Val rushed onto the set and looked down at the charred pie on Tate’s countertop.
She grabbed her star’s wrists. “What the hell happened?” She pushed at the pie with her fingertip. “What the hell do you call this?”
Tate’s grin was wobbly. “It’s an old Cajun specialty. Blackened pecan pie.”
“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” She leaned forward and sniffed his breath, then fanned the fumes away from her face. “I don’t believe it. You’re plotzed. Totally, stinking drunk.”
“I prefer to think of my current condition as pleasantly buzzed.” Tate got a butcher knife and began hacking at the pie, haphazardly slapping the misshapen pieces on the plates he’d set out on the counter.
“You can’t serve this crap to the judges,” Val said. “They’ll laugh us right off the set. Off the show, for damned sure.”
Ignoring her, he opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle, and painstakingly placed a maraschino cherry on the top of each hunk of pie.
“Plate appeal is nearly as important as palate appeal,” he said, flourishing the finished product.
“All right, people,” Zeke said, joining them in the kitchen. “Five minutes. I’ve got the judges coming over right now.”
He looked down at the plate Tate held out and blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Never more serious in my life,” Tate said. He gestured toward the pan. “There’s plenty more. Would you like a taste?”
Zeke sighed. “You’re not making this easy for me, Tate. What am I supposed to tell Barry? And the judges?”
“Tell them my oven was broken,” Tate said. “Tell them you people deliberately sabotaged our equipment. Tell them Tate Moody does not fuckin’ appreciate bein’ fucked with, you moron!”
Zeke shook his head and held his hand out to Val. “I’m sorry, Valerie. You know I have nothing but respect for you and your abilities.” He gave Tate a pitying glance. “I respect him too. Most of the time.”
Val took Zeke’s hand in both of hers. “Thanks, Zeke. I appreciate that. And the chance to compete. I’m just sorry, well, you know. For all of it.”
Wow!” Barry said, glancing down at the judge’s tally sheets. “Talk about a drama-packed evening. After two riveting rounds of competition, everything came down to one night—one show—one dish. Our contestants were asked to prepare a favorite southern dish—bourbon pecan pie. They were given the recipe, and all the ingredients necessary, and a two-hour time limit.”
He leaned in nearer to the camera, as though to impart a closely guarded family secret.
“But what our contestants weren’t given,” he said, in a hushed tone, “was the information that they would be baking their pie in ovens whose thermostats had been turned down by fifty degrees!”
Tate glanced over at Gina, who stood motionless in her kitchen, her hands tightly folded on the countertop. “Told ya,” he said.
Gina forced herself to look pleasant when she felt murderous.
“We wanted to see how our chefs would react to this kind of real-world challenge—how they would change or adapt their game plan,” Barry confided. “And as you saw, our contestants had two very different responses. Regina Foxton’s bourbon pecan pie parfait was an innovative way to deal with a not-quite-set pie by first chilling it, then chopping it up and layering it with sweetened whipped cream for a pecan pie parfait. Her rival, Tate Moody, was not quite as successful. The judges just didn’t love his Cajun blackened pecan pie. And so…”
The cameras cut to Gina, beaming.
And to Tate, who had placed Moonpie on his kitchen counter and was busily feeding him the remnants of the pecan pie. Not an astute judge of southern cooking, the dog was happily lapping it up.
And then the camera came back to Barry, his arm around Gina’s shoulder.
“Regina Foxton—you’re our very first Food Fight winner, and our newest Cooking Channel network star!”
While the Food Fight theme music swelled, the judges swept onto the set, to shake hands and congratulate Gina. Toni Bailey and Beau Stapleton even offered polite, if somewhat chilly greetings to Tate.
“Dude,” Beau Stapleton said, slapping Tate on the back. “I don’t get it. You had her beat, hands down. I watched your pie crust technique. It was flawless. And not everybody can make a pie crust. What happened up here tonight?”
“Dunno,” Tate said, leaning in close enough to allow Beau to smell the bourbon fumes.
“I do,” Stapleton said, stepping backward.
“Hey, Tate.” D’John brandished his ever-present video camera. “I’m doing interviews for my documentary on the making of Food Fight. How would you sum up your experience here on Eutaw Island? Was it everything you thought it would be? What was it like to be stranded on an island with Gina Foxton?”
“S’great,” Tate said boozily. “All of it was just great.”
An hour later, with the wrap party still going, Val finally managed to slip away. She knocked on Tate’s door, but wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer, or to find the door unlocked and the room empty, except for his neatly packed duffel bag.
Commandeering a golf cart, she drove herself down the oyster-shell path to the ferry dock. Silhouetted in the light at the end of the dock, Tate was sitting on the edge, his bare feet dangling in the water. He had an arm around Moonpie, who seemed captivated by something in the water below.
He must have heard her footsteps approaching, but he didn’t turn around.
She sat down beside him and lit a cigarette.
“Nice night,” he said.
“If you happen to like temperatures in the nineties and one hundred percent humidity,” she said.
“I thought you’d still be at the party.”
“It’s winding down. Everybody still has to pack yet. Anyway, I wasn’t really in the mood to celebrate.”
“Yeah.” He sighed deeply, and finally turned to look at her. “Look, Val. About what happened tonight…”
She held up a hand to stop him. “I just want to know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Was she worth it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s worth all of it. And more.”