One Chef!

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Kate Stark woke slowly with no memory of going to sleep.

And absolutely no memory of taking a man with her.

But the body she lay half across was male. A broad, powerful chest. Very definitely male.

His heartbeat was loud in her ear despite the shirt.

Shirt?

What was the point of dragging a man into her bed if she didn’t remember it and they didn’t get naked?

She tried opening her eyes. No difference. Not even a little. Either she was blind or it was pitch dark. To avoid panic she chose one from Column B, thank you very much.

Kate pushed herself up, using the sleeping man for leverage. He barely grunted.

She was dressed too. A hand to her chest—show clothes. She rubbed her fingers over her left breast—the outline of the Kate’s Kitchen from Hell logo embroidered into her master chef’s jacket.

The show!

Kate’s Kitchen from Hell.

She’d been judging a show. The final show of a two-week filming stint. First two weeks of June. Three shows a day. A whole season plus Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Kate’s birthday holiday specials in the can. The final judging. Two competing chefs. Maxwell and…

The man beside her snorted, not so softly, then shifted and continued his slumber.

And now…? What was she doing?

Her brain was moving through molasses.

She sat on a mattress. A really thin one. Not hers.

They had judged that first contestant. He was an excellent chef and his meal had been splendid. His final dessert of mango sorbet served on a strawberry-wine reduction with a flake of a fresh-made chocolate mint sprinkled with sea salt made a delectable denouement to the meal.

She remembered that clearly enough and rubbed the back of her neck to try to shake loose more. She hissed against the pain. A mosquito bite-sized lump on the back of her neck and a bruised area the size of her palm.

Kate tried but couldn’t connect it to anything.

Guest judge Harold Merritt—with his patrician features, short dark hair, and broad, work-out chest—was clearly taken in by the progression of flavors, totally missing its lack of original thinking.

To Kate, Maxwell’s meal had been most exceptional in not being exceptional.

Zania’s palate had clearly been outstripped, but she’d declared it “wicked tasty” and realigned her sheerly clad and impressively generous profile to best advantage for the nearest camera.

Off the edge of the thin mattress, a platform extended. Kate tapped a short-trimmed fingernail—a metal platform. Reaching out into the smothering darkness a foot or so—more metal. Not smooth like a knife’s blade or a stainless steel counter, instead rough and covered with a patina of rust corrosion. And the smell of…fish. Not television-show fresh fish either. When she rested her palm against the platform, or maybe it was the floor, she could feel a deep vibration rumbling through the steel. Diesel engines, big ones, running at cruise—not flat out but not idling either.

She eased the collar of her show jacket, the air was tepid—thick and surprisingly difficult to draw into her lungs—and…tepid was all her sluggish mind could unearth for an adjective. Like tea water with no remaining warmth to comfort or coolness to soothe.

The man beside her grunted and thrashed about a moment before settling. His noises echoed strangely. She snapped her fingers, though it took a couple of tries to make it a clear, sharp sound; her nerves were functioning no better than her thinking. Once achieved, the snap made a bright sound, as if— She didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

Then Marianne Rimaldi had served. That was the second chef! Harold and Zania had come to life. Somehow Marianne was managing to work both sides of the aisle with her flair for showmanship.

The food was also fascinating. Her first dish was exquisite, though her second rated as a bit of a miss—the chocolate Halibut Mole. She’d either needed a stronger fish to mitigate the contrast of the protein and the sauce or a sharper mole for the contrast to be a statement of flavor—but the first and third dishes were so exceptional and the mole itself so rich that Kate decided the contestants were neck and neck going into the dessert course.

Kate rubbed at her sore neck, still unclear what had happened. But the other memories were coming back, perhaps this one would as well. It was hard to be patient while breathing tepid, fish-flavored air in total darkness.

If Marianne nailed the dessert, Kate would invite her onto Two Chefs Chat. It was a new show she was developing to help chefs take that next step to stardom—a one-on-one master class filmed for the public.

Rising to her feet, Kate wobbled on the unstable mattress and braced one foot lightly on the sleeping man’s chest. She also discovered a headache that cried in alarm.

She ignored it.

Cries. There’d been cries of surprise, each sharply halted on a gasp. Marianne Rimaldi stumbling and nearly dumping her dessert service onto the studio floor as she’d climbed to the steps to the judge’s stage.

At five-foot-nine, Kate’s reach was seven-six. Mattress thickness plus standing up on her tip-toes told her exactly what she didn’t want to know. At seven-foot-ten above the steel floor was a corrugated metal roof.

Screams.

On the verge of toeing her uninvited companion awake—because Kate always remembered when she invited someone into her bed—she became aware of a new sound.

They hadn’t been screams of surprise. They’d been screams of…