Deep Dish (30 page)

G
ina stood on the kitchen set, staring down at the counter, which was covered with a white bed sheet. “What’s this supposed to be?” she called.

“Don’t touch that!” Barry hustled onto the set. He’d left the rain suit behind and was dressed in his customary black shirt and pants. Zeke trailed not far behind, dressed in dry clothes—also black.

Barry took her by the arm and ushered her to a quiet corner of the ballroom, set up with folding tables and chairs. “Your surprise ingredients are under those sheets,” he told her. “I don’t want either one of you to see what you have to work with until we start taping. I gotta tell you, Gina, I like this challenge even better than the first one. Don’t you?”

“Honestly? Barry, we’re exhausted. Do we really have to do this tonight? I’m dead on my feet. And I look like crap. Where’s D’John?”

He patted her cheek. “You look fabulous. Fresh as a daisy. Which is why I told D’John we won’t need him tonight. I want you and Tate to look just the way you do—fresh from a brutal confrontation with the elements.”

“But,” Gina sputtered, “I can’t work looking like this. These aren’t even my clothes, Barry—these jeans have got a row of safety pins running up the butt. And this T-shirt—”

“You look awesome,” he said, getting up to leave. “You’ll start a new fashion trend. The day after this show airs, you wait, every chick in America will be wearing jeans just like those.” He glanced down at his watch. “Okay, cookie. Since you’re so tired, I’m gonna give you a break. Ten minutes, then I want you on set. Okay? Terrific.”

H
ey,” Tate whispered. “Are you pissed at me?”

She refused to look over at him. The sound tech snaked a mike up underneath her T-shirt and clipped it to the neckline.

Despite Barry’s edict, D’John hovered at her side, makeup kit in tow. “I’m just going to powder her nose a little,” he told Adelman. “To take the shine down, that’s all. And I’ll put a little gel in her hair, to make her color more dramatic.”

“What’s going on between you two?” D’John whispered, cutting his eyes from Tate to Gina. “And don’t even try to stonewall D’John.”

“Nothing’s going on,” she insisted.

“He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since he walked onto the set,” D’John said. “He’s looking at you like he looks at that dog of his. And you’re treating him like dog—crap. What’s the story? I thought you two made nice after the first Food Fight.”

“He sold me out,” Gina said stonily. “If we’d presented a united front on this thing, we never would have had to do this crazy taping tonight. But Barry insisted, and Tate folded, like a cheap tent. He’ll do anything to win this thing.”

D’John squirted styling gel into his hands and began working it into her hair. “The two of you, marooned alone on an island. It’s crazy sexy.”

“You weren’t there,” Gina said.

“Ooh, but I wish I had been,” he said.

“All right, everybody,” Barry called from his seat at the production table. “Let’s get this thing cranked up. I’m going to come out, detail the challenge, and unveil your secret ingredients. You’ll have two hours to cook up a storm, using as many of the ingredients as possible. You can also draw from the supply of kitchen staples that are already in each kitchen. But you’ll have penalty points subtracted from your total if you don’t use one of the surprise ingredients. When the food’s done, we’ll bring the judges back and do the presentation and the scoring. Everybody good with that?”

Tate cleared his voice. “Uh, Barry? What exactly are we supposed to be cooking? A southern meal, or what?”

“Whatever you think will tickle the judge’s taste buds,” Barry said, chuckling at his own cleverness. “Use your imagination. Go nuts.
Comprende?
”

“Comprende
,” Tate said sourly.

G
ina stared down at the groceries assembled on her kitchen counter in disbelief. She glanced over at Tate, whose reaction was even stronger than her own.

“What the hell?” He pointed at the boxes and bags. “I can’t make a meal out of this crap. Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?”

“Cut,” Barry said. He strode onto the set, his customary cheeriness gone. “It’s not a joke,” he said tersely. “We’re trying to emphasize the kinds of ingredients the average Joe Sixpack has in his home kitchen. And the crew and I would appreciate it if you would just do your job, without any editorial comments. You’re not the only one who’s had a long day today.”

So, Gina thought. The teacher’s pet had his hand smacked with a ruler. She smiled sweetly to herself, and then started taking stock of her raw ingredients.

A one-pound sack of Martha White flour. A dozen eggs. A can of Campell’s cream of tomato soup. A tin of Hershey’s cocoa. A pound of sugar. A box of Frosted Flakes cereal. Containers of salt, garlic powder, chili powder, and black pepper. A can of Crisco. A package of defrosted chicken parts, thighs, drumsticks, breasts, and wings. A pound of bacon. A huge head of cabbage. A bag of confectioner’s sugar. A jar of Duke’s mayonnaise.

She heard pots and pans being rattled and slung around from Tate’s kitchen, and plenty of muttering. But she tuned it all out. Scott, damn him, was right. This challenge was hers to win or lose.

This time around, she couldn’t lose. The foodstuffs on her kitchen counter could have been straight out of Birdelle’s kitchen back home. Right out of the aisles of Tastee-Town, in fact.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember the shelf of stained and tattered cookbooks in her mother’s daisy yellow kitchen. The red-and-white-checked
Better Homes and Gardens
was her mother’s biblical authority on culinary theory. It sat beside the faded green metal file box full of recipes, clipped from
Southern Living
, the Savannah paper, and the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. But the go-to cookbook, the one her mother and her grandmother had cooked from day in and day out was
Simply Sinful
:
Recipes from Tabernacle Baptist Church Women’s Missionary Circle
—or
Sinful,
in her grandmother’s shorthand.

Gina had learned to cook from that cookbook, with its cheerful pink laminated cover and its spiral-bound spine. Later on, after college and cooking school, where she’d flirted with the works of Julia Child, Paul Bocuse, and Pierre Franey—not to mention every Junior League cookbook published in the South—she’d sneered at
Sinful
’s reliance on convenience and processed foods, its two dozen recipes for congealed salads, its reliance on gimmicky recipe titles, but now, she thought,
now
was the time to bring back
Sinful
.

Gina reached for the can of tomato soup and stepped back twenty years in time. For the next two hours she sifted and stirred, chopped and crushed, fretted and frosted.

She was just taking her chicken dish out of the oven when she heard the Food Fight buzzer go off.

“Time’s up!” Barry announced from his place at the director’s table. He stood up, stretched, and yawned. “Gina, Tate, why don’t you guys take a little break, then we’ll come back and show you plating up your food.”

Scott rushed onto Gina’s kitchen set. He looked at the dishes assembled on the counter, his forehead wrinkled in concern. “It looks…interesting,” he said. “Did you manage to use all the ingredients?”

“I think so,” Gina said numbly. She yawned hugely and glanced over at her opponent’s kitchen. Tate had disappeared. As far as she could tell, his counter held only two dishes, a baking pan that seemed to contain a casserole, and a plate of cookies. Her own counter held half a dozen dishes.

“You’ve got Moody beat by a mile,” Scott said smugly. “He made
barbecue sauce with the tomato soup and poured it over the chicken, and then he mashed up some of the Frosted Flakes for some bizarre kind of cookie. Look over there,” he pointed. “Half his ingredients haven’t been touched.”

Her pleasure at the prospect of besting her rival suddenly dimmed.

“Wow!” Lisa wandered over and handed her a cold Diet Coke. “Geen—I’ve never seen anybody cook that hard or that fast. It was like you were in some kind of trance or something.”

“It kinda felt that way,” Gina admitted. “Come on, I need to sit down before I fall down.”

Deliberately ignoring Scott, Lisa led her to the makeup room. When she opened the door, the first thing she saw was Tate, sitting in one of the chairs, leafing through a newspaper. He looked up when she walked in, and then, quickly, back down at the paper.

“Hey, Tate,” Lisa said cheerfully. “Are you as tired as we are?”

“Yes.”

Gina dropped into the chair next to his, while Lisa perched on the edge of a table.

“You think they’ll let us eat some of that food once the judges have finished?” Lisa asked, desperate to fill the awkward silence in the room.

“Why would you want to?” Tate flipped the page of the newspaper.

“I haven’t eaten in hours,” Lisa said plaintively. “And everything smells so good. My stomach was screaming the whole time you were cooking. Geen, what was that chicken thing you made?”

“Oven-fried chicken,” her sister said. “Mama used to make it when I was little. You weren’t even born yet. The original recipe called for crushed up cornflakes and buttermilk. But I only had Frosted Flakes, and since they’re way too sweet, I added chili powder to the crushed cereal. I just dipped the chicken in a mixture of the mayonnaise and egg, instead of buttermilk, and then coated it with the cereal. God knows how it’ll taste.”

Tate laughed despite himself. “Frosted Flakes and chili powder. Damn. Wish I’d thought of that. I used the Frosted Flakes for cookies—it was the only thing I could think of.”

“Too bad,” Gina said. She finished her drink and stood up. “Come on, Lisa. We better get back before Barry sends out another search party to look for us.”

“You’re still mad at me,” Tate said, tossing the paper in the trash. “Why?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Gina said coolly. “I don’t care about you one way or the other. I have a job to do, and I’m doing it.”

She had her hand on the door, but Zeke pushed it open and stuck his head in. “Time, people,” he said excitedly. “The judges can’t wait to get started.”

G
ina was halfway to the ballroom when Tate caught up with her. He tapped her lightly on the shoulder. “Can I have a word with you?” he said, his voice low.

Lisa took the hint and sped ahead, linking her arm through Zeke’s.

“What is it now?” Gina asked. Her tone was light, but her heart was beating a mile a minute.

Tate opened the nearest door and pulled her inside what turned out to be a broom closet.

“Hey!” she protested, nearly tripping over a mop bucket.

“Shut up.” He leaned back against a set of metal shelves. “Did I get hit on the head on that island tonight? Maybe suffer a brain injury without even realizing it?”

“What’s this about?” Gina asked.

Tate ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. “Just a few hours ago, we were alone on Rattlesnake Key. Did I just imagine it, or did you jump me and insist that you were ready to—how shall I put it delicately—have your way with me?”

Gina felt her cheeks burning. “I’d appreciate it if you would forget about what happened on Rattlesnake Key tonight. It was a big mistake.”

“A mistake? That’s what you want to call it?”

“Yes.”

“Even though I told you that I’m in love with you?”

“We’ve both been under a lot of strain in the past few days,” Gina said. She hesitated. “I, uh, want to thank you for not taking advan
tage of me at a time when I was extremely vulnerable. You were right. I was feeling desperate. But now that we’re back on Eutaw, I would like to focus on the competition.”

His dark eyes glittered, and his smile was sardonic. “This is bullshit, Reggie. You want me, I want you. It’s that simple. Forget about the damned Food Fight. This whole thing is a joke. You saw how Adelman treats us. Like cattle. He was halfway hoping we had drowned—think of what a ratings sensation that would have been.”

“No,” she managed. “It’s easy for you to call it a joke. You’ve still got your show. Even if you lose, you win. It’s different for me.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You’re great. Adelman’s said it a hundred times. You’ll get another show.”

“I want this one,” she said stubbornly. “Look, Tate. Despite what you think, I’m not really like the woman you were with on Rattlesnake Key tonight. I, uh, regret that I let things get out of hand.”

He leaned in closer, his lips grazing hers.

“You regret this?”

“Yes.” She tried to back away, but the closet was too small—there was nowhere to go.

Tate pulled her to him, kissing her harder, his hands roaming down her back, cupping her rear end. He kissed the hollow of her neck and her shoulder blades, pulled the neckline of her T-shirt down and kissed the top of her breast. “You regret this?”

“Yes,” she said, moaning. She was dimly aware of the scent of Pine-Sol, of something damp pressing against her back, but her head was spinning.

He kissed her deeply one more time, and this time she was kissing him back, giving in, giving up, wrapping her arms around his neck, burying her fingers in his hair, still salty from the sea.

“Liar.” His voice was fierce.

And then he was gone. She heard the closet door open, then slam shut behind him.

P
eople, 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.

T
here 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.

C
ontestant 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 origi
nality, 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.”

Y
ou’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!”

G
ina’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.