How Six Chefs Got It On Read online

  I stared at them while they stared at themselves. Their own faces held them captive, mesmerized almost. Their desire for fame, their hungry expressions, and their eagerness for the camera to love them outweighed everything else in importance. Talk about making love to a camera. I’d never understood the expression until this moment. As they ogled themselves, I giggled.

  Alex tweaked my pinky finger resting on the counter top. He smirked. I giggled again, embarrassed he’d caught on to what I had been thinking.

  One of the other contestants, a French pastry chef from Paris partnered with Olive, approached us. Like the French race-car driver in Talladega Nights, he came across very pompous, peering down his long, pointy nose at Alex and me. It didn’t seem to bother Alex—he had a blue collar, bacon-boy reputation in the food-television world of which he was proud.

  “Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes?” Pierre quipped under his breath. Chuckling with disdain, he shook his head and made a strange high-pitched snorting noise through his nose as he passed us.

  This competition might get cutthroat. I couldn’t tell yet. Could someone be such an arrogant asshole from the minute you met them?

  “He’s very nice, once you get to know him,” Alex murmured.

  “I guess.” I agreed with him, jokingly, “Seems real nice.”

  Throughout the morning’s events, no matter how strange, unkind, quirky, or downright mean anyone else acted on the show, Alex remained the nicest guy on the set to everybody. Both happiness and sadness for Alex filled me at the same time. Happy because, of all the very strange contestants on the show, I’d somehow snagged him for my partner. Alex, the nice guy, but the one thing I’d learned in my twenty-one years—nice guys finish last, and this made me sad for him. I hoped this wouldn’t turn out to be some kind of unmet expectation on my part.

  He made me feel anxious, uneasy, but safe all at the same time. Something about him attracted me, but what was it? His stature, his confidence, his sexy smile, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But all. of a sudden, I couldn’t wait to dive in and start baking those chocolate bacon cupcakes with him.

  A crew of sous chefs moved in and set up all the ingredients for our recipes on the black-topped lab-type kitchen counters where we would work. Finally it was time to cook! All the tables had been filled with sugar, flour, eggs, and, in our case, bacon. As I glanced down the aisles to check out what my competition would be baking, Alex stared at me with the strangest expression, somehow conveying a yes and a no at the same time.

  I shifted my gaze from him to the other contestants.

  “Never compare yourself to your competition,” Alex whispered, his breath tickling my ear. “Just know you’re gonna be better.”

  I turned, and he winked at me.

  I didn’t glance at the other contestants again but took my cues from Alex. He stood tall, posture erect, full of confidence. We hadn’t even begun baking, but, with the broadest smile of surety, he sniffed the air as if inhaling something delicious. His behavior seemed so innocent and silly. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  He smiled. “Can you smell it?”

  “Smell what?”

  “The sweet smell of success.”

  All at once, the buzzer went off, indicating we could begin cooking. I almost jumped out of my skin. Nothing like dropping into a half-pipe—this cooking stuff’s scary—real cooking—not mac and cheese—and on television, in front of millions of viewers. I stood frozen at my counter, staring into the camera. Alex began gathering our ingredients—bowl, eggs, sugar. I couldn’t get it together. I stood there like a zombie.

  “Tonya,” Alex whispered.

  I peered up at him, and he handed me an egg then, cupping my hand in his, cracked the egg delicately on the side of a large black bowl. The yolk dropped into it, sliding along the side. So sexy!

  “Breathe,” he said in a hushed tone.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I whispered back.

  His hand lingered a split second more on mine, and he gave me a soft, reassuring squeeze. Smiling up at him, I handed him a second egg, which he cracked with our hands clasped.

  The baking experience proved a lot more thrilling than I’d ever imagined it could be. Cooking with Alex Stanley? Hot and messy. I loved it!

  When the final buzzer rang, our chocolate bacon cupcakes sat before us, glistening in drizzled bacon fat. I didn’t think we had a chance of winning. They created the impression of dirtiness—so greasy and gritty from the bacon bits stuck in the chocolate frosting—more like dirty cupcakes than Dirty Lickings, the name of Alex’s other cooking show on HGTV. Sensing my apprehension, he scooped a thick wad of frosting from around one of the sides of the cupcakes and held his forefinger up to my lips, tempting me.

  “Try it.” He raised an eyebrow, licking his lips lasciviously as I wrapped my mouth around his fingertip.

  How delicious the strange confection tasted in my mouth. In fact, I found myself licking his finger a bit too long, evidenced by the extreme close-up by camera one, zooming in on the shot of me sucking the frosting off Alex Stanley’s finger.

  “Aannnd…cut!” the director yelled. “Perfect! Perfect!” She approached us. “The chemistry between you two is electric, steamy, delicious! Great for the ratings. Keep it up!”

  On the monitor, I blushed crimson to my roots. Shocked and embarrassed, I used the back of my hand to wipe away the grease from the frosting running down my chin.

  “Never mind her.” Alex winked. “Told you they were great!”

  I gave a meek smile and, as discreetly as possible, made my way off stage.

  “Ooh la la!” Pierre, the French chef, snarked as he passed me.

  My sister waited outside. “How’d it go?” she asked a bit too motherly.

  “Great,” I lied, melting into the front seat of her car.

  Episode Two

  Six o’clock and rain poured from the sky. Not unusual during hurricane season in Florida, but it still put a damper on the already gray day. The studio people expected me on set at eight o’clock, and my sister had once again agreed to drop me off at the studio. Most of the other contestants stayed in a hotel the show provided. But since I lived in Orlando, it was easier for me to stay at home than in some hotel with a bunch of strangers.

  I hadn’t slept well at all, thinking about the camera shot of me licking Alex’s finger. All my family and friends from the X-games would see it when the show aired in September. We were shooting several weeks out, and the grand finale would air live in December before Christmas. Just knowing I had five months to wait for the bomb to drop made me miserable. I cringed, imagining how embarrassing it would be. Plus, we had ten more episodes to shoot before the finale. Ugh!

  Part of me wanted to quit right then, but another part had this bizarre notion it still might be fun with Alex as my partner. I thought of Nicodemus’s words from the day before, “It’s up to you how far you’ll go. If you don’t take a chance, you’ll never know.”

  Dropping into a half-pipe and grabbing big air on my skateboard didn’t frighten me as much as baking in front of millions of people. When had I become such a chicken shit? With one million dollars on the line, which Alex and I would split if we won—a half million dollars for each of us—I couldn’t afford to grow feathers now. If we won, Alex’s half would go to the Elysian Fields Soup Kitchen—like I said, nice guy.

  I hoped Alex had picked something interesting for us to make today. We were allowed to choose our own recipes like they can choose their own songs on American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, but within a given range. Yesterday had been cupcakes. Later, we would find out how we did on the previous show. As for today, I had no idea what to expect, making me uncomfortable. On entering the studio for the second day, I held my breath.

  Darn it! Again I was the last one to arrive, and I’d thought I would be early—well, early for me, at least. Alex smiled when he saw me coming in. Wistful, but a smile all the same, acknowledging the fact I’d tried to be on time. Eight o
’clock in the morning on-set calls would not be easy for me. Everyone else was living together in the hotel for the next few weeks. Maybe I’d better join them from now on.

  I was relieved to see that we were making Jell-O shots. Strange food for a food porn reality TV show, I thought, but Jell-O sounded pretty easy, even for me. Like a fool, I had thought I would be cooking on the show. I had always believed not watching television to be a good thing. At that moment, I wished I’d watched this dumb TV show at least once before agreeing to be a contestant on it.

  “What’s all this?” I must have blurted it out a bit too loud because every contestant on the set turned and laughed at me.

  Standing in the kitchen on set in front of all those cameras in a bikini, right next to Olive, the porn star with the supermodel’s body and Bran in his grape-smuggler bikini bottom, whose interest in Olive—also known as Easy Olive in the adult film industry—was clear, my head was about to explode from insecurity.

  The set had been turned into a ginormous swimming pool of green Jell-O, and to win Head Chef this week, we had to dive into the gelatinous goo and retrieve the gold-star plastic cookie cutter buried deep within the messy muck. Oh, and we had to wear blacked-out swimming goggles, like being blindfolded, and had only the assistance of our partner chefs, who stood along the sides of the swimming pool shouting directions.

  “Smells good.” Alex sniffed the air that reeked of lime-scented Jell-O from the gurgling mess below us. He was stifling a laugh, wickedly amused by the fact I would be the one to dive into the sticky stuff. I smirked at him with my blacked-out goggles atop my head.

  All the contestants stood in silence, none of us were eager to dive into the green glob, though some appeared very excited about getting to sport a swimsuit on television for millions of viewers. Steve and Jeffrey were pretty much doing flexing poses like Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabes, while Olive kept pushing out her bust and stretching out her backside, wrapping her already much-too-long legs around anything in her path. Poor Eric shivered and glanced around, more scared than anyone else on the edge of the pool. And Bran, who had chosen to don the grape-smuggling Speedo bathing suit, had clearly had a difficult time squeezing all five-foot-nine inches and two hundred fifty plus pounds of himself into a teeny-tiny suit. His raging hard-on for Olive crept out to introduce itself.

  Anxious, I waited at the edge of the pool, trying to think of any advantages I might have in this kind of challenge. One, I love Jell-O. Two, I am great at dropping into half-pipes and dropped into my fair share of empty pools in the neighbors’ backyards as a kid. Three, this giant see-through swimming pool, rounded and shaped like a big bowl, has to be a plus for me, right? Four, I have a great deal of balance, on and off a skateboard. Not sure about the rest of my competition, but I’m pretty sure this stuff is going to be awful slippery. The trick will be staying on my feet. All great advantages, I thought, as Alex helped to lower my blacked-out swimming goggles onto my face to cover my eyes.

  “The star cookie cutter is in the pool!” the emcee announced.

  The set quieted. Alex set his hands on my waist to help me jump into the Jell-O. It was so sensual, I squirmed from the electricity of his touch.

  Turning toward him, I whispered, “I’m going to drop into this like I drop into a half-pipe. Just make sure my feet are near the edge, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Alex whispered back and steered me closer to the edge of the pool so my toes hung over the edge of the seam. Vinyl was super slippery, and I intended to drop into the pool using my feet like a skateboard. If I landed on the bottom upright, I thought I’d have a huge advantage in this challenge.

  The buzzer went off, and I heard a lot of noise from the other contestants.

  “Ew!”

  “Yuck!”

  “Argh!”

  “Easy does it,” Alex whispered as he nudged me over the edge.

  I slid down to the bottom of the pool.

  “Left, left, left,” Alex shouted to me over the din of madness from the other contestants.

  In theory, it may sound easy, going left in a big puddle of green Jell-O, but my problem was, while I had landed upright as I’d intended, all of the other contestants had been thrown into the green slime and were rolling over one another blindfolded. It had become a giant orgy of Jell-O wrestling, a real wet and messy sploshing session, and I had to steer clear of the other contestants in order to find the cookie cutter and win the challenge. From what I could hear and feel in my blindness, I was the only one still standing, and if I could use my feet to feel along the bottom of the pool, I could find it.

  I wished Bran and Olive would stop their squealing and screaming and— Whoa, somebody just grabbed my ass!

  “Hey!” I shouted to no one in particular. It could have been anybody. Then someone plopped a big wad of green Jell-O smack on the top of my head. This is ridiculous! I just wanted to find the damn cookie cutter and get the hell out of there as fast as possible. I was a no-nonsense kind of girl, never imagining myself writhing around in a food orgy and on television, too. Ugh! What will my X-games’ fans think of this challenge?

  All of a sudden, my big toe bumped into something hard and plastic along the base of the pool. The cookie cutter! Great! Now I just had to bend down and scoop it up. The Jell-O was about three feet deep. Clenching the star-shaped cookie cutter between my toes, I brought it up to my hand, which, to I discovered my horror had somehow gotten tangled in someone’s bathing suit. It felt pretty small, so I figured it must be Bran’s or Olive’s bathing-suit bottoms. I couldn’t wriggle free of the damn strap though, try as I might.

  The hell with it. I plunged my arm straight down, grabbed the cookie cutter that I held fast in between my toes and pulled off someone’s bikini bottom in the process.

  Olive howled like a madwoman.

  I smirked then called out to Alex, “Catch!” I tossed the cookie cutter into the air.

  “Got it!” Alex declared in triumph.

  The buzzer rang, and I whipped off my blackened goggles to find a full-on orgy going on in the pool between all of the other five contestants—Olive sans culottes as they say in Paris. Frenchie stood at the pool’s edge, pulling his hair out in wild fists of rage to emphasize his disgust at how his partner, Easy Olive, had lost the challenge.

  The producers were ecstatic. They’d achieved what they’d wanted, a full-blown epic food fight/orgy in the slime, a food-fetish sploshing scene that had begun in the UK but went viral all over social media.

  Alex and I came out on top, and I came out unscathed. I’d jumped out as soon as I had gotten the silly cookie cutter in Alex’s hands. Because we’d won, he was the Head Chef for the next week, and I was his sous chef. Hmmm, sous as in under. I giggled to myself, feeling hot and horny from the orgy going on below me. Nice guy or not, Alex Stanley was becoming yummier by the minute. All of the other contestants sloshed around, being exhibitionists for the cameras, which were still rolling even though the event had ended. Olive had thrown her bikini top off, too. Naked, she and Bran—who had somehow lost his briefs as well—put on a show for everyone.

  “Care to join them?” Alex smirked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Fat chance, my friend. Why don’t you? I have had my fill of green Jell-O for today.” I shook my head to free some of the green slime plopped atop my head in the melee.

  To my utter surprise, Alex did! He jumped in and sloshed around in the gooey mess in the pool. Olive spotted him first in the chaos, rushed over to his side, and slathered him with Jell-O. Scooping up a big glop of gelatin, he plopped it on her head then smeared it all over her curvaceous body. I found myself getting moist between my thighs, turned on by the whole scene. Olive had lascivious intentions for my smoking-hot partner. Their playing together in the Jell-O gave new meaning to the term sploshing. No wonder the producers loved it. I had no doubt the American public would love it, too.

  “Come back in,” Alex called to me, waving his hand in invitation.
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br />   “I’ll sit this one out.” I made my way to the showers. Make it a cold shower for me please!

  All in all, the second day had gone far better than the first, and I felt a whole lot better about doing the show with Alex—the good guy who had even given me a big hug for retrieving the gold plastic star despite the fact I resembled the green-slime ghost from the old movie Ghostbusters. Of course, he’d then jumped in the pool and gotten covered in the stuff himself. Almost as if he liked the sensation. I tried to imagine him with a food fetish. Nah, too kinky.

  When we got cleaned up, they called us back on set for the elimination round. The show took all our goodies from the day before out on the street and had a bake sale on Main Street with Nicodemus overseeing the whole thing.

  Talk about feeling ridiculous. All twelve contestants, chefs included, were made to stand in a giant fake frying pan for the elimination segment, called Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire. The team in last place would be tossed into the flames and would leave the show. Ever confident, Alex assured me we would be fine. “I’ll see you on the set, okay?”

  We emerged from the showers backstage, clean and ready for the next segment on the show. I waited for everyone else to go on the set first and climb into the pan. My stomach rolled; my nerves jangled. Not as sure as Alex we would be staying, I took hesitant steps into the kitchen area, waiting for the proverbial knife to fall. I kept my head down, pulling my pink bangs over my face to hide my nervousness from the cameras. Everyone else laughed, making small talk, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be standing in a frying pan the size of Texas. Olive, Bran, and Steve were the loudest of the bunch, but Jeffrey and Eric made sure they appeared on camera, too. I think they called this part building alliances. As a loner, the strategy was lost on me.

  Waiting for the emcee to come back on set and announce our fate, Alex reached over and gave my clenched fist a tender squeeze. His touch resonated deep, deep inside of me.