Romancing the Chef

by Robyn Amos

  Around two thirty in the morning, Ronnie’s telephone rang. Startled into full wakefulness, she grabbed the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “We have some action in the kitchens,” Ace said. “Someone came in and started tampering with your cakes and my royal icing. Etta’s products weren’t touched.”

  “Who was it?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She started to climb out of bed.

  “You don’t have to come down now.”

  “But my cakes. I have to bake new ones.”

  “No, you don’t. Garett is taking care of everything right now.”

  Ronnie blinked, still sleepy. “He’s going to bake more cake for me?”

  “No. It seems you and Etta are both doing round layer cakes. Her cakes are the same as yours. So he’s switching your tampered cakes with her fresh ones and doing the same with her royal icing and mine.”

  Ronnie frowned. “Is that the right thing to do? Maybe we should just report the whole thing and let the judges decide how to handle it.”

  “We can do that. But I’m in favor of giving Etta Foster a little taste of her own medicine. When she walks into her kitchen tomorrow, she’ll find the contaminated products she tried to make us use. Let’s see if she’s the star chef she thinks she is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look. You and I were able to make it through this competition despite working against the odds. If she’s going to beat us fair and square, that’s fine, but if she really deserves to win, she can triumph over the same odds we did.”

  “You’ve got a point there. But are you sure Garett can handle all of this by himself?”

  Ronnie didn’t like where her mind was going, but the thoughts came anyway. What if Garett only fixed Ace’s problem and left her at a disadvantage with Etta. Then Garett’s client, and his only real concern, Ace, would be a sure thing for the win.

  “I know you must be worried, Ronnie. But I promise, neither he or I would screw you over just to win. I’ve never worked that way, and despite his obvious flaws, Garett doesn’t either. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Okay,” Ronnie replied, still not completely comfortable with the fact that everything was in Garett’s hands now.

  “Besides, if everything isn’t just how it should be in your kitchen tomorrow, you can cry foul, and I’ll back you up,” Ace added. “We’ll take our chances with the judges and let them sort it out. But I hope you can trust me.”

  “It’s easier for me to trust you than it is for me to trust Garett.”

  “I know we don’t have the best track record, but I wouldn’t want to win if I had to do so at your expense. We’ve always had a friendly rivalry between us. I wouldn’t stoop to dirty tricks now. I’m not afraid to lose to you, Ronnie. If you make the best cake tomorrow, I’ll congratulate you. The fact that I plan to win doesn’t take away from that fact.”

  Ronnie smiled. Ace hadn’t ever shied away from a challenge in his life. Win or lose, he always fought hard.

  And even though he could talk a lot of trash, he’d never been a sore loser.

  She was going to have to trust him, because not doing so could cost her sleep, and she needed to put her best foot forward in the morning.

  “I believe you, Ace. See you in the morning. You’re going to need a good night’s rest to handle the butt-whooping I’m going to hand you tomorrow.”

  The morning of the competition was a blur of activity for Ronnie. The first thing she and LQ did was inspect their prebaked cakes. They were light, fluffy and perfect. If Ronnie hadn’t known better, she would have thought they were the cakes she’d baked herself.

  There was some commotion in Etta’s kitchen initially. She’d never seen a white-haired woman swear up such a blue streak.

  “They’ve been switched. Someone switched my cakes. Look at them. They’re falling apart.”

  Ronnie and LQ continued to work, and when the cameras arrived at her kitchen for her reaction to the accusations Etta was making, she played innocent.

  “It seems Etta didn’t bake a dense enough cake and now they’re falling apart. I wish her luck. It’s going to eat up a lot of her time if she has to start baking new cakes.”

  As the day went on, Ronnie heard that the judges had allowed Etta’s sous chef, her grandson Adrian, to purchase new cakes at the market for her to use in the competition.

  Beyond that, Ronnie didn’t have time to worry about what was going on in the other kitchens. She wanted her Eiffel Tower wedding cake to be a showstopper.

  At that moment, LQ was busy hand-pouring chocolate into the lattice shape of the top spire of the tower. Oncethe four sides of the candy pieces dried in the cooler, they would be constructed on top of the cake as the topper.

  Ronnie planned to paint the rest of the towers by hand on the four round tiers below. The hand-painting would be the most time consuming portion of the cake, but if she could do clean work, she knew the judges would appreciate the detail. Especially Kari Voegler, who was a stickler for craftsmanship.

  Now that all of her cake tiers were covered in smooth white fondant, she had a perfect blank canvas to showcase her artistry. Ronnie thought she had a genuine advantage in this leg of the competition, and she was excited to finally show what she could do under fair circumstances.

  Ace had finished constructing and carving the shape of his arch for the Arc de Triomphe, and now that he’d covered it in fondant it was time to start carving the sculptures that were all around the archway.

  If Ace had had more time, he would have special-ordered molds to fill with white chocolate to give a more authentic feel to his cake. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that opportunity, so he was going to have to get creative.

  He didn’t have dainty little fingers to make the sculptures freehand out of chocolate, so he had to use modeling chocolate to form the general shape of the relief sculpture and then paint on the details. The result was that some of the elements would appear flat instead of raised. But it was the best he could do in the time he had left.

  When the judges and the cameraman came around to his station, he had some tough questions to answer.

  Kari Voegler, one of the Food Fight’s toughest judges, asked him, “In the other kitchens we have the Cathédrale Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Do you think you’ve chosen a landmark that’s complex enough?”

  Ace smiled at Kari, but continued to work. “I’m not a pastry chef, so I chose something I thought I could do cleanly and completely in the allotted time. Hopefully, when you see my finished product, you’ll like what I’ve done.”

  It didn’t hurt to hope someone else in the competition messed up. There had been many cake challenges for the Food Fight where contestants didn’t complete their cakes, or only vaguely represented the sketch they’d started with.

  Ace and Marcel were working hard, so Ace had to hope that, along with the scores from his previous rounds, would be enough to put him over the edge.

  From the quick look he’d given Ronnie’s kitchen on his right, he could see that she was bringing her A game. He’d heard the interview she’d given about her chocolate spire at the top of the Eiffel Tower. With the delicate hand-painting she was doing on the cake, she was definitely the one to beat.

  He didn’t want to underestimate Etta Foster, but from the looks of her cake, she was grossly behind schedule. She had shed her grandmotherly image and was barking snide orders to her grandson. There were so many curse words flying out of her mouth, the producers had to warn her more than once.

  She’d constantly complained about her cakes and her royal icing, and at this late stage in the competition, her cake barely resembled the Cathédrale Notre Dame.

  But considering the fact that she’d won the first two rounds of the competition, it was possible that she’d take the top prize simply for completing her cake.

  If that happened, he was worried that Ronnie may regret her decision to go along with his plan to let
Etta drink herown medicine instead of trying to get her disqualified for cheating. But it was too late to turn back now.

  There were only two hours left before they’d have their answer. Ace and Marcel just had to keep working.

  Ronnie heard the audience counting down the clock just as she and LQ were trying to attach the chocolate spire to her Eiffel Tower cake. If they dropped it now, there was no time to make repairs.

  The last leg of the spire was glued to the cake with royal icing and Ronnie instructed LQ to let go. They both stood back from the cake just as the buzzer sounded.

  With a lump of pride in her throat, Ronnie surveyed her work. She’d carved the legs of the tower out of her round cake tiers, so that with all the layers stacked together, the Eiffel Tower appeared to be standing out from a round wedding cake. She’d meticulously piped the latticework of the tower’s rails in chocolate so that it blended with the chocolate spire at the top. She’d decorated the rest of the wedding cake with traditional white icing decorations so that the tower was the main focus of the cake.

  She’d never been more pleased with her work. She and LQ gave each other a high five. Now if she and LQ could just move the cake from their kitchen to the display table, Ronnie would be able to rest easy with the outcome of this competition, whatever it turned out to be.

  It was a safe bet that Etta Foster wouldn’t win this round. Her unfinished cake was being moved to the table as Ronnie awaited her own turn. Only half the elements in Etta’s cake had made it onto her finished product. There were gaps and drooping frosting on the cake.

  Ronnie watched as Etta and her grandson began to move their cake to the table. Etta was wearing a scowl that hadbeen on her face since the start of this round. She was still muttering under her breath as they approached the table.

  Adrian lifted his edge of the cake to move it over to the display table, but Etta seemed to give up at that point. A corner slipped out of her hand, and the cake dropped to the floor.

  There was a startled gasp in the audience, and the announcer continued. “Etta Foster’s entry is now just a pile of frosting on the floor. It’s hard not to wonder if the perfectionist in Etta just wouldn’t allow her to show an unfinished cake. Now we move to Ace Brown’s kitchen where he’ll be moving his Arc de Triomphe cake to the table.”

  With two strong men in that kitchen, no one was surprised when Ace and Marcel easily moved their showpiece to the table.

  Now the final round would definitely go to either Ace or Ronnie. All she had to do was move her cake without incident, and she’d be in the running to win one hundred thousand dollars.

  She and LQ each took two corners of the cake board and began to slide it off the counter. As soon as they began moving, her spire began to sway.

  As if their minds were connected telepathically, both she and LQ froze. “Slowly, LQ. Very slowly. Let’s move.”

  It was a delicate balancing act, but they took baby step after baby step toward the cake table. After what seemed like an eternity, Ronnie and LQ gingerly placed their cake on the table.

  When the board was in place, Ronnie clutched her chest in relief and the audience exploded with applause.

  Ronnie was riding a wave of elation as she and LQ entered the green room. It had been a long day, and afterthree very tough rounds, this competition was finally about to be over.

  The last to place her cake, Ronnie was also the last to enter the green room. As she came in, she was surprised to find Etta Foster yelling at Ace.

  Ace was sitting calmly as Etta ranted from across the room about her cake and icing being switched.

  Ronnie glared at the woman. “Etta, you may as well admit that you cheated. Everyone in this room knows that you did. There are no cameras in here. Just admit it.”

  Etta glared back at her in surprise.

  “It’s true,” Ace added. “Besides, how could you be so certain that your cake and icing had been switched, if you weren’t expecting our kitchens to have the contaminated products? We saw Adrian on camera, Etta. If you don’t want to admit the truth here in private, maybe you’d like to explain to the judges why Adrian was in our kitchens messing with our supplies last night.”

  Etta waved him off. “All right, all right. Why do you need me to say it out loud? You already know the truth.”

  Ronnie shook her head, confused. “I’d just like to know why a woman with your reputation in this industry would have to stoop to such low tactics. You’re world famous and practically the face of GTV. Why didn’t you go up against us fairly?”

  She snorted. “The face of GTV? Maybe I used to be. But when it was time to renew my show’s contract last month, the network told me they were going in a new direction. They want to pull in a younger demographic. Apparently I’m no longer relevant.”

  Ace tsked. “I’m sorry to hear that, Etta. But how does cheating to win help you stay relevant?”

  “I can’t afford to lose when they’ve already cancelled my show. I have to show that I can compete with you hotshotyoung chefs. I was planning to leverage this win into a pitch for a new show where I travel the country challenging young chefs to a cook-off.”

  Ronnie frowned. “Etta, if you feel you had to cheat in this competition, how were you planning to manage in your future challenges? Were you going to try to cheat your way through those, too? You’re a talented chef. I’m sure you could have won without the underhanded tactics.”

  The older woman scowled. “We’ll never know now. I guess it’s time for me to retire anyway. All this travel has made me realize that I’d rather be at home.”

  Before they could discuss the matter further, the chefs were being called back out for the announcement of the winner.

  Giving LQ a big hug, Ronnie left her with the other sous chefs backstage and lined up next to Ace and Etta for the announcement.

  The host began to recap their scores from the previous rounds, and discussed the judges’ comments on their cake presentations that day. Ronnie had received the highest praise of the day, but her scores going into this round were slightly below Ace’s. With Etta receiving no points for this round, it was mathematically impossible for her to win.

  Swallowing hard, Ronnie’s mouth went dry as she waited for the verdict.

  “The winner of Gourmet TV’s All-Star Food Fight …” The announcer paused for effect.

  Ace took Ronnie’s hand and squeezed. They exchanged tense looks, but still managed to share a smile.

  “With a final-round score just five points above the other chef, the winner of one hundred thousand dollars is Veronica Howard.”

  Chapter 19

  Her win didn’t start to sink in until LQ came out and a gold medal was placed over Ronnie’s and LQ’s heads, and they were presented with a giant check in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

  She gave LQ a tight squeeze, and then she felt someone’s hand on her back. It was Ace.

  “As soon as I saw that amazing cake you made, I knew you’d win. Congratulations. You deserve this,” he said, pulling her into a gentle hug.

  She hugged Ace back, not letting herself savor it the way she’d like to because the cameras were still rolling. “Thanks, Ace. You made me work for it.”

  Cara and her family came out of the audience to share hugs and kisses with her and LQ. “I knew you could do it! See, the next time I make a prediction, you’re going to have to listen to me.”

  A.J., Cara’s husband, kissed her on the cheek. “Now youcan come back home and the kids can have their favorite babysitter back.”

  At A.J.’s words, Ronnie realized that the fantasy was over. It hadn’t been all blue skies and roses, but it had been the best adventure of her life. But now it was over. And that meant it was time to face the realities of her relationship with Ace.

  Ronnie handed Cara’s baby girl back to her. In a few minutes she and LQ were due for follow-up interviews in the press room. She wanted to touch up her hair and makeup.

  As she turned away from her fri
ends, Ronnie was pulled into a hug. “Congratulations, Ronnie.”

  “Andre. What the—” She pulled away, backing out of his arms.

  “I always knew you were a winner. How about dinner to celebrate your big win? On you, of course. You’re the one with a hundred thousand dollars,” he said, laughing as though he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

  Ronnie scoffed. “You’re kidding me, right? You and I aren’t friends. Why would I go to dinner with you?”

  He leaned in and deepened his voice in the way that used to make her melt. “We could be friends again.”

  Now that tone just made her skin crawl. “No, thanks. Tonight I have my choice of dinner dates, and you’re not on the list.”

  His eyes became cold, and Ronnie braced herself. Finally, she recognized what a cruel person Andre had always been. Whatever he had to stay, she could handle.

  “Your choice, huh? I suppose your referring to the Sexy Chef himself. Are you two really a thing? I thought that was just some publicity stunt.”

  “Whatever we are to each other, it’s certainly none of your business.”

  “Sure, now that you’re skinny you can get a guy like that. But you’re a chef and you like to eat. Let’s be real. You probably won’t always be that slim. Where will he be when you gain all the weight back?”

  She swallowed hard. “I’m not going to—”

  “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But maybe you should be nicer to me. I’m the only one who wanted you when you were fat.”

  Feeling her face flash hot with anger, Ronnie opened her mouth, but before she could get any words out, Cara stepped to her side.

  “What are you doing here, Andre? Isn’t there a rock you should be crawling under?”

  Then an arm slid around her waist. It was Ace’s. He kissed her on the cheek. And when she turned to look up at him, he kissed her full on the mouth. “Are you ready to go out and celebrate your win? We can do it up big, inviting one and all, or we can make it more of an intimate celebration, courtesy of me, the Sexy Chef,” he said with a grin.