of the match, the team with the most points moved on to the next round, up against a fresh new batch of five hopeful chef contestants. Major bonus points were awarded if every member of a team answered a question.
Jules stuck the end of the pen in her mouth and bit down on it, thinking furiously.
“Mmm, a woman with an oral fixation.” Max sprawled down beside her, his long legs kicking out in front and crossing at the ankles.
She spat out the pen. “Shut up. It helps me think.”
He did a quick double eyebrow raise. Together with the smirk he had going on, it was lethal. “Honey, I like the way you think.”
She cracked, letting out a tiny snort of laughter before she could muffle it. “God. Doesn’t anything get to you? Have you heard some of the questions the other teams have been asked? We’re going to get creamed!”
“No way.” Max leaned back on his elbows and rolled his head toward her. “We’ll smoke ’em.”
Jules closed her eyes briefly. “Just tell me you studied up on toxic foods.”
“I looked over a few books, made a few notes,” Max said, tilting his head lazily until the sun-bronzed tips of his buzzed–short brown hair kissed the floor. The tilt of his chin made the harsh overhead light find the threads of red and gold in his stubble. “No sweat.”
Jules didn’t want to think about exactly how much sweat, of the cold, clammy variety, was currently trickling down the small of her back. She wanted to scream, “If you’re not going to freak out with me, then get the hell away from me!” But at the same time, she couldn’t help taking comfort in the long, solid line of his body stretched out next to her.
His olive cargo pants were worn thin, almost see-through in places, and they molded to his legs so lovingly, her pa
lms itched to smooth down the fabric and chase the warmth of his skin underneath. He was wearing his white chef ’s coat, per regulations, but he hadn’t buttoned it. The white poly-blend flapped open over a red ringer shirt sporting three cans of Suntory beer across Max’s muscular chest.
The chest she’d seen, touched, kissed her way down, in a hurried assignation behind the towering sacks of flour in the pantry. They hadn’t had time to do much more than they’d managed in their first encounter, until yesterday morning in the pantry.
She’d sunk to her knees, her cheek against the crisp silk of the hair arrowing down into his pants, and he’d husked out, “Stop.”
Jules had looked up, confused, until he’d gripped her arms and hauled her up his body, spinning her until her back was against the wire racks of shelving.
“This time it’s my turn,” he’d told her, in that deep, shattered voice that scraped over her nerves like the edge of a knife over a cutting board. And then he’d proceeded to drop to his knees and turn her whole entire world into fire and melting and little explosions of breath that she muffled with both hands.
Sadly, the liquid relaxation she’d experienced after that encounter only lasted about an hour. Not a trace of it was left in her wire-strung body at the moment.
It wasn’t fair. She was a ball of stress, vibrating with tension and worry and nerves and expectations—and Max reclined on the floor like a pasha waiting for some harem girl to feed him a peeled grape.
“I can’t believe you’re not more nervous,” she said.
Max laughed. “It sounds like you wish I were sitting here wringing my hands and rending my garments.”
“Is that too much to ask?” Jules knew she sounded grumpy, but she couldn’t help it.
The gentle bump of Max’s knee against hers made Jules suck in a quick breath. “Hey,” he said softly. “I bet I can make you forget your nerves.”
“Stop that,” she hissed, looking over her shoulder. “Your parents are around here somewhere.”
“So what?” Max said, sitting up. Now he looked grumpy. “I mean, not that I have a yen to make out right in front of them, but seriously. Let ’em see. I don’t care if they know something’s up with us, Jules. I wouldn’t mind.”
The tip of her pencil pressed so hard into her notebook that it snapped. She blinked. “What?”
Max’s scowl smoothed into a softer expression, a hint of vulnerability sneaking into his eyes. “That is, I guess—if you agree that something’s up with us.”
Jules breathed in, the whole, crowded room fading away, but before she could say anything, Max swiveled to face her. “Look, I admit when this thing between us started out … I wasn’t exactly thinking it would be anything serious. And I know you’ve got your own issues about that, and I respect them, Jules, I do. But then there’s the fact that I really like you. As in, the whole you. Not just the outside parts, which I’m admittedly most familiar with.” He smiled, but it was a quick, fleeting thing followed by a shrug. “What can I say? I always seem to want more from people than they want to give me.”
Blinking rapidly, Jules tried frantically to sort through the mess of emotions called up by Max’s declaration. It was tough not to focus on the part that scared her spitless—the part where he could look at her and see that she had “issues.”
She didn’t want him to ever know about all that crap. It was over and done with, she’d put it behind her and moved on. Even thinking about it cut off the flow of warmth from the rest of his words, reducing it to a thin trickle that couldn’t reach the cold, deep inside her.
Because as tempting as he was, as much as she wanted to throw caution under the bus and really be with Max for however long they had together—she couldn’t escape the past. Shouldn’t escape it—because she owed too much to the people who’d helped her. And, deep down, she knew there was another reason.
She didn’t want to end up like her mother, at the whim of her so-called love for some man.
Feeling numb all the way to her fingertips, Jules stared for a long moment, taking in the lean, perfect lines of his body and the open brightness of his heart shining out from his eyes.
God, she wanted him. But could she really have him? Maybe it would be better to end this now. She’d already let him in too far.
Even though part of her knew she was taking the coward’s way out, Jules turned a pleading look on Max. “Do we really need to have this conversation now? Like, right now, only minutes before we go on stage to compete in a high-stakes challenge?”
Disappointment flashed over his face for a bare instant before he laughed and looked down, scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Sorry. This whole relationship thing is kind of new to me. I’ve never really been in one place long enough before, you know? I’ll try to get it together.”
And wasn’t that the perfect reminder of why she had to keep him at a distance? Jules said gently, “And in a few more weeks, you’ll be gone again. So what’s the point of pretending this is some big, forever thing in front of your family and the guys on the team? Our timing is just a little—off. I need to focus, and you … God, Max. You’re pretty much the biggest distraction I could possibly imagine.”
Glancing up at her from beneath his lashes, Max pulled his mouth into a lopsided parody of his usual bright grin. “Yeah?”
Jules shook her head. “Oh, you like that, don’t you?”
“Hey, I’ve been called worse things than a distraction. And for the record? I’m holding back. A lot.”
She raised her eyebrows. “This is you holding back?”
“Considering what I really want is to drag you off to a nice secluded custodial closet or something and get you naked and horizontal? Or, actually—vertical works for us, too, doesn’t it? Yeah. This is me holding back.”
His words conjured an immediate picture in her mind’s eye, and Jules shuddered with the shaft of heat that went through her like a hot knife through butter. “Okay. I think that’s my cue to get up from here and go find everyone else,” she said, shaking free of the sex haze.
Max stood up in a fluid move, then reached down a hand to help her to her feet. Jules wobbled embarrassingly. She told herself it was because she’d been sitting on the floor for so long, but one glance at Max’s heated, knowing stare and she knew they were both aware of just what it was that made her weak in the knees.
Swallowing hard, Jules turned to walk back to the bleachers, but Max still had her hand captive, and he used it to tug her to a stop.
“I’ll work on my timing,” he said, his voice serious and low. “Because this is real, Jules. It’s good. It makes me feel the same way a brand-new stretch of open highway does, or a shaded alley winding between buildings in a city where I don’t speak the language. When I look at you, I get that same rush. And I want to see where it goes.”
This time, the shudder down her spine was mostly fear, with a pinch of despair thrown in. She stared at Max, the openness of his expression, and knew she was already in way over her head.
But how am I supposed to resist this?
Pulling at her hand, she broke free of Max’s grip. “They’re going to be calling us any minute. We have to go.”
Turning blindly, Jules made her way to the bleachers where the rest of the team stood clustered around Gus and Nina.
“There you are,” Gus said with relief as she walked up. “Our number’s almost up. Where’s Max?”
“Right behind me,” Jules promised without looking back. “Are we ready, gang?”
The chorus of “hell, yeahs” was enthusiastic enough to almost make Jules smile. She looked at Gus, his handsome, lined face alight with all the excitement of a kid at Christmas, and at Nina, dispensing last-minute good-luck hugs. Danny submitted to his with a good-natured eye roll, Winslow with an answering smacking kiss on the cheek. Beck, though … he let Nina enfold him, bending down from his great height to make it easier on her, his dark hair swinging forward to hide his face.
Tears c
logged Jules’s throat. This was her family. They were the ones who’d still be there for her when Max was long gone. She couldn’t let them down.
Gus stepped down a bleacher to wrap one long arm around her shoulders. She sniffed back the emotion making her mouth tremble and her eyes sting, knowing it was too late. Gus saw her—he always had.
“You ready to rock and roll, little girl?” His voice was kind, soft in that way Gus mostly only used when he talked to Nina. Sometimes when he talked about Max and Danny, too—a blend of pride, bone-deep affection, and worry.
“I’m good,” she started to say, but she couldn’t stop her voice from breaking, her shoulders from tensing under Gus’s arm, when Max stepped up to the group.
And as Max swept his mother into a hug tight enough to lift her feet off the ground, Gus scowled and turned to Jules, putting both hands on her shoulders and making her face him. “What did he say to you?” Gus said.
“Nothing,” Jules said, too quickly. God, she didn’t want to be the cause of any more friction between Max and his family.
Gus’s eyes narrowed on her face. “Is there something I should know about?”
Jules mustered up a smile and a wink. “No, I’m fine. What about you? Promise me you’ll sit down and keep calm while we’re up there. Watching you collapse in the audience would really ruin our chances!”
“Oh, for the love of … I’m perfectly healthy! Nothing a little steak and red wine can’t cure.” Gus made a face. “You kids better win—I’m counting on the victory celebration to con Nina into letting me off the spinach and oatmeal regimen.”
“No steak for you, not until your numbers improve,” Jules warned.
“Who’s having steak?” Max’s voice came from behind her, and it took everything Jules had not to jump like she’d been stung by a wasp.
“Max,” she said helplessly, trying not to sound as freaked as she felt.
“Weren’t you going to lead the team in some kind of Buddhist prayer circle or something?” Gus said smoothly. “If you still want to, you’d better get on it.”
Too Hot to Touch Page 12
