King of the Kitchen Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re a brave woman, bringing a baby onto Christian’s set,” he said as he greeted the child in question with a silly face that made the nine-month-old gurgle in delight.
    “We stayed outside the sound stage until the filming light went out,” she said, shifting the baby on her hip when the girl started reaching for Beck. “I’m not suicidal.”
    He didn’t reach out to take the baby since his hands were still covered in aioli from the sandwiches he’d made on air today—seriously, who still used aioli in this day and age? Christian’s pander-to-the-middle tastes were killing Beck—but he leaned in and let the child tug on his hair and pull his microphone off his collar.
    “Benton will skin me alive if you gnaw on that,” Carlie chided her daughter as she grabbed the mic from her chubby little hands and tucked it in Beck’s breast pocket.
    “Matt sick today?” Beck asked, making a face of exaggerated alarm when the baby tugged on his hair again, setting her off into peals of fresh laughter.
    Carlie was Beck’s favorite set stager, and her husband, Matt, usually stayed home with their daughter since he was a writer for another network and could work from home. If Carlie had her kiddo on set with her today, it either meant Matt was sick or he was forced to go in for an all-hands meeting at his studio.
    Carlie wrinkled her nose. “No, they’re up for renewal, and all of the writers had to go in for a brainstorming session. He’s been working ridiculous hours trying to get storyboards together for the next sixteen episodes. They’re afraid the show might be canceled.”
    Beck hummed sympathetically. “So you’ve got Annabelle for the duration, eh?”
    The baby squealed again when Beck said her name, and he stuck his tongue out at her.
    “Well, I wasn’t supposed to be in today at all. But Christian called and was upset because he didn’t like the new curtains, so I had to come resurrect the old ones from storage. We changed them… what? Six episodes ago, and he’s only noticing now?”
    Beck snorted. Christian probably hadn’t been in the studio to notice the new curtains in the last six weeks. When Beck had joined the show, he’d been in the background, but over the last three years, his uncle had slowly but surely been pushing Beck into the host role more and more often. He still made enough appearances and hosted enough of the specials and other important shows that the fans knew King of the Kitchen was still very much his show, but the day-to-day management and menial hosting was something Christian had passed to Beck and Christian’s daughter Lindsay.
    “What did you do with the new ones? I liked them.”
    Carlie pursed her lips. “That’s the thing. By the time I got here, he’d already decided he liked the new ones after all.”
    Not surprising. Christian was pretty fickle. “So why are you still here?”
    They’d been filming for three hours, and if she’d come in early enough to do a set change, then she and Annabelle had been hanging out at the studio for nearly four hours.
    “Because he told me he wanted to have me on hand in case he changed his mind.”
    Beck raised an eyebrow. “In case he changed his mind in the middle of filming? So what, we’d either have to reshoot the scenes with the curtains in them or deal with the continuity problem of having two different sets of curtains in the same episode?”
    She offered him a tight smile. “Yup.”
    Beck sighed. “Take your daughter home, Carlie. Make sure you put in for a full day’s pay today so you don’t waste a day of your vacation on this. Are you out the rest of the week?”
    She nodded.
    “If he calls again for anything, call me or Lindsay. He shouldn’t be asking you to come in on your day off, even if it does mean we get to see this cutie.” He pressed a smacking kiss to Annabelle’s cheek.
    Some of the tension bled out of Carlie’s expression. “You’re a lifesaver. Normally I’d have told him where to