Month of Sundays (22 page)

“That can be arranged. What else? Tell me what you want so I can give it you.”

“I want someone I can trust. I want someone I can start a family with. I want someone who loves me as much as I love her. And I want that someone to be you. Can you give me that?”

Griffin pulled her suitcase behind her as she strode down the hall. Her luggage’s plastic wheels clacked against the hardwood floor. A camera crew trailed her as she approached the apartment that would be her home away from home for the better part of the next month. She turned the knob and opened the door.

“Cut,” the floor director said before she could step inside. He, the cameraman, and assorted technicians brushed past her and walked through the door, leaving her standing on the threshold. “Wait there and enter on my signal. We want to get a reaction shot of you coming in.”

She flinched when the door slammed in her face. She had spent the last twenty minutes shooting the same scene from three different angles. She was dying to see who the rest of the contestants were, but she had yet to reach the inside of the apartment.

Apparently, reality TV isn’t very
real
after all.

“Action.”

She opened the door and finally stepped inside. Five men were gathered in the apartment. One tossed her a beer.

“Six down, two to go,” he said.

She caught the beer and popped the top. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

The men wandered over and introduced themselves one by one.

“Trevor Wright. You can call me Mr. Wright, but I’ll settle for Mr. Right Now.”

Griffin pegged him instantly. With his gelled hair and too-tight pants, he was the resident lothario. The pretty boy. If his cooking skills were as weak as his lines, he’d be gone by the end of the first episode.

“James Cavanaugh. Nice to meet you. Don’t feel bad when I take you out.”

He was easy to figure out, too. He was the cocky one the viewers—and the other chefs—would love to hate.

“Brady Rosen.”

Soft-spoken, prematurely balding with thick glasses and an apparent fondness for sweater vests. He was the cute, cuddly nebbish.

A man whose muscles had muscles came forward next.

“Damian Myers.”

He was the only one she recognized. A former professional baseball player, he was the ex-athlete who was finding it difficult adjusting to life out of the spotlight.

And, finally, the one who had tossed her the beer.

“Salvatore Iocovozzi. Call me Sal.”

Damian was the jock. Sal was the shirtless guy swilling beer in the stands. The burly Everyman who singlehandedly disproved the theory that only snobby intellectuals could find their way around a kitchen.

Griffin flashed back to her childhood. “This feels familiar. Five guys and I’m the only girl.”

“I like those numbers,” Trevor said with a leer. “Any combination that includes the two of us getting it on is fine by me.”

So much for not judging a book by its cover.

The guys had claimed two of the three dorm-style bedrooms. Griffin deposited her bags in the third, the one with two standard beds instead of three twins.

Beer in hand, she returned to the living room. “How long have you guys been waiting?”

Sal opened another cold brew. “Long enough to start a second round. This hurry-up-and-wait shit’s for the birds.” He turned to the camera hovering over his left shoulder. “You’re going to edit that out, right?”

“Don’t address the camera.” The floor director looked nonplussed. “Pretend it’s not here.”

“Yeah, right,” Sal grumbled. “I’ll try to remember that when you’re filming me taking a dump every morning.”

Griffin laughed so hard she nearly spewed beer all over the couch.
I’ve just inherited five more brothers. Maybe this experience won’t be so bad after all.

A few minutes later, a seventh chef entered their midst.

Another guy. I’m detecting a pattern.

He introduced himself as Jorge Gonzalez. The owner of his own catering company, he was the self-starter. The one who proved you didn’t have to be professionally-trained to be successful in the food service industry. He seemed nice enough, but she was hoping a few more female chefs had made the cut so she’d have someone to commiserate with when the guys’ testosterone levels got too high.

Based on the way the bedrooms were set up, she assumed at least one more woman was in the cast, but where was she? And more importantly,
who
was she?

She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

When Veronica Warner walked through the door, Griffin felt the pieces click into place. She no longer wondered what role she had been chosen to play. She knew. She was the foil.

“Well, well, well,” Veronica said, folding her tattooed arms across her chest. “It looks like the angel and the bad girl are together again. Let the catfights begin.”

*

After the chefs spent a couple hours socializing—and ignoring the cameraman recording the bonding session—they were driven to the studio where most of the cooking scenes would be filmed. They posed for group and individual photos. Then they were herded to the set. It was time for the first Pressure Cooker challenge, the contest that would determine who would be exempt from the next day’s elimination challenge.

The hosts were Elinor Davies, the Auckland native who was once Miss Universe, and Stewart Sands, the force behind a string of wildly-successful restaurants specializing in New American cuisine.

“Good afternoon, chefs,” Elinor said as the contestants lined up behind their randomly-selected stations.

Griffin ignored the six-foot Maori beauty’s stunning exterior and focused on the words she was saying instead of the way her luscious lips formed them.

“Welcome to the seventh season of
Cream of the Crop
. You have been brought here to compete for two hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash, a feature in
Fresh Take
magazine, a showcase at the Fresh Take Fiesta in Austin, Texas, a suite of professional grade kitchen appliances, and the right to be called the cream of the crop.”

“This season will provide a stern test of your creativity as well as your mental endurance,” Stewart said. His passion for his profession filled the TV screen each week, making the portly restaurateur an unlikely sex symbol. “Before we get to the team challenges, let’s begin with an individual one. Today’s challenge is a test of your speed and accuracy. It will take place in three rounds. In the first round, your mission is to dice two cups of onions. The six who do it fastest will move on. In the second round, the four who dress two chickens the fastest will advance. In the final round, the two competitors who shuck ten oysters in the shortest amount of time will compete for immunity during tomorrow’s elimination challenge.”

Elinor took over for Stewart. “Your chance to see who can rise a cut above starts now.”

Griffin grabbed three onions, cut off the ends, and began to chop the tear-inducing vegetable into pieces small enough to be considered diced. No chunks allowed. She prided herself on her knife skills. Advancing to the final round of today’s challenge shouldn’t pose a problem.
They don’t call me Edward Scissorhands for nothing.

She scooped the last of her onions off the cutting board and dropped them into the measuring cup next to it. She checked the measurement. Two cups exactly. “Chef.” She raised her hands, indicating she was done.

Stewart checked the size of the pieces to make sure none were too large. “Congratulations, chef. You’re moving on.”

Griffin clenched her fist.
Step one.

James finished second, followed by Veronica, Sal, Brady, and Jorge. Trevor and Damian were eliminated.

In the next round, James finished dressing his second chicken a split second before Griffin did. Veronica and Sal moved on while Brady and Jorge fell by the wayside.

Griffin flexed her fingers and waited for the third round to begin. Her first job was working at a seafood restaurant in her native Newport Beach. She could shuck oysters in her sleep.

I’ve got this. Everyone else is competing for second.

James finished second, leaving Veronica muttering curses as she cleaned her station.

“And now for immunity,” Elinor said. “Griffin, James, you have thirty minutes to create an entrée using some or all of the ingredients you’ve been working with today.”

Griffin felt the pressure mount. If she won today, she would set herself up as one of the favorites—and paint a large bull’s-eye on her back. Which of the hundreds of recipes in her head should she choose? Should she play it safe or take a risk?

“Ready?” Stewart said. “Go.”

Griffin sprinted to the pantry and gathered the items she needed to prepare a creamy seafood risotto. Dicing the onions in the first round had saved her some time, but she had to hustle to prep the rest of the ingredients. Risotto was tricky. If the rice was undercooked, the flavors refused to marry and the dish wasn’t worth eating. Most risotto recipes took a minimum of thirty minutes to prepare and the clock was already ticking.

She tossed the onions into some heated oil and waited for them to soften. Then she added seafood stock and fresh garlic and increased the temperature so the mixture could come to a rapid boil. She needed to get the rice on as soon as possible.

She looked over at James’s station as she julienned her oysters. His dish—chicken in oyster sauce—was already coming together. Hers was barely underway.

James finished plating his dish with plenty of time to spare. Keeping a close eye on the timer, Griffin waited until the last possible second. She spooned the risotto into the judges’ bowls just before the display on the LED readout changed to zero.

James stared at her as if he knew he had her beat. “Nice try,” he said under his breath.

“Let’s see what the judges have to say.” Some might find his trash talking intimidating, but she wasn’t one of them.

The judges didn’t give anything away as they sampled each dish. They conferred with the producers, then returned to announce their decision.

“James,” Stewart said, “you get bonus points for using all of the selected ingredients, but your chicken was slightly undercooked. Griffin, you took a risk by deciding to make risotto, and by opting not to include chicken.”

“Griffin,” Elinor said after a dramatic pause, “your gamble paid off. You are the winner of today’s Pressure Cooker. You have immunity this week.”

Griffin was happy to come away with the win, but she wasn’t satisfied. Not yet. A bigger prize lay ahead.

All the chefs offered their congratulations, though some seemed more sincere than others. Back at the apartment, when the cameras were off and everyone could finally relax, Veronica sought to make amends for their troubled past.

“Risotto, huh? That was a ballsy move. Nice going.” She stood in the doorway of the bedroom she and Griffin were sharing, a glass of wine in each hand. Her short dark hair was wet from the shower. She wore a pair of low-riding gray sweatpants and an olive tank top. The drab colors were in stark contrast to the colorful tattoos that adorned her arms from her shoulders to her wrists. Pin-up girls posing provocatively with kitchen utensils were etched into her skin.

Griffin accepted the proffered glass of wine. “Is this supposed to be a peace offering?”

Veronica sat cross-legged on her bed. “That’s up to you. We’re going to be sharing space for the next eighteen days. We should put our big girl panties on and let bygones be bygones.”

“Agreed.” Griffin didn’t want to say too much. Veronica was infamous for twisting her words into shapes they weren’t meant to take. “What did you mean when you said we were ‘the angel and the bad girl’?”

“You’ve got the manners of a Girl Scout and the merit badges to prove it. I’m the one who blows snot rockets and scratches herself in public. You’re the one women take home to meet their parents. I’m the one who fucks them senseless and tosses them a few bucks for cab fare. You’re perfect and I am your diametric opposite.” Veronica snorted. “But we both know better than to buy that line of bullshit, don’t we? You’ve bagged as many babes as I have, if not more.”

Griffin tried to defend herself against Veronica’s verbal attack. “I’m seeing someone.”

“Just one? What happened? You used to keep one in the batter’s box and one on deck.”

“That happened once.”

“I know. I was the one on deck, remember?” Veronica ran a hand over one of her gym-toned arms. “Let’s face it. You’re not a happily ever after kind of woman, Sutton. It’s not the way you’re built. Why else would you be the only member of your incredibly fertile family who isn’t married or civil unioned or domestic partnered or whatever the hell you want to call it? I give you and Little Mary Sunshine six months max before you start craving something new.”

Griffin could tell Veronica was trying to bait her into a confrontation, but she refused to play along. “The cameras aren’t on, Ronnie. Stop trying to play head games and tell me what you want.”

Veronica ran her hands through her hair. The letters F-O-O-D were stenciled across the fingers of her right hand, W-I-N-E on the left. “If I don’t walk away with the top prize, I’d rather you did instead of one of those blowhards in the other room. No woman has ever won this show. The only way to guarantee that happens this season is for both of us to make it to the final round. Once we get there, it’s every woman for herself. Then we can finally settle the issue of who’s the better chef. Look me in the eye and tell me that doesn’t appeal to you.”