Soufflés at Sunrise (11 page)

“And remember,” Diego said, reminding Kai he hadn’t been listening at all. “Don’t get burned.”

With that, the buzzer went off
.
Kai ran for the supply tables and immediately grabbed the ingredients he’d need for his choux pastry. He was determined to get that part started before he got distracted by the other fancier elements of the dessert. Next to him Chase was doing the same thing, and Kai eyed the distance between them, momentarily distracted. It seemed like his workstation was closer to Chase than usual.

He looked around. They were
all
working closer together than normal. Someone had obviously decided to shift the workstations around to fill in the gaps of the people who had left.

Interesting.

Kai startled, realizing his daydreaming was eating into precious work time, and got to work weighing his raw ingredients. Diego was making his way around the room, talking to the other contestants and asking to see their sketches. Kai wasn’t much of an artist—not with a pen and pencil, anyway—so his sketch looked like something a four-year-old would scribble with unsharpened crayons.

“So tell me what you’re creating today,” Diego said to Chase, and they were definitely close enough to overhear each other’s conversations now.

Chase deftly slid his pan of butter off the burner so it didn’t spoil, then smiled at Basil. “I’m making a classic French dessert called a croquembouche,” Chase said.

Kai felt his stomach plummet to the floor.

Fuck. Fuck!

“Why don’t you tell me more about that?” Diego said.

Kai was distracted, too distracted as he listened to Chase recount his plans for a pistachio cream filling, and damn—that sounded good. He was seething as he watched the producers watching his reaction, and felt the knowing eyes of another camera filming his reaction.

“Shit,” Kai muttered as his careful planning went out of the window and the choux pastry he’d been beating in a pan split. There was no saving it. He’d have to start again.

Of course, Diego chose that moment to move over to Kai’s station, and the cameraman immediately swept in to film the ruined pastry.

“Oh dear,” Diego said, sounding delighted at Kai’s failure. “What happened here?”

“The pastry split,” Kai muttered. He took a deep breath and pushed his hair back from his face.

“What are you making for us today, Kai?”

Kai felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. “A croquembouche,” he said tightly.

“How interesting,” Diego said. He sounded even more delighted. “
Another
croquembouche.”

Kai winced then went on to describe his plans, and by the time Diego had moved on to Big Al’s station, Kai was really behind schedule despite being given three hours in total to complete the challenge.

Determined not to fall apart, not this early in the game, Kai blocked out everything that was going on around him and methodically started on a fresh batch of pastry. By the time he got the first two trays into the oven, he had made up time, and although he’d have to work quicker than planned to decorate, he was sure things could get back on track.

For the next two and a half hours, Kai sweated for the first time since they’d started filming
Burned
. He was hyperaware of Chase next to him, the man he was spending hours in the evening making out with suddenly very real competition. Whenever a camera got near, Kai started swearing loudly, making whatever footage they had taken completely unusable. It was a cooking show, so the viewers were used to the occasional “fuck.” Kai’s language was a lot more colorful than that, though. He didn’t want those damn things in his face when he was stressed, and they swarmed around stressed chefs like buzzards, usually.

After his initial disaster, the cooking gods seemed to take pity on Kai, and he managed to make it to the fifteen-minute countdown with no more problems than the panic gnawing at his stomach. His dark chocolate threatened to give him trouble at one point, but he wasn’t going to deal with that and he almost bullied the chocolate into behaving.

By the time the buzzer sounded, Kai had one tall cone of croquembouche with all the delicacy and finesse he prided himself on. He was fairly confident the judges would like it—he’d stuck to the brief and created something that was, for him, fairly conservative.

The only problem was Chase’s effort was clearly better than his.

Kai watched, jaw clenched, as all three judges sang Chase’s praises; his execution, flavor, and skill were all near perfect, and Kai wasn’t surprised when he was in the top two. He only lost out to Breon, who had delighted the judges with a line of perfect
religieuse
—pastries that were covered in chocolate, named after their resemblance to miniature nuns.

Since he hadn’t driven into the studio that morning, Kai couldn’t hang back to talk to Chase before they got back to the apartment, and he was forced to listen to the others congratulate Chase over and over on the ride home. More than one of them clearly thought he should have won the challenge. Kai couldn’t help but feel a little stung.

They had left Carson back at the studio to film his exit interview. Kai was more than a little shocked the French chef had gone out on what was, essentially, a French pastry challenge. Carson’s ambition had been his downfall. He’d totally overreached, considering the time limits of the challenge, and his barely finished dessert was just never going to impress. Kai guessed it would make great TV, though.

When they got back to the building, Kai grabbed hold of Chase’s wrist.

“You did great back there,” he said softly. Chase grinned.

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to go… I don’t know, grab a beer somewhere? Or some ice cream?”

“Why don’t we go get some beers and bring them back?”

Kai nodded. “Okay.”

They made their way down to the parking lot in silence, only picking up the conversation again when they were enclosed in the safety of Kai’s car.

“Shit.” Kai dropped his head back and laughed. “That was hard work.”

“I can’t believe we picked the same dessert!”

“I suppose there’s not actually that many traditional choux pastry things you can do,” Kai said. He sat up straight and turned the engine over, then pulled out of the space. “It was always going to be a possibility more than one of us would do the same thing.”

“They didn’t tell you to do that, then?”

“Nope. Though I was wondering what was going on when they split us all up.”

Chase’s eyes lit up in understanding. “They didn’t want me to tell you what I was planning.”

“Or vice versa,” Kai said in agreement. “You did so well today. That was incredible.”

“Wanna know a secret?” Chase asked. He wound down the window and the breeze played with the edges of his blond hair. Kai forced his attention back to the road.

“Sure.”

“Choux pastry is my nemesis. My cheesecake.”

Kai laughed. “Really?”

“I’ve never once made it successfully.”

“Today was the right day to pull it out of the bag, baby.”

Baby? Where did that come from?

“Tell me about it.”

“Why pistachio?”

“I dunno. It just seemed like a good idea.”

“You need to stop having so many of those,” Kai teased as he signaled and turned into a gas station. “We might end up going against each other in the final.”

“Jeez,” Chase muttered. “I’m not even thinking that far ahead. I’m happy when I survive every week.”

“Maybe you should think that far. You blew nearly everyone else out of the water today.”

They walked into the store close but not touching, and Kai let Chase pick out the beer while he grabbed a couple bags of chips. Tonight was not the night to watch what he was eating. However proud he was of Chase for his achievement, the reality that they were each other’s competition was starting to dawn on him now. Sooner or later, one of them was going to get knocked out, and Kai’s loyalties were still firmly with the
Burned
winner’s trophy rather than with Chase.

For the moment, at least.

T
HAT
NIGHT
,
someone had the bright idea to go out for dinner—all of them together. All Kai wanted was a hot shower, something comforting to eat, and a movie on his laptop. The chance to relax for a few hours.

It clearly wasn’t going to happen, though. Jenna had gotten everyone excited about some new Argentinian place down on the beach, and had organized a bunch of taxis to get them all there and back. Kai knew if he backed out now he would look like a total dick, so he pulled on a pair of half-decent jeans and a shirt, hoping to look like he’d made at least some of an effort.

Chase looked hot. Kai had watched him shower, then change into nearly the same jeans-and-shirt combination. It was different on Chase, though. He had only done about four buttons up on his plaid shirt, and the green brought out the color of his eyes. If Kai weren’t quite so aware of Aaron watching them, he would have gone over and unbuttoned a few more.

“You guys ready?” Polly stuck her head around the door and grinned at them. Kai couldn’t help but smile back.

“I think so. If I can get Aaron to stop drowning himself in cologne.”

“Hey!” Aaron protested, and put the bottle down.

The traffic on the way to the beach was hideous, but no one in their car seemed to care. Chase had been dragged into another vehicle, and Kai couldn’t help but be annoyed. If there was one thing that could have made this little school trip bearable, it would have been running his hand up and down Chase’s thigh in the backseat where no one else could see. Instead he was jammed in between Aaron and Jenna, who was bouncing in her seat.

“How are your kids?” Kai asked, pushing the one button he knew would get Jenna talking for hours without any need for him to reply.

“Oh, they’re good,” Jenna said with a big smile. “Missing Mommy, of course, but Caitlin has been telling everyone her Mommy is going to be on TV, and that seems to be keeping them going.”

She started on a new story about her eldest son, who had just joined the Little League team and was desperate for Jenna to go home and watch him play. She had three or four kids in total, Kai couldn’t remember exactly, and her poor husband and mother were now looking after them full-time.

“It must be hard for you,” he said sympathetically, patting her arm.

Jenna turned watery eyes on him. “It is. But you do what you have to do for your kids. This show is securing their futures, you know?”

Kai did know. He could see what was next for Jenna as if he’d suddenly become a master of divination—she’d get some big national campaign for healthy school snacks, would go on
The View
to show her deep concern for the health of the nation’s children who were, after all, the future. Jenna would go on to do a cookbook, maybe brand some snack bars that would be sold in Whole Foods, and generally be a pain in the ass for the next few years until people forgot about her.

It was practically written in the stars.

When they finally—
finally
—got to the restaurant, Kai hung back from the crowd to get a few moments of fresh air. He tagged along at the back after the hostess started showing the group to the long table that had been reserved for them, eyes on Chase’s ass in those jeans.

Fuck. Did he paint those things on?

“Hey,” he said in a low voice as he caught up, his lips close to Chase’s neck so the puff of warm air danced over his skin. The resulting shiver through Chase’s body made Kai grin wickedly to himself.

“Hey.”

There were two seats left at the end of the table by the time Chase and Kai got there, opposite each other, which was fine by Kai. He could play footsie under the table.

“Want to share a bottle of wine?” he said to Chase as they sat down, immediately reaching for the wine list.

Chase laughed. “Sure. What are you in the mood for?”

“Wine,” Kai muttered darkly. “Lots of wine.”

“I don’t drink that much red,” Chase admitted. “It gives me a headache.”

“White is fine with me,” Kai said, running his finger down the list until he found a Chablis he liked the look of.

While everyone else seemed content to chatter along with Jenna at the head of the table running it all, Kai let his focus narrow in on the man in front of him. He couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm for overpriced steaks and mediocre ceviche, but making Chase laugh and watching his cheeks turn pink the more wine he drank was definitely worth it.

“I’m going to have such a hangover tomorrow,” Chase said, biting his lip as Kai signaled to the server for another bottle.

“You’ll be fine,” Kai said and gave him what he hoped was a charming smile. “Drink plenty of water before you go to bed and take a couple of painkillers, you’ll be fine.”

“Are you going to get dessert?” Chase asked. There seemed to be a pretty even split between the others; Jenna and Sylvia were already nursing coffees and had ordered from the very average dessert menu. The other guys were sitting back, seemingly content with whatever alcoholic drinks they were working on.

“Do you want to share?”

“Are you serious?” Kai didn’t know how public he was supposed to be with Chase in front of everyone. That group from the roof, fine. But Clarissa? He just didn’t know.

“Yeah, why not?” Chase didn’t seem to care. Maybe Kai should take his cue from Chase.

He shrugged. “Sure. Your choice.”

“Cheesecake?” Chase teased.

“Please.” Kai made a face.

“I was kidding, don’t worry. They don’t even have it.” His bottom lip got tucked up under his front teeth as Chase looked down the menu again. “Pionono looks good.”

“Sounds good to me.” Kai topped off both their glasses. “You know, in places like this, the desserts probably get made in a factory somewhere and get shipped in.”

“Stop being such a party pooper.”

Kai hooked his foot around Chase’s ankle and nudged the cuff of his jeans. “Does anyone say that after kindergarten? Besides, I am not a party pooper.”