Heat 1 (Heat: Master Chefs #1) (3 page)

“About
six… seven months.”

She
started to pull out a few jars and bottles, but then stopped to look
expectantly at me.  “I’ve really got to get to work.”

“Sure. 
Go ahead.”

“And
don’t you have a class to go to?”

Shit. 
I glanced up at the clock on the wall.  I was already five minutes late. 
“Yeah, I guess I should get going.”  I really didn’t want to leave.  I had so
many questions for her.  I wanted to know everything about her.  Still, I
headed to the door and turned to her.  “I’m Bobby Cummings, by the way.”

“Again,
good to know.”

I
was disappointed she didn’t offer her name.

“And
you are…?”

She
smiled and for a moment I thought she’d refuse to answer me.  “Lilly Cooke.”

“Cooke,
huh?  The name suits you.  Cooke in the kitchen.”

“Cute. 
I’ve never heard that one before.”  But her crooked grin told me she’d heard it
a million times.

Shit,
even when I tried to be cute I was missing the mark.

I
opened the door and stepped out into the hall, but stepped back inside for a
final question.  “Hey, I was just wondering.  How did you find my sister?”

“Taryn? 
Easy.  When I got you home, I tried to find a contact in your phone, but it was
out.  I plugged it in and it immediately started ringing.  I picked up and it
was your sister.  She was pretty freaked out.”

 “I
guess you knew her already, right?  Her and Errol King.”

“Sort
of.  I mean, I know of them.  I know Errol taught here a while back, but he was
already on sabbatical by the time I got here.  I think I heard something about
him being back in New York running his new restaurant or something.  And then
he took time off to get married and go on a honeymoon.  Am I all caught up
now?”

“Sure.” 
I was relieved to see she hadn’t really heard anything about me.  I could just
imagine what she would think of me if Taryn or Errol had inadvertently talked
about me and my womanizing ways.  I was usually pretty proud of my playboy
status, but in front of this girl, I felt the need to hide that aspect of my
life. 

“You
really need to get going.”

I
nodded.  “Hey, I’ll catch you later.”

Chapter 3

N
eedless to say, I was late for my next class,
but it didn’t really matter much, because I didn’t hear a word the teacher
said.  The image of Lilly was stuck in my brain.  Walking out of that class, I
tried to shake the image of her face, of that black dress beneath that white
lab coat out of my head.  I had to concentrate.  Taryn had already warned me
about goofing off, and I certainly didn’t want to waste any of my mother’s
money.  Daydreaming about Lilly would have to wait until the end of the day.

But,
damn…

I
looked down at my lesson schedule to see what and where my last class of the
day was;
Le Science des Aliments
 in room 32-C.  I glanced at the little
map of the institute and hurried down the hall to my right.  I was determined
to make it on time, sit down and take in every last little thing from the next
lesson.  That said, having every class in French was draining.  Not only did I
have to learn the lesson, I had to first translate virtually every word spoken
by the teacher.  Fortunately I had a translation app on my phone to help me
along, but it was still a tedious endeavor.

Running
to the door of the classroom, I reached it at the same time as a brunette girl
wearing a white lab coat and we collided just as we entered the room.  She
looked up at me.

“You
again?”

“Lilly? 
Great.  I was hoping we’d have a class together.”  I scanned the room and spotted
two seats at the back of the class.  “Come on.  There are a few seats back
there.”

“You
go ahead,” she said, her tone authoritative and strong.

Was
she really going to brush me off that easily?  A little perplexed, I headed to
the lone seat closer to the front of the class and sat down.  My jaw dropped,
literally dropped, when Lilly walked to the front of the room and wrote her
name on the chalkboard.

“
Bonjour. 
Je suis Mademoiselle Lilly Cooke.  Bienvenue a l’introduction aux sciences des
aliments
.”

My
French may have been sketchy, but I knew enough to understand that Lilly Cooke
would be teaching this class.  She was about my age.  How could she be teaching
a cooking class, even if it was a basic science of cooking class?

As
she went on with her introduction and her background, I quickly entered a
succession of words into my phone to have them translated so I could try to
keep up with what she was saying. 

Before
coming to the institute, she’d been an apprentice at one of the largest food
labs in France for two years.  Before that she’d lived in the French
countryside where she grew up in a convent.

I
had to enter that word in twice;
couvent
.  I had to be mistaken.  Maybe
I was spelling it wrong.  The gorgeous, smart girl standing in front of the
class couldn’t possibly have spent years in a convent.  It was insane.  But she
went on to explain how the convent grew much of its own food and prepared
various products like sauces, soups and stews.  Her love of cooking was born
while she helped the nuns with new sauce recipes and tended to the fresh food
products that grew in their own gardens.

I
was blown away.  I was also a little intimidated.  Up until then I thought I’d
had a pretty full and exciting life.  I mean, growing up in New York City, and working
at my mom’s restaurant since I was, what, twelve?

But
this girl… this fragile beauty with the serene gaze and a world of wisdom.  How
could I ever measure up?  No wonder she looked at me as if I were some punk
kid.

As
she continued to speak, she pulled the lab coat back to set her hands on her
hips.  Man, what a sexy figure she made.  And the best part was that she was
totally unaware of it.  But that simple black dress… it was tantalizing in the
most innocent way.  It lured me, making me want to slowly unwrap the gift it
hid.  I had no doubt she had a body that could drive men nuts… and making love
to her… Mmm.  I was getting a hard-on just thinking about it.

Her
gaze met mine and she licked her lips in a nervous and apprehensive manner that
shot a blast of arousal to my hardening shaft.  She quickly looked away, opened
the folder on the desk in front of her and pulled out a small stack of paper.

“
Dites-moi
ce que
….”

Like
a madman, I punched key words into my phone to get the gist of what she was
saying, but as she started to walk down the aisles passing a sheet to every
student, I realized what she wanted.

We
were to write down the last five dishes we’d cooked.  She wanted to know where
we stood in the kitchen.

Well,
that was easy enough, I thought.  Okay, let’s start with a
pot au feu
last Thursday, then I had some pasta with seared scallops in a white wine sauce
the Monday before that, and a few days ago I made a delicious, fabulous grilled
salmon with a mustard crunch over wild rice.  Then what?  Let’s see.  I had a
burger a few days before that, then had dinner at that crappy restaurant,
grabbed a pizza on the way to the dorm… Oh, yeah, that braised brisket.  That
was great.

A
string of students had already begun to line up in front of Lilly’s desk to
hand in their list of dishes and I got up to get in line.  It was funny how
nervous I felt as I slowly approached her.  I was apprehensive, as if what I’d
written on my list was of the utmost importance.  I wanted to impress her. 
Damn it.  Was what I’d put down enough?  Stretching to my full height, I
glanced over the shoulder of the guy in front of me;
pigeons aux petits pois,
navarin de homard, fricassée de volailles aux morilles
… Shit.  Where was
this guy from?  And more importantly, what was he doing in a beginner’s class?

I
had to go back and add something… change something.  My list was so goddamned
unimpressive.

“Yes,
Bobby,” Lilly said as the guy in front of me walked off.

“I
didn’t know you were going to be my teacher.”  I knew, without a doubt, that I
sounded exactly like a seven year old.

“I
guess I should have suspected you’d be one of my students.”  Her smile was warm
and genuine, but I could have sworn her eyes sparkled with interest.  “Are you
going to hand in your list?”

“Um,
I… I haven’t really cooked much these past…  You know; new country, new
residence, new language.”

“That’s
okay.  It’s not a test, Bobby.  It’s just a quick and easy way to evaluate
where each student is situated.”

And
where am I situated?  I wanted to say.  At the bottom of the heap?

“You’re
awfully young to be teaching, aren’t you?”  I said as I handed her the list.

“I
guess you could say that.  Not a lot of twenty year olds teach other twenty
year olds, right?”

Nodding
like an idiot, I grinned.  “So how d’you land this gig?”

Scrutinizing
my page, she nodded as she read.  “It was quite unexpected.  At the last minute
the teacher who’d been hired to teach this class decided he wanted to throw
himself into a new bistro, so he quit.  They didn’t have anyone else on such
short notice, so, since I have a bit of time between lab experiments, they asked
if I could fill in.”

“Oh,
good.”

She
looked over the page at me and tilted her head to the side in a silent
question.

“I
mean, it’s just that… well, if you're officially my teacher… it could be
awkward, but if you're not…  If you're just a substitute…”  Hell, I was making
such a mess of this.  “Like, maybe we could go out sometimes.”

Setting
the page down on her desk, she looked at me with the strangest expression. 
You’d think I’d grown antlers.  “Like a date?” she finally said.

“Yeah,
like a date.”  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone on an actual date,
but the idea suited me.  “I think I would really like to take my time with
you.  You know, the whole nine yards; dinner, movie… maybe some dancing.  I’m
usually a lot quicker to get to the serious business, but I want to take the
slow road with you instead of rushing to do the nasty.”  I bit my lower lip for
emphasis.  It always drove the girls wild.

“Do
the what?”  Her lips parted in horror and her eyes went wide with astonishment
as she glared at me.

“Oh,
don’t worry about sex for now.  I can easily wait until our second or third
date.  It’ll make it all the more exciting, don’t you think?”

“Mr.
Cummings,” she said.  “Thank you very much for handing in your recent cooking
experiences.  If you would return to your seat…”  She looked past me and I
turned to see another student heading up to the desk to hand in her list.

Although
the pretty female student smiled and batted her eyes at me, I stared straight
ahead and walked back to my desk.  I was like a deer caught in the headlights. 
What had just happened?  And when had I turned into Mr. Cummings?

Mr.
Cummings?  Shit.  That was the worse.

I
plopped down into my chair and glanced down at the notes I’d taken as she’d
made her initial introduction.  My eyes were riveted to one word:
couvent
.

The
girl had been raised in a convent and here I was suggesting we do the nasty in
a date or two.  Shit, I was so damned clumsy.  The girl had probably not even
been kissed before and I… Shit.  I wanted to smack myself over the head. 
Jackass… what a dunce.

By
the time class let out, I didn’t even dare look her way.  I kicked myself all
the way to the door at the back of the class and continued to kick myself all
the way back to the dorm, but before I could fall into my room to lick my
wounds in private, Errol came around the corner.

“Can’t
handle the rigors of your first day at the institute?” he said.  “I told you
this would be tougher than you thought.  You thought you’d just sail through,
didn’t you?”

“It
wasn’t that bad.”  I wasn’t in the mood to talk.  I wanted to hide in my room
and not come out for the rest of the week.

“Then
what is it that has your face contorted with self-disgust.  Or is that self-pity?”

“You
don’t really want to know.”

“Try
me.”

“I
just put my foot in my mouth.”

“And
you didn’t like the taste.”

Was
that his idea of a bad culinary joke?  Well, I wasn’t laughing.  “I tried to
impress a girl and…”

He
guffawed and set his hand on the wall to steady himself.  “Girl troubles
already?  You don’t waste any time, do you?”

I
groaned and glared at the ceiling.

“Well,
look, Bobby, don’t let this get in the way of the real reason you're out here
to begin with.”

“Yeah,
I know.”

“You’ll
have plenty of time to take care of the ladies when you get your degree.”

“Yeah.”

“But,
for now, you have to keep your grades up if you're going to keep that
scholarship you got.”

“Yeah,
I know.”

“And,
exemplary behavior is a must.”

“I
know.”

“Whatever
you do, don’t go getting yourself into trouble.”

Hadn’t
we been through all this before?  “Yeah, I’ll try.”

He
slapped me hard against the shoulder.  “Good.  Then start trying tonight.”

“Tonight?” 
He had to be kidding me.

“There’s
a faculty student meet and greet.  You're going with Taryn and me.”

“Do
I have to?”

“Yes,
you have to.  You also have to wear a suit.  For God’s sake, make yourself
presentable.”

I
looked down at the trendy jeans and crisp shirt that hung over them.  I thought
I looked pretty good, but didn’t argue.

“Don’t
embarrass your sister, Bobby.  Taryn has worked hard and there’s a possibility
she could get her degree a year early.  If she can finish a year earlier, that
means she’ll be able to accompany me as I travel the world to care for my
restaurants, and for pleasure.”  He winked at me.  “Married life…  It sure
offers a lot of pleasures. It’s beyond my wildest expectations.”

“Yeah. 
I bet.”

He
laughed and slapped my shoulder again.  “Don’t become the stain on her good
reputation.”

“Shit,
maybe I should change my name.”

“Don’t
change it.  Live up to it.”

Great,
Errol.  Pile on the pressure.

“Be
at
la Salle de Montigny
at seven o’clock.”

“Right,”
I grunted.

“Don’t
be late.”

Anything
else?