Island Heat

But it didn’t mean he was going to concede the battle. Tory hadn’t changed that much; if he gave her an inch, she’d take charge and start throwing her weight around as though she owned the place. Working methodically, he began to rearrange the drawers once again. After a few seconds, Tory made a small disgusted sound in the back of her throat, then she elbowed her way past him and pulled open the bottom drawer, dumping the rolling pin back in it. Shoving the drawer shut with her foot, she crossed her arms over her chest and challenged him with her eyes.

“I’ll just move it later,” he said.

“Try it.”

“Oh, I will,” he assured her.

Her eyes narrowed, and her cheeks puffed out as if she were holding in a few choice words of four letters.

He found himself fixating on her mouth, on the full rosebud of her lips. For a long second he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

“If I could have, I would have said no to this—you know that,” she finally said.

“Then I guess we’re both going to have to suck it up.”

She turned away without another word, and he stared at her back for a long beat. It hadn’t been anything like the first meeting he’d anticipated. He’d expected the conflict but not her vulnerability, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Frowning, he got down to work.

CHAPTER THREE

THE TERMBUTT-HEADHAD been expressly invented for Ben Cooper, Tory decided as she forced another smile onto her stiff lips. They’d nearly finished their afternoon cooking demonstration, and if she had a voodoo doll made in his image, she’d twist its head off and throw it in the rubbish disposal.

She bristled all over again as she remembered the way he’d walked in as though he owned the place and started rearranging the kitchen. He was exactly the way she’d remembered him, only more so. More confident. More cocky. More charismatic.

God, how she hated admitting that to herself, especially after what he’d said to her. But it was the truth. Age had not wearied him. Age had in fact been damned kind to him. His body was stronger, more muscular, his face more attractive with its laugh lines and the hint of roguish crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.

The thing that really got her goat—apart from his born-to-rule mentality in their shared kitchen—was that he patently thought he was God’s gift to womankind. It was no wonder, of course, given the way the women in the audience responded to him. It almost made her ashamed of her sex. Word had clearly spread since their morning session, and the number of women seated in the theater had doubled for this afternoon’s lecture. And it wasn’t because they wanted to hear more from Tory. She had no illusions there. They had come to ogle and flirt with Ben—and, worse, he was encouraging it.

For starters, there was his chef’s uniform. Every chef she knew wore a white or black jacket with checked pants. It was traditional, professional. Ben, however, wore a pair of dark indigo wrinkled linen trousers paired with a navy singlet worn beneath his open white chef’s coat, the ensemble casually revealing his well-sculpted chest and long, strong legs to all comers. She’d stared outright when he’d come back into the cuisine center after changing.

“You’re not going to do up your jacket?” she’d asked him incredulously when he’d started preparing food for their demonstration.

“Nope. Cooler this way.”

“No doubt, but I would have thought that safety might rate a little higher than your groove factor,” she’d said.

Chef’s coats were designed to protect the wearer’s torso and arms and be easily removed in case of hot spills. She’d escaped many a burn over the years thanks to her chef’s whites.

He’d laughed briefly to himself. “Man, you are so uptight. I’d forgotten that. I meant it’s less hot this way, not more fashionable. And I won’t be working with hot oil, so the risk factor is low. Unless you think this coconut salad is going to leap up and attack me?”

She’d ignored him, just as she’d tried to ignore everything else about him, from his low laugh to the deep timbre of his voice to the fresh, crisp aftershave he wore. It was hard to ignore his skill in the kitchen, however.

She’d opened both sessions, talking about spices in general in the first, then jerk mixes more specifically in the second, explaining, among other things, how many of the strong spices in Caribbean foods had originally been employed to cover the lack of refrigeration in the region and that jerk pork had been brought to the islands by the Cormantee slaves from West Africa in the 1600s. Once she’d finished her spiel, Ben had stepped up and immediately upstaged her with his humor, his stupid exposed chest and his show-off cooking skills.

The audience had oohed at his speed with a knife. They’d aahed when he’d dramatically flambéed some bananas in the pan. They’d laughed when he’d juggled mangoes for them.

And she’d stood on the sidelines and known that her own presentation had been about as interesting as a stale bottle of beer by comparison. Now, watching him invite the audience up to taste-test the meals he’d just demonstrated, she thought of her carefully prepared lectures, all her local information, all the images she’d sourced and organized for each lecture. She’d have to stay up late tonight to revamp it all if she wasn’t going to wind up looking like a theology lecturer by comparison for the rest of the cruise.

Which brought her back to why Ben Cooper was a butt-head. He was funnier than her. He oozed charisma. And he was sexy. How was she supposed to compete with that?

And it was a competition, she had no doubt about that. She’d caught him watching her out of the corners of his eyes a few times, enjoying her growing awareness that his portion of their dual presentation was a hit and that hers was most definitely a flop.

But the worst thing—the absolute very, very worst thing—was that she wasn’t immune to his flashy charms, either. She’d tried with every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep her gaze from lingering on the well-defined planes of his chest. She’d ordered herself very specifically not to check out his cute, tight rear end when he bent to pull something from a lower drawer. And she absolutely forbade herself to respond to a single one of his charming jokes, quips or witticisms. To no avail. She’d stared, she’d run greedy eyes over his sexy butt and she’d caught herself smiling more than once at something he’d said.

It made her feel so pathetic. Especially after the fight they’d had when he’d first arrived. She had no illusions about the way he felt about her—he’d made it clear that he wasn’t here to make nice. In fact, she’d gotten the distinct feeling earlier that he’d been more than ready and willing to keep battling it out with her until the cows came home. There’d been something intense and almost desperate in his eyes as he’d goaded her. Then he’d called her that old, nasty name from school, and it had taken the wind out of her sails in an instant.

It was stupid to let something so ancient and dusty get to her like that. Before he’d walked in the door this morning, she’d been so sure that she’d come to terms with what had happened between them. But one look into his navy-blue eyes and she’d been awash in memories….

She’d noticed Ben from the first moment she walked into her first class. Along with every other girl, of course. He was tall, dark and handsome, with a cheeky smile and a laconic charm that encompassed everyone and everything—except, it seemed, her. He’d never once given her one of his lazy smiles. And he’d certainly never run his eyes over her in warm appreciation the way he did with the other girls—not until he had an ulterior motive, that is. She’d told herself that she was too busy acing her way through the Cuisine Institute to care. But she’d cared. She’d noticed him and she’d wanted him to notice her back. And then he had, and she’d fallen into his bed as though it was meant to be.

And the next day she’d learned the truth.

“You just going to stand there or are you going to pack up?” Ben asked.

Tory jolted out of her reverie and blinked at him. “Sorry?” She realized too late that the theater had emptied and they were alone again.

He shot her a searching look, and she busied herself disconnecting her notebook computer from the plasma screens and collecting her notes. She could hear the clang and clatter of him tidying the demonstration kitchen, and when she’d finished stowing her own gear, she automatically reached for a bottle of cleaning spray to wipe down the counter.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I can’t just stand around and watch you work,” she said, spraying cleaner across the counter.

He looked thrown, as if she’d surprised him.

“What? I can’t help out in the kitchen now? You want to do your own cleaning as well as all the prep and cooking work?” She dropped the spray bottle and held her hands in the air as though he’d told her to stick ’em up.

“No. You don’t have to help, that’s all,” he repeated.

She frowned at him, then her hands found her hips and her frown turned into a glare. “I get it—you think I think I’m too good to clean, is that it?” she asked.

“You are Little Miss Haute Cuisine.” He shrugged. “Cleaning up is for the apprentices.”

She flinched, stung by his comment. Was that what he really thought of her? What he’d always thought of her?

“You have no idea who I am,” she said.

He picked up her cookbook, Island Style, and waved it under her nose. “You might be slumming it with us islanders for a little while, but you’ll be back serving up chateaubriand and chausson aux framboises at Le Plat once you’ve finished playing around.”

She was surprised to realize that he didn’t know that her father had closed Le Plat on his retirement rather than pass it on to her. She understood why Andre had made that decision, but she doubted Ben would and she wasn’t about to give him more ammunition. He’d just take enormous satisfaction from learning that she’d apparently missed out.

She made a grab for her cookbook, but he held on tight and she had to put all her weight behind it to tug it from his grasp.

“You know what, you can clean up on your own,” she said, tucking her book under her arm and grabbing her computer bag and notes.

She turned for the door but stopped in her tracks when she saw Patti, the cruise director, standing there.

Hot color stained her cheeks as she wondered how much of her and Ben’s exchange the other woman had heard. To say they were being unprofessional was a gross understatement. Immature, childish—both descriptions were much more accurate.

“Hi, guys. Welcome aboard, Ben. Nice to be offering you hospitality for a change instead of the other way around.” She smiled at Tory, obviously feeling an explanation was in order. “We try to dine at Ben’s restaurant every time we pass through. Best food in the islands.”