by Jackie Braun
“I could ask the same thing,” he shot back.
She swallowed, but notched up her chin and rallied. “Go ahead and hoard ingredients. I get it.”
His eyes narrowed. “What do you get?”
“You’re afraid if we make the same thing mine will taste better.”
Rough laughter erupted. “Reverse psychology. Pathetic.”
She arched one brow and said nothing.
“Here. Knock yourself out.” He reached into the bowl and took the two ripest avocados before handing it to her.
Lara didn’t have time to be relieved. As for saying thank-you, she didn’t get the chance. Finn had already turned and started back to his workstation with a couple of cameramen in tow. She grabbed spices, heirloom tomatoes and a can of black beans, as well as a couple of dried spices. Just before hurrying back to her station, she grabbed a couple of yams. She’d decided to make a hash of sorts, updating the flavor profile with unexpected ingredients and spices.
By the time she returned to her prep table, nearly three minutes had passed.
Finn was already busy at his cutting board. His avocados were pitted and peeled, and he was slicing a rolled-up bundle of fresh basil leaves into thin ribbons. His movements were deft, fluid. A day earlier, she would have admired his skill with a knife. There was something to be said for a gorgeous guy who knew how to make a chiffonade. But his words in the greenroom made her resent the traitorous tug of longing she felt low in her belly.
“Looking to see how it’s done?” he asked without glancing up.
“Just making sure you’re not going to cut off a finger. Blood doesn’t pair well with the first course I have in mind.”
“I know what I’m doing. I haven’t nicked myself since culinary school.”
“Then maybe you’re due,” she said.
She’d been teasing. So, Lara felt horrible when a moment later she heard his ripe curse and glanced back to find him gripping his hand with a white towel. A splotch of bright crimson bloomed on the fabric.
“Oh, my God, are you—”
“I’m fine,” he bit out.
Somehow he managed to bandage his finger and don a latex glove before the host’s voice came over the loudspeaker to announce, “Chefs, you have fifteen minutes left to prepare your appetizers.”
For the remaining quarter of an hour, neither of them spoke. Nor did they make eye contact until the buzzer sounded and time was called.
Lara stepped back from the prep table, both hands held aloft, and eyed her mixture of avocados, tomatoes, black beans and sautéed yams. She gave it an A for taste. Cumin and smoky paprika lingered on her tongue from the bite she’d sampled just prior to plating. The food stylist in her, however, wasn’t pleased with the overall presentation. The crisp white shallow bowls were the right choice, but she should have added a garnish, perhaps a sprig of something green and leafy. Or maybe even put the hash inside a leaf of bib lettuce first. It was too late now, of course.
She glanced over at Finn’s dish. Even though they’d both used avocado, they’d gone different directions. While she’d detoured to the Southwest, his inspiration clearly had come from Italy.
The plate of bow-tie pasta was covered in a rich sauce into which he had incorporated the avocado. Good call, she thought. The portion size was perfect as a first course. She would have plated it differently, but given that Finn had been working injured, she gave him credit for finishing ahead of the clock. One of the competitors hadn’t, she realized, after a couple of young production assistants came around with a cart to collect the plates. The fact that one of that chef’s plates was missing the sauce on his appetizer wasn’t an automatic dismissal, but it certainly tilted the odds.
In the greenroom, the chefs flopped down onto the various chairs and couches. The only seats that remained unoccupied were on the couch next to Ryder. Lara decided she would rather stand. She picked a spot next to the coffeemaker and leaned against the wall. She needed the extra support to remain upright. Her head was still spinning, both from the competition and from her fight with Finn.
Let it go, she kept telling herself, but to no avail. Her heart was too bruised for that. For the first time in a long time, she’d let down her guard. She’d thought...
“That was tougher than I expected it to be,” one of the chefs said, drawing her attention.
“Twenty minutes!” another shouted. “It felt more like two.”
“I know! I swear I just got started and they were calling time,” added the chef who had failed to finish plating on time. After which he lamented, “I’m as good as gone.”
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Finn said.
Lara glanced over to find him staring at her. Staring, not glaring. Still, his expression was a long way from warm. He’d discarded the latex glove. His injured left hand had been rebandaged and was now cradled in his right.
She walked over to where he stood and asked, “How bad is it?”
“I’m fine.”
“Maybe you should have the show’s doctor look at it.”
He shook his head. He appeared more wounded than his hand when he told her, “I’ve survived worse.”
SIXTEEN
Blend on high
It was several more hours before the contestants learned the identity of the chef who would be the first to go home. It was the one who had failed to finish all of his plates in the allotted twenty minutes.
Ryder had scored in the bottom three with his unimaginative mixed-greens salad. He wasn’t happy about it. He was especially unhappy to learn that Lara had scored higher. In fact, Lara’s creative take on hash had put her in the top three along with Kirby and Finn.
Finn’s Italian dish had scored the highest of all with the judges. He should have been ecstatic with his showing. He should have felt vindicated, given all of the lies his ex-wife had circulated about him and his ability to concoct recipes with interesting flavor profiles. But late that evening as he let himself into his apartment after one of the longest and most grueling days of his life, all he could think about was Lara.
Finn was confused and hurt and he was still angry. He just wasn’t sure whom he was angry with. Lara? Her father? The show? Or himself?
He twisted off the cap from a bottle of beer and plunked down on the couch in his sparsely furnished apartment. The place seemed especially empty now. As he ruminated over the day’s events, the telephone rang. Picking it up, he realized he had nearly a dozen voice-mail messages waiting to be played back.
“Hello?” he said into the receiver.
Kate was on the other end of the line.
“Finally!” his sister shouted by way of a greeting. “Where have you been? You haven’t answered your cell all day.”
“I turned it off for the show.” And he’d never turned it back on after leaving the studio. “Is anything wrong?”
“Is anything wrong?” she repeated, followed by a loud scoffing noise that had him pulling the receiver away from his ear. “Jeez, Finn. We’re all here at Mom and Dad’s dying to find out what happened today. You promised you would call after filming.”
He set the beer down so he could rub his eyes. “Right. Sorry.”
“Well? Quit keeping us in suspense. Are you still on the show or what?” Kate all but screamed the question.
In the background, he could hear his mother say, “Good heavens, Katie, don’t put it like that. You make it sound like we have no faith in him.”
A second later, she was on the line and the echo made it clear he’d been put on speaker.
“We’re proud of you, Finn. No matter what happened today. You know that.”
He smiled in spite of his foul mood. But once again he found himself thinking of Lara and the way she’d looked as Garrett played back the interview with her father.
As proud as Finn’s parents would be of him even in failure, nothing she did measured up to her father’s unrealistic expectations.
“I’m still on the show, Mom. In fact, I had the highest score in today’s round.”
A flurry of excited squeals greeted his news.
“I knew it!” his mother replied.
“Have you told Lara yet?” Kate asked.
“Actually, I didn’t need to. She was there today.”
“She came to watch you?”
“I didn’t think they allowed outsiders on the set,” his mother said.
Kristy wanted to know, “Can we come and watch next time?”
He reached for his beer and took a gulp as he waited for the speculation to die down.
“She didn’t come to watch me. She came...she came to compete. The network agreed to let her back on the show.”
He didn’t mention that the decision had hinged on his vote. Nor did he divulge the harsh words that had passed between the pair of them afterward.
His sisters were once again talking over each other, peppering him with questions. His mother, however, cut to the heart of the matter. He heard a click and the girls’ voices receded. He was off the speaker and pretty sure that his mother was now moving to a more private location to continue the conversation. She was an expert at reading between the lines.
“You’re upset.”
“No, Mom—”
“You are. What’s happened?” she asked in a tone that told him she didn’t want to argue. She wanted an explanation.
He sighed.
“I saw her just yesterday.... Hell, we’ve practically spent every day of the past two weeks together, and she never mentioned...” He took another pull on his beer. The sour taste in his mouth lingered nonetheless.
“She knew and didn’t tell you?”
“I—I’m not sure. But I called her last night and this morning and she didn’t return either call.”
“Okay, back up a minute. You said you’re not sure what she knew. Did you ask her?”
“Not exactly. But like I said, I called her last night and this morning. I find it a little odd, not to mention suspect, that she didn’t call me back,” he added, feeling riled up and once again justified in his anger. “And then, today, when she walked into the greenroom...she looked...guilty.”
Finn drained his beer.
“But you didn’t let her explain?”
“Mom—”
“Do you like this woman, Griffin?”
He scraped at the edge of the label on his empty beer bottle and said nothing.
“Okay, I’ll answer for you. You do. In fact, I think you like her a lot.”
“We only just met. There’s a lot I don’t know about her.” He grunted and got up from the couch. While he went to the kitchen for another beer, he added, “In fact, she lied to me the first time we met. She told me her name was Lara Smith.”
“Yes, I remember you mentioning that to me. And why did she lie about that? Hmm?”
“Okay, she said it was to get on the show without anyone knowing who her father is, but there’s a pattern here, Mom,” he insisted.
He twisted off the beer’s cap and tossed it in the direction of the trash can. It missed and pinged off a cabinet door before rolling across the floor.
“Did you ever think maybe you see a pattern because what Sheryl and Cole did to you has made it difficult for you to trust people, especially people you have feelings for?”
“Maybe,” he allowed.
He knew better than to argue with his mother. He was guaranteed to lose. Besides, she had a point, one that he had already considered. But the gap between what his head recognized and what his heart felt was not easily spanned.
“Do yourself a favor, Griffin, and give her the benefit of the doubt until the two of you can sit down and have a proper conversation.”
He hung up agreeing that he would, but when he went to bed that night, he still had not called Lara.
* * *
The week passed, and with it two more rounds of competition that saw another pair of chefs sent packing. Ryder stepped up his game and managed to stay out of the bottom three both times. Meanwhile, Finn and Lara remained in the top tier. Already, they had been targeted as the two to beat. As such, they found themselves largely ostracized in the greenroom. Even Flo and Kirby now kept their chitchat to a minimum. Ryder, of course, was happy to speak to them, as long as he was slinging insults. Lara had learned to tune him out. More difficult to tolerate, however, was the silence from Finn. It was deafening.
Every now and then, she would catch him watching her. But then his jaw would clench and his gaze would harden before sliding away.
She missed him. Deeply. And she mourned what might have been. She’d never admitted her feelings to him. She hadn’t even admitted them to herself. But she knew she’d been falling in love. And that realization, even unspoken, made her ache.
The days were long, the schedule grueling. While the actual cooking took up very little time, they spent hours at the studio, taping interview segments after the fact in which they discussed culinary techniques, recipes and ingredient choices, and even talked a little smack about their fellow competitors. Lara kept her comments to a minimum, even though the producers made it clear that tension and drama made for better ratings.
Tension. There was plenty of that between her and Finn.
The second week ended. Three more chefs were sent home, Kirby among them, bringing the number to six. On the following Monday, after another casualty was announced, Lara was outside waiting for a cab when she spied Finn exiting the building.
They still weren’t talking, but they’d brokered a truce of sorts. While Ryder and some of the other chefs hoarded ingredients, Finn always shared and vice versa.
Their gazes met and he nodded in quasi-greeting.
“That was a tough one,” she remarked.
“I can’t believe you pulled off such a complex entrée in forty minutes.”
A complete sentence as well as a compliment. The surprise must have shown on her face, because he added, “I’ve never doubted your ability in the kitchen, Lara. See you tomorrow.”
She swallowed hard as she watched him walk away. No, she thought, he’d just doubted her.
* * *
By the final week of competition, four chefs remained: Lara, Finn, Angel and Ryder.
“You’re going down,” Ryder assured her in the greenroom before the day’s competition began. “You’ve stayed on too long already.”
“We’ll see,” she replied mildly.
At her prep station half an hour later, she swore under her breath when Garrett announced they would have thirty minutes to prepare a dessert, and the celebrity chef who would be helping to score their dishes just so happened to be a renowned pastry chef.
“This sucks,” she heard Finn mutter.
“If you know how to make the shortbread your mom served at her party, you’ll be staying,” she murmured.
He glanced sideways, looking surprised and, she wanted to believe, grateful.
Lara wound up making an apricot tartlet with cinnamon-infused whipped cream.
“Your crust looks good,” Finn remarked after time was called.
“I’m worried it’s not flaky enough.”
“It’s fine.” He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “And thanks for the suggestion.”
He nodded toward his plates, where he’d turned shortbread cookies into sandwiches with a creamy raspberry filling and dipped one side in dark chocolate.
“I didn’t suggest all that.” She squeezed his hand back. “And nice plating, by the way.”
He’d included some fresh raspberries and a sprig of mint.
Half of his mouth
rose. “I just asked myself, ‘What would Lara do?’”
A little while later, after their desserts had been scored by the judges, the chefs once again stood at their stations, hands clasped in front of them, as Garrett read off the name of the latest casualty.
“Angel, I’m sorry, but you have been eliminated,” the host said, tilting his head to one side in feigned sympathy.
Under the set’s bright lights, the woman’s eyes glittered, not with tears, but with pure hatred.
“Blind tasting, my ass! I know what’s going on here.” She flipped Garrett her middle finger before pointing the neighboring digit in Lara’s direction. “We all know the judges have been told which dishes are hers so that she will wind up winning.”
“That’s not true,” Garrett replied mildly, although the complexion under his salon tan paled a little. “All of the judges commented that your ice cream was neither the right consistency nor sweet enough.”
Trying to reason with Angel now, however, was like trying to reason with a charging bull. She saw red and wasn’t about to stop until she had gored someone. She spouted out half a dozen more accusations, accompanied by language that a longshoreman would have hesitated to use. All of those four-letter words were going to have to be bleeped out before the segment aired on television. Fifteen minutes into her tirade, security was called to the set.
As two uniformed guards escorted Angel off the set, she warned Lara, “Watch your back, bitch!”
“That was unpleasant,” Garrett said, adjusting the French cuffs on his designer shirt.
Since several cameras were trained on Lara, waiting to catalog her reaction, she remained stoic. The network wanted drama, but she would be damned if she would provide any more of it than she already had.
After that, the chefs were sent home early. Angel’s unbecoming exit had cast a pall over the set. None of the contestants, judges or even the crew felt much like continuing with business as usual.
Lara’s plan was to go home, pour herself a glass of wine, draw a hot bath and then soak in it until her skin was shriveled and prunelike. She was surprised when she spotted Finn milling about near the curb, especially since she’d given him a good fifteen minutes of lead time.
