Gator Bowl (8 page)

Alex Pardini's assistants had set up a little café table for two with an umbrella that boasted his network's affiliation.

I usually had a few small tables and chairs with me when I went out each morning. They were for my customers when I had to park where there weren't places to sit. I thought people liked it when you gave them some extra consideration.

I'd had to leave them at home for the race.
No furniture outside the food truck.
There was a whole
book
of rules to follow. I had to keep reminding myself—
fifty thousand dollars
.

“Come on over and let's get started,” Alex invited. He was a photogenic thirtyish man with thick blond hair and remarkable blue eyes. I'd noticed, watching him on TV, that he always wore blue to emphasize them.

“I'm Alex.” He shook my hand. “It's nice to meet you,
Joey
.”

I smiled. The names
did
sound a lot alike. Just think how many names he had to remember, bless his heart.

“My name is
Zoe
Chase. Thanks for having me here.” I sat down in the chair opposite him and crossed my legs.

“Fair enough,
Zoe
.” He grinned; another man who realized how handsome he was. “Let's talk about your life as a food truck vendor, shall we?”

Before a word could come out of my mouth, my sponsor, Chef Art Arrington, came around the corner of the Biscuit Bowl.

His assistant, Lacie, a nervous little woman with huge glasses who wore her skirts too short, managed to make it to the table right before he did. She quickly put out a chair for him.

“All right! I love interviews, don't you?” Chef Art was famous in Mobile. He was like Colonel Sanders and Papa John rolled into one short, round body and white linen suit. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“I'm sorry,” Alex said. “I wasn't expecting a sponsor.”

“That's quite all right, my boy. No harm done.”

“I mean, this interview is
supposed
to be between me and the
vendor
.”

“Not a problem. I'll sit back here and take it all in. Zoe, you give the man the answers he needs now, you hear?”

Chef Art had always been a larger-than-life figure in my hometown. He lived on an old estate called Woodlands outside Mobile where he entertained famous people from across the world in his mansion.

His wreath of white hair, bright blue eyes, and closely clipped gray beard were well known throughout the South. He'd once owned a famous restaurant back home. It was so famous that investors had asked him to open another one just like it in New York City.

That one had failed, but it hadn't tarnished his legend. Everyone knew him and admired him. Someday, I wanted to be just like him—except for the beard and the linen suit.

“Okay.” Alex nodded to the cameraman who was to my left. “Let's get started.”

There were several adjustments that had to be made because the light wasn't good for Alex. I tried to wait patiently.

The street behind us was starting to pick up traffic. I glanced at my watch. It was five
A.M.
If he was going to talk to me, he'd better do it. I wasn't losing the first challenge because my interview ran late. Staying on time was one of the rules.

“Zoe, how did you get started with your food truck?” Alex asked—
finally
.

“Well, Alex, I really wanted my own restaurant, but I couldn't afford to open one. I started the Biscuit Bowl for an investment in my future, and because I wanted to cook for people.”

Chef Art cleared his throat. “She's my protégé, you know. I'm
very
proud of her.”

Alex glared at him but continued the interview. “Tell us what a biscuit bowl is, Zoe.”

I described, in detail, what a biscuit bowl was and what I could do with it. My speech should've been perfect—I'd been practicing for a week.

It went off without a hitch.

“That sounds really good,” Alex encouraged me. “I'd like to have one, and I'm sure our audience at home would like to see me eat one.”

Eat one?
Take another biscuit out of my stash as we struggled to reach one hundred biscuits for the challenge?

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. What else could I do?

Delia had been watching from the open doorway. She removed her chef's hat so her long, silky dark hair fluttered around her shoulders in the early morning breeze.

“Here you are, Alex.” She handed him a biscuit bowl, bending over to show a little cleavage.

The camera zoomed in that way because it was close to the biscuit,
of course
.

“Thanks.” He couldn't take his eyes off her. The biscuit, orange with sweet potato in it, was in his hand. It stayed there for a full minute as he smiled at her.

The cameraman cleared his throat. Chef Art chuckled.

“Let's take a big bite.” Alex studied the filling. “What's inside of here, Zoe?”

I couldn't think for a minute.
What are we filling the biscuits with today?

Delia, now off camera, made a circle around her face with her hands and puffed out her cheeks.

“Apples. Spiced apples,” I said as she nodded.
Smart girl.

“Here we go.” Alex took a
big
bite.

The biscuit bowl stayed together, one of my fears about adding sweet potato to it. He chewed and swallowed. He was looking at Delia. She blew him a kiss, but his words of praise were for my biscuit bowl. “Deelish!”

It was Alex's favorite way to express how much he liked a food when he ate it. I'd watched him say it on Food TV for a year.

Chef Art was beaming. The interview was over. I was quickly shuttled away from the table and chairs so they could be moved to the next food truck.

Alex thanked me—and asked for Delia's cell phone number.

“I'll tell her you're interested.”

He was okay with that and gave me his card. “Talk to you later, Zoe. Good job!”

I went back inside my food truck and gave Delia his card.

“You sounded great,” she said. “I think he really liked the biscuit bowl.”

“And the woman who brought it out to him.” I grinned. “Thanks for rescuing me during my brain glitch.”

“That was
my
idea,” Uncle Saul said. “Ain't nothin' better than good food and a pretty woman.”

“How do we stand on our biscuit count?”

“We're halfway there.” Ollie yanked another tray of biscuits out of the oven.

“Great! Let's make sure all the fillings are ready. We need to be able to hit the ground running at six.”

Uncle Saul stroked his jaw. “You know, I was thinking—two of us can sell while two of us stay here and keep making food.”

“We could do that. There's nothing in the rules against it. Great idea! I don't know what to say about the filling. I'd planned for hot fillings, but we can't run the microwave and the oven at the same time.”

“We could start with cold,” Ollie added. “We've got apple and raisin filling that won't have to be warmed. They didn't say what had to go inside, right? Then we can move into the cheese and bacon filling.”

“Absolutely.” I smiled at my team. “You're the best!”

Chef Art joined us, the Airstream leaning a little lower with all five of us inside. “You did good out there, Zoe. Sounded like a pro. Make me proud this morning.” He reached toward the pile of biscuits on the side shelf. “I'd like to have one of these.”

“Get in line at six.” Ollie slapped his hand.

Chef Art didn't look too pleased about that. “I oughta—”

I rushed in to keep that drama from happening. “We need one hundred biscuits. We're working
really
hard to get that right now. Every biscuit counts.”

“What's the problem?” He shot an angry glance at Ollie but let it go.

I explained the situation to him. He offered to bake some of the biscuits in his RV, which was double the size of mine and had a huge kitchen in it. It was a nice idea, but we'd lose if we did it. “The rules say that all the food has to be made in the food truck.”

“Crazy rules.” He shook his head. “Where's Delia's hat?”

“She'll put it back on.”

“Too bad she wasn't wearing it on camera. The audience would've gone wild.”

When he was gone, Ollie laughed. “What's he talking about? The audience wanted to see
Delia
. They didn't care what she was wearing.”

Delia smiled at him as she adjusted her chef's hat on her head again. “You always say the
nicest
things.”

Ollie frowned. “You know what I mean. You'd look good if you were wearing a hat or not.”

Uncle Saul laughed as he put in a new tray of biscuits.

I was about to rein in the banter before I lost Ollie and Delia when I heard a loud howling sound from the passenger seat at the front of the food truck.

Crème Brûlée!

I ran past everyone and outside to the passenger side door. Before getting the Biscuit Bowl set up for the race, I could walk between the driving and cooking areas. Because we had to add extra items, like the oven, and modify the back area to hold four people, the spot was closed now.

“I'm so sorry I forgot about you,” I said to my very large white-and-tabby-colored Persian cat. He was lying on his back with his large paws up in the air. “I know. You're hungry. Let's come outside for a few minutes.”

I strapped him into his harness—no mean feat since he kept rolling back and forth on the seat and batting at me with his paws.

“You know, you didn't want to stay with my mother. This is what happens when you go on an extended road trip. You have to get out of the RV and walk around a little in the soft grass and go potty.”

It took both arms to carefully lift him out of the seat and put him in a nice patch of grass next to the Biscuit Bowl.

He'd given me grief all the way up here from Mobile, wanting his familiar litter box. So far, no accidents on the seat. I was hoping that wouldn't change.

I couldn't really walk him to the grassy spot. He hated the harness and started meowing loudly and chewing on it. It was hard to imagine that he could bend his big body enough to reach the material with his mouth, but he could.

I was pretty sure there were lots of things he pretended he couldn't do so that I'd do them for him. He was devious that way.

I set him down in the grass and waited, holding his harness. I was worried that he might sneak off and get lost. Crème Brûlée never
ran
anywhere—I was safe from that problem.

He looked up at me from the grass and sweetly meowed.

He was so
cute
! But I had to be tough with him. “Just get it over with already. Then you can go back inside and eat your breakfast. Don't be so stubborn.”

I heard shouting from inside the food truck parked in front of ours. Something slammed on the floor and broke. I grabbed Crème Brûlée, hoping he was done with his private business, and walked up to the Dog House.

The Dog House was the only other food truck from Mobile that had made the cut for the race. I thought it was probably the cuteness of the truck, which was made to actually look like a dog, with a face on the front and a tail sticking out the back.
Ingenious.

I knew the owner, Reggie Johnson. He wasn't so cute. He was greasy, with a lank ponytail sticking out of the back end of his baseball cap. He had bad acne scars, most of his teeth were missing, and his nose was twisted like he'd broken it a dozen times.

He wasn't a very nice person, either. There were several times back home that he'd zoomed in and cut me off for a prime location at the police station or down by the docks where the tourists disembarked from the cruise ships.

He'd come into the Biscuit Bowl a few times and stood around telling me nasty jokes while he stared at my butt. Altogether not my kind of person. I wasn't exactly thrilled when he was announced as a contestant for the race.

The two male voices in the trailer were still arguing. As crazy as it seemed, it sounded like Reggie and Alex Pardini. I knocked on the back door. “Everything okay in there?”

Reggie pushed open the door a crack, not enough for me to see inside. “What do
you
want?”

“I was just checking on you.” I smiled. “Anything wrong?”

“Mind your own business, Zoe Chase. I'm getting ready for the race.” Reggie slammed the door closed again.

I didn't see Alex, but it had certainly sounded like him.

“Well, at least he's okay,” I said to Crème Brûlée as we walked away. “I wonder what he and Alex were arguing about.”

I walked back to the Biscuit Bowl and put Crème Brûlée in the passenger seat of the truck again. “Try to be good,” I coaxed. “This is only the beginning of the race.”

“How's he doing?” Miguel asked, startling me.

“He's fine.” I smiled back. “Just a little homesick, I think.”

He shrugged. “Me, too. I haven't left Mobile in a long time.”

“Me, either.” I stroked Crème Brûlée's head. “I know how he feels. I'm always more comfortable at home.”

“Me, too.” Miguel smiled. “I'm sure you're going to do well during this race.”

I
really
loved his smile.

“Thanks. I'm happy you could be here to help. I really appreciate you taking the time to come with us—to come with
me
.”

“No problem. It sounded like fun.”

I turned away with a sigh. We never seemed to get any further than polite Q & A like this. It seemed as though one of us should've been willing to step up and kiss the other person senseless.

Just not
me
.

There was a loud shout from inside the Biscuit Bowl.