Seared (Cooking up a Celebrity Book 2)

by Hadley Harlin

“Like me!”

  I nodded, my mouth dry and begging for an icy beer to help ease this story or a pack of real fucking cigarettes.

  “For initiation, some of the guys gave her an acid tablet after dinner service one night. If I’d known, I would have intervened, but I was doing the books in the back office. Then, they took advantage of her in the produce closet.”

  I swallowed hard as Clara remained perfectly silent. “The next day, I came in to work and viewed the wreckage from the night before. All of our produce was on the ground, unusable, and our most expensive cuts of beef mutilated with teeth marks in everything. It was unreal.”

  “What happened next?” she prompted.

  “The girl came clean, sobbing the story to me, and we formed a game plan. Even though I’d been clean for over a year, my coke addiction was well-known, so I agreed to take the fall for her as long as she agreed to take a rape kit test and bring those bastards to justice. She really needed the job, and I knew the owners would fire the new girl if they found out she’d eaten all of their profits. I think it’s safe to say that we were both pretty surprised when the owner fired me outright. New girl, sure. But their tried and true exec chef? That stung.”

  “Did you hate her?” Clara asked shyly.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It wasn’t her fault. The owner was impossible to predict, and she lived up to her side of the agreement. They arrested all three of the men for rape.”

  And it felt pretty fucking awesome to see Wagyu take a beating in the press from losing four of their cooks in the course of a few days. Too bad he was able to cover up in the media the real reasons why he’d lost four chefs.

  “But you suffered,” Clara said. “For being the good guy.”

  I shrugged. “Life’s a bitch.”

  I didn’t tell her I went right back to using. An addict has got to do what an addict’s got to do. It took another year before I could begin my count anew.

  After cleaning up, we snuck out ten minutes apart, reconvening outside the villa to wait for a taxi to take us into town. It wasn’t long before we reached the center of the old city, San Gimignano.

  There were two gelato shops across the street from each other, and both claimed to be the oldest and best one in the world. Only one was, though. We could tell which one it was by the winding line out the door and onto the cobblestones. Gelato Dondoli was tiny, but it had acres of flavors.

  There were dozens of aluminum tube pans brimming with brightly-colored ribbons of gelato flavors. Some had whole sprigs of rosemary or slices of figs piled on top to show you exactly what you were ordering.

  I didn’t love sugary things, not even in my desserts, so I went with the gorgonzola and walnuts option. Clara got the tartufo—a chocolate truffle scoop of decadence, which seemed to encapsulate her perfectly.

  “What do you think the elimination will be today?” she asked.

  I watched in barely-disguised awe as Clara licked her cone with abandon. Damn, I wished I were that cone.

  She answered her own question. “Probably milking an Italian cow, skimming the cream off the top, and churning three types of gelato from it.”

  “Sounds legit.” I laughed.

  We walked around the town, admiring the cats sunning themselves lazily on ancient walls while scruffy dogs begged for scraps. Laundry flapped in the breeze, and old women watched the world pass by from their iron balconies, which dripped with the ever-present pink and purple flowering vines. It was as close to perfection as I could imagine, and it made me never want to leave. Until Clara started whispering dirty words in my ear.

  She giggled, pulling me into her arms against centuries-old stones, warmed by the Tuscan sun. We kissed and groaned in anticipation. I knew I should have been reading some Italian cookbooks or studying up on pasta, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop studying Clara.

  We went straight back to her room where I brushed up on her favorite things, like the way she shivered when I kissed the back of her knees or the way she moaned when I hit just the right spot with the tip of my cock. I pounded into her as she screamed my name over and over again. Then I lay on top of her as she ran her fingers through my stubble, my cock still pulsing with aftershocks inside of her.

  Never mind my earlier thought. This was fucking perfection.

  Except that it wasn’t, and now I’d done the worst. I’d let her think I’d chosen her over everything else when I knew in my heart I’d chosen the competition.

  After Italy, I promised myself there could be no more screwing around. But I was too cowardly to tell her that. Instead, I let her curl up into me, feeling her tight body mold into mine.

  “I hope this never ends,” she whispered contentedly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Liam

  San Gimignano, Italy

  Everything on me was sweating. It usually took more than a thousand-degree heat pouring out of the coal fired open-air ovens to put me off my game, but I usually wasn’t wrapped up in a girl, either.

  Worse, the judges had misled us. Italy wasn’t about gelato. It was about pasta and always would be. We had to execute the extremely tricky egg yolk single raviolo in a saffron broth. Something Clara had probably been doing since she could stand.

  She hadn’t held up her end of the bargain by helping me with Italian cuisine. If I were being fair, I’d admit I hadn’t exactly let her. I’d probably saved her ass in Germany, and she was about to cost me mine in Italy.

  I whirled through the kitchen like a tornado, ignoring everyone around me. The last three egg yolks I’d separated had already broken while I shakily crimped the edges of the pasta. My fingers were too clumsy and heavy-handed for this. Too shaky for precision and delicacy. Also too lost in the memory of being inside of Clara.

  I was already behind after having to start over with my pasta dough twice. TWICE. Clara never did tell me if it was three egg yolks or two per cup of pasta. It was too wet, then too crumbly, and completely overworked. By the time I called it quits, I didn’t have nearly enough time to let it rest. I had to keep going.

  My dough finally rolled and now the damn egg yolks kept fucking breaking. Just stay together, baby, before you break me. We’d already heard the five-minute mark, so I flopped what I had in the salted, boiling water. It’d only take two-and-a-half minutes to cook, which would leave me with a minute to plate and strain the broth.

  Except, the pasta refused to float to the surface. It stayed on the bottom in a thick lump, too thick to cook in time, because I hadn’t been able to roll it out thin enough, because I hadn’t had time to let it rest long enough.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, motherfucking fucker!

  Sophia clapped her hands. “Time is up in three, two, one!”

  We all stood back, hands in the air, completely out of breath. I’d at least gotten the raviolo in the bowl, though I was pretty sure the pasta dough was undercooked. The only thing that made me feel better was all of the cursing coming out of everyone’s mouths. Except Clara’s, of course. Hers looked perfect.

  I didn’t have to be the best. I just had to be better than at least one of those motherfuckers.

  My saffron sauce wasn’t even near my plate, which, to be honest, was probably a good thing. It was cloudy and unrefined, as I hadn’t had any time to strain it. And I didn’t need the judges to cut into my pasta to know my egg yolk was completely overcooked. There would be no money shot of golden goodness oozing out.

  Worse, despite me apologizing profusely for my shitty effort, Chef Sato decided to use me as her whipping boy. What the fuck crawled up her ass?

  “Yes, but we still have to eat it,” she said, ice in her eyes.

  We stood numbly, knowing exactly who was in the bottom. It came down to Pierce and me. People on the chopping block usually held hands or some shit like that in solidarity, but not me. My look pretty much said, “Touch me and die.”

  I barely heard her speech about how much we sucked, abominable efforts, blah, blah, blah. Finally, Sato sighed.r />
  “Pierce, Italy is the last stamp on your passport.”

  I sagged in relief. I had squeaked by, the margin thinner than my thick-ass pasta. If I wanted to keep my shit together and win this competition, something had to give, and unfortunately, I knew exactly what it was that had to go.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Clara

  Istanbul, Turkey

  I’d sailed through Italy, but the competition was only getting fiercer. I felt like I’d hit my groove, and I wanted to stay striding. Even Jizzwad Jackson had quieted down since the Alps. He seemed subdued in some way.

  Everything was coming up Clara.

  Except I also felt Liam’s tongue between my lips and the touch of his fingers across my back as he pulled me into him. The memory left searing imprints down my body, and fuck, I was fucked. Finally fucked for good.

  But it didn’t matter. I still wanted more.

  I wanted him in my bed every night and between my legs every morning. I’d never woken up so sore and so completely carefree before. I was always worrying what my next move was going to be, which rung of which ladder I needed to climb to ensure I would make it to the top. Which restaurants to apply to, which chefs to approach for an apprenticeship.

  Now, only one thing mattered, Liam Long, except he had been very distant since his near elimination in Italy. Actually, that wasn’t right. He’d been absolutely silent and avoided me at all costs. I vowed to figure out what was going on and maybe study up on Turkish cuisine together, as well as other things. Just thinking about the other things made my stomach coil into pleasantly hot knots.

  I wandered through the opulent five-star Turkish hotel looking for him. Maybe we could grab dinner and ask the cooks for a few tips. Anything to get a leg up in the game. Then, once we got back to the room, I’d put my leg up over his head.

  After an hour of searching, I started to wonder if he was sick or something. The entire hotel buzzed with people enjoying their Turkish holiday in the sun, but none of them were Liam. Finally, I admitted defeat and went to grab my good luck bandana before our first challenge.

  The cast met at the Spice Bazaar. A crew member strapped GoPro cameras to our bodies in preparation to let us loose on the poor shopping center.

  Liam stood as far away from me as possible while they belted us up and resolutely ignored my glances.

  I bumped past Emma, trying to get closer, but Sophia and Hawthorne foiled my attempts by shouting for attention. Today, we needed to find a list of ingredients from the many stalls of the bazaar and to familiarize ourselves with the spices of Turkey. We’d be cooking with them later.

  The moment the judges shouted “Go!” Liam sprinted off, jumping over a wicker basket full of powdered turmeric, and disappeared into the crowd. The elusive bastard!

  Instead of hunting down saffron and sumac, I hunted Liam. I saw him a few times, slipping by a mound of paprika or carrying a bag of Turkish delight, but by the time I got to his stall, he was gone. A paranoid girl would start to think he was avoiding me on purpose.

  I didn’t think his Italy disaster was that big of a deal at the time, but maybe it was. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed after being on a high from my win. I mean, it’s not like he’d gone home, but sometimes it was hard to remember that the cameras were capturing all of our failures and triumphs. If we sucked, it would ruin our reputations back in the States. I knew he didn’t have a job to go back to and a huge gap in his résumé after Wagyu. Losing could sink his career for good.

  Chances were, we’d both lose. Jackson was the clear frontrunner. Maybe Liam would consider finding an apartment in New York City and living with me. We could look for a job near each other and hang out all the time. Unless one of us won, of course. Then the whole world would be our oyster. I wouldn’t hold it against him. Under his tough exterior, I saw the real Liam—and I didn’t think Liam would hold it against me if I won, either.

  So where the fuck was he?

  As if on cue, a huge figure turned a corner and slammed me into a stall of figs, dates, and prunes. I went stumbling, all of the items I’d already found going up in a haze of spiced, red air.

  “Sorry, princess.” Jackson smirked. “Didn’t see you there.”

  I couldn’t stop sneezing, but managed to choke out a “fuck you, asshole” as he scooped up my bag of dried hibiscus flowers. I figured he’d hand them to me and help me up, but instead he took off in the opposite direction.

  I struggled to my feet, slipping on all the dried fruit scattered below. Was he seriously going to run me over and steal my spices? Even for Jackson, that was some bottom of the barrel bullshit.

  Suddenly, something large vaulted over my prone body and tackled Jackson. It was Liam, his eyes on fire. He wrestled Jackson to the ground and pinned his face against the dirty floor so hard I actually winced for him.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Jackson protested. “I didn’t even see her.”

  “Give her the bag back, jackass.”

  Without waiting, I crawled over and ripped the bag from Jackson’s fingers. Liam let him go and stood up, giving him one last kick as he slunk off.

  He wiped his paprika-streaked hands on his pants and offered them to me. “You okay?” he asked, pulling me to my feet. Goose bumps prickled along my skin at his touch.

  I nodded, unable to speak in his presence. He was so tall and masculine and barely breathing heavy after running around the bazaar and man-handling Jackson. He smelled of spices and his own woodsy scent, igniting all of my desires—and doubts.

  We still had our GoPro cameras strapped to our bodies, so I didn’t say what I really wanted to say. Like, why are you ignoring me? Did you take what you wanted and move on without telling me? Do you feel for me as much as I do for you? Are you as frightened as me? Don’t abandon me!

  Instead, I watched as he ran back the way he came, not once turning around to look at me.

  We finished the spice hunt in silence, the judges telling us where to meet them tomorrow morning, but I could barely concentrate.

  I didn’t tell him that he was making me doubt everything about myself.

  I didn’t tell him he was breaking my heart. We’d only known each other for a few weeks. That would be ridiculous. Right?

  Right?

  Chapter Twenty

  Liam

  Istanbul, Turkey

  So this was hell. Welcome to hell.

  Three hundred and fifty-five days.

  I kept telling myself it was better for both of us, but fuck. It hurt to erect this invisible wall between us. My chest was constantly tight, and my nerves were strained. I’d never been closer to wanting a drink before. It felt as desperate as when I found out that Mom was in the hospital from yet another overdose. Clara brought out emotions I didn’t think existed in me anymore. Things I’d hoped I’d tamped down for good.

  At the end of the day, what was more important? My career or a girl? Did that even make sense? I had nothing to go back to if I didn’t win, nothing to give her. I had no choice. I had to buckle down and focus. She should, too.

  The best way I knew how to scare myself straight was by talking to my sponsor. It was balls-early in New York, but I could call him any time of the day or night. I dialed his number, waiting impatiently until he answered.

  “Liam, where are you?”

  Saying hell out loud sounded a little dramatic, so I went with the truth. “Istanbul, Turkey. I’m not allowed to tell you much, but I’m halfway through the competition.”

  “That’s great. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, but save your pride. I’ve barely squeaked by every challenge that wasn’t German-based. There’s no way I’m going to survive.”

  “Don’t think negative. Take it one day at a time. One challenge at a time.”

  I hemmed around, not saying much of anything. Usually, my sponsor was content to let me drive the conversation, like an expensive therapist I got for free. This time, he nudged. Probably because it was two in the fucking m
orning in the States.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is it difficult getting back into fine dining and being around alcohol?”

  “I’m not going to pretend it’s a walk in the park, but there’s other complicating factors,” I admitted.

  “Mmm hmm. Go on.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, there’s a girl. Beautiful, smart, killing the competition. And we’ve gotten… involved.”

  “Okay.”

  I knew it wasn’t my sponsor’s place to tell me what to do, but a little insight to his thoughts would’ve been nice. I continued, anyway.

  “We’ve spent most of the competition together, but I know I’m not giving it my all when I’m thinking about her all day. I’m sure she’s not, either.”

  “Do you think that’s true, or do you think it just makes you feel better to tell yourself that?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s not affected at all. She did win the last two challenges in Italy, but she’s Italian.”

  “Again, do you think that’s true?”

  “The only thing I know for sure is that she’s occupying all of my thoughts. I’ve tried avoiding her for the past few days, and it’s made it worse. I’m not in a good mind space at all.”

  “Okay, if you don’t know what to do in regards to yourself, what would be best for her?”

  “I know I’m not good for her and that it would be better if we cut things off cold turkey, like alcohol. It’s the only way to fully detox.”

  “If that’s what you feel in your gut is best, then listen to it.”

  “But I don’t want to do that. I want to be with her, but I’m afraid I’ll start to resent her if I lose.”

  “It sounds like you have a decision to make that only you can, Liam.”

  “I was sort of hoping you’d give me a magic bullet I could shoot myself with and make my feelings for her go away.”