vegetables he’d been assigned to work with by the chef. Staci still had half her pile to go. He reached over and took the carrots from her.
She smiled her thanks. “Yes, I do boss her around a lot. But not just her, anyone who needs my advice.”
“Do I need it?”
“I don’t know. A part of me wants to say yes, but I don’t know you well enough. You’re wicked with that knife.”
“Knife skills are one of the best weapons in a chef’s arsenal,” he said.
“Yes, they are, Remy,” Chef Ramone said returning to them.
“You’ve done well with the task I assigned you. Ready to assemble our dish?”
Remy found the same comfort of working in the kitchen with Staci and Chef Ramone as he did working in his own kitchen back home. It was telling he thought that this was home for him even though he was thousands of miles from New Orleans.
And he wasn’t sure he could find his own way. Staci messed with his concentration and that intrigued him. He’d had affairs before, he was too passionate and his sexual drive too high for him not to. But he’d never allowed himself an affair with another chef. It seemed to him that life was best served by keeping his personal and professional lives separate.
Now, he wasn’t sure. He watched her dip her spoon into the sauce she was preparing and stared at her full lips and saw her eyes sparkle. He suppressed a groan. In his mind he moved closer and leaned in to taste the sauce but not from the spoon, from her.
“Want a lick?” she asked.
He snapped back to the present and nodded. He wanted way more than a lick but that would be a good place to start. She held the spoon out to him, but instead of taking it from her hand, he wrapped his hand around her wrist and drew her to him.
He brought their hands up and then he leaned down to run his tongue over the sauce, keeping eye contact with her the entire time. Her lips parted and her tongue darted out again, just as it had before. Her pupils dilated and there was a rosy flush that climbed up her face.
“Delicious,” he said, letting his hand drop and stepping back to his station.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice thready, husky even and he knew that in the game of flirtation, he’d just won the round.
It was at that moment that he knew he wasn’t leaving California without taking Staci Rowland to his bed. He’d thought that she’d distract him from cooking but he was coming to realize that if he didn’t have her, it would be more of a distraction.
She was temptation incarnate and he was from The Big Easy. He’d been raised to indulge his passions in the kitchen and out and even though this would be the first time that he combined the two, he found the anticipation exquisite.
“Remy?” she asked.
He glanced over at her and saw the confusion in her eyes. And for a second he wondered if he’d misjudged her but then she licked her lips again and he smiled. He knew that he hadn’t.
Staci seemed as if she were dealing with some issues in this competition, much like the rest of them. And though tonight it was just the two of them, he knew that whatever knowledge he gleaned about her would be useful for the rest of the weeks ahead.
He closed the gap between them. Put his hands on her shoulders and leaned down as he drew her closer. He brushed his lips over hers and tasted the buttery sweetness of the sauce but also the indescribable taste of Staci. It was unique, mysterious and so addictive he didn’t want to stop kissing her.
Yet he knew he had to. He stepped back and saw her watching him with an unfathomable expression. He’d shocked her. Hell, he’d surprised himself because he’d thought the young impulsive man he’d been was gone forever. But he was glad that he was back.
He thought he needed to be a little impulsive if he was going to find the right path forward for himself and for Gastrophile.
He had an idea of a seasoning to add to the dish and turned away from Staci and returned to his station. Cooking with renewed enthusiasm, when he was done and they both presented their dishes to the chef, he knew he’d prepared something different.
Something unique and something that he couldn’t have come up with if he hadn’t kissed Staci. It was as if she were a muse.
She was quiet and stole sideways looks at him, but he didn’t face her. He waited for the verdict on the dishes, unsurprised when his was pronounced the winner.
He felt a balm of satisfaction and realized that he owed Staci a big thank you, but more than that he wanted to keep cooking with her by his side. Earlier today he’d been resentful of having to listen to someone else in the kitchen but tonight he acknowledged that only with outside input could he move to the next level.
Chef Ramone stepped away again and Staci put her hands on her waist as she turned to him. “What was that about?”
“What?”
“Kissing me like that. I thought we were both professionals,” she said.
“We are,” he admitted. “That kiss had nothing to do with our cooking and everything to do with the fire burning between us. I thought it would be distracting …”
“Wasn’t it?” she asked. “It was for me.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t distracting. It was inspiring.”
He leaned over and kissed her again. “Thank you for that.”
She semi-glared at him and he felt her displeasure. “You’re welcome, I guess. I don’t want you doing that again.”
“I’m not making any promises,” he said.
STACI KEPT HER DISTANCE from Remy for the ride home. She’d thought flirting with him would give her an edge and it had surprised her how easily he’d flipped the tactic on her. But as she watched him moving easily around the living room of the house and talking to the other competitors she knew there was more to it than that.
There was something about Remy that was shaking her to her core. She had to tread carefully. Where kissing her had spurred him and inspired him to make a creative and unique dish, it had floored her and made her put up something mediocre. She was lucky that tonight hadn’t been a judged cooking session that counted. She was lucky that it had merely been a learning experience. She wasn’t going to forget it either.
“How was it?” Vivian asked, coming up next to her and handing her a glass of wine.
Staci took a swallow of the dry white wine as she weighed what to say to Viv. They were roommates so the impulse to share what had happened was strong, but she also knew from watching these kinds of reality television shows that close personal relationships often backfired. Even friendships.
“It was fantastic,” she said. She also knew that she wasn’t going to ever say anything negative about anything.
“I knew it. I’m going to win the next challenge,” Vivian said.
“Are you?”
“Hell,
