People, please!” Zeke pleaded, pacing back and forth on the Food Fight set. “We have got to get this taping started. We need Tate, we need Gina….” He glanced at the doorway from the veranda, where Val Foster had appeared, reluctantly cutting short her smoke break.
“Have you seen him?” Zeke asked.
“He’s around,” Val said vaguely. “I think he was just taking Moonpie for a short walk. I’ll go see if I can round him up.”
She was starting down the hallway toward the makeup room when Tate burst out of a doorway and came storming down the hall toward her, murder in his eyes.
“Hey!” she said, stepping in his pathway. “Remember me? Your producer?”
“Gotta go,” he said, trying to sidestep her. “Adelman’s ready for us.”
“I know,” Val said. “Zeke just sent me to fetch you.” She took a step closer, brushing at something on the collar of his shirt. She held up a fingertip and examined it. “Translucent powder,” she said.
“D’John insisted,” Tate said. He did another quick sidestep, but again she was too quick for him. With her thumb, Val wiped at a smudge on his chin. She held up the thumb. “Very Berry lip gloss. Not really your shade, Tate.”
“You’ve made your point,” he said gruffly. “Now can we get on with this damned charade?”
She fell into step beside him. “How do you think you did on this round?”
“You saw how I did. I sucked. What the hell was I supposed to do with tomato soup and a jar of mayonnaise?”
“Gina Foxton found plenty to do,” Val said. “God knows what the judges will make of it, but she does have quantity, if not quality, on her side.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Let’s just get it over with, okay? This place is really starting to get on my nerves.”
“I completely agree,” she said. “But if Gina wins this round, it complicates things. She ties it up, we have to go through one more challenge. Which you will have to win, if you want to win the whole shooting match.”
“Remind me why I agreed to go along with this insanity?” he said irritably.
Val stopped dead in her tracks. She felt panicky. She’d been panicky ever since she set foot on Eutaw Island. No good could come of a place without off-ramps, smog, or a single Starbucks. The wheels were starting to come off the well-oiled Vittles machine.
“I shouldn’t have to remind you. You’re doing this because they’re going to give the winner his own prime-time network cooking show. You’re doing this because it means no more cooking demonstrations in the parking lot at the Peach County Feed ’n’ Seed. It means more money and more prestige. It means a Porsche Carrera for you, a Mercedes for me, and a Louis Vuitton collar for Moonpie.”
He sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He started to walk away.
“Do you even know what a Louis Vuitton dog collar costs?” Val called after him.
“Don’t wanna know,” he called back.
There you are,” Lisa cried, spying her sister lollygagging around outside the ballroom. “Where have you been? Zeke’s had me looking all over for you.”
“Lipstick,” Gina said cryptically. “D’John forgot to fix my lipstick.”
“Well, come on then,” Lisa said, pushing Gina through the door to the ballroom. “Everybody’s been standing around for the past ten minutes waiting on you.”
“Sorry,” Gina said, starting for the set.
“Wait.” Lisa grabbed Gina’s arm. “You can’t go out there like that.”
“Like what? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”
Lisa patted her sister’s butt. “Eeew. You’re all wet. And you smell like Pine-Sol. What happened? Did you pee in your pants?”
Gina reached around and felt the damp seat of her pants. “Crap,” she muttered.
“Gina! Come on, come on,” Barry stood at the director’s table, motioning her forward. “Time is money, cookie. You don’t want to keep the judges waiting.”
“Coming,” Gina said, tugging her T-shirt down over her wet butt.
Contestant one,” Barry announced, setting trays in front of the three judges.
Toni Bailey clapped her hands with delight after tasting the first of Gina’s dishes.
“Tomato soup cake!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my mercy, I bet I haven’t had a chocolate layer cake this dense and moist since my mama died.”
Gina blushed with delight.
“Tomato soup cake?” Beau Stapleton lifted a forkful of the layer cake to his quivering nostrils and sniffed. He slid the cake in his mouth, chewed, and nodded reluctantly. “It’s actually quite good,” he said.
Deidre Delaney leaned forward, holding out a plate with a chicken thigh. “Taste the oven-fried chicken,” she urged. “It’s beyond weird—Frosted Flakes and chili powder—but I actually like it.”
Stapleton gnawed on the end of a drumstick. “I’d never dream of serving this in one of my restaurants,” he said.
“They’re not asking you to serve it in one of your hooty-snooty joints,” Toni retorted. “We asked them to come up with dishes using everyday ingredients, and this is what they fixed. I, for one, applaud this contestant’s inventiveness and creativity.”
“This bacon-sauteed cabbage is awfully good,” Deidre said. “Although I don’t want to think of the fat and carb count on any of these dishes.”
“Definitely not what you’d serve to your South Beach patrons,” Stapleton said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Deidre shot back. “I can see doing this as a small plate. Of course, I’d do it with apple-smoked pancetta and organic kale, maybe throw in some pan-toasted fennel seed, but the concept is really a winner.”
Stapleton stabbed a piece of pie on the plate in front of him. “What’s this?”
Toni nibbled a piece. “Vinegar pie! My goodness, what a trip down memory lane.”
Deidre scribbled something on her scorecard and looked around at the others. “Did the contestant use all the ingredients?”
From off camera, Barry nodded yes.
“No points deducted,” Toni said. “Contestant two is going to really have to step it up a notch to beat this performance.”
Barry made a show of sliding the next round of dishes onto the judge’s table.
“Contestant two,” he announced solemnly.
“This is it?” Deidre said, looking around expectantly.
“Looks like it,” Stapleton said. He speared a piece of the barbecued chicken and chewed.
“Nice and moist,” he said. “Got a tang to it that I wouldn’t have expected.”
Toni and Deidre each helped themselves to a piece of Tate’s barbecued chicken.
Deidre wrinkled her nose after one bite. “Too sweet.”
Toni spooned up a bit of cabbage from the bottom of the chicken casserole. “It’s an unexpected pairing,” she said charitably. “I think I would have done a coleslaw instead.”
“But we’re not judging on what you would have done,” Beau reminded her. “You two just applauded the first contestant for originality, but you’re slamming this contestant for taking a chance with adding shredded cabbage to a chicken dish.”
“Contestant one’s dishes worked,” Toni said. “This one just doesn’t. Not on any level.”
Val closed her eyes and shook her head. What had Tate been thinking? He’d made dozens of variations of coleslaw on his show. He’d made braised cabbage, stuffed cabbage. How the hell could he be stupid enough to dump cabbage into a dish with barbecued chicken?
She glanced over at Tate, who seemed perfectly relaxed, sitting off camera, staring into space. He had Moonpie at his side, and was absentmindedly scratching the dog’s ears.
Gina Foxton, on the other hand, seemed to hang on the judge’s every word, leaning forward, fists tightly clenched at her side. Occasionally she would sneak a peek at Tate, and then instantly glance away. He was making quite a show of not looking back.
She could wring Tate’s neck. He had women of all ages following him everywhere, throwing themselves at him. He could have his pick of any girl, any time. He’d had girlfriends since the show started, yeah. But they never lasted any longer than a month at most, and he somehow managed to part friends with every girl whose heart he broke into a million tiny pieces.
But why now? Why this Susie Homemaker with the bad dye job? The one woman in America whose ass he needed to kick—and he was obviously, pathetically, head-over-heels in love with her. He had this thing in the bag, and he was going to blow it, all for her.
Toni Bailey, bless her heart, was trying to even the odds. She picked up one of Tate’s heinous-looking Frosted Flakes cookies and broke off a piece. Gamely, she chewed, smiled, and swallowed.
“Interesting,” she said, dabbing her mouth with a paper napkin. She didn’t fool Val, who could see Toni covertly spitting the rest of the cookie into the napkin.
Deidre Delaney didn’t trouble herself to make nice. “I’d give these to Tate Moody’s dog,” she said, after one bite. “But I happen to be an animal lover. Cocoa and Frosted Flakes? It’s almost worst than the barbecued chicken with cabbage.”
Beau Stapleton did his damnedest to sway the others to his side. “I don’t see what your problem is with the cookie,” he said, reaching for another while still chewing the first cookie. “The texture is great. Crunchy with a chewy middle. And I like the chocolate undertones.”
“You mean aftertaste,” Deidre sniped.
“All right, you two,” Toni said. “Let’s see if we can come to some kind of decision—it’s been a long hard day for all of us.”
“It’s no contest as far as I’m concerned,” Deidre said. “Did contestant two even use all the ingredients?”
“No.” Barry mouthed the words.
“So, there’s a deduction right there,” Deidre said, looking to Stapleton and Toni for a consensus.
The three judges took only a moment to scrawl their scores on their clipboards.
Barry strolled onto the set, collecting the scores, while turning toward the camera. “The suspense is killing us all,” he said, sotto voce. “But we’re just going to have to wait until after the break to see how the judges have scored round two of our exciting Food Fight.”
You’re going to win!” Lisa trilled, hopping up and down with excitement. “I just know it. Did you see those judges? Even that snotty Beau Stapleton had to admit you rocked it with the chocolate cake and the fried chicken.”
Gina nervously rotated her shoulders, desperately trying to relax. “They did seem to like everything,” she admitted.
“Like it? They loved it!” Scott said. He stood behind Gina and rubbed her shoulders. “No way you can lose this time,” he said. “Moody blew it. We’re going to New York, baby!” he exulted.
Gina wondered why she felt so numb. Scott and Lisa were right. She had definitely dominated in this round. She should be celebrating. So why did she feel like crying?
“All right, people,” Zeke called a moment later. “We need Tate and Gina on their kitchen sets in two minutes.”
D’John hurried over to give Gina a last-minute freshener. He fussed with her hair for a moment, brushed more powder on her nose and cheeks, and touched up her lipstick. He had Lisa hold his minicam while he interviewed her sister.
“Gina Foxton, you’re about to win the second round of the Food Fight. How does that feel?” D’John asked in a plummy radio voice.
“We don’t know that I’ve won,” Gina corrected him. “It could go either way.”
“No way,” Lisa said. “Chicks rule!”
Gina’s stomach was doing flip-flops as Barry approached the kitchen set. She took a deep breath, tried to remember the relaxation exercises she’d learned in yoga class. But her mind was mush. It kept wandering back to that damned broom closet, to the feel of Tate’s beard scraping against her cheek, the feel of his hands on her body, and to the appalling realization that no matter what he’d said, her own actions had betrayed her.
Barry had a piece of paper he was reading from. He was thanking the judges, thanking Tate and Gina for an outstanding performance, even thanking Zeke and Lisa for rescuing them from Rattlesnake Key. His voice droned on and on. She felt her eyelids drooping.
Wait. Barry had his arm clamped around her shoulders, was beaming at her.
“Gina Foxton, what a stunning comeback tonight,” he said. “Our three celebrity judges unanimously named you winner of tonight’s Food Fight. Tell our audience at home—how do you feel?”
“I’m, I’m…stunned,” she said, forcing a smile. She wanted to cry.