Burn (Heat #1)(2)

"Yesterday was my day off. I took a bus to Chappaqua." I ignore his question in favor of an actual, rational explanation for what I said to Drea. "I took a tour of your experimental garden. I was talking about the tomatoes when you walked in."

His lips twitch. "You were talking about tomatoes?"

"Marglobe tomatoes," I clarify. "You're growing a hybrid there. I asked for a taste but the tour guide said those are off limits. He offered me a Juliet, but I wasn't interested."

"Tomatoes?" He narrows his eyes at me. "You were talking about putting a tomato in your mouth?"

"I think it's important for a chef to have a relationship with the food they cook." I rub at my forehead, feeling a headache tightening its grip on me. I'm not going to tell him that the conversation he overheard started when I told Drea about the flawless Marglobe tomatoes I saw when I was at Tyler's garden. Drea held up an average, market bought, Tigerella tomato in her hand. She licked it before she popped it into her mouth, bit it once and swallowed. "Your experimental garden supplies some of the produce for the restaurant. I went there to see the source."

"Who asked you to do that?"

"No one did," I answer with no hesitation. "I was briefed on the garden during my orientation. I've been meaning to go upstate for weeks to visit it. I finally booked a spot on one of the tours yesterday."

"That's impressive," he says tightly. "I value that kind of initiative."

I sigh inwardly, grateful that I found a tunnel to dig me out of the compromising position I'd accidently fallen into. "It was worth the trip."

"It was worth it?" His gaze meets mine. "Even though you didn't get to sample a Marglobe?"

"They're a week away from harvest," I repeat what the guide at the garden told me word-for-word. "I'll have my chance once they're delivered here."

He moves his gaze around the small office, then back to my face. "You'll be the first to taste them. I'll see to it personally that you're there when we crack open the crate."

If he's being facetious in any way, I can't find that in his expression or his voice. He sounds sincere. His brown eyes back that up.

"Is that all, Chef?" I blink. I want to head back to my two-foot by two-foot prep station and finish what I've started before the kitchen swarms with the extra bodies and heat generated by my co-workers as lunch service kicks into high gear. The crowded congestion in that small, meticulously designed space, defines Nova. The restaurant is one of the most popular in Manhattan right now, and the amount of food we prepare and serve on any given day is proof of that.

"No." He lowers his voice. "That's not why I called you back here. There's something else, Cadence."

He says my name differently than most. It's an easy name. It's pronounced exactly as it looks, yet his tongue holds onto the second c longer than it should. It lingers there, on his lips, as goosebumps pebble my skin.

"What else?" My brow knits.

He offers a quick smile. "I need you tomorrow morning, very early tomorrow morning."

"For what?" I ask, spellbound by how his face alters when there's joy touching the corners of his mouth. He looks happy, or excited. It's something other than the serious scowl that is synonymous with his name.

"You're going to make your television debut."

"I'm what?" I snap. "I'm going to be on television?"

"We're going to be on television." He makes the subtle correction. "I'm doing a spot on a national morning show about the new menu and I need an assistant. You're it."

"Why me?" I ask as I try not to sound completely terrified of the prospect.

His mouth softens into another grin. "I asked Darrell, one of the head chefs, for a recommendation yesterday. You're it. Tomorrow morning, you're going to cook the gorgonzola gnocchi in front of millions of people."





CHAPTER 2


"I'm not sure how much of this you want me to eat, Cadence."

I glance across our kitchen island at my best friend, Sophia Reese, who's eating gnocchi like a woman deprived a meal for days. "I told you to taste it, Soph. I didn't want you to eat it all."

She sets her fork down carefully on the granite countertop. "It's hard not to. It's delicious."

I laugh as I pick up the fork and the bowl and take a bite of the now, cold food. "I can do better than this."

She pushes her long brown hair back over her shoulder, her blue eyes locking on me. I know that look. I also know what she's about to say. "You're stressing over nothing, Den. You're going to walk onto that kitchen set tomorrow morning and knock the culinary socks off every single one of those millions of people watching you."

"I don't need you to remind me how many people watch that show." I smile overly sweetly, grateful that Sophia left her office at a reasonable time tonight so she could be my taste tester.

We've been close since she moved in with me shortly after she arrived in New York almost two years ago. I put out some feelers with friends asking them to keep their eyes and ears open for anyone, preferably a woman close to my age, looking for a room to rent on the Upper West Side.