Fire In the Kitchen (21 page)

“You have to go and get changed, and make it snappy. We’re due to do a commercial in quarter of an hour.”

“Oh, they’re fun!” Cassidy jogged on the spot. “It’s all happening now, isn’t it? Give me a few minutes and I’ll see you there.”

“Before you go, there’s something I need to tell you. It happened just before you came back.” Dante hesitated before continuing. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like it, but I think you should know.”

“You know what, Dante, I am
so
sick of bad news.” Cassidy glanced at her watch. “I’m in a really good place. Can it wait ’til after the shoot?”

Dante reached for her hands and squeezed them. Their eyes met. He held her chin, kissed her gently on the lips, and she was sure there were little stars twinkling around them, even though it was daytime.

The kiss was over almost as soon as it began, but as he pulled away, Cassidy could still feel the tingle, as if his lips were still gently pressed to hers. She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him closer to her so roughly it surprised her. She kissed him with enthusiasm.

“Oh, Cassidy,” he groaned, pulling away. “You are so damned distracting, but let me talk to you for a second. It’s important. It’s about our last cook-off.”

She held her breath, wanting to pull him close to her again. Instead, she gathered all her strength left over from the kiss to give him her bravest smile. “Is it as bad as the fire? Do I need a stiff drink?”

Dante frowned as he looked away from her. He looked back again as if he’d made a decision. “You might want to get rid of that parsley stuck between your teeth before you go on camera. They’d have a field day with that one,” he said.

Relief filled Cassidy’s bones and seeped out of her pores. “Oh, how embarrassing!” She put her hand over her mouth and ran away from him as quickly as she could, eager to find her toothbrush before she came across anyone else.

Back in her room, Cassidy flashed her teeth in the mirror and saw the green bits stuck between her teeth as Dante must have seen them. Once upon a time, the serious Dante would have rolled his eyes and continued with what he was doing. She liked the subtle improvements in his demeanor. Sure, he was still stuck-up when it came to local food and keeping it deceptively simple when cooking it, but he was definitely lightening up.

She changed into the sea green chef’s outfit Dante had purchased for her and admired herself in the mirror. She was looking mighty fine in a chef’s outfit she would never have believed herself worthy of wearing. How had he managed to buy it for her while he was still in the competition?

A sharp rap on the door was followed by a loud voice, its tone suggested it didn’t expect an answer. “They’re waiting for you, Cassidy. Get down to set immediately, please.”

Cassidy checked her teeth in the mirror one more time and ran her finger over them, just in case, before dashing out the door.

The set was organized chaos, with lighting, cameras, and directions being flung around. Her name was being yelled out. She was used to it now.

“I’m here,” she called back. She was ordered to sit on a chair for her makeup and hair. They hadn’t done that in the first round of commercials. Perhaps there had been too many contestants to focus on.

A feminine man and a woman walked around and examined her features in the same way Sandra Bullock had been scrutinized in
Miss Congeniality
. Cassidy decided
Miss Congeniality
should be the order of the day. Although she wasn’t one for heavy makeup, particularly the awful bright scarlet lipstick she’d agreed to wear, she figured they knew what they were doing.

She drew the line, however, when they started discussing spraying auburn highlights into her hair. Cassidy did not want to look even remotely like Valerie.

Dante approached and took a cursory glance at her made-up appearance. He pursed his lips. Miffed, the male makeup artist asked him what seemed to be the problem.

“She’s too beautiful for tacky red lipstick. You need to be more subtle.” He pointed to a bronze color on the palette. “How about that one?”

“Thank you,” Cassidy mouthed at Dante as the others became intent on finding another shade.

“You’re welcome,” he mouthed back, and watched as the change of lip color was made.

Cassidy looked at herself in a handheld mirror and smiled.

“Better,” Dante agreed and held out his hand to help her down from the high-legged chair she’d been sitting on. “Come and check out the new sets.”

Cassidy grinned as she saw two side-by-side benches. One was stainless steel and spotless enough to eat off. It was adorned with a piece of modern art in the form of a delicious antipasto platter copied from Dante’s original competition dish, and a glass of champagne.

The other bench was made of rustic wood and it had deep creases in it, made by knives cutting directly onto it. It was splattered with flour, broken eggshells, milk, and a bottle of not-so-discreetly-placed branded maple syrup.

Wordlessly, Dante stood behind the messy bench and Cassidy behind the tidy one. Cassidy looked around the room as if it were the most natural place she should be and then put on her apron and straightened it. She was careful not to look at Dante because she knew the laughter would ruin her makeup.

“Very funny, guys. Swap places.” Eric obviously didn’t have their sense of humor. “Time is money, people, move it.”

Without further ado, they traded places, trailed by the hair and makeup teams and the lighting technicians, all holding things up against their faces.

“Right, Cassidy.” The person behind the camera walked up to her. “I want you to pick up the maple syrup and hold it so the label is facing outward for the camera. But don’t make it too obvious, we want it to be a subliminal cue for our viewers. Got it?”

Cassidy held up the syrup. “How’s this?”

“Lower,” he responded. “Lower…bit higher. Got it. Now, move your chin down a bit. Shoulders back. You got it. Thanks.”

They encouraged her to smile and be herself, suggesting she might even cook up a batch of pancakes because the ingredients were all there. They started filming.
I could get used to this,
Cassidy thought as she got into the spirit and flipped a pancake high in the air.
I’m a new brand of show-off.
She wasn’t sure about the brand of dessert syrup because of the artificial flavors, but she decided it was a small price to pay for finishing the competition.

Her time in the spotlight was over quickly, but her cooking energy had been reignited. She sat on a nearby chair to watch the rest of the commercial being filmed, and accepted a glass of wine as her reward for getting through it relatively unscathed, at least in the producers’ eyes. She took a sip and wished she could have a morsel from the antipasto plate in front of Dante.

During Dante’s shoot, his fiery temper returned in full force. Things had been going quite smoothly until they’d asked him to hold up the packet of processed supermarket ham for the cameras.

“That is not what I used for the platter.” He picked up a cold piece of the meat and wagged it in the air as if it were a dead mouse. Cassidy stifled a giggle she knew would be unwelcome. “Look at it,” he continued. “It’s processed rubbish from who knows where. I wouldn’t feed it to a stray dog.”

“That’s not the point, Dante, and you know it. Stop trying to play us.” Eric sounded even angrier than Dante. “Can’t you just pretend to like it so we can move on? You know we’re going to show this brand of ham on the commercials whether you like it or not. Just get over yourself.”

Cassidy knew his answer wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Put my name to this and I’m out, you rude son of a bitch. I’ve told you how I feel about this. We had a deal.”

“It’s only one more episode,” Eric spat back. “Your threats can’t penetrate these walls the way they did at your own place when you treated your staff like puppets. Yes, we’ve heard all about your dictatorship.”

Cassidy could have played a tune in time with the nerve pumping up and down in Dante’s neck. She got up and walked over to him with a placating palm toward the producer. She pushed Dante’s short dark hair behind his ear.

“Don’t let them win by making you angry,” she whispered into it. “Just let them put the ham on the end of the bench and grin and bear it. How can I say I beat the maestro Dante tomorrow in our final challenge if you’re not there? Can’t we make it all about me?”

She smiled at him, and he bent down until their foreheads touched. In that moment, no one else existed.

“Just breathe,” she continued in a low voice. “You’re almost there. Compromise, humor them a bit. I have to leave you so I can practice for tomorrow’s final, it’s getting late. So suck it up, Dante. We’ve come this far, please don’t leave now. Not like this. Okay?”

“A-O-K.” He made a small circle with his thumb and index finger.

“People always say ‘A-O-K’,” Cassidy replied. “Have you ever heard anyone say ‘B-O-K’? Because I truly want you to
be okay.
”

“Thanks, Cassidy.” He kissed her on the cheek and she knew that was her signal to leave him alone to cook. She picked up the ham and put it on the far edge of the cooking bench and winked at him. The producer put his hands in the air and pointed his index finger at the cameraman to continue.

Cassidy knew they needed these ads to be good, and the sooner they finished them, the sooner they could show them during prime time. If she heard ‘it’s all about the ratings’ one more time, she thought she might scream.

She left them to it as she made her way to the commercial kitchen. Tomorrow they could cook whatever they liked, but she had no idea how much time would be allocated to them. Therefore, she needed to have a few more dishes in her repertoire. She had to use the time they gave her wisely. They would mark her down if she chose a recipe that had too much of a steady pace without any time pressures, and likewise if she chose a dish too challenging within the time allotted and she couldn’t finish it.

When Cassidy arrived in the main kitchen, she looked around it with a sense of accomplishment. She’d made it to the final challenge. She’d cooked against award-winning chefs and come out as one of the top two. It was a privilege for her to have made it this far alongside a man with extraordinary talents, a man she adored. She was going to do him proud with her newfound independence, and perhaps just a small leap of faith. Cassidy decided on an entrée, main course, and dessert, with all three dishes complementing each other, in case they had a couple of hours to cook an entire meal.

She wasn’t worried too much about the dessert. She’d used the citrus pudding recipe her mother had found on the floor and given her, and she’d adapted it to make it more special. She was glad she’d brought the scrap of paper with her to the competition, otherwise it would have been lost in the fire.

Satisfied she’d done enough, she turned off the kitchen lights and yawned as she made her way to bed.

Cassidy looked at the three flights of stairs leading to her well-deserved night’s sleep. Her feet were killing her and her shoulders were stiff from leaning over the bench. If she were handed a pillow, she’d be happy to fall asleep right where she was.

Her mind was full of the order of food she had to prepare the next day without the aid of notes…
Dante
…the knives she had to sharpen…
Dante
…sleeping through the night without being excited about the next day…and
Dante, Dante,
Dante
. Once she’d made the decision she could trust him again, the rest had been easy.

Exhausted, she looked up at the numerous steps again. What if she bit the bullet and just raced up them? Her mind was willing, but her body resisted. She was going to have to give in to it, she thought, as she grasped the handrail and made her way up, one long weary step at a time.

As she reached the top, she heard footsteps clacking on the hard, wooden floors. They were approaching fast and they could belong to only one person: her best friend…
not.
Did she have time to race back down the stairs to get away from her? Maybe, but the thought of climbing the stairs again was too painful to consider.

Valerie rounded the corner and they came face to face.

“Cassidy, daaarling, so good to have you back.”

This woman is everywhere I don’t want her to be.

“Hi, Valerie. How are you?”

“I’m wonderful, thank you. How did the commercial go?”

“Good, thanks.” Cassidy’s smile was forced and she wondered how much polite chit-chat was necessary before she could excuse herself and get as far away from Valerie as possible.

“Dante give the producers a hard time over the sponsors?” Valerie said with too much familiarity in her tone.

Hands off, lady
.

“Yes, he did, I’m afraid.” Cassidy sighed.

“Oh well, he won’t have to worry about that after tomorrow,” Valerie said. She formed a small ‘o’ with her mouth and put her hand over it, as if she had divulged too much information.

“He will if he wins,” Cassidy responded. “He’ll have to promote more products than ever. The promoters will be scrambling to get him to cook with their products, but he probably has a few plans up his sleeve to ensure he doesn’t have to endorse them directly.”

Oversharing. Way to go, Cass.

“Cassidy, Cassidy.” Valerie let the pins out of her hair and shook it so it fell over her shoulders. She looked sexy, and Cassidy could see what Dante had been attracted to. “If you’re intimate with a man, you need to know what makes him tick.”

Sensibility took over. She knew Dante. She knew the way he felt when they were together, physically and emotionally.

“I know his passion is the Slow Food movement. I know he encourages and cooks with fresh local produce. I know he’ll do everything he can to endorse that way of life, and he’s sacrificed a lot in his life to promote it.”

“Yes, he’s even sacrificing winning against you tomorrow.” Valerie’s smile was insincere. “Did you know the only way you were going to be allowed to return to the competition was if Dante agreed to let you win?”