Eric kicked the truck into gear and headed down the street, a grin on his face. “Well, you just gave the whole town something to talk about.”
They arrived at Knockers a few minutes later. It was strange to see the place empty and quiet, no band on the stage, no one on the climbing wall or dance floor, no one playing pool.
Joe met them just inside the door. “Hey, Victoria, Hawke. Lexi’s already here. Thanks for coming. I’ve got all your ingredients laid out in the kitchen.”
Joe led them toward the back, where they found Lexi chatting with a handful of kitchen staff, who were busy with the day’s prep.
Lexi smiled when she saw them and hurried over to give Vic a hug, a questioning look in her eyes, her gaze flitting to Eric and back. “I told Austin I wouldn’t miss this for the world—a chance to taste Chicago-style pizza again. He’ll be by later.”
Vic gave Lexi the answer she wanted in a smile. “I hope it turns out well.”
Then a giant of a man stepped forward. His head was bald, but he had a bushy red beard over which he wore a hairnet, its loops over his ears. “I’m Rico, Joe’s kitchen manager and head cook. I hear you think our pizza sucks.”
Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut about the pizza? “I didn’t say it sucked.”
“Let’s make it better,” Joe said.
Joe handed them all hairnets and aprons. “If you’re going to be in my kitchen, you’ve got to follow my rules, and, yes, that means you, too, Hawke.”
Vic slipped the hairnet over her ponytail, trying to gather her thoughts. She’d never cooked under pressure before, and she didn’t want to make Joe sorry he’d come in early. “We’ll need a big mixing bowl, a rolling pin, two deep-dish pizza pans, and a big pot to cook the sauce in.”
Rico reached up with one hand and took down a big sauce pan from a hook. “This ought to work for the sauce.”
“Perfect.” She set the pot on a cold burner, only too aware that everyone was watching her.
What business did she have giving a cooking lesson to a successful restaurateur and professional cook? She wasn’t a professional. She just liked to cook.
“The secret to great deep-dish pizza is in the dough.” She separated the ingredients for the sauce from those she’d use in the dough. “If it’s not done right, you can tell. The sauce is important, too, but you can cheat in a pinch, use sauce from a jar, and still have a good pizza. You can’t cheat with the dough. The secret ingredients are cornmeal, butter, and lots of olive oil.”
They started with the dough, which needed a good hour to rise, Rico joining her in measuring out flour, salt, sugar, butter, warm water, and yeast. The moment her hands were busy, her nerves vanished, cooking with friends chasing away her doubts.
This wasfun.
* * *
Eric watchedwhile Victoria showed Rico and Joe how she made pizza, he and Taylor, who had finally shown up, acting with Lexi as official taste-testers.
Hey, it was a tough job, but someone had to do it.
Victoria’s enthusiasm was palpable, and Eric found it hard to take his eyes off her. Even with a hairnet on her head, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. There was a glow about her that hadn’t been there when she’d arrived in Scarlet, the happiness on her face shooting straight to his heart. Was it self-centered of him to hope that at least some of that happiness was his doing?
Knock it off.
Yes, they’d had an incredible night together, but that wasn’t reason for him to lose his head. She was leaving on Sunday. She would get on a plane and fly back to Chicago, and he wouldn’t see her again for a long time. He needed to enjoy the time he had with her and just let the rest of it go.
Besides, even if Victoria lived in Scarlet, that didn’t mean the two of them would end up together. In his experience, most women liked the idea of hooking up with a firefighter only when they were thinking with their hormones. The reality—six to eight days each month spent sleeping alone, trying to plan a life with someone who was almost always on call, the very real risk of injury and death on the job—was much less sexy and a lot more difficult. Hell, half the men who worked for him were divorced.
And what thehellwas he thinking anyway? Did he genuinely want to be in a serious relationship with her, a woman he’d known for a week?
“Hey, Hawke,” Taylor called from across the room, apparently not for the first time. “You deaf? Check this out.”
Eric went over to see what Taylor was looking at and found a Class K fire extinguisher with no pressure. “Hey, Joe, you need to get this fire extinguisher serviced. It won’t do you a damned bit of good if that fat fryer goes up. Also, it shouldn’t be back here behind all these mops and buckets. I could give you a citation for that.”
But he wouldn’t—not today.
Joe took it in stride. “Shit. Right. Sorry.”
“That’s what you get for letting the fire chief into the kitchen,” Rico joked.