Can't Stand The Heat Read online

  “I understand,” Miranda said, and she thought she really might be starting to. Despite his unorthodox methods, Adam Temple actually had a decent work ethic. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  He winced. “No, no. You don’t get it. Don’t try not to do it again. Don’t do it.”

  Frustrated, Miranda said, “All I can say is that I’ll do my best! But I’m flying blind here; it’s not like I know how to cook.”

  Adam stared. “You’re a restaurant critic. And you don’t know how to cook?”

  A flush of heat enveloped Miranda’s whole head when she realized what he’d just goaded her into admitting.

  “I have an excellent palate,” she told him. “I can distinguish flavors and ingredients after a single bite. If I can pick the coffee notes out of a mouthful of dark sauce, is it really necessary that I know the perfect way to skim stock?”

  Adam shook his head, evidently aghast.

  “It may not be necessary to your bosses at Délicieux, but it’s sure as hell important to me. Until you have some solid grounding in the basics, you’ll keep making rookie mistakes and screwing up my kitchen.” He stood up and placed his hands flat on the desk, looming slightly.

  Miranda tried not to be nervous.

  Then he grinned.

  “There’s only one thing for it,” Adam declared. “I’m going to teach you to cook.”

  TWELVE

  Jess blinked awake from a blurry dream, full of indistinct figures as hazy as a Stieglitz photograph. But Jess could produce from memory a vision of the main player in the dream, a Richard Avedon–esque image of a long, sharp face pale against a crop of black hair, the lines and angles as familiar as the face Jess saw every day in the mirror.

  Frankie Boyd.

  He burrowed down into the covers, not quite ready to let go of the dream. It had left him with a low-level hum of pleasurable happiness. This was getting to be a regular occurrence, waking up with afterimages of the lanky souschef burned onto his eyelids. Frankie was just so . . . wild and different and alive. Exactly the way Jess felt when he was anywhere near him.

  For the last week, Jess had managed to avoid any actual conversation with the object of his obsession while silently and unobtrusively (he hoped) stalking Frankie around the restaurant. He was well aware that it was dangerous and dumb, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  Jess had discovered lots of random facts. Frankie smoked Dunhill cigarettes, a British brand reputed to use very fine tobacco and fancy silk filters. He listened exclusively to punk music and would argue long and loud with Adam over which was better, New York punk or British punk. He played bass guitar in a band at an after-hours bar. Frankie was a dog—he’d slept with nearly everyone in the kitchen and front of the house, boys and girls. And the rumor was that Frankie had his eye on someone new.

  After last night, Jess had a shameful, flickering hope about who that “someone new” might be.

  Jess knew Frankie had ducked outside for a cigarette when he let himself out the back door. He also knew he should stay inside, but something compelled him to follow the guy. Heart pounding, he rationalized that surely there’d be a group of cooks out back smoking, and maybe Jess could join in and bum a cigarette from someone (even though he didn’t smoke), and maybe Frankie would give him a light and touch his hand. It was ridiculously junior high. If Jess had considered it for longer than two seconds, he (probably) would’ve changed his mind.

  But he didn’t give himself time to wimp out. And when he hit the back doorstep and saw that Frankie was alone in the dark—it was like his brain went offline completely. His feet carried him closer with no clear directive from his mind.

  “Evening, Bit,” came Frankie’s laughing voice from out of the night.

  “Hi,” Jess responded, then snapped his mouth shut. How lame could he be?

  “You know,” mused Frankie, taking a pull on his cigarette. “I believe this is the first time we’ve been alone together since we met. Remember?”

  Jess shivered. He did remember; sometimes he had trouble thinking about anything else. It hadn’t been anything big or momentous, or at least it shouldn’t have been. But somehow that instant when Frankie had first looked him in the eye and really seen him before smiling that naughty, hint-of-tongue smile—nothing, for Jess, had ever been bigger.

  “Everything’s been so busy, getting the restaurant ready to open,” Jess said vaguely.

  Frankie arched a brow, the one with a curve like a scimitar. “Not too busy now for a nice little chat, is it?”

  Jess gulped, hoping it wasn’t audible. “No,” he agreed. “My tables have all cleared.”

  There was the smile again, and Jess watched, fascinated, as Frankie flashed the trademark tip of tongue between his front teeth. There was no earthly reason that should be so ridiculously sexy.

  And yet.

  Jess cast about for a topic of conversation while Frankie leaned hip-shot against the wall, smoking contemplatively and staring into the sliver of night sky visible between the tops of buildings. Shifting his weight from side to side, Jess let his eyes wander from Frankie’s kick-ass black boots, up the black denim-clad legs to the greyhound-lean chest encased in yet another T-shirt, a white one with the black outline of a woman’s face surrounded by a pouf of eighties hair.

  The sleeves had been ripped out, and Jess noticed again the tattoo that had caught his eye that first day. A skinny figure with shoulder-length dark hair lounged against Frankie’s bicep, wearing suspenders and a collared shirt. A pair of dark eyes smoldered out of the tat. Jess wondered with a sudden pang if he was looking at someone who’d been important to Frankie.

  “Who’s the guy on your arm?” Jess blurted, and could’ve smacked himself for how completely noncasual he sounded.

  Frankie clamped his cigarette between his teeth and twisted his arm so he could see his own tattoo. “Guy? Are you cracked? That’s Patti Smith, you plonker.”

  Jess could feel his face coloring. “A chick. Seriously?”

  Frankie took the Dunhill between his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at Jess. “Not just any chick, Bit. Patti Smith is the Godmother of Punk. She’s a genius, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, fucking Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters.” He shook his head despairingly. “Sweet suffering saints, what are they teaching you young squirts nowadays?”

  Jess scowled. He hated it when people referred to his age. It’s not like he could help being nineteen. “I’m not that young,” he said, fighting to keep the sullen out of his voice.

  Frankie pushed off the wall and sauntered closer. Jess felt trapped by his own magnetic attraction, as if Frankie were the planet he was revolving helplessly around, and yet he didn’t exactly want to escape. Frankie leaned in, and Jess was suddenly enveloped in his scent, the rich tobacco tang from the Dunhill clashing with the savory smoke from the grill. He breathed in as deeply as he could without gasping aloud.

  “I bet you’d like Patti’s music, Bit,” Frankie said, his sexy lick of an accent rasping over Jess’s nerves. “There’s this one line of hers makes me think of you every time I hear it, about your youth being for the taking. Makes me want to take your hand and run away.”

  Frankie shook his head again, laughing at himself, but there was something shadowy in his eyes that made Jess wish for broad daylight so he could puzzle it out. “Don’t be so quick to cast off your youth, Bit. Once it’s gone, you can’t ever get it back.”

  And then Miranda made a racket entering the alley, and Jess came back to reality with a bump.

  Jess sank onto his pillow with a sigh. If she hadn’t come outside then . . . but she had. And God, she’d almost seen—he didn’t even know what, but something. And that would’ve been awful, he reminded himself, in spite of the ache of unfulfilled anticipation that still throbbed below his breastbone.

  His late night had gotten even later because, of course, he’d had to come home and download every single Patti Smith album he could find. Including
the one with the cover he recognized immediately as being the basis for Frankie’s tattoo. It turned out to be a Mapplethorpe photograph, which gave Jess shivers when he found out. Robert Mapplethorpe was one of his favorite artists.

  Jess twisted and reached to grab the iPod off his bedside table. Fitting in the earbuds, he scrolled to the song Frankie had referenced last night, which Jess had finally pinned down after several hours of intensive listening. By the time he went to sleep, Jess understood exactly what Frankie loved about her. Patti Smith was the essence of cool, brazen and unapologetic. He found the live version of “Kimberly” and let the steady bass guitar beat fill his head.

  Jess was fully aware that this was getting out of hand. He was stupidly close to losing his head over Frankie.

  Okay. Recognize it and get over it, because no good could possibly come of following through with whatever this was. Miranda would be hurt, Jess would lose his job and all his new friends, and what would he have gained? Only the knowledge that he’d learned absolutely nothing from all the shit that went down at Brandewine. And he couldn’t bear for that to be true.

  Scrubbing a hand over his face, Jess hauled his ass out of bed and into the shower, determined to get a handle on his hormones.

  Following Adam out of his office and up the stairs was like trying to keep up with a bike messenger in rush-hour traffic. Miranda cursed herself for wearing heels yet again, and actually considered slipping out of them.

  But barefoot in a restaurant? That had to be a health violation. And anyway, how much farther could he be running?

  Adam glanced over his shoulder and made an impatient noise when he saw Miranda straggling, and to her surprise, he reached back and grabbed hold of her hand, hauling her up.

  It should’ve hurt, being manhandled like that, but somehow Adam’s hand, hard and callused as it was from years of holding a knife, was nothing more than gently implacable. His dark eyes gleamed down at her in the dim hallway, and when he smiled, his even teeth were white against the darkness.

  “Come on, sweets,” he said, all gruff and excited. “Keep up. You’re gonna learn to cook! I’m telling you, it’s the best thing in the world.”

  Infected by the sheer incandescent joy on his face, Miranda couldn’t help smiling back. She’d spent all night and morning worrying about getting screamed at and banished from the kitchen, only to be confronted by Adam in full-on boyish charm mode instead. The reversal of fortunes, added to this insanely good-looking and charismatic man’s nearness in the enclosed space of the back hallway, was making her a touch giddy to start with. And when he turned that lethal enthusiasm on her?

  Her normal cool reserve didn’t stand a chance.

  So she found herself smiling up at him, at the warm, solid length of him pressed close to her side, and before she knew what was happening, he laughed out loud and dipped his head to brush their mouths together.

  She felt the soft, supple pressure of his full bottom lip moving against hers, the seeking tilt of his head, and they both froze. He seemed as startled as she was by the contact.

  The air around them crystallized with tension for one heartbeat, two, then with a muffled groan, he slanted his mouth down over hers. It was hot and deep and wet, zero to sexy in no time flat, and all Miranda could do was cling to Adam’s strong hand. It was the only place they were really touching, other than their lips, and the point of contact steadied Miranda against the rush of sensation when he licked into her and rubbed the velvety nap of his tongue across the sensitive roof of her mouth.

  The kiss was a jolt of pure electricity down her spine.

  When Adam drew back, running that dangerous tongue over his bottom lip as if seeking to catch the last of her flavor, Miranda knew her eyes were as round as saucers. Her heart was jackhammering away and she felt stunned. Like he’d kissed her stupid.

  Adam stared down at her for a long beat before saying, “I’ve been wanting to do that for days. You’ve got a mouth that was made for kissing. Did you know that?”

  “I—I . . .” Damn it, brain, kick in! “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  Smooth.

  “Why not?” Adam cocked his head. “It was fun. It felt good.”

  Miranda fluttered like a startled pigeon. Adam still had a firm grip on her right hand, so she was forced to use her left to gesticulate wildly. “You can’t just go around kissing people because you feel like it! My God, where do you come from?”

  “The West Village,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Maybe it did.

  Her heartbeat slowed to something resembling a livable rhythm, although the warmth that had pooled in her belly had yet to dissipate. Miranda shook her head, utterly without a response.

  “Come on,” Adam cajoled. “It was only a kiss. Chalk it up to my exuberant personality, or my total fucking joy at being offered an excuse to ditch the books for the morning. Whatever you want.”

  Getting her feet under her again, Miranda twitched her soft jersey-knit wrap dress more perfectly into place and smoothed her free hand over her hair.

  Then she fixed him with the sternest look she could muster, grateful that the poorly lit stairwell would hide the glow of pink she could still feel heating her cheeks.

  “Fine. Just promise me it won’t happen again.”

  The son of a bitch had the audacity to grin.

  “Not on your life, sweetheart.”

  By the time Jess hit the apartment stairs, it was already after nine. Thanking whatever gods looked out for penniless students that Miranda had brought his bike when she moved to Manhattan, he unlocked the chain and kicked off.

  It was another pretty day, one more thing to be thankful for, and Jess pedaled fast for the entrance to Central Park. He liked to cut across the park in the mornings to get to work, weaving around joggers and people walking their dogs. The leaves were a canopy of vibrant green shading the path. Jess’s photographer’s eye tagged everything as he whizzed past, on the off chance he’d see something worth stopping for.

  His beat-up old Nikon was in the messenger bag slung over one shoulder along with his Market server duds. Jess liked to take the camera everywhere he went, just in case. The city was full of amazing moments that were worthy of being captured on film for all time, if you knew how to watch for them.

  Fifteen minutes later, he chained his bike in the alley behind the restaurant and let himself in the back door. His traitorous brain immediately zeroed in on Frankie’s presence toward the front of the kitchen, near the pass, and Jess studiously kept his head turned away. He couldn’t afford to get in any deeper. He had enough going on in his life already without complicating things with this childish crush.

  Ignoring the quiet internal voice that insisted Frankie was more than a crush, Jess hurried through the kitchen toward the staff staircase. He didn’t notice there was music playing, the usual Market kitchen soundtrack of frenetic punk rock, until it switched off abruptly, to be replaced by the now-familiar opening beats of “Kimberly.”

  Patti’s whiskey-on-the-rocks voice poured out of the speakers, trippy lyrics like abstract poetry set to music, and it froze Jess in place with one hand on the door leading down to the staff changing room.

  Blood thrummed in his ears, nearly drowning out the music, but before he could turn and meet Frankie’s sly, knowing gaze—the gaze Jess could feel trained on the back of his neck like a hot photo studio spotlight—the staff door flew open, knocking him back several paces, and Adam burst in, dragging a shell-shocked Miranda along by the hand.

  “Frankie,” Adam bellowed. “I’m out. Got to school Miss Miranda, here.”

  “Go on and skive off, then, you bastard, we’ve prep covered,” Frankie replied, unruffled as always.

  Jess watched the exchange still in the shutterbug zone, unconsciously noting everything from the exuberant gleam in Adam’s eye and Frankie’s wry responding twinkle to Miranda’s slightly mussed makeup and wide-blown pupils.

  Which made him raise h
is brows and take a closer look. Miranda caught his eye and the blush mantling her cheeks intensified in color as she tried surreptitiously, and unsuccessfully, to disentangle her hand from Adam’s.

  Interesting. She looked exactly the way Jess had felt when Frankie shook his hand that first day. Confused, overwrought, and disbelieving. She gave Jess a halfhearted wave as she followed Adam from the restaurant, still looking as though she didn’t quite know what had hit her.

  Jess sympathized. In his experience, that feeling got worse before it got better.

  The thought prompted him to finally meet Frankie’s eyes, and the smoky invitation he read from across the kitchen made Jess swallow his heart back down into his chest, where it lodged uncomfortably, beating raucous and loud against his ribs. He shifted awkwardly in his jeans, which suddenly felt too tight, and beat a hasty escape down to the staff changing room.

  So much for getting control of his hormones.

  THIRTEEN

  Where should he take her? Adam wondered. He’d paused just outside of Market, brought up short by the lack of any real plan.

  “What are we doing now?” Miranda asked in that snotty tone she used when she felt off her game and didn’t want the other players to know. It startled Adam momentarily that he’d already started cataloguing this woman’s tones, and he took too long to answer.

  “Well?” she prompted, finally succeeding in wrenching her hand away from his. Adam had sort of forgotten he’d grabbed her, but when he thought about it, he knew he’d been enjoying holding that hand for a while now.

  Miranda Wake seemed to bring out the impulsive in him. That kiss! Everything perked up at the memory of the hot, sweet friction of her mouth on his.

  Adam squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, willing his unruly body to settle down. “You are not the boss of me,” he told his dick.