Hot Under Pressure

by Louisa Edwards

  “Well,” he said, his low voice resonating through her whole body. “That’s a good start.”

  Chapter 20

  Twisting at the hips to realign her spine, Skye pressed both hands to her lower back and breathed in, imagining oxygen flowing into the knotted muscles.

  She thought longingly of the Bikram yoga class she’d had to give up when she moved out to Sausalito, and released her breath and the position on a long sigh.

  “Tough day at the office?”

  She whirled to face Beck and her long skirt flew out around her ankles, whipping at her calves. Off balance, she stumbled against the railing, but Beck caught her before she could do more than stare, shocked, at the churning water of the bay.

  His hands were big and solid on her forearms, rough with calluses and unbelievably warm against skin chilled by the breeze whipping off the water.

  It was that cold wind making her shiver, Skye told herself, pulling away with a forced smile.

  “We made a good start, I think.” Finding it stupidly hard to meet his dark, knowing eyes, Skye squinted out over San Francisco Bay, searching the horizon for the fast-moving ferry that would take her back to her parents’ house. “What about you? I would’ve thought you’d be back at the hotel, resting up for tomorrow. It’s not like the farmers’ market is open this late.”

  She felt more than saw Beck’s shrug. “No, but I’m thinking about using salumi in one of my dishes—thought I’d come check out what Boccalone’s got to offer. Somehow I missed it when we shopped here for the last challenge, but Win couldn’t stop talking about it.”

  That surprised her into looking straight at him. They were standing so close together, she had to crane her neck back to catch his gaze.

  “Have you forgotten I’m the enemy? I can’t believe you’d give me any clues about what you plan to cook.”

  This time it was Beck who looked away, as if he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “I don’t think it matters at this point. Our styles are different enough, we could use all the same ingredients and still come up with entirely distinct dishes. Besides, I know you don’t like salumi, and that rasta kid on your team would bust a nut if you put cured meat on your menu.”

  She laughed, remembering Nathan’s grouching about how she’d given up full-team consultation just to avoid hearing him suggest vegan dishes. His parting shot as the team left had been a reminder that animals were her friends, and friends didn’t eat friends.

  “Yeah, salumi’s not really our thing at Queenie Pie,” she admitted. “How about you? Already sweating bullets over having to open up about your past?” Not that Skye was looking forward to hearing what Beck came up with to explain his life story, or anything.

  He shrugged, massive shoulders jerking up and down in a parody of his usual smooth grace. “Nah, I’m just making the food I want to make. I’ll come up with something to say to make it sound good.”

  Disappointment lanced through her. Skye shook her head. “Of course you will. God forbid you should actually follow the challenge and tell anyone anything about yourself.”

  In the distance, a long horn sounded, signaling that the ferry was on its way to the dock.

  “Heading home?” Beck’s voice was toneless, completely impassive, but Skye still stiffened against the implied criticism.

  “It’s a temporary situation,” she blurted, then snapped her jaws shut on the rest of the explanation. She didn’t need to explain anything to him.

  Beck appeared to agree, since he didn’t ask any more questions. Not for a long moment filled with nothing but the skreel of gulls and the wash of choppy water against the side of the ferry dock.

  When he finally spoke, his question took her completely by surprise.

  “Are you happy, Skye?”

  Something about the way he said it, the quiet care she could suddenly hear in his voice, choked her up. Clearing her throat, she tossed her hair out of her face and squinted into the setting sun.

  “Sometimes. What about you?”

  “When I’m cooking.”

  The simplicity of his answer gutted her. She kept her face averted, soaking up the dying warmth of the sunset on her skin and trying to breathe around the constriction in her chest.

  “Me, too. I miss my restaurant.”

  “What happened to it?” Beck’s frown was as audible as his concern for her, and Skye made herself give him a smile.

  “Nothing bad! It’s just … it’s a tiny place, and I don’t have a huge crew of reliable cooks. I had to close it down for the month while we compete in the RSC.”

  “Can you afford that?”

  Narrowing her eyes at him, she said, “Normally, here’s about where I’d tell you to mind your own damn business. But since part of the start-up money for the café came from what I saved of the money you sent home after you enlisted, I guess it sort of is your business.”

  He held up a hand. “Hey, no. You don’t have to tell—”

  “We can afford it,” she interrupted. “Barely. But it’s a damn good thing we made it this far, and the publicity from getting to the finals should help us make up the lost time.”

  His fine, chiseled lips were nearly white, they were pressed together so tightly. “Good. I’m glad it’s going well for you.”

  Skye held back a sigh of frustration. She could already feel Beck closing off again, the brief window into his emotions slamming shut. It reminded her of … well, pretty much every conversation they’d ever had during their months of living together. And, just like back then, she found herself searching for any possible way to prop that window open for just a little while longer.

  “Hey. Would you be interested in seeing Queenie Pie? Considering you’re a major investor and all…”

  That got her a sardonic brow lift. “I thought you had a ferry to catch.”

  The ferry that would take her out to the quiet, picturesque artists’ colony of Sausalito, where her parents would be so busy arguing over politics and bickering over the last joint that they’d barely notice she was there?

  “There’ll be another one later. Come on, we can catch a cab.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “Since when?”

  The glimmer of humor in his dark eyes called an answering smile from Skye, as instinctive as breathing, and the reflexiveness of the response annoyed her enough to make her voice sharp. “We might not be the Big Apple, but San Francisco has a perfectly adequate fleet of taxis, and great public transportation.”

  “Right. You always loved those cable cars.”

  Shooting him a look as they left the Ferry Building, crossing a set of cable car tracks, Skye gestured at the lines running up and down Embarcadero. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather climb onto a charming old open-air cable car, zoom around town with the wind in your face, instead of trudging down into the bowels of the earth and packing yourself into a tin can that travels through subterranean tunnels with no fresh air.”

  Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought he went a little pale under his olive skin. “No arguments here. Subways aren’t my thing.”

  Guilt for playing on his claustrophobia twisted at Skye’s stomach. “Well, either way, it’s not an issue because we’re going to grab a cab. Nothing could be simpler or quicker.”

  Please, she prayed to whatever god controlled traffic patterns and the sometimes lackadaisical cab drivers of San Francisco. Please don’t make a liar out of me.

  For once, the gods seemed to be listening. Beck and Skye had only been waiting in semi-awkward silence on the corner of Embarcadero and Market for about five minutes when an open cab pulled over.

  The awkward silence continued as the taxi carried them over the Bay Bridge and up into the Berkeley hills, and Skye stared out the window wondering what the hell she was doing.

  What nutty impulse had prompted her to initiate this little adventure? She was supposed to be avoiding Beck, avoiding the temptation he represented and the catastrophic emotional hurricane he threw her into, not inviting him over
for tea.

  Exhaustion, stress, worry, and guilt made for quite the mood-killing cocktail, and as the cab sped past the familiar townhouses, bakeries, indie bookstores, and mural-painted walls of downtown Berkeley, Skye felt her mood turning black.

  But then the taxi pulled onto the bustling side street that was home to the Queenie Pie Café, and for the first time in what felt like forever, warmth suffused her chest and lifted her heart.

  The sight of her restaurant never failed to make Skye happy, and today was no exception. Even seeing it all closed up when it should be bright and busy with happy customers couldn’t dim her joy.

  “This is it,” she told the cabbie, tapping on the thick plastic separating the front seat from the back. “You can drop us anywhere along here.”

  They paid and got out, Skye nearly tripping over her own feet in her hurry to get inside the café and check on everything. She’d come by when she first got back to San Francisco after the Chicago leg of the competition, but that was nearly a week ago now.

  Fumbling for her keys, she dropped the heavy ring once before managing to slot the right key into the lock on the glass door. Pushing the door open with a flourish, Skye turned back to wave Beck inside, vividly aware that her hair was a mess around her flushed, beaming face but unable to care.

  “Enter!”

  She ducked into the dark restaurant and flipped the wall switch to flood the place with light while Beck hovered, his looming form filling the entire doorway.

  He looked more uncertain than she was used to seeing him, and something about the way he held himself reminded her forcibly of the first time she’d taken him to meet her parents. He had that same odd mixture of defiance and supplication, his hands curled loosely at his sides and his stern, strong-boned face set in uncompromising lines.

  Skye couldn’t help it; her instinct was the same now as it was back then—to treat Beck like a barely tamed wild thing, to be lured and gentled.

  “We came all the way out here,” she said softly, her heart thudding unevenly in her chest. “Don’t you want to see the place you helped me build?”

  Something in his closed-off expression opened up as surely as if she’d slipped her key into the right lock.

  “This is what you always wanted.” His voice was gruff, like sand over glass. “A place to call your own.”

  She nodded, throwing her arms wide and twirling in a slow circle. “Queenie Pie is mine: every booth, every chair, every cup, every spoon. And I love everything about it, from the broken exhaust fan above the flattop range to the wobbly legs on table thirteen.”

  Fierce pride lit Beck’s eyes to darkly glowing coals. That look, right there—that was why she’d brought him here.

  “I gave you this.”

  He didn’t phrase it as a question, but Skye stopped twirling and looked him straight in the face. “The money you sent, and the fact that you were in the Navy, gave me the collateral to get the bank to extend me a loan, yes. A loan I’ve almost finished paying off.”

  And wouldn’t it be amazing to be free, out from under the burden of that debt? She could hardly wait.

  Propping those big hands on his lean, sturdy hips, Beck studied the layout of the space. His laser beam gaze took in everything, from the wood-framed chalkboard mounted on the back wall, still advertising coq au vin blanc and summer vegetable risotto, the night’s specials from a month ago, to the mismatched vintage light fixtures she’d found in thrift shops around town.

  The soft red of the walls combined with the creamy yellow light to cast a warm glow over his face, his brown hair, tanned skin, and black T-shirt standing out darkly against the cheerful color.

  Skye found her own anxious gaze drifting to the tiny imperfections she knew were there: the nick in the countertop running the length of the left wall and serving as a bar, where people could have a cocktail or a glass of wine while they waited to be seated; the one lightbulb that always burned more dimly than the others on the sixties-era Italian brass fixture over the back corner of the café, no matter how many times she replaced it; the scuff marks on the swinging doors that led into the kitchen.

  Swallowing down a swarm of butterflies, she made her voice as casual as she could. “So. What do you think? Did you make a good investment?”

  He paused long enough that Skye’s butterflies threatened to come right back up, but finally he tilted his chin down and met her gaze. “If anything I did helped you achieve this, then I’m proud. And glad. I think my leaving was the right thing to do.”

  Her instinctive rejection of that last statement nearly strangled her. And as she tried to relearn how to breathe, the truth reached up and smacked Skye in the back of the head.

  As much as she loved the café, she would’ve given it all up if it had meant keeping Henry at her side.

  Shaken, Skye dropped her woven hemp satchel on table four and headed for the kitchen, her only thought to grab a few seconds alone to process what she was feeling.

  But before she could push open the kitchen door, Beck was there, his long arm propping it open for her. Ignoring the way his bicep stretched the sleeve of his shirt and the corded tension of his lightly furred forearm, Skye reached for the light switch.

  In contrast to the mellow softness that lit the front of the house, the kitchen’s brilliant overhead lighting buzzed to life in a blinding rush of fluorescence, illuminating every nook and cranny of the small, cramped rabbit warren of cook tops, freestanding tables, and wire shelving.

  “Wow,” Beck said, his voice rumbling softly above her head, close enough to make her jump as she felt his breath stir the curls at her crown. “Not a lot of room to maneuver back here.”

  “It’s an old building,” she choked out, moving away from him as swiftly and smoothly as she could, even though it felt like everything under her skin was jumping.

  “I’ve seen more space in the galley of a submarine.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, leaving her breathless. He’d never talked about what it was like for him on the boat, not in any of the stilted conversations they’d managed after he left.

  Not that there’d been a lot of time—he’d only been gone three months when it happened, and they’d had that final, awful phone call when she’d had to tell him the news. And after that … nothing.

  Until now.

  Her fidgety fingers smoothed over the familiar lines of her workspace, trailing across scarred wooden cutting boards and gleaming-clean stainless steel countertops. The open wire shelves were still stacked with the long-lasting ingredients they used the most often, white plastic tubs of basics like flour, salt, and sugar alongside crates of condiments like Sriracha, Dijon mustard, and jars of Queenie Pie’s own canned pickled vegetables.

  “So … I know why you left me.”

  He jerked as if she’d shot him, but Skye barreled on, babble filling her mouth like dirt that she had to spit out, or choke on it. “I mean, I know what you said at the time, and I think I even know why you didn’t come back—but what I’m wondering now is why you left the service. Was it because of the…”

  “What?” he growled, crossing his arms over his massive chest so the muscles bulged.

  “You know.” Skye waved her hands around helplessly. “The space issue. The claustrophobia.”

  Surprisingly, he relaxed at that, the tension melting out of his shoulders as he dropped his hands to steady his lean back against the corner workstation Nathan used. “That was part of it. After that last stint on the boat, I never wanted to see another submarine, much less go out in one.”

  Hungry for any scrap of information, Skye couldn’t mask the eagerness in her voice. “Why? What happened?”

  She expected Beck to shut down, the way he always used to when she asked questions, tried to get him to talk about anything in his past, but instead he just shrugged, a slight frown touching his mouth.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, except they kept us out there on the ocean for nearly seven months. Which wasn’t all that out o
f the ordinary, come to think of it.”

  Seven months. She couldn’t imagine it. “I thought … when you first joined up, they said the submarine operated on a schedule of three months out, three months on land.”

  He shrugged. “That schedule—it’s not set in stone. It can’t be. Shit happens, things Command can’t foresee. We were used to it.” Pausing, Beck shrugged again, more tightly this time. “Doesn’t mean we liked it and accepted it with zero bitching, but we got it. We went where we were needed.”

  When he put it like that, Skye felt like a selfish bitch for the thought that kept running through her head.

  But I needed you, too.

  Afraid to say anything that might break this confiding mood Beck seemed to be in, Skye murmured, “That must have been tough.”

  Somehow, that was exactly the wrong thing to say. Beck pushed away from the counter he’d been leaning against, straightening his spine as his face settled into its usual sculpted stone lines. “It was a job,” he muttered. “And it was worth doing.”

  Stung by the implication, Skye put her hands on her hips. “I never said it wasn’t!”

  He snorted. “Come on. This is me. I know you, Skye. I know how much you hate war and violence.”

  “Of course I hate violence! That doesn’t mean I hate soldiers, or that I’m not grateful for their sacrifice and protection.”

  Beck narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t believe her. “The way you acted when I told you I’d enlisted, though…”

  Skye couldn’t believe he didn’t understand. “I was worried about you,” she cried. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “No, it was more than that.” He had that stubborn, closed look again, and Skye squeezed her eyes shut, tried to control her jumpy stomach and heaving lungs.

  “Yes, it was. I didn’t want you to go, because I didn’t want to be without you.”

  Chapter 21

  Everything inside Beck’s head rearranged itself, as if a giant hand had swept through his mind, scattering the building blocks of his memories, all the choices and reactions that made him who he was.