Free Hot Under Pressure by Louisa Edwards Page B

Like me.”
    He grinned again, and this time it lit up his whole face. “Ok, I guess I’m doing a soup. What’s the Beckster got planned?”
    All eyes turned to Beck, who froze for a bare instant before unlocking his muscles and lifting his coffee to his mouth, buying time.
    “I’m doing fish,” he said when he’d swallowed the hot, incredibly deep and intense coffee. Tipping the cup at Win, he silently acknowledged the greatness of the brew.
    God, he’d missed West Coast coffee.
    “Well, we know that,” Jules said with a grin. Beck could practically hear the eye roll in her voice. “But ‘fish’ covers a lot of territory.”
    “What’s your signature dish?” Max asked helpfully. “The one you’ve cooked for the most people or gotten the most requests for.”
    Beck’s most requested dish? That had to be the linguini with clam sauce he’d whipped up after scamming a case of canned clams off the quartermaster of another boat when the submarine had surfaced near Greece.
    The boys had gorged themselves on the pasta, slippery with salty, lemony sauce and the satisfyingly chewy clams, until they’d devoured every single can. For at least a year after, whenever Beck took requests before heading out on libo to forage for contraband and extra rations, he’d get at least a couple of seamen who remembered that clam sauce and asked for it again.
    But this was the Rising Star Chef competition, he reminded himself, shaking the past away. He wasn’t going to pop a tin of pilfered clams open and dump it over some noodles.
    The judges weren’t going to be as easy to please as a bunch of sailors who’d been cooped up on an underway sub for five months without a break.
    “I haven’t decided yet,” Beck said calmly, aware that he was projecting enough fuck-off vibes to propel everyone around him back a step.
    His teammates, though, God love ’em, weren’t easily intimidated.
    “Sounds good,” Danny said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Walk around a bit, see what looks nice and fresh. That’s my plan, too.”
    Everyone nodded, apparently used to Beck not talking or contributing much. Setting his jaw, Beck tried not to hate himself.
    He’d come up with something to cook, and everything would be fine.
    But as the rest of his team walked away, pairing off naturally as they went in search of their ingredients, he couldn’t help but feel alone. Which was stupid, right? Because alone was exactly how he liked it.
    Right?
    As he wandered to the rear of what looked like a high-end grocery store, he found Ferry Plaza Seafood tucked away in the back. It looked like a casual restaurant, but up by the counter was a glass display case full of gorgeous seafood, and Beck found his gaze lingering on the pile of fresh, unopened clams mounded over the crushed ice.
    Next to the gleaming fillets of deeply orange, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, the clams looked small and dirty, dull and unassuming and in no way impressive.
    But when the young girl with the septum piercing and hot pink hair came over to take his order, Beck couldn’t keep himself from adding a few pounds of clams to the side of salmon.
    Opening the floodgates to the past wasn’t as simple as it seemed, he realized, as he tried to stem the tide of memories.
    Well, fine. Maybe the memories would be inspiring. He sure hoped so, because as of right now, he had no clue what he was going to prepare for the judges tomorrow.

Chapter 8
    The thin light of early dawn filtered into the competition kitchen from a set of narrow windows set high in the white tiled wall.
    Claire gripped her clipboard and wished fervently that she’d brought along an underling to send out for coffee.
    But no. The magazine ran close to the bone on deadlines and staffers, the way all print media seemed to these days, and there was no one to spare for a frivolous job like following the editor in chief around and making sure she didn’t work herself into a nervous breakdown.
    Not that Claire was close