Can't Stand The Heat Read online

  “Keep your opinions to yourself.”

  THREE

  It was as if a flashbulb went off behind her eyes. Then it dawned on her that it actually was a flash, right in her face, as one of her fellow guests snapped a quick candid of noted Délicieux columnist Miranda Wake in a public brawl with hotshot chef Adam Temple.

  The copy wrote itself.

  Adrenaline surged up, chasing away the lingering haze of alcohol, and Miranda blinked.

  A man with dark hair came into focus, nearly close enough to kiss—so close she could only see one feature at a time. His hair was too long on top and completely disordered, curls standing up like devil horns. His tanned skin stretched taut over a broad forehead and sculpted jaw. His wide mouth was drawn in a sneer that couldn’t quite hide the sensual shape of his lips. He had dark, flashing eyes. The light was too dim to really make out the exact color, but the expression in them was clear enough: a sort of stunned fury, hot enough to burn.

  Miranda felt heat scorch along her cheeks and neck, and wasn’t sure if it was from the vodka, the intensity of Adam Temple’s regard, or the gaze of fifty tipsy foodies. Probably a combination of all three.

  There was an expectant silence, and the longer it went on, the more insufferably smug Temple’s expression became. Miranda shook herself slightly, attempting to reorient her brain.

  What just happened? Did he seriously challenge me to spend a day in his kitchen?

  And just like that, she was back.

  She’d have to be a whole lot drunker than this to allow the opportunity of a lifetime to pass her by. This was her chance to move beyond magazine writing, to get that insider look that her book proposal was obviously lacking.

  She looked him right in his smug, self-satisfied (gorgeous, sexy) face, and said, “I accept.”

  He took a step back.

  “What?”

  “I said, I accept your challenge,” Miranda repeated. She was already itching for her notebook and pen. From here on out, everything was fodder for The Book. A Critic in the Kitchen. Or What the Chef Doesn’t Want You to Know. This was it, the angle she’d been looking for. A serious exposé of the gritty underbelly of American professional cooking, from the point of view of an embedded journalist.

  She frowned. It was going to take more research than a single day, though.

  Adam was frowning, too. Like a thundercloud.

  “What are you doing?” he hissed.

  Miranda blinked, trying to look as guileless as possible. “I’m taking you up on your offer. Unrestricted access to your kitchen, your crew . . . and you.”

  Adam blanched. “I didn’t offer that . . . Wait, what?”

  “But yes, I heard you.” Claire appeared at Adam’s elbow, widening her eyes gravely. “You invited Miranda into your kitchen.”

  “It was more of a dare, really,” Miranda pointed out, enjoying herself.

  Claire waved a languid hand. “As you say. The important thing is that I’m sure Chef Temple would not wish to renege on his offer. Not when so many were here to witness it.”

  Adam opened his mouth, then closed it again in a firm line. Miranda studiously avoided noticing how the angry set of his jaw made his dimples pop out.

  He attempted a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “Maybe we could discuss the details later,” he said, belatedly cautious.

  “That would be lovely,” Miranda cooed, already trying to work out how she could finagle a longer stint in Market’s kitchen.

  “Certainly,” Claire agreed. “I’ll need to get input from the Délicieux editorial board as to what sort of piece Miranda will do.”

  Miranda could almost hear Adam’s back teeth grinding. She smiled, alcohol and excitement fizzing through her veins.

  And to think, she hadn’t wanted to come to the Market prelaunch party.

  “Last night,” Grant moaned, “was a debacle. I’m so not ready to go clean that mess up. Thanks for having the postmortem at your place, Adam. I couldn’t face Market yet.”

  “Not without a pot of strong coffee, no,” Adam called from the spacious kitchen, where he was searching for his French press. After an event like the preopening publicity party, he liked to meet with his top guys, in this case Frankie and Grant, to discuss how it went, what could’ve been better. He expected today’s meeting to be short. What was there to say beyond “we totally screwed the pooch”?

  His apartment was actually the first floor of a small brick-front townhouse. It was a weird living space, comprised of two largish rooms. One was the kitchen and the other was the dining/living/bedroom. His bed was partially screened from the rest of the room by a wide bookcase, full of an assortment of cookbooks, science fiction novels, mysteries, and historical fiction—not that he had any down time for reading. All in all, the apartment was a tad cramped for company, but it suited Adam fine.

  The whole building used to be a single home, when his parents were still living in New York. But they’d retired to Florida a few years ago, leaving Adam the building. Which, as Eleanor had immediately pointed out, was one of Adam’s few financial assets. As long as he put it to use. So he mortgaged it to the hilt, and rented the second floor to a dizzy blond grad student who hosted late-night pizza-and-study sessions. Adam looked forward to the day when Market turned a profit and he could afford to have his house to himself again.

  Adam cursed under his breath at the dizzying array of kitchen implements cluttering his cupboards. More than half of his kitchen stuff had migrated, slowly but surely, over to the Market kitchen, and what was left at home base had abandoned any semblance of order.

  With a bit of luck, he managed to close his fingers around the French press fairly quickly. Some boiling water, a little finely ground espresso, and Adam was carrying mugs of coffee strong enough to hold a spoon up vertically into the other room. Grant snatched one mug out of Adam’s hands and Frankie took the other, setting it down on the coffee table to cool.

  “Wasn’t so bad, last night,” Frankie disagreed, lighting up a Dunhill in flagrant disregard for Adam’s no-smoking-in-the-apartment policy. Frankie took a deep drag and squinted up from his boneless sprawl on the living room floor. “Until our boy here lost his head over some magazine bint.”

  Frankie happened to be lounging just below the crown jewel of Adam’s poster collection, a pressed-tin sign for the Clash’s 16 Tons tour. Sallow, angry faces of punk rock icons, from Siouxsie and the Banshees to the Sex Pistols, glared out from Adam’s walls. It probably wasn’t a sign of perfect social adjustment that the sight always relaxed him. Johnny Rotten’s snarling visage was never meant to put anyone at ease, and yet Adam found himself already starting to unwind. Which didn’t mean he was ready to absolve Frankie of any responsibility for last night’s clusterfuck.

  Adam looked from the group of skinny British punks on his wall to the one currently taking up space on his floor.

  “You started it,” Adam accused, pointing a finger and not caring how fourth-grade it made him look. “You got the guests all smashed and kept the food in the kitchen. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Oi,” said Frankie, around an aggrieved puff on his cigarette. “Was thinking you’d be nervous, and a half-in-the-bag audience would be better than a bunch of sharp bastards waiting to cut you to ribbons.”

  Adam deflated slightly. He should’ve considered the Frankie version of logic. Of course it all came down to, in the end, what it always came down to: Frankie had his back. No messing around, no exceptions. It was hard to keep a good mad going in the face of that.

  “But listen, guys,” Adam beseeched them, flopping down next to his best friend. He took a sip of coffee and leaned his back against the sagging chenille sofa he’d been dragging around since college. “We have to get better at communicating. Fuckups like this’ll kill us once the joint opens for real.”

  The guests had finally gone home around midnight, partied out and stuffed full of Adam’s food. The French lady and the redheaded heckler had left ea
rly, presumably to rub their hands and cackle while they plotted Adam’s downfall.

  He couldn’t believe he’d lost his cool like that. One snarky restaurant critic got in his face, and he went all macho and chest-thumpy on her. Daring her to spend a day in his kitchen! If she’d refused, what would his follow-up have been—I double dog dare you?

  Only she didn’t refuse. She fucking well jumped on it. And now he had to come up with a way to back out. No way was he welcoming a critic into his kitchen.

  He knocked his head against the hard wooden arm of the sofa, then deliberately did it again. Before he could whack himself a third time, Frankie reached over and cupped the back of his head, cushioning the blow.

  “Here, now,” he said, cigarette hanging from his lips. “No need for that.”

  “Yeah,” Grant said, squatting in front of them, both hands cupped around his coffee mug. “We’ll pull it together. No sweat, boss.”

  The sound of the front door’s deadbolt made them all turn their heads.

  “You’d better be discussing how to make Market an enormous success,” said Eleanor Bonning, stripping off her sunglasses and folding them carefully into their case. She slipped the case into the pocket of her Burberry and looked down her nose at the trio on the floor. “Because I’m not ruining my perfect investment record over you.”

  Adam clambered to his feet.

  “She’s still got a key? Glutton for punishment, you are,” Frankie muttered under his breath. Adam aimed a swift kick in his direction before approaching Market’s financial backer.

  “Eleanor, I didn’t know you were coming by.” He tried for casual and probably missed it by a mile, but what could he do? Eleanor Bonning held the future of Market in the palm of her hand. Pretty fucking far from ideal, given their complicated history.

  “We need to talk, so I juggled my schedule to fit it in,” Eleanor said with a tiny frown. Adam resolutely did not look at Frankie; if he had, the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth would bust out. Over the past year, numerous witticisms had been made at the expense of Eleanor’s ironclad schedule.

  The dreaded words “We need to talk” pretty well killed any incipient grin, however, and Adam said “Oh?” as evenly as he could manage.

  Eleanor was all business today. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the repercussions of your conversation with Miranda Wake,” she said.

  Shit. Adam had hoped Eleanor missed that excruciating ten minutes. Or at least that he’d have a chance to set the record straight with Wake and her magazine before he had to face his financial backer.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Frankie and Grant both standing up. They moved to flank him, and the gesture of support fortified his frazzled nerves.

  “Yeah, okay. Miranda Wake.”

  Red curls, creamy skin, raspberry-stained mouth.

  “Precisely. Everyone is talking about your little contretemps with the infamous Ms. Wake.”

  Adam could well believe it. For all of New York City’s eight million–strong population, in some ways, it was a very small town. Each neighborhood functioned as a distinct little community; Adam was a born-and-raised West Villager; he had neighbors who’d never been above Fourteenth Street. He knew several dedicated denizens of SoHo who wouldn’t be caught dead in Times Square, and Brooklyners who hated Queens with a passion.

  Similarly, the culinary community of Manhattan was tightly knit and incestuous. Everyone knew everyone else, and gossip spread like clarified butter in a hot pan.

  “Look, I’ll blow her off and this whole thing will be over in a few days, as soon as Mario Batali pulls a crazy stunt or Tony Bourdain blows back into town or something. If we stay cool and let it die down—”

  Eleanor was shaking her head. “No, no, no. That’s exactly what I don’t want.”

  “Then what—”

  “The buzz, Adam.” Eleanor’s eyes glittered with that intense look she got when discussing the high rate of return on her portfolio. “All those people, those industry professionals, talking and blogging and posting pictures of you and Miranda Wake. You can’t buy publicity like this.” She paused. “Actually, you can, but it’s very expensive. Better to get it for free, if at all possible.”

  Adam choked on a laugh. “Are you shitting me?”

  Eleanor’s mouth pursed again, and Grant poked Adam, hard, in the back.

  “No,” Eleanor replied, familiar disapproval heavy in her tone. “I am not shitting you.” The cuss word sounded extremely dirty in Eleanor’s modulated, Ivy League accent. “And the very last thing you’re going to do to Miranda Wake is ‘blow her off.’ In fact, I’ve already spoken to the editor-in-chief of Délicieux magazine—they’re set to promote it online and in print, maybe even some TV and radio ads.”

  A feeling of dread was surging up from Adam’s gut, tightening his belly like bad shellfish. “What, exactly, are they set to promote?” he asked through numb lips.

  “Their newest feature. ‘Dish It Out: The Adventures of a Critic in the Kitchen.’ ”

  Grant spoke up. “I don’t get it. All that for one day of Miranda Wake sitting around the Market kitchen? Doesn’t sound so exciting or buzzworthy to me.”

  “Of course not. A single day would be pointless. A true publicity happening like this one builds over time.”

  “How much time?” Adam felt slippery cold sweat break out on his palms.

  “We were thinking a month. To start with.”

  Adam’s jaw dropped. But while he may have been struck momentarily dumb, Frankie suffered no such affliction.

  “I think I speak for everyone here when I say: bollocks to that.”

  FOUR

  Jess Wake had a dream. It was a pretty simple one, as these things go.

  He wanted to be normal. Like everybody else, for once, instead of the weird kid who lived with his sister. The orphan. The shutterbug. The nerd.

  He deliberately didn’t think about some of the nastier names he’d been called. There was no point tormenting himself over what couldn’t be changed—he was never going to be normal. That’s why it was a dream, not a goal.

  His goal was to try and find his way through the confusing mess of lies and half-truths he’d told his sister over the years in hopes that she wouldn’t notice how completely not normal he was. To get to some kind of honest place where he could feel okay about himself again. Or, really, for the first time.

  So here he was, in New York, the city he’d longed to live in ever since he was a little kid, socked away in the boonies upstate. He’d left Brandewine, shaken the dust of that craphole off his shoes, and he was ready for a new start.

  The morning sun illuminated everything so clearly. The quality of the light had changed, from bright spring to hazy summer, and Jess wished he’d brought his camera out with him.

  But no, this was a specific errand, he reminded himself. A good-houseguest errand, to make sure his sister knew how much he appreciated being allowed to stay.

  More than that, being welcomed. With open arms and no questions asked.

  At least, not out loud. Not yet. But he could feel them lurking in the shadows of the apartment, ready to pounce and claw, and he’d had to get out, just for a little while.

  Jess shivered in the brisk breeze, hugging his packages close to his chest, and turned his feet toward home.

  Miranda blinked her eyes open and immediately squeezed them shut again. Why was it so bright? Her tiny Upper East Side apartment only had a single window facing the street, and that was in the living room. The other window in the glorified closet masquerading as a second bedroom looked directly onto another apartment building’s brick exterior. So how could her bedroom suddenly have developed a glare?

  After the first abortive motion of the day caused pain and suffering of the don’t-turn-that-way-or-your-head-will-fall-off variety, Miranda stayed carefully still and reviewed her options.

  One: she could lie on her back in this bed for the rest of her life. That sounded all right, at fi
rst. Until the insistent need to visit the bathroom poked its way into her consciousness. Scrap that.

  Two: she could get up, but keep her eyes closed and try to make it to the bathroom blind. This had several advantages: minimization of the head-falling-off effect, as well as the satisfaction of the increasingly urgent demands of her bladder. On the other hand, she couldn’t remember if she’d followed her usual nightly ritual of putting away every garment and accessory before bed last night. In most bedrooms, that probably wouldn’t matter, but in Miranda’s, where there was barely space for one person to turn sideways and scuttle between the wall and the bed to get to the bathroom, any debris on the floor could spell potential disaster. Especially for someone with her eyes shut, and her head in danger of defecting from her shoulders at the slightest provocation.

  Miranda was fairly certain that tripping and smacking her head into the wall, bedstead, or doorframe would hurt exponentially more than opening her eyes enough to see where she was going.

  Simple, really, when you looked at the cost/benefit ratio, she reflected. Of course, most of life was.

  Cracking her eyes the merest sliver, Miranda gritted her teeth against a grunt of pain and breathed out through her nose. Moving creakily, like an old, infirm woman, she managed to haul her aching body from the bed and hunch her way to the bathroom, avoiding a tangle of cocktail dress, ripped stockings, and red satin pumps on the floor. Considering how out of her mind she must have been last night to forgo the putting-away ritual, it was a minor miracle that she’d managed to somehow locate and pour herself into her favorite white-and-cream-striped pajamas.