by M. J. O'Shea
The director called, “Cut,” and there was an immediate buzz of conversation around the room. Nicolette was talking to the director, and Diego had leaned in to answer something Big Al had asked him. Chase turned the iPad over and over in his hands nervously.
During the challenges in the week, they’d been given simple recipes to follow to make good, basic puff and phyllo pastry bases. Their execution of that had been judged, but it was more about what they’d put inside the pastry, how creative and tasty and beautiful that final product was. Of course, for the final he had to come up with a recipe of his own.
Tommy called for their attention again and started to run through the additional rules for the challenge that would be explained to the TV viewers in a voiceover. They weren’t allowed to steal any ideas from the Internet. Instead their morning was to be spent looking for inspiration, designing their dessert, and figuring out what flavors they would be using. The cameras would follow them, so there was no chance for Chase to grab Kai and beg for his help.
Even as they were dismissed to go and find a comfortable spot to do their research, Chase knew he wouldn’t actually go to Kai. He didn’t have much, so his pride was important. He could get through this.
Deciding to go back to bed, Chase hoped the cameras would at least give him a respite for a while as someone from the production team frantically cleaned the room around him. That gave him a chance to search “tips for making sublime choux pastry” and made scribbled notes to himself on how to achieve that.
It proved to be a useful exercise—he learned where he’d gone wrong last time, at least. By the time the cameras and the director tracked him down, Chase was doodling a big pile of circles in an inverted triangle shape.
“We’ll get you to do a voiceover to explain what you’re thinking at the moment,” Diego said. Chase nodded. “Just carry on with what you’re doing.”
By the time they’d left, he’d decided on a croquembouche for his dessert to dazzle the judges. It was a classic French dessert: a large cone of spherical choux pastries filled with a pastry cream, piled up on top of each other and held together with chocolate and caramel. For his Burned twist, Chase decided to add pistachios to his pastry cream filling and press the little green nuts into the caramel too, giving it a beautiful, visual twist.
As long as he could conquer the pastry itself, he felt confident that this week might finally go his way.
KAI SAT up straight, stretching out the cricks in his neck and back that had developed as he’d hunched over the breakfast bar, working on his design for this big challenge. The production team clearly wanted them to produce something incredible, grand, and stunning, and Kai knew a variation on a classic croquembouche was exactly the thing to stun the judges.
He had a twist planned, naturally, to use more chocolate than caramel and dark cherries to give the dessert an almost Black Forest sort of feel. He’d made this before, without the variation, and was pleased with the concept.
Nicolette swept into the room after having spent the past fifteen minutes talking to Chase in their bedroom. Kai grinned, ready for this, and turned on his charm and enthusiasm as he started describing his plan to the judge. Tommy was just behind the camera, and Kai noticed his eyes widening, then his grin, then how he stepped away and started muttering into his iPhone as Kai talked Nicolette through his plans.
“Great,” Tommy said as Kai finished talking and the cameras stopped filming. “Kai, we’re going to film the next part of the show in groups, so I need you to come with me now.”
Kai nodded, a little confused but willing to do what he was told. They’d never done this before, splitting everyone up. But then they’d never been given extra time to plan before either, so maybe it was all to do with their big twist that was clearly going on this week.
Kai, along with Polly, Aaron, Clarissa, and Big Al, was hustled into a shuttle bus that took them over to the studio. The others were chattering excitedly about their plans, their concerns for the afternoon, how long they’d have to create the dessert. Kai had figured he would need at least two, nearly three hours to create the whole thing. Any less than that and he’d need to scale back on the size of his dessert, which he didn’t want to do.
“How’s Chase doing?” Polly asked, startling Kai out of his thoughts.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I haven’t seen him since the announcement this morning.”
“He’s performed well all week,” Polly mused. “I bet he’ll be fine.”
I hope so, he thought, and forced himself to smile at Polly in response.
They were kept in the three smaller groups while they rotated through the voiceover studio, lunch, and the ordering deck where they could request any ingredients the show didn’t already have in stock. One of the poor interns would then be dispatched to go and get them before filming started at one in the afternoon.
By the time they were led into the studio, Kai’s head was already in a whirl from everything they’d been put through today so far. It was rare to do so much before a challenge, and he had to force himself to relax, take some deep breaths, and focus. He spaced out a little during Diego’s customary introduction speech. He’d heard most of it before, prizes, yada yada, introduce the judges, tell the audience who was burned the week before, and how many ways they could get screwed this week. He looked at the ceiling, then the judges’ table where Emilio, Basil, and Nicolette were chatting. He knew what he was doing. He just wanted to get it over with.
“And remember,” Diego said, reminding Kai he hadn’t been listening at all. “Don’t get burned.”
With that, the buzzer went off. Kai ran for the supply tables and immediately grabbed the ingredients he’d need for his choux pastry. He was determined to get that part started before he got distracted by the other fancier elements of the dessert. Next to him Chase was doing the same thing, and Kai eyed the distance between them, momentarily distracted. It seemed like his workstation was closer to Chase than usual.
He looked around. They were all working closer together than normal. Someone had obviously decided to shift the workstations around to fill in the gaps of the people who had left.
Interesting.
Kai startled, realizing his daydreaming was eating into precious work time, and got to work weighing his raw ingredients. Diego was making his way around the room, talking to the other contestants and asking to see their sketches. Kai wasn’t much of an artist—not with a pen and pencil, anyway—so his sketch looked like something a four-year-old would scribble with unsharpened crayons.
“So tell me what you’re creating today,” Diego said to Chase, and they were definitely close enough to overhear each other’s conversations now.
Chase deftly slid his pan of butter off the burner so it didn’t spoil, then smiled at Basil. “I’m making a classic French dessert called a croquembouche,” Chase said.
Kai felt his stomach plummet to the floor.
Fuck. Fuck!
“Why don’t you tell me more about that?” Diego said.
Kai was distracted, too distracted as he listened to Chase recount his plans for a pistachio cream filling, and damn—that sounded good. He was seething as he watched the producers watching his reaction, and felt the knowing eyes of another camera filming his reaction.
“Shit,” Kai muttered as his careful planning went out of the window and the choux pastry he’d been beating in a pan split. There was no saving it. He’d have to start again.
Of course, Diego chose that moment to move over to Kai’s station, and the cameraman immediately swept in to film the ruined pastry.
“Oh dear,” Diego said, sounding delighted at Kai’s failure. “What happened here?”
“The pastry split,” Kai muttered. He took a deep breath and pushed his hair back from his face.
“What are you making for us today, Kai?”
Kai felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. “A croquembouche,” he said tightly.
“How interesting,” Diego s
aid. He sounded even more delighted. “Another croquembouche.”
Kai winced then went on to describe his plans, and by the time Diego had moved on to Big Al’s station, Kai was really behind schedule despite being given three hours in total to complete the challenge.
Determined not to fall apart, not this early in the game, Kai blocked out everything that was going on around him and methodically started on a fresh batch of pastry. By the time he got the first two trays into the oven, he had made up time, and although he’d have to work quicker than planned to decorate, he was sure things could get back on track.
For the next two and a half hours, Kai sweated for the first time since they’d started filming Burned. He was hyperaware of Chase next to him, the man he was spending hours in the evening making out with suddenly very real competition. Whenever a camera got near, Kai started swearing loudly, making whatever footage they had taken completely unusable. It was a cooking show, so the viewers were used to the occasional “fuck.” Kai’s language was a lot more colorful than that, though. He didn’t want those damn things in his face when he was stressed, and they swarmed around stressed chefs like buzzards, usually.
After his initial disaster, the cooking gods seemed to take pity on Kai, and he managed to make it to the fifteen-minute countdown with no more problems than the panic gnawing at his stomach. His dark chocolate threatened to give him trouble at one point, but he wasn’t going to deal with that and he almost bullied the chocolate into behaving.
By the time the buzzer sounded, Kai had one tall cone of croquembouche with all the delicacy and finesse he prided himself on. He was fairly confident the judges would like it—he’d stuck to the brief and created something that was, for him, fairly conservative.
The only problem was Chase’s effort was clearly better than his.
Kai watched, jaw clenched, as all three judges sang Chase’s praises; his execution, flavor, and skill were all near perfect, and Kai wasn’t surprised when he was in the top two. He only lost out to Breon, who had delighted the judges with a line of perfect religieuse—pastries that were covered in chocolate, named after their resemblance to miniature nuns.
Since he hadn’t driven into the studio that morning, Kai couldn’t hang back to talk to Chase before they got back to the apartment, and he was forced to listen to the others congratulate Chase over and over on the ride home. More than one of them clearly thought he should have won the challenge. Kai couldn’t help but feel a little stung.
They had left Carson back at the studio to film his exit interview. Kai was more than a little shocked the French chef had gone out on what was, essentially, a French pastry challenge. Carson’s ambition had been his downfall. He’d totally overreached, considering the time limits of the challenge, and his barely finished dessert was just never going to impress. Kai guessed it would make great TV, though.
When they got back to the building, Kai grabbed hold of Chase’s wrist.
“You did great back there,” he said softly. Chase grinned.
“Thanks.”
“Do you want to go… I don’t know, grab a beer somewhere? Or some ice cream?”
“Why don’t we go get some beers and bring them back?”
Kai nodded. “Okay.”
They made their way down to the parking lot in silence, only picking up the conversation again when they were enclosed in the safety of Kai’s car.
“Shit.” Kai dropped his head back and laughed. “That was hard work.”
“I can’t believe we picked the same dessert!”
“I suppose there’s not actually that many traditional choux pastry things you can do,” Kai said. He sat up straight and turned the engine over, then pulled out of the space. “It was always going to be a possibility more than one of us would do the same thing.”
“They didn’t tell you to do that, then?”
“Nope. Though I was wondering what was going on when they split us all up.”
Chase’s eyes lit up in understanding. “They didn’t want me to tell you what I was planning.”
“Or vice versa,” Kai said in agreement. “You did so well today. That was incredible.”
“Wanna know a secret?” Chase asked. He wound down the window and the breeze played with the edges of his blond hair. Kai forced his attention back to the road.
“Sure.”
“Choux pastry is my nemesis. My cheesecake.”
Kai laughed. “Really?”
“I’ve never once made it successfully.”
“Today was the right day to pull it out of the bag, baby.”
Baby? Where did that come from?
“Tell me about it.”
“Why pistachio?”
“I dunno. It just seemed like a good idea.”
“You need to stop having so many of those,” Kai teased as he signaled and turned into a gas station. “We might end up going against each other in the final.”
“Jeez,” Chase muttered. “I’m not even thinking that far ahead. I’m happy when I survive every week.”
“Maybe you should think that far. You blew nearly everyone else out of the water today.”
They walked into the store close but not touching, and Kai let Chase pick out the beer while he grabbed a couple bags of chips. Tonight was not the night to watch what he was eating. However proud he was of Chase for his achievement, the reality that they were each other’s competition was starting to dawn on him now. Sooner or later, one of them was going to get knocked out, and Kai’s loyalties were still firmly with the Burned winner’s trophy rather than with Chase.
For the moment, at least.
THAT NIGHT, someone had the bright idea to go out for dinner—all of them together. All Kai wanted was a hot shower, something comforting to eat, and a movie on his laptop. The chance to relax for a few hours.
It clearly wasn’t going to happen, though. Jenna had gotten everyone excited about some new Argentinian place down on the beach, and had organized a bunch of taxis to get them all there and back. Kai knew if he backed out now he would look like a total dick, so he pulled on a pair of half-decent jeans and a shirt, hoping to look like he’d made at least some of an effort.
Chase looked hot. Kai had watched him shower, then change into nearly the same jeans-and-shirt combination. It was different on Chase, though. He had only done about four buttons up on his plaid shirt, and the green brought out the color of his eyes. If Kai weren’t quite so aware of Aaron watching them, he would have gone over and unbuttoned a few more.
“You guys ready?” Polly stuck her head around the door and grinned at them. Kai couldn’t help but smile back.
“I think so. If I can get Aaron to stop drowning himself in cologne.”
“Hey!” Aaron protested, and put the bottle down.
The traffic on the way to the beach was hideous, but no one in their car seemed to care. Chase had been dragged into another vehicle, and Kai couldn’t help but be annoyed. If there was one thing that could have made this little school trip bearable, it would have been running his hand up and down Chase’s thigh in the backseat where no one else could see. Instead he was jammed in between Aaron and Jenna, who was bouncing in her seat.
“How are your kids?” Kai asked, pushing the one button he knew would get Jenna talking for hours without any need for him to reply.
“Oh, they’re good,” Jenna said with a big smile. “Missing Mommy, of course, but Caitlin has been telling everyone her Mommy is going to be on TV, and that seems to be keeping them going.”
She started on a new story about her eldest son, who had just joined the Little League team and was desperate for Jenna to go home and watch him play. She had three or four kids in total, Kai couldn’t remember exactly, and her poor husband and mother were now looking after them full-time.
“It must be hard for you,” he said sympathetically, patting her arm.
Jenna turned watery eyes on him. “It is. But you do what you have to do for your kids. This show is securing their fu
tures, you know?”
Kai did know. He could see what was next for Jenna as if he’d suddenly become a master of divination—she’d get some big national campaign for healthy school snacks, would go on The View to show her deep concern for the health of the nation’s children who were, after all, the future. Jenna would go on to do a cookbook, maybe brand some snack bars that would be sold in Whole Foods, and generally be a pain in the ass for the next few years until people forgot about her.
It was practically written in the stars.
When they finally—finally—got to the restaurant, Kai hung back from the crowd to get a few moments of fresh air. He tagged along at the back after the hostess started showing the group to the long table that had been reserved for them, eyes on Chase’s ass in those jeans.
Fuck. Did he paint those things on?
“Hey,” he said in a low voice as he caught up, his lips close to Chase’s neck so the puff of warm air danced over his skin. The resulting shiver through Chase’s body made Kai grin wickedly to himself.
“Hey.”
There were two seats left at the end of the table by the time Chase and Kai got there, opposite each other, which was fine by Kai. He could play footsie under the table.
“Want to share a bottle of wine?” he said to Chase as they sat down, immediately reaching for the wine list.
Chase laughed. “Sure. What are you in the mood for?”
“Wine,” Kai muttered darkly. “Lots of wine.”
“I don’t drink that much red,” Chase admitted. “It gives me a headache.”
“White is fine with me,” Kai said, running his finger down the list until he found a Chablis he liked the look of.
While everyone else seemed content to chatter along with Jenna at the head of the table running it all, Kai let his focus narrow in on the man in front of him. He couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm for overpriced steaks and mediocre ceviche, but making Chase laugh and watching his cheeks turn pink the more wine he drank was definitely worth it.
