Under Her Clothes

John Qui was worth keeping an eye on. He was a lifer who’d learned on the job, working his way up to cook from dishwasher, same as Colby. The other three were spit-shined culinary school grads without a single burn mark between them. They’d started the day cocky and smirking, but their starch was wilting before the dinner rush even got going.

“Behind, hot,” a tight voice spat out. Colby tucked her elbows in and spared a quick, exasperated glance for the cook hustling down the line with a steaming saucepan of hot milk. Bryce Manning was the culinary school grad who’d hung in the longest, through a combo of what seemed like grit and spite, but he was clearly starting to crack under the pressure of his station. He’d been designated saucier tonight, a tricky, persnickety station that required focus, organization and attention to detail.

“Watch it,” Colby hissed as hot milk splattered the toes of her battered kitchen clogs.

“Just stay out of my way,” Manning snarled back, face purple with heat and embarrassment.

Colby rolled her eyes and turned back to the grill station where she was marking off beautifully marbled steaks to order. Manning might be one to watch, too, if only because he seemed like the kind of guy who’d sabotage her if he got the chance.

Swearing under his breath, Manning made it back to his sauces while all around them, the kitchen swirled along with an eerily silent clockwork precision that was nothing like the loud, chaotic kitchens Colby was used to.

All day long, it had been quiet like this, the Maison regulars working silently side by side with the five auditioning chefs. She thought once service started, it would devolve into the usual fiery rush of clattering pans and shouted orders...but the atmosphere had stayed military tight. Only the auditioning chefs occasionally wrecked the forced calm as they fumbled their way through the unfamiliar kitchen.

Besides turning out amazingly consistent and immaculate food, the regimented perfection of the crew made any mistakes stick out like a fly in a bowl of cream.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Antonio making a brief note on his ever-present flip pad. The sous chef was Dominic Fevre’s eyes, ears and sometimes his voice here in the kitchen. After looming uncomfortably in the corner for a while watching the action, Chef Fevre had disappeared into the back office down the hall on the other side of the kitchen from the dining room.

Colby had to admit, she hadn’t managed to relax until he was gone. Every moment in his presence sent tingles of interest rushing over her skin, lifting every hair and keeping her on edge.

Now, even as she plated up four steaks, their perfect grill marks at a precise forty-five-degree angle, and winged them over to the runner who was waiting to take them up to the pass, the now-familiar tingle swept down Colby’s spine once more. Without even turning, she knew Chef Fevre was on the floor.

She didn’t need to turn to confirm what she already knew, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Colby glanced from the next round of tickets she’d already memorized and looked over her shoulder to see Dominic Fevre standing straight-backed and grim at Antonio’s side.

Wincing, Colby refocused on her station and hoped like hell that whatever updates Antonio was murmuring to the intense head chef, there was nothing in there about Colby getting into it with Manning.

Every inch of her skin was alive to the presence of the huge, scowling French guy behind her. His stare was like an itch between her shoulder blades, impossible to scratch and just as impossible to ignore.

Losing herself in the swift flow of orders, temperatures, and pick-ups had never been so hard, but she couldn’t afford to screw up. Especially not with Chef Fevre watching.

Chapter Three (#ulink_94dc2092-5373-5890-9af0-64fc69fe13d9)

Dominic crossed his arms over his chest and let his gaze go soft focus to take in the entire kitchen. Soaking up the aura of calm competence he insisted on with all his staff, Dom analyzed the movements of his raw recruits.

Instinct told him where every person in the kitchen should be at any given moment, how every station should be working and each chef’s moves choreographed into the high-speed ballet that sent perfect plates out to the dining room. As he’d expected, however, tonight’s chorus line had a few people kicking out of turn. Two of the chef candidates were no more than a beat off the music, a pace behind but picking it up again even as he watched.

The tall, wiry Asian chef—Qui, he remembered—was holding his own while expediting at the pass, staying cool and composed even as one of the chef candidates delivered an incorrect dish and Qui had to sort out the resulting confusion. The guy at the sauce station smirked into his béchamel, and Dominic’s brows lowered. He didn’t stand for in-fighting and back-biting in his kitchen—but maybe in this situation, it was inevitable.

Still scowling, Dom scanned the rest of the kitchen for a good minute before he realized that the reason he hadn’t noticed the fifth and final chef candidate was that Colby St. James had melted seamlessly into the fast-paced swirl of the Maison de Ville kitchen. Every lift of the boy’s leanly muscled arms, every twist of his slim hips, had an economy of motion that spoke of efficiency, confidence and style.

Blood throbbed heavily in Dom’s prick, an unwelcome distraction. But Colby’s grace under the dual pressures of Maison’s dinner rush and the competition went straight to Dominic’s unruly dick.

“Any early predictions, patron?

The low murmur had Dominic glancing down at his trusty second-in-command. Antonio Hernandez was the only one at Maison allowed to call Dom anything other than “Chef.”

Yes.

The internal certainty surprised Dominic. Deliberately ignoring the kitchen action, Dom smiled a brief refusal to commit himself. “Time will tell.”

Icertainly haven’t already locked in on the chef I think will be my top pick.

“Patron.” The way Antonio lowered his voice and eyes respectfully drew Dominic’s attention from his battle with denial. “He’s here again. Table twenty-six. Requesting to speak with the chef.”

Marc was here. His younger brother, looking to reconnect, to bring Dom back into the family fold.

It took everything Dominic had not to stiffen, but he kept his back ramrod straight and his shoulders back. Head high.

Akitchen is a battlefield, their father had always said. Your men will not follow a weakling.Show them pride and strength.Never weakness.

Dominic clamped his jaw tight. As the owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant, their father had said a lot of things. Dom had gotten good at ignoring them.

Not seeing or speaking to Edouard Fevre for the past decade or so had helped with that.

“You want me to go, patron?” Antonio squinted out over the kitchen, as if he wanted to give Dominic privacy while he came up with an answer.

The fact that relief was the first emotion to wash over him had Dominic biting out “No. I’ll deal with him” before he had time to overthink it.

Antonio evinced no reaction, merely nodded briskly and went back to overseeing the frantic dinner rush. There was a reason he was Dominic’s favorite.

With impeccable timing, a grease flare skyrocketed over Colby St. James at the grill station, making the short, skinny cooking school grad at the station next to him jump. Colby, however, didn’t even take a step back. Cursing with a vicious precision that would have impressed the most hardened dockworker, St. James ignored the danger of singeing off his own eyebrows to rescue the rib eyes at the back of the grill from charring.

Only when the flare-up had died down and the steaks were all safe at the front of the grill did Colby swipe his forearms over his sweaty forehead. He winced, grimacing down at his arm, before going back to flipping steaks as if he hadn’t noticed the three-inch burn mark turning a more livid red with each passing moment.

Caught between approval of the kid’s stamina and an appalling desire to charge across the kitchen and stick Colby’s arm under cold water and wrap him in icy compresses to stop the burn, Dominic turned on his heel and stalked over to the dining room doors.

The runners stared at him, then shrugged at each other. It wasn’t often that Dominic made the rounds of the dining room; he preferred to command the kitchen himself or to preside from his office desk while dealing with the myriad of tasks that went along with running the city’s top French restaurant.

Ignoring the frisson of whispers and glances from the elegantly dressed diners, Dom stalked between the widely spaced tables with his facial expression set to neutral. All his attention was on the familiar stranger seated alone at the deuce by the front window.

Only eighteen months Dom’s junior, carefree and happy-go-lucky Marc had always seemed even younger. But the mischievous smile Dom remembered was nowhere in sight as Marc leaned back in the soft, upholstered chair and stared out the window at twilit Park Avenue. His carefully composed plate—the duck breast, Dom noted, at perfect medium rare—sat before him, untouched.

A dark shadow of beard roughened Marc’s hard jaw, and the crinkles beside his gray eyes didn’t look like laugh lines. Dominic felt a frown pulling at his own mouth.

What had happened to his brother while Dom wasn’t looking?

As if sensing the presence looming over him, Marc turned from his contemplation of the late-rush-hour crowds of CEOs speeding home in their black chauffeured cars. Blinking up at Dom, he said, “Finally. What does it take to give my compliments to the chef in this dump?”

Dom stiffened, unused to teasing. “It might help if you actually tasted the food,” he pointed out, crossing his arms.

“I don’t have to taste it to know that it’s perfect. You made it.”

The words sounded like a compliment, but there was a twist of bitterness beneath them that plucked at Dom’s patience. “Haven’t we outgrown this rivalry, Marc?”

“We didn’t have time to outgrow it or get over it. You left.”

Guilt soured the back of Dominic’s tongue. “Eva Jansen offered me an opportunity. I had to take it.”

“Even though it meant leaving Paris. Leaving your family.”