Island Heat
It's been eight years since Tory Sanderson has seen Ben Cooper–eight years since she found out he seduced her to win a bet with some classmates at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, and eight years since she got her revenge. . . . After fulfilling her dream of publishing a cookbook of island recipes, Tory is thrilled when she's invited on a Caribbean cruise as a guest lecturer. But excitement turns to anxiety when she finds out that Ben, who is now a celebrated restaurateur, will join her as the guest chef. Ben accepted the guest chef gig in order to enjoy a week of Tory sweating it out in the kitchen.But once the heat starts to climb, getting even turns out to be the last thing on his mind. In fact, picturing a future with Tory in his kitchen might add just the right amount of spice to his life. . . .
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Sarah Mayberry
ISLAND HEAT
A huge thanks to my amazing partner, Chris, for his
patience and sense of humor during the writing of this book. We’ll never move houses mid-manuscript again, I promise! Thanks also to the amazing Ms W for putting me in the writer’s seat on this one, and to Harlequin for inviting me to play with a bunch of talented, amazing ladies.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
TORY FOURNIER UNZIPPED her suitcase and flipped it open. Inside nestled a host of flimsy dresses, swimsuits, flip-flops and sun hats. She frowned at the bright colors and lightweight cottons. Why had she gone crazy and bought hot-pink and aqua? She only ever wore black, beige or white. Suddenly everything in her case looked garish and cheap and even vaguely slutty.
Great.
Pushing a hand through her straight blond hair, Tory started to unpack. She didn’t really hate her new tropical wardrobe. Deep inside she knew that. But she was feeling frustrated and oddly depressed. As she hung her sundresses in the closet in the stateroom she’d been assigned, she forced herself to remember that she was on a luxurious cruise ship, about to sail into the Caribbean for ten sun-filled days. There were about a million worse places to be, and not many better.
Back in New York, for example, it was snowing. People were wearing gloves, scarves and hats and tucking their faces into their turned-up collars as they trudged to work. They could see their breath in the air, for Pete’s sake.
And she was about to explore sunny, exotic St. Bart’s and Grenada and the Bahamas. What was wrong with her?
She didn’t have to go far to unearth the source of her downer: her father. At twenty-nine, she should have been used to his unenthusiastic reactions to her good news. It was his way, that was all. He rarely lavished praise on anything or anyone, and his only daughter was no exception. All her life he’d greeted her successes with a nod of acknowledgment and little more. When she’d been accepted into the prestigious Cuisine Institute of America to do her chef’s training, she’d expected champagne corks and back pats from him. She’d been following in his footsteps, after all. But he’d simply reviewed her course selection and told her to avoid working under Monsieur St Pierre. When she’d scored a publishing contract for her collection of Caribbean-inspired recipes, he’d just looked confused and asked why she was dabbling when she should be pursuing her first Michelin star ranking in a prestige restaurant.
And when she’d told him her publicist had organized for her to come on board Alexandra’s Dream as a guest lecturer to work in conjunction with a local celebrity chef for a special Caribbean-cuisine-themed cruise, he’d shaken his head in disbelief.
“What about this Caribbean-themed restaurant you want to start up?” he’d asked. “That’s just going to go on hold, is it? You know I’m not sold on the idea anyway, but you need to show some commitment, Victoria.”
He’d slipped into his chef-de-cuisine tone, the one he used to employ when he was castigating a lowly member of his kitchen staff. Perhaps because he was retired now, he used it on her more and more often these days.
“It’s ten days, Andre,” she’d said. She’d gotten into the habit of calling her father by his name over the long summers she’d helped out in his former restaurant, the critically acclaimed Le Plat. “My real-estate agent is finalizing a list of properties for me, my backers are in place. This isn’t going to interfere with my plans.”
Her father had just thrown his hands in the air in perfect imitation of her Gallic grandfather.
“No one will ever take you seriously if you flit about like this,” he’d said.
Just remembering the conversation made Tory mad all over again. She wasn’t flitting. She had a well-thought-out business plan to have her own restaurant fitted out and up and running within the next three months. She’d scouted sites, finalized a menu. She’d even tapped some past colleagues on the shoulder to warn them she would be head-hunting them soon. Ten days in the Caribbean was not going to derail any of that.
She knew that part of her father’s attitude could be laid at the door of his retirement. He hated being a man of leisure. Practically his entire adult life had been spent in the stress and drama of a commercial kitchen; playing a round of golf in the morning and flicking through industry magazines for the afternoon just did not do it for him. But apart from being patient, there was precious little Tory could do about that. He’d chosen to hang up his apron—going out on a high, he’d called it—so he was going to have to come to terms with this new stage in his life. Unfortunately, it had been two years now and he was still showing no signs of accepting that his career was over.
Of course, she could have told her father her other reasons for wanting to go to the Caribbean, but he wouldn’t have understood those, either, just as he didn’t understand her passion for island food.
