Too Hot to Touch

by Louisa Edwards

  Max thought of the hundreds of dinner services his family had churned through, searing and serving thousands of perfect steaks at each meal. He thought of every fight he’d ever had with his father, right in this very kitchen, about how unchanging and boring the menu was, how steeped in tradition and imprisoned by people’s expectations.

  And he grinned. “I’m doing steak.”

  Chapter 27

  There was truly nothing in the world more luscious than duck fat, Jules mused as she poured the creamy golden renderings over the duck legs she’d marinated in spices and sweet wine the entire night.

  Settling the legs in their rich bath of melted fat, Jules bent to check the flame under the wide cast-iron braiser. It had to be hot enough to slowly poach the duck legs over the next few hours, but never so hot that the fat actually boiled around the meat.

  She moved back over to her cutting board, resolved to keep an eye on the braiser. In an unfamiliar kitchen, with untested equipment, she wouldn’t be comfortable until she’d examined and inspected everything.

  Not that it wasn’t a nice kitchen. In fact, the Rising Star Chef competition kitchen was probably the most luxurious, state-of-the-art kitchen she’d ever cooked in. The ranges and ovens had all been donated by top-of-the-line professional appliance companies, presumably for the exposure they’d get in Délicieux magazine, and the drawers of the movable stainless-steel countertops were filled with every conceivable culinary device.

  And it was enormous. More spacious than most restaurant kitchens, that was for damn sure, which was lucky, since all four teams had to share it. Each group of five chefs had a corner of the room set up with two long prep tables, two gas ranges, and two ovens. The middle of the room was taken up by a huge grill, open on all four sides, with a giant hood hanging over it to suck up the smoke, and they all had to share that, too.

  Calling it pandemonium in there would be understating things. It reminded Jules of the chaotic fighting and running and throwing things on the playground back at P.S. 721, only instead of elementary school kids banging around and bumping into each other, they were adult-sized people holding sharp knives and hot pans.

  And the stakes were just a little higher than who got picked last for four square.

  “Garlic press wishes and potato masher dreams,” Danny said, whistling. He liked to read her mind sometimes, just to prove he still could. “This place has everything.”

  “For serious,” Winslow agreed, racing by with his bowl of vegetables. “We get to keep all this high-tech stuff when the competition’s over, right? Like a consolation prize?”

  “I have a feeling Claire Durand would have something to say about that.” In the midst of halving her beautiful, perfectly ripe Wildman Farms plums, Jules still made time to watch the head judge as she moved through the kitchen, checking in with each team.

  “Besides, we won’t need the consolation prize,” Danny said with a manic grin. “We’re going to win!”

  His hair was sticking up as if he’d just pulled a sweater off over his head, and there was a smudge of flour lining one sharp cheekbone. He was so familiar and dear, for a moment it was all Jules could do to keep from going over and giving him a squeeze.

  “We are going to win,” Beck put in calmly, his fast-dicing hands never slowing their quicksilver motion. “For Gus.”

  “Any word from the hospital?” Win wanted to know. “How long do they think it’ll be before Gus is back to normal?”

  Jules swallowed, hard, and kept her gaze on the growing pile of plums. If Gus couldn’t compete in the next round of the RSC, what did that mean for all of them when Max left for Italy?

  Danny shot a glance at Max, sharing the adjacent table with Winslow. He’d ducked away for a second when his phone rang, presumably trying to find a place where he could hear over the din of people shouting and pots clanging on the metal cooking range, but he was back now.

  “Dad’s doing great,” Max informed them all, his hands already fondling that fillet of beef. “The stent relieved a lot of the pressure and pain in his chest, and with this kind of surgery, they usually get a pretty quick recovery. He’ll be back on his feet and hassling the hell out of us before you know it.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jules saw an upright form in an impeccable tan skirt suit approaching. A flash of silvery blue camisole peeked from under her crisp jacket, somehow picking up and emphasizing the chic, dignified threads of silver running through reddish-brown hair, loose and curling around slim shoulders.

  Claire Durand.

  Instantly on high alert, Jules put on her best, brightest smile and said, “Good morning, Ms. Durand.”

  “Good morning, chefs,” she replied in her lightly accented voice, before turning to Max and Danny. “I was very sorry to hear about your father,” she said, everything about her softening slightly, from her tone to the set of her mouth. “I hope that he is improving, and will be back with us soon.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” Max said. “I just spoke with him, and he’s so eager to resume his coaching duties, the nurses are threatening to tie him to the hospital bed.”

  Claire, who’d widened her eyes at Max’s perfect French, now narrowed them in speculation. “And who is leading the team, may I ask, with your father out of commission?”

  Max didn’t hesitate. “Jules Cavanaugh is my father’s right hand. We take our cues from her.”

  Pride burst like a bubble of champagne in Jules’s chest, and she ducked her head. Beside her, Danny threw an arm over her shoulders, and she leaned into the support gratefully. “It’s a group effort,” she finally said, glancing up to meet Max’s steady gaze and bumping her hip against Danny. “I lean on them, they lean on me … it’s a whole leaning thing.”

  Claire smiled, the thin smile of someone who knows more than she should. “Bien. It looks as if you’re doing an admirable job of propping one another up, so I won’t keep you from your work any longer. I look forward to tasting your dishes later; I hope you’ll let me or one of the other officials know if there’s anything you need.”

  She wandered off to scare the life out of the team from the Red Orchid Bistro, and with a harried glance at the countdown clock hanging on the wall, Jules motioned the others back to work.

  * * *

  Very interesting, Claire mused as she took one final look around the busy kitchen.

  All the teams appeared to be working well within the parameters of the strict time schedule she’d worked out.

  To avoid forcing the judges to sit down to a table laden with four separate five-course meals at once, Claire and Eva had decided to stagger the teams throughout the day, giving each a different start time to begin cooking. All of them would have the same total number of hours to prepare their dishes.

  The first team had been cooking since six o’clock that morning, and would be serving at ten.

  “Four hours to cook, plate everything up, and serve it?” Kane’s voice had betrayed his disbelief over the phone lines. “That’s some rough stuff right there.”

  Claire pursed her lips for an instant, displeased to be questioned, then forced her expression smooth again. “When Theo Jansen founded this competition twenty years ago, his aim was to elevate the craft of cooking to the highest level by testing the skills of chefs against one another. He never intended it to be a popularity contest, or a celebrity exhibition match, and I certainly agree. This competition is meant to separate the weak from the strong, Mr. Sl— Kane.”

  She corrected herself before he could do it for her, surprised and flustered by the heat in her cheeks, and thanked heaven that he couldn’t see her blush over the phone.

  “I get it, I get it,” he said. “Guess that means I’d better have a light supper tonight, and nothing at all tomorrow morning.”

  Claire cleared her throat. “That would, perhaps, be wise. Do not starve yourself, however. That would give the first team too great an advantage.”

  His low, rough laugh sent a shiver straight down her s
pine. “Hunger is the best sauce.”

  “Indeed. That proverb exists in many languages for a reason.”

  “What is it in French?”

  “À la faim, il n’y a pas de mauvais pain.” And why speaking her native tongue to him should prolong her blush, Claire didn’t know. Perhaps she was coming down with something.

  Better a fever than a severe case of ridiculousness.

  “Wait, isn’t pain bread?”

  “The literal translation is ‘to hunger, there is no such thing as bad bread.’ And when you consider how picky we French are about bread…”

  “Say it again,” Kane requested, his voice deeper all of a sudden.

  “Why?” Claire shifted. Her office chair wasn’t terribly comfortable, but it wasn’t usually this difficult to keep still.

  “Because I like the sound of it.”

  And because she liked the sound of Kane when he dipped into that lower, seductive register, Claire had to sit up straight in her uncomfortable chair and remind him of their agreement about the flirting.

  He hadn’t been terribly repentant, and the whole thing had only reinforced her determination to be the one to check in with the Lunden’s Tavern team, the night before the final challenge.

  Kane hadn’t seemed to mind being sent off to oversee the packing up of the Ristorante D’Este team, although Eva had pouted upon being assigned the Red Orchid group.

  Just as well. Claire hadn’t missed the byplay between Eva Jansen and that pastry chef from Lunden’s Tavern, the younger brother, either. Yet another trouble spot to watch.

  So Claire had done her duty, trundling all the way downtown to verify that the Lunden’s team finished their prep at the appointed hour and packed all their items onto speed racks, wrapped them in clear plastic, and loaded them onto a truck to be delivered to the RSC kitchen, thereby saving both Eva and Kane from the temptation of getting into trouble with the all-too-attractive Greenwich Village team.

  She was doing a much better job of removing temptation from the paths of her fellow RSC officials than she was for herself.

  It had been interesting, however. Last night’s observations, coupled with what she’d overheard this morning, seemed to indicate that if Kane Slater broke his word, and all the rules, by trying something with that female Lunden’s chef, he’d be disappointed. The young woman in question appeared to have quite enough male attention on her hands already, from both of the Lunden boys. Which quite possibly spelled disappointment for Eva, too, which was just as well.

  Good, she thought firmly. We can all be alone, frustrated, and disappointed together.

  At least there was the food to look forward to.

  Chapter 28

  It was down to the wire.

  Of course it was; in every competition Max had ever entered, it always came down to those final few seconds and the ability to power through the panic and get his dish done.

  The difference was that in every other competition, he’d been on his own.

  In some ways, that had been easier. At least when he was alone, he only had to worry about disappointing himself with his own fuck-ups.

  But when a chef from another team crashed into Danny and made him drop his pan of melted chocolate, spattering everyone around him and wasting a good half hour of work, Max didn’t have time to decide if it was an ideal time to let his tenderloin rest and marinate—he ran to the rescue.

  Luckily, the meat was fine when he got back to it after helping his brother crush what felt like seven hundred bars of bittersweet chocolate. In fact, the time away from his cutting board had brought the steak up closer to room temperature, which would help it cook more evenly, and had allowed the miso, soy, and yuzu marinade to sink in even further.

  Standing over his cutting board, Max nearly swooned as he inhaled the clean, earthy scent. The complex saltiness of the miso and the delicate citrus of the yuzu took him straight back to Japan, while the underlying smell of the beautifully butchered, bright red, high-quality raw beef was the scent of his childhood.

  He closed his eyes and took a moment to wish Gus Lunden could be there to see and taste this dish.

  I think you’d actually like what I’ve done with your old recipe, Dad.

  The celery root puree he intended as the base for the steak was straight out of the Lunden’s Tavern playbook, too, only Max had bumped up the richness and tang of the flavor with roasted, pureed artichoke hearts. And for color, he planned to serve a very pretty salad of organic yellow wax beans and green beans with gingered orange peel and toasted hazelnuts.

  Of course, as the clock ticked down the final minutes of their allotted cooking time, it was the fucking side dishes that tripped him up.

  His tenderloin had been grilled to the perfect temperature using his father’s famous techniques, and brushed with the miso glaze until it glistened. Once it came off the grill, the timing was precise. It needed to rest for ten minutes, so it would retain its delicious juices when he sliced it, but not longer than that, or it would be cold.

  The first three courses had already gone out—Jules’s incredibly tantalizing duck confit with pickled balsamic plums, Winslow’s updated matzo ball soup, and Beck’s homage to the classic bagel and shmear.

  Max was up next. The judges were waiting. His puree was down on the plates, waiting to have the thinly sliced beef fanned over it. Everything in him was clamoring that it was time, the beef needed to be sliced and sent out before it was ruined—but the fucking green beans would not cooperate.

  Max stared down at the handful of hazelnuts, their papery, dark brown skins clinging to them so tenaciously, he despaired of ever getting them clean and pristine. He stole a glance at the clock.

  Three minutes. His hands started to shake.

  All of a sudden, there was a brown, agile hand gently moving him out of the way and scooping the toasted hazelnuts into a clean dish towel.

  “I know a quicker way,” Winslow said, winking.

  “The gingered peel goes on the beans, too, right?” Beck confirmed, grabbing a knife and getting to work mincing the pile of sticky orange peel.

  Max blinked until Jules gave him a shove toward the resting meat. “Get slicing,” she ordered. “Unless your hands aren’t steady enough.”

  He looked at his teammates, his friends, busily saving his butt, and picked up his favorite, perfectly honed chef ’s knife.

  “Steady as a surgeon,” he told her.

  Now came the moment of truth. No matter how perfect your timing, how accurate your thermometer, or how refined and experienced your eye, there was really no way to be sure the tenderloin was grilled to perfection until you sliced into it.

  Holding his breath, Max sent up a quick prayer and let the sharp edge of his knife sink down through the meat in a clean cut.

  As the slice toppled gently to the cutting board, it revealed a gorgeously pink, juicy interior, still steaming slightly. Max let out a whoop of relief, slicing the rest as quickly and carefully as he could.

  There was a bit of last-minute scurrying, but somehow, and with the help of every person on the Lunden’s Tavern team, he managed to send three perfect plates of food out to the judges.

  Slumping to the floor, Max threw his head back and stared up at Danny. His brother’s course, dessert, was last.

  “Need help?” Max asked.

  “It’s chocolate cheesecake,” Danny reminded him smugly. “It’s been finished and in the cooler for an hour.”

  “I hate you,” Max said. “No, wait, I love you, because that means I’m done.”

  Ten minutes of tasting and exclaiming over his teammates’ dishes later, Max had managed to catch his breath, only to lose it again when Danny sent out his plates and Jules turned to them, eyes tired and cheeks flushed, and said, “Now all we can do is wait.”

  The waiting was the worst part.

  At least, that’s what he thought until he remembered that once the judges finished tasting the food, he and the rest of the team would have to go o
ut on stage, in front of the judges and a whole audience of people, and talk about their menu.

  Normally? Not such a big deal. But as Max leaned against the wall of the kitchen, letting the insanity of the teams still cooking flow around him like a raging river, he could actually feel himself crashing.

  At least he had the comfort of knowing, down to his bones, that they’d sent out a kick-ass lineup of dishes. If the judges didn’t like them, or scored someone else higher, they were insane and this whole competition was stupid and pointless, and Max would be sure to tell them so.

  Just as soon as he slept for twenty hours straight.

  “You okay?” Jules slid down the wall next to him, her hip and shoulder settling companionably against him.

  Even with his thirty-six straight hours of wakey-wakey time catching up with him, the lean warmth of her body still made him shiver.

  “Tired,” he said, yawning. “Was working on pure adrenaline, which sadly doesn’t last forever. And once it’s gone, there’s not going to be a whole lot keeping me upright.”

  Jules sent him a hesitant, sidelong look. “I bet I could get you up.”

  And just like that, he was back. “Hey there,” he said, dropping the hand he’d propped on his knees to tickle at the side of her hip, making her squirm and laugh. “How long do you think we have before they call us out there?”

  A shadow fell over them. “Not long enough,” Danny said, amusement curling his mouth. “Also? Get a room. Something a little more private than the dry-goods storage closet would be my recommendation.”

  Winslow bounced over on the balls of his feet, clearly not experiencing any sort of crash. “Aren’t you guys nervous? I’m nervous as all hell.”

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Beck said, joining them. “Nerves are only useful when they can spur you on to work harder, faster, better. Once the work is done, they become pointless.”

  “Wow.” Max blinked up at the tall chef. “That’s actually very Zen.”

  “Sounds like common sense to me,” Jules said.