Chapter 45
The camera crew and her own entourage were waiting on the porch of the lodge when Gina drove up in her golf cart. One of the cameramen ran toward the cart, followed by the sound man, who was wielding an ominous-looking boom mike aimed right at her.
“And, rolling,” Barry called.
“Noooo!” Gina cried, shielding her face with both arms. “Not like this! I’m a mess. I look like who-shot-Sally.”
“Exactly,” Barry said, walking over to the cart, trailed by all the others. “Reality is the new reality, sweetheart. We want the viewers to see that you’ve really had to battle in this food fight. And believe me, that’s obvious right now.”
“Ohmigod, Geen,” Lisa said, lifting up a lock of Gina’s salt-stiffened hair and dropping it just as quickly. “What happened? I mean, no offense, but you look like Swamp Thang.”
“I got wet,” Gina said, climbing wearily out of her cart. “And before that I got sunburned, and bit by bugs, and pinched by crab claws, and then slapped in the face with every branch and blade of saw grass on this island.”
“We were starting to get worried about you,” Scott said, taking the bucket of crabs from the cart. “Moody got back here thirty minutes ago. The man is unbelievable. He killed a pig. An honest-to-God pig. Hey, what happened to your shoes?” he asked, looking down at her bare feet, which were scratched and filthy.
“Okay, people,” Barry said, clapping his hands for attention. “We can play twenty questions later. Right now, I need everybody out of camera range, because we have got a show to shoot.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” D’John said, elbowing the others aside as he wielded a spray bottle and a comb. “You are not letting the world see this tragedy until I do something with this hair and makeup. Not D’John’s client. Oh, no. I’m not having people associate my name with a woman who looks like she got beat up with a homely stick.”
“Flatterer,” Gina muttered under her breath.
“You can do something about her hair and wipe some of the crud off her face, but other than that, I want her left as is,” Barry said, relenting a little. “And you’ve got five minutes. I want her in the kitchen, cooking, in five minutes. So hurry.”
“Hurry,” Scott said tersely. “The clock’s running.” He grabbed Lisa’s arm. “And could you please get your sister some shoes?”
“Hurry,” Gina said, as D’John combed watered-down conditioner through her tangled hair. “I’m so far behind, I’ll never catch up. What did Tate look like when he got here?”
D’John shuddered. “He looked ghastly! Blood all over his clothes, and those cuts and bruises. If I were the type for rough trade, honey, I would have been all over him. But I’m not, and I wasn’t.”
Lisa hurried over with a bowl of hot water and a soapy cloth, and began gently dabbing at her sister’s face. She stepped out of her sandals and slid them onto her sister’s feet. “It was awesome, Geen. He looked kinda like Mel Gibson in one of those battle scenes from Braveheart. Only Tate’s taller than Mel. And hotter. Much hotter. You know, his shirt was kinda ripped open and his hair was all wild and windblown. I swear to God—”
“Enough!” Gina said.
“Enough,” Barry decreed. “Stand back, everybody.”
The smell of roast pork greeted her when she finally made her way to the ballroom and the kitchen set.
Tate looked calm and collected—and clean—as he nonchalantly chopped onions and added them to a sauté pan.
“Hey, Reggie,” he said, taking in her disheveled appearance. “Long day, huh?”
“The longest,” she agreed. “Heard you’re serving pork for dinner. Not bad.”
He shrugged. “I got lucky. What about you?”
She had already resolved not to ask him how he’d managed to kill a pig. No, she would not give him that satisfaction.
“Not that lucky,” she admitted. “I managed to catch some blue crabs and scrounge up some vegetables. So don’t count me out yet.”
“Never.”
She bustled around the kitchen, putting a stockpot full of water and seasonings on to boil for the blue crabs, shucking the corn and putting it on to boil, and lining up all the ingredients she’d need for the menu she’d assembled in her head on the ride back to the lodge.
“Nice-looking tomatoes,” Tate murmured from his side of the kitchen.
“Quiet,” Barry thundered. Turning to the cameramen, he looked annoyed. “Cut here. And Tate, buddy, no more chitchat. You guys are supposed to be mortal enemies, right? I don’t want our viewers suspecting collusion.”
“I don’t know about her viewers, but mine wouldn’t know collusion if it bit ’em on the ass,” Tate said.
Gina shot him a surprised but grateful look, and then the cameras were rolling again, and the big digital clock was ticking off the minutes.
The rest of the hour was a blur. She whisked together a quick topping of crumbled sugar, butter, flour, and cinnamon to top the dewberries she’d spotted only a few hundred yards down the path from the lodge. She sprinkled sugar on the berries, added the topping, and thrust the cobbler into the oven.
When the crabs had finished boiling, she dumped them on the counter and began furiously picking the meat from the shell, setting the heat-reddened backs aside.
Gina’s hands shook slightly as she diced celery and onions and dropped them into a skillet to sauté. In the pantry, she found a box of saltines, grabbed a sleeve of them, and pounded them into crumbs with the bottom of a can of tomatoes. She folded the cracker crumbs into the softened vegetables and added half the crabmeat, an egg, and some of the crab boil seasonings.
She carefully spooned the crab mixture into the crab backs, and placed them on a baking sheet. Just before placing them in the oven, she sprinkled the chopped chives over each deviled crab, and dribbled melted butter over each one.
When the corn had cooled, she scraped the kernels from the corncobs and dumped them into a pan of simmering cream and butter, then added in a cup of the crabmeat, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Her stomach growled at the tantalizing smell of cooked pork wafting from Tate’s kitchen. If only, she thought, she had a bit of pork fat to throw into her chowder. And maybe a hit of sherry to give some depth to the chowder’s flavor.
She shot Tate a surreptitious look. He was peering into his oven. “You got any sherry over there?”
“Nope,” he said, not looking up. “But I saw a bottle in the bar in the library.”
“No time,” she said with a sigh, cutting up the tomatoes, cukes, and peppers for a southern version of chopped salad.
“I’ve got five minutes till my tenderloin comes out,” he said, and then he was running off the set, headed for the library.
“Hey!” Barry called. “Where the Christ do you think you’re going? We’re shooting a show here, dude.”
“Library. Be right back,” Tate called over his shoulder.
Less than a minute later, he was back, a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a bottle of sherry in the other.
“Thanks, Tate,” Gina said softly, hoping the boom mike wouldn’t pick up her words. “Really. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. But I’d been thinking about grabbing that bourbon anyway, to use in the glaze for my pork tenderloin,” he said.
“Five minutes,” Barry intoned. He was on camera now, standing in front of the kitchens, supplying commentary to the furious action going on right behind him.
“Our chefs are at the make-or-break point right now,” he said in a golf whisper. “Tate Moody appears to have his dishes out of the oven and ready to plate. Right now he’s whisking some bourbon into the pan his pork tenderloin cooked in, deglazing the pan drippings. With the remnants of the fig and cracked pepper glaze, that should make a unique sweet-and-savory pan gravy for the pork.”
Gina heard Adelman’s commentary, but she didn’t dare look up from her own kitchen to see her rival’s progress. She yanked open the oven door and took out the dewberry cobbler
, setting it on the counter to cool. But when she grabbed the baking sheet with the deviled crabs, one went skidding off the pan and onto the floor.
“Oh, too baaad!” Barry crowed. “Party foul for Fresh Start chef Gina Foxton.” And now the cameras and mikes were aimed at her. “She’s got three judges to feed, and only five deviled crabs now,” Barry observed. “Can she turn this tragedy into a triumph?”
Gina forced a smile. She placed three of the remaining crabs on three dinner plates, then scooped the crab out of the two extra shells and divided the extra crabmeat between the three plates, mounding the crab higher now on each. She spooned the chopped salad onto the plates alongside the deviled crabs, and quickly showered each dish with a confetti of chopped chives.
“One minute left,” Barry said breathlessly. “Can she do it? Can she get everything plated and on the judge’s table with so little time left?”
“Bite me!” she wanted to scream. But instead, she ladled the corn and crab chowder into shallow soup bowls and splashed a little sherry into each bowl. Grabbing a tray, she ferried the plates and bowls to the judge’s table, then ran back to retrieve the cobbler.
The buzzer went off just as she placed the steaming hot cobbler onto the table.
“And…time!” Barry yelled.
Chapter 46
Tate watched the judges’ faces carefully. Their dishes had been delivered to the judges for what Adelman called a blind tasting, and he fervently hoped that justice would, indeed, be blind.
Deidre Delaney lifted a tiny forkful of the tenderloin, held it in front of her nose, and sniffed delicately. She turned the fork this way and that, put the fork down, made a note on a clipboard beside her plate, picked the fork up again, and finally took a bite.
She chewed slowly, closing her eyes, nodding thoughtfully. She made another note, then took a tiny bit of the sweet potato fritter and tasted, nodding some more.
“Overcooked,” she pronounced. “Not to mention clichéd.”
At least, Tate thought, she wasn’t holding her nose or gagging.
Beau Stapleton had taken a knife and was quite deliberately separating out all the elements of his dishes before tasting, like a kid pushing the peas aside from the mashed potatoes on a school lunch plate. He’d take a bite, chew, take a healthy swig of the wine on the table by his plate, and then take another bite.
Toni Bailey, on the other hand, pulled her plate toward her and happily dug in, attacking the pork and sweet potatoes with reckless abandon, the way southern cooking was meant to be approached, he’d decided.
“Nice,” she said aloud, scribbling a note on the clipboard at her place. “The meat is tender and flavorful, and I love the fig and pepper glaze. I’m gonna have to steal that idea, for sure.”
“Looks like you’ve got at least one fan,” Gina said.
They were sitting off camera, watching the judges from a couple of folding chairs they’d dragged up to one of the monitors at the assistant producer’s table.
“Thanks, Reggie,” he said, glancing over at her.
Adelman had called for a break between shots, and she’d hurried off the set. Fifteen minutes later, she was back, showered and changed into clean clothes—a brightly flowered cotton sundress and sandals. She wore little or no makeup, and with her still-damp hair and sunburn, she looked like a teenager just back from spring break in Panama City Beach.
Zaleski was hovering around her, trying to get her to eat some of the sandwiches and fruit that Iris and Inez had sent over for the cast and crew, but she just waved him away.
“I can’t eat anything. I’m too nervous. And all your fluttering around isn’t helping. So please, just leave me be.”
When Zaleski had wandered away, Tate yawned widely. “You’re not hungry? I’m starved. I could eat that whole cobbler of yours.”
“Maybe later. Not that it matters. You’ve won this round,” she said, not taking her eyes off the judges. “But don’t count me out yet.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he replied. “Check out Deidre’s face. She doesn’t look overly impressed. And she’s hardly touched anything.”
“Yeah, but Toni Bailey’s digging on your stuff.”
“What’s with this Stapleton dude?” Tate asked. “I can’t tell whether he likes it or hates it. Do you know anything about him? Ever eaten in one of his restaurants?”
“Just once, unfortunately,” Gina said, tucking a strand of damp hair behind one ear. “Let’s just say it was a memorable experience. For both of us.”
“Look,” Tate said. “They’re starting in on your soup.”
“It’s probably cold by now,” she fretted.
Deidre Delaney lifted a spoon to her lips and tasted. “Beautiful presentation,” she said, lifting up one of the chive blossoms Gina had floated on top of the soup bowl. “And the silkiness of the corn doesn’t overwhelm the delicacy of the crabmeat. Although I would have liked a little heat to the finish.”
“Daggumit,” Gina said. “I should have added one of Iris’s peppers. But I was worried about repeating too much of the deviled crab flavors.”
Toni Bailey wasn’t stopping to make notes. She was lapping up the soup like a contented kitten, not stopping until her bowl was empty.
“Now that’s a winner,” she declared. “The essence of southern summer flavors. It’s easy to get too precious with all this layering of flavors that’s the hot ticket right now. But this chef understands that simple, fresh ingredients don’t need any embellishments.”
Gina let out the breath she’d been holding and beamed proudly. “She really gets my food,” she said.
“You must be joking,” Beau Stapleton declared, pushing his nearly full bowl aside. “I can’t believe either of you liked the chowder. It was watery, insipid. Lacking in imagination. And,” he said, holding out his spoon with a flourish, “I found a huge chunk of crab shell in my bowl. If a line cook in one of my restaurants pulled a rookie stunt like that, I’d fire them on the spot.”
Gina clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “I was in such a hurry, I must have missed it. That’s it,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “He’s right. I blew it.”
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Tate said, patting her knee. “It’s just one dish. And the other two seemed to love the chowder.”
“No,” Gina said, shaking her head emphatically. “He knows which dishes are mine. And he won’t let me win. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not saying you don’t deserve to win this round,” she said quickly. “I mean, you went out with a kid’s fishing pole and a glorified butter knife and somehow managed to come back with a pork tenderloin. It was totally MacGyver.”
“Shh,” one of the sound tech guys told them. “We’re rolling here.”
“Sorry,” they both whispered.
Beau Stapleton reached for the next plate on the table. “Crab again?” he said nastily.
Gina jumped up. “I can’t watch any more of this. I’m about to jump out of my skin.”
“Shhh!” Barry Adelman glared at her.
He found her on the front porch of the lodge, prowling back and forth.
She stopped in her tracks when she caught sight of him. “Is it over? What did they say?”
Tate had to laugh. “Would you relax? They finished deconstructing your deviled crabs, and Barry gave everybody a break before they come back to dessert.”
“What’d they say?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to get any more depressed than I already am.”
“Toni loved ’em, Deidre would have liked ‘a little more heat.’ The woman probably puts jalapeños on her oatmeal.”
She had to ask. “And Beau?”
“Can’t understand why you used so much breading. ‘A little seasoning and a lot of crab—that’s all they need.’ That’s the gospel according to Beau.”
“I only used the barest minimum of cracker crum
bs!” she wailed. “You’ve got to have something as a binder. Anyway, that’s the authentic Eutaw Island recipe for deviled crabs.”
He shrugged. “I think maybe you’re right. The dude just doesn’t like you. Or your food. But don’t let it bother you. Deidre Delaney’s not exactly president of the Tate Moody fan club.”
“Really? She knows you?”
“We’ve met,” he said succinctly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just that we’re probably in a draw. Deidre hates my guts, Stapleton’s got it in for you. That makes Toni the wild card.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Gina said, pacing again. Then she stopped and whirled around. “Hey! What’s up with that? Why are you suddenly on my side?”
“It’s not so sudden,” he said.
They heard a horn beeping then, and turned to see D’John speeding toward them on a golf cart.
He pulled alongside the porch. “All right, you two,” he drawled. “Barry wants you back at the set ASAP. The judges are ready to score the first round. But first, I have got to find a way to make both of you look presentable.”
Tate bowed in Gina’s direction. “Age before beauty,” he said with a grin.
Chapter 47
D’John was brushing powder over Gina’s face—a shame, Tate thought, to cover up those freckles—when Lisa strolled into the makeup room.
“Hey!” she started.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Gina said glumly. “I lost.”
“Who knows?” Lisa said, hopping into the empty chair next to her sister and uncapping a bottle of water. “The judges have been bickering for an hour now.”
“What are they saying?” Tate asked.
“I can’t really hear anything. But that Deidre chick threw a glass of wine in Beau Stapleton’s face a little while ago. And not long after that, the black lady—Toni? She got so mad she stomped off the set and Zeke had to go get her and beg her to come back.”
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