Some Like It Hot (18 page)

A mille crêpe cake was, literally translated, a thousand crêpes stacked into a single dessert. Its layers were stuck together with any of a variety of ingredients, from lemon curd to whipped cream. What Danny had was Winslow’s beautiful vanilla bean custard and some gorgeous caramelized plums worked into a deep amber compote shot through with streaks of ruby.

“Win, come here,” he said, once the stack of thin, fragile pancakes was starting to get respectable. “Damn it,” he swore as he flipped too gingerly and the crêpe folded in half.

“Whoops.” Win bounced up next to him.

“Tell me about it.” Danny rolled his eyes at himself. He could waste a bunch of time trying to get it back into the pan and on the correct side to brown without ripping it to shreds, or he could simply accept that it was over and move on. He dumped the crêpe.

Re-oiling the pan, he scooped up a new ladleful of batter and said, “My fault. I was too wimpy with it. You’ve got to show those crêpes who’s boss.”

“Where did you learn to make these?” Win’s face was fascinated, the way it always got when someone showed him a technique he’d never seen before. “At the FPI?”

Danny had taken classes at the French Pastry Institute in New York, but he’d never gotten certified as a pastry chef. Couldn’t take the time away from Lunden’s Tavern.

He shook his head. “Nope, my mom. And Julia.” He grinned, remembering his mother sitting down with him to watch old episodes of Julia Child’s public television show when he was a kid. They’d both loved quoting Julia, parroting back to the TV, “You must have the courage of your convictions!” in that high, fluty voice.

“Man, that chick got around,” Winslow said. “So, what do you need from me, boss?”

Danny filled Winslow in on the plan and watched the kid’s startling green eyes get bigger. He looked surprised, then hungry, which Danny took as a good sign.

“Okay, go, go, go,” he urged as he scraped the blender bowl for the last of the crêpe batter.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes,” Jules called out, and Danny automatically responded with their normal kitchen acknowledgment, “Heard!”

Fifteen minutes. It was enough, but only barely. They’d have to work fast and clean, not the easiest when dealing with tender, paper-thin, still-warm crêpes, but it could be done.

A sense of infinite possibilities expanded Danny’s rib cage, making him light-headed and invincible.

He stole half a second for a glance up to the front of the kitchen where Eva stood with the judges, talking to them about who-knew-what. The color had come back into her cheeks, but she still looked drained, diminished in some indefinable, wordless way.

She hadn’t looked like that last night. She’d looked intense, passionate, alive … she’d looked happy.

He’d been happy, too.

Why were they both so willing to give that up without a fight?

Clenching his jaw, he went back to work, finishing the final crêpes with a flourish to distract himself from the way his wrist ached from the constant, repetitive flipping almost as much as his palms stung where they gripped the handles of the pans.

He’d do it. He’d finish this damn cake, and it would be the best thing Eva had ever tasted, and she’d give him that smile, the one that chased all the shadows out of the room and made him feel like he’d borrowed one of Winslow’s too-tight T-shirts and his chest was about to burst out of it.

Eva thought she could dismiss him, turn Danny into just another notch on her bedpost, but she was wrong. There was more to him, more to them, and he wanted the chance to figure out exactly what that meant.

He wanted the chance to make her happy again—and to be happy himself.

It was good to have a goal, he told himself, running over to Winslow with the final batch of crêpes stacked high on a platter.

Never mind the fact that there was sort of a built-in goal when you were cooking in a timed challenge as part of the Rising Star Chef competition.

He wanted to help his team win, no question. But at the moment, the reward of Eva’s smile felt more real and urgent than any prize.

Kane Slater was not having the time of his life.

First off, he was thrown. That nice lady he’d sung happy birthday to was in some sort of trouble that no one wanted to talk about too much, even though Kane wanted to tell them,
Y’all, I grew up with a single mom and five older sisters, I know about feminine issues
.

Not that it was his business, really, but he was worried. She’d seemed nice, and Devon Sparks had always been a stand-up guy to Kane. He liked the way the older chef lightened up whenever anyone mentioned his pretty, new southern belle of a wife.

But that was only the first thing that intruded on Kane’s personal happy day parade, and he had to keep reminding himself that it was the worst—the most important, because whatever Lilah Sparks was going through had scared Devon enough to hightail it out of Chicago on the first plane back to New York, and that shit was real.

It was definitely a bigger deal than Kane’s little, bitty, silly problem accepting the fact that he was going to be spending quality time with one of Claire’s exes. One of the ones who mattered, he was pretty sure, after watching Claire light up with a fond sparkle the instant Theo Jansen walked into the room.

No,
Kane told himself as he watched the older man step over to stand way too close to Claire, his trim, distinguished body angled in such a way that all his intense attention was clearly focused directly on her.
This is no biggie.

The past, over and done with a long time ago, according to what he remembered from when Eva gave him the scoop on the other judges before he’d agreed to come on board.

“Claire’s a peach,” she’d said, cheerfully unaware of Kane’s embarrassingly massive, stupidly persistent crush on the editor in chief of his favorite food magazine.

“She’s been more of a mom to me than any of the steps,” Eva went on, referring to the progression of ever-younger women her father continued to marry and divorce every few years. “Or maybe I should say she’s like a big sister, at this point. I still think of her a little in the mommy way, though, because she almost got stepped! That’s how I met her, my dad dated her for a few months when I was a kid. But Claire was too smart to get on the step train, and when she broke up with him, I cried so hard! I thought I’d never see her again. But she didn’t break up with me—she’d take me to high tea at the Pierre every couple of weeks, talk to me about school and boys, God, everything.”

Eva had smiled, a softer look than Kane was used to seeing on this wild-child party buddy who’d become a friend. “She took me to get my first French manicure, and complained the whole time about how much better they did it in Paris,” Eva reminisced. “She bought me my first tube of red Chanel lipstick.”

“And thus, a monster was born,” Kane intoned with maniacal laughter, ducking the punch Eva threw at his arm.

But he’d known right then that if he ever actually met Claire Durand, he’d be in trouble.

If his crush was this bad, based only on her picture and smart-as-hell letters from the editor in every issue of
Délicieux,
how would he withstand a real live woman who’d cared enough to befriend the motherless daughter of a man she’d dumped?

And of course, he’d been right.

Really, he had nothing to complain about. After all, how many foodie nerds with hopeless crushes ever got to actually meet the object of their long-distance affections? Talk and hang out? Seduce and kiss and touch and see them naked in real, living color?

Kane was lucky. Always had been, one of the luckiest bastards on the planet, and he knew it.

So this thing with Theo Jansen showing up, it shouldn’t have caused a ripple in the smooth, crystal-blue waters of Kane’s lucky, lucky life. And if Claire had treated him with the disdain due an obnoxious ex-boyfriend, or if Theo had been less charming, dapper, witty, urbane, and above all interested, Kane would probably not be sulking right now.

Probably.

He was moody, sometimes, he’d been told. To which he usually replied that he had to keep up the rock star image somehow, and since he wasn’t interested in heroin and loved his guitar, Betsy, too much to smash her on the stage, he was left with mood swings.

But this felt worse than one his moods where he was sure he’d never make another record or come up with another good lyric, and the space in his head that was usually filled with music was quiet and dark and scary.

This actually felt
worse,
and that was a total nightmare, because up till now he would’ve said the musicless brain void was the scariest shit of all. Now he knew better.

Now he knew that watching Theo Jansen put a light, yet somehow proprietary hand on Claire’s slender shoulder—and her not shake it off—was worse.

Eva appeared next to him as if drawn by his misery. She looked none too pleased, herself, and Kane breathed a sigh of relief at the idea of focusing on Eva’s mood instead of his for a few minutes.

“Everything okay?” he asked, deliberately turning his back on the tableau of Food Editor Wooed by Restaurant Magnate.

“Not so much,” Eva said, trying to laugh, but it sounded more like a choked sigh. “My father is … it’s complicated.”

Kane, who’d turned back to Claire and Theo at the first mention of Eva’s father, as if he were physically unable to compel his body to obey instructions that might increase his sanity, blinked his eyes closed and zeroed in on his friend. “I’m good at complicated,” he told her. “
Rolling Stone
said so in their review of my last album. ‘Layered and textural, with hidden levels of complication and emotion woven into every verse.’”

He paused. “Not that I memorized it, or anything.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “Of course not.” But she laughed when she said it, and Kane felt like, hey, mission accomplished.

Thrusting his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, he lifted his chin toward the wall clock steadily ticking down. “It’s almost time. You think they’re ready?”

Eva followed his gaze up to the timer. “If they’re not, they’re disqualified.”

Man, that would suck. Kane hadn’t been so consumed by adolescent jealousy that he’d missed how hard everyone was working in that kitchen, running their asses off, shouting back and forth.

Even a good ways back from the stoves, it was hotter than Austin in August in there, a wet, overpowering, killing heat that got into the lungs and made it hard to breathe. Everyone was sweating, including the judges, but some of those poor chefs looked about ready to pass out.

It was a total kick to be there, to see it up close, and Kane pressed his lips together, determined not to waste this opportunity to learn from some of the country’s best young culinary talent.

So Claire was flirting with her ex—or at least, not shutting him down when he flirted with her, in that sedate, dignified, grown-up kind of way. So what? Kane was in Chicago, one of his favorite cities, immersed in one of his favorite things in the world—food.

As the buzzer went off, loud and startling, and Eva yelled, “Knives down!” Kane promised himself he’d quit mooning and start experiencing.

With that firmly in mind, he was the first one out of the kitchen and across the hall to the conference room the hotel had set up as an elegant private dining room with a large oval table decked out in white linen, gleaming silverware, spotless crystal glasses. The works.

No food yet, though, and Kane rubbed his flat stomach, congratulating himself on the stellar decision not to eat breakfast that morning.

Okay, it had been more of a choice between having a bagel and rolling Claire over and having
her
one more time, but he was confident he’d made the right decision.

Especially considering, for all he knew, that might have been the last time. Shaking himself free of the morose thought that he should’ve joined her in the shower afterward, too, Kane threw himself into a chair and stared into his water glass.

The other judges followed after him, and Kane tried not to care where Claire sat. He supposed he could’ve arranged things the way he wanted them by sitting in the middle chair, but that felt too much like childish game playing to him, and God knew, he didn’t want to do anything else to make Claire think of him as a stupid kid.

Not with the perfect example of a handsome older man on hand to provide comparison.

Unbuttoning his sleek, tailored sport coat, Theo Jansen stepped forward and pulled out the center chair, making Kane grit his teeth in annoyance. And then again in embarrassment, because Jansen had pulled the chair out for Claire, like a gentleman, like a guy with manners who wasn’t raised in a barn, and Kane could just hear his mama screeching in the back of his head.

Trying to sit up straight instead of falling into his normal, comfy slouch, Kane was glad he’d ditched his hoodie today. Not that the crumpled gray cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows was the epitome of class and taste, like ol’ Jansen’s pin-striped suit, but at least, you know, it had buttons instead of a drawstring and zipper.

Eva was the last one in, and she hurried over to the chair beside Kane’s just as the first team of chefs trooped in with their dishes.

“You okay?” she whispered in his ear.

“I’m fine,” Kane promised, splaying both hands flat on the tabletop to make them quit twitching and moving.

Imagine this is a stage, and you’re having an off night, but these people paid for the Kane Slater Experience, and they are by God going to get it.

He smiled at her, the bright, star power one. “I’m just hungry. And no offense, but I kind of hate your dad.”

Eva snorted. “None taken. At the moment, I’m kind of right there with you.”

She looked gutted, and no wonder. The guy swoops in, all charming and shit, and undermines her in front of everyone involved in the competition, while simultaneously putting the moves on Claire. What a douchewad.

Man. Kane hated feeling so negative. He’d never understood people who wrote those achy-breaky-heart songs, or why the radio-listening public lapped them up like ice cream on a hot day, but now he thought maybe he got it. The only thing he could imagine doing with all this crazy emotion was to pour it into a song.

Look on the bright side,
he told himself.
This is fodder for the next album. People will call it my Blue Period, and I’ll get to look like a true artiste
.

The thought was less cheering than it should’ve been.

Kane didn’t really perk up until the Southwest Team set their plates down in front of him. Time to get down to the serious business of eating.

The southwesterners had done a play on the famous Chicago-style hot dog, replacing the standard steamed all-beef dog with a spicier, almost chorizo-esque sausage heaped with fun stuff like avocado and Mexican crema. There were pickled jalapeños to balance the richness with a little sour, and the soft, pillowy fresh-made bun elevated the whole thing.

It was kind of a huge mouthful, though, and Kane only managed about a quarter of his, hoping to pace himself for the future teams’ offerings. The dessert was a little disappointing, a sort of soupy ice cream that the team revealed they hadn’t had time to chill properly.

“Which one of you is the pastry chef?” Kane asked.

Blank looks were his only reply, until a short, hairy guy on the end piped up to say he’d been in charge of the ice cream.

Huh.

As the next teams cycled through, it became clear that they hadn’t brought a true pastry chef along for the ride, either. The southern contingent presented a kick-ass homage to Chicago’s soul food, although their fried chicken wasn’t as good as Kane’s mama’s. Their take on buttermilk pie was more successful than the ice cream, but the crust was pitiful, too thick on the bottom, soggy and tasting of raw flour.

The West Coast Team had a pastry chef, but she was young and kind of rabbity nervous looking—for good reason, as it turned out.

The first two dishes, a salad and a vegetarian, distinctly California version of Chicago’s famous pizza made Kane feel like he’d never look at vegetables as boring and uninteresting again. Their food was a revelation to Kane, who had a tendency to go big and bold rather than simple—but simplicity, when executed as perfectly and as masterfully as Skye Gladwell’s crew did it, took the fresh, delicious, completely un-exotic ingredients to whole new heights. They were Kane’s biggest surprise of the day.

But that poor little pastry chef. The molten chocolate cake she served for dessert was a total flop. The oozy, liquid center was too sweet, the sugar almost grainy on his tongue, dissolving to an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste.

The Midwestern Team was the one Kane was the most excited about. They’d scored the highest in the final round with a very impressive meal full of the latest techniques using the hottest new gadgets—smokers and semiconductors and liquid nitrogen and a metric ton of other stuff that Kane had written down to acquire for the kitchen in his house back in LA. Assuming he ever spent longer than three days there again.

And the Limestone chefs didn’t disappoint. Every dish was a knockout, putting together bold, gutsy flavor combinations Kane had never thought of, would never think of, but that forced him to redefine the whole idea of
delicious.
Their presentations were fanciful, full of playful details like serving their pan-seared lamb chops on a parchment paper pillow filled with burnt hay, so that as the pillow slowly deflated, the scent wafted up and infused the lamb with the flavor of a backyard bonfire.

The dessert was a sweet beet sorbet mounded beside a chocolate mousse with a port sauce. The whole thing was sprinkled with smoked sea salt, and it wasn’t made by a pastry chef, but it was competent, an avant-garde little creation that Kane didn’t love. But he could tell it was well done, and Claire and Theo sure seemed to like it, so it was probably one of those no-accounting-for-tastes things.

Or maybe he was just getting full, although that would suck, since there was still one team left to go.