Some Like It Hot Read Online Free PDF

to see is my marble pastry board set up all nice and cold and in one damn piece.”

    One of Max’s brows quirked up in that annoying way he’d had ever since they were kids, whenever Danny was being a moron. Which, according to Max, was often.

    “Come on, Dan. I never pegged you for one of those New Yorkers who refuses to leave the city.”

    Danny tensed. “Not everyone feels the need to spend half their life wandering the globe playing with their auras and trying to find themselves. Or whatever new-agey crap gets you out of bed in the morning.”

    Eyes wide, Max backed off, hands held up in front of him as if Danny had pointed a gun at his chest.

    “Boys, play nice,” Jules interjected from Max’s other side. She didn’t raise her voice or anything, but then she didn’t need to. Her genuine distress at seeing her best friend and her boyfriend squabbling like … well, like brothers, was enough to simmer Danny down.

    Except this thing with Max was more than plain old vanilla sibling bickering, and Danny knew it. They’d hashed out their differences enough to be able to work together, but sometimes the issues simmered over and blew the lid off their careful, stilted relationship.

    A pang of guilt shot through him, but before he could apologize, the weird, non-yellow taxi swerved to the curb—at least the cabdrivers seemed to have gone to the same driving school as the ones in New York—in front of the hotel that would be their home base for the first leg of the Rising Star Chef competition.

    Paying the cabbie and dealing with the fact that some of their luggage seemed to be missing from the trunk allowed Danny and Max to skim over the awkward silence that had started cropping up between them anytime they got into an argument lately.

    The cab carrying Beck, Winslow, and the missing gear pulled up, and in the ensuing confusion of bags and luggage carts, Danny managed to shake off his worries and get juiced about the start of the competition.

    The irrepressible Winslow Jones was a big help with that.

    “Man, can you believe this joint?” The youngest chef on the team stared up at the vaulted ceiling of the lobby, jaw hanging open in exaggerated awe. “Now this is what I’m talking about. Lunden’s needs more shiny. Marble floors and what not.”

    Danny reached over to rub Winslow’s smooth shaved head. “Sure. You can be in charge of polishing,” he deadpanned, cracking Win up, and smiled his way over to the reception desk.

    The Gold Coast Arms, a four-star hotel in the swankiest part of downtown Chicago, was the home of one of the city’s best restaurants, Limestone—which also happened to be one of the Jansen Hospitality Group’s biggest stars. Rumor had it that Eva Jansen had strong-armed—or sweet-talked, depending on whom you heard it from—the ritzy hotel into sponsoring the preliminary round of the RSC, which was usually held in a bare-bones convention center somewhere.

    Glancing around at the opulent decor—even the walls were shiny, patterned with some expensive-looking gold-leaf stuff—Danny shook his head. He would’ve preferred a basic, utilitarian setup to all this luxury. It was unnecessary and distracting, when distraction was the last thing he and his guys could afford.

    A scuffle drew Danny’s attention to the far side of the lobby where an enormous glass-and-steel doorway arched almost to the ceiling. In the course of his explorations, Winslow had managed to bump the chrome easel beside the door, knocking the sign it held onto the floor.

    Win got it back on the easel, realized it was upside down, and turned it right-side up, apologizing profusely the whole time and just generally making a spectacle of himself.

    Danny’s amusement faded into concentration when he read the sign, though, which proclaimed in bold letters that the acclaimed hotel restaurant Limestone was temporarily closed in preparation for the Rising Star Chef competition.

    That sign, and the knowledge