Falling for Her Rival

SIXTEEN


Blend on high

It was several more hours before the contestants learned the identity of the chef who would be the first to go home. It was the one who had failed to finish all of his plates in the allotted twenty minutes.

Ryder had scored in the bottom three with his unimaginative mixed-greens salad. He wasn’t happy about it. He was especially unhappy to learn that Lara had scored higher. In fact, Lara’s creative take on hash had put her in the top three along with Kirby and Finn.

Finn’s Italian dish had scored the highest of all with the judges. He should have been ecstatic with his showing. He should have felt vindicated, given all of the lies his ex-wife had circulated about him and his ability to concoct recipes with interesting flavor profiles. But late that evening as he let himself into his apartment after one of the longest and most grueling days of his life, all he could think about was Lara.

Finn was confused and hurt and he was still angry. He just wasn’t sure whom he was angry with. Lara? Her father? The show? Or himself?

He twisted off the cap from a bottle of beer and plunked down on the couch in his sparsely furnished apartment. The place seemed especially empty now. As he ruminated over the day’s events, the telephone rang. Picking it up, he realized he had nearly a dozen voice-mail messages waiting to be played back.

“Hello?” he said into the receiver.

Kate was on the other end of the line.

“Finally!” his sister shouted by way of a greeting. “Where have you been? You haven’t answered your cell all day.”

“I turned it off for the show.” And he’d never turned it back on after leaving the studio. “Is anything wrong?”

“Is anything wrong?” she repeated, followed by a loud scoffing noise that had him pulling the receiver away from his ear. “Jeez, Finn. We’re all here at Mom and Dad’s dying to find out what happened today. You promised you would call after filming.”

He set the beer down so he could rub his eyes. “Right. Sorry.”

“Well? Quit keeping us in suspense. Are you still on the show or what?” Kate all but screamed the question.

In the background, he could hear his mother say, “Good heavens, Katie, don’t put it like that. You make it sound like we have no faith in him.”

A second later, she was on the line and the echo made it clear he’d been put on speaker.

“We’re proud of you, Finn. No matter what happened today. You know that.”

He smiled in spite of his foul mood. But once again he found himself thinking of Lara and the way she’d looked as Garrett played back the interview with her father. As proud as Finn’s parents would be of him even in failure, nothing she did measured up to her father’s unrealistic expectations.

“I’m still on the show, Mom. In fact, I had the highest score in today’s round.”

A flurry of excited squeals greeted his news.

“I knew it!” his mother replied.

“Have you told Lara yet?” Kate asked.

“Actually, I didn’t need to. She was there today.”

“She came to watch you?”

“I didn’t think they allowed outsiders on the set,” his mother said.


Kristy wanted to know, “Can we come and watch next time?”

He reached for his beer and took a gulp as he waited for the speculation to die down.

“She didn’t come to watch me. She came...she came to compete. The network agreed to let her back on the show.”

He didn’t mention that the decision had hinged on his vote. Nor did he divulge the harsh words that had passed between the pair of them afterward.

His sisters were once again talking over each other, peppering him with questions. His mother, however, cut to the heart of the matter. He heard a click and the girls’ voices receded. He was off the speaker and pretty sure that his mother was now moving to a more private location to continue the conversation. She was an expert at reading between the lines.

“You’re upset.”

“No, Mom—”

“You are. What’s happened?” she asked in a tone that told him she didn’t want to argue. She wanted an explanation.

He sighed.

“I saw her just yesterday.... Hell, we’ve practically spent every day of the past two weeks together, and she never mentioned...” He took another pull on his beer. The sour taste in his mouth lingered nonetheless.

“She knew and didn’t tell you?”

“I—I’m not sure. But I called her last night and this morning and she didn’t return either call.”

“Okay, back up a minute. You said you’re not sure what she knew. Did you ask her?”

“Not exactly. But like I said, I called her last night and this morning. I find it a little odd, not to mention suspect, that she didn’t call me back,” he added, feeling riled up and once again justified in his anger. “And then, today, when she walked into the greenroom...she looked...guilty.”

Finn drained his beer.

“But you didn’t let her explain?”

“Mom—”

“Do you like this woman, Griffin?”

He scraped at the edge of the label on his empty beer bottle and said nothing.

“Okay, I’ll answer for you. You do. In fact, I think you like her a lot.”

“We only just met. There’s a lot I don’t know about her.” He grunted and got up from the couch. While he went to the kitchen for another beer, he added, “In fact, she lied to me the first time we met. She told me her name was Lara Smith.”

“Yes, I remember you mentioning that to me. And why did she lie about that? Hmm?”

“Okay, she said it was to get on the show without anyone knowing who her father is, but there’s a pattern here, Mom,” he insisted.

He twisted off the beer’s cap and tossed it in the direction of the trash can. It missed and pinged off a cabinet door before rolling across the floor.

“Did you ever think maybe you see a pattern because what Sheryl and Cole did to you has made it difficult for you to trust people, especially people you have feelings for?”

“Maybe,” he allowed.

He knew better than to argue with his mother. He was guaranteed to lose. Besides, she had a point, one that he had already considered. But the gap between what his head recognized and what his heart felt was not easily spanned.

“Do yourself a favor, Griffin, and give her the benefit of the doubt until the two of you can sit down and have a proper conversation.”

He hung up agreeing that he would, but when he went to bed that night, he still had not called Lara.

* * *

The week passed, and with it two more rounds of competition that saw another pair of chefs sent packing. Ryder stepped up his game and managed to stay out of the bottom three both times. Meanwhile, Finn and Lara remained in the top tier. Already, they had been targeted as the two to beat. As such, they found themselves largely ostracized in the greenroom. Even Flo and Kirby now kept their chitchat to a minimum. Ryder, of course, was happy to speak to them, as long as he was slinging insults. Lara had learned to tune him out. More difficult to tolerate, however, was the silence from Finn. It was deafening.

Every now and then, she would catch him watching her. But then his jaw would clench and his gaze would harden before sliding away.

She missed him. Deeply. And she mourned what might have been. She’d never admitted her feelings to him. She hadn’t even admitted them to herself. But she knew she’d been falling in love. And that realization, even unspoken, made her ache.

The days were long, the schedule grueling. While the actual cooking took up very little time, they spent hours at the studio, taping interview segments after the fact in which they discussed culinary techniques, recipes and ingredient choices, and even talked a little smack about their fellow competitors. Lara kept her comments to a minimum, even though the producers made it clear that tension and drama made for better ratings.

Tension. There was plenty of that between her and Finn.

The second week ended. Three more chefs were sent home, Kirby among them, bringing the number to six. On the following Monday, after another casualty was announced, Lara was outside waiting for a cab when she spied Finn exiting the building.

They still weren’t talking, but they’d brokered a truce of sorts. While Ryder and some of the other chefs hoarded ingredients, Finn always shared and vice versa.

Their gazes met and he nodded in quasi-greeting.

“That was a tough one,” she remarked.

“I can’t believe you pulled off such a complex entrée in forty minutes.”

A complete sentence as well as a compliment. The surprise must have shown on her face, because he added, “I’ve never doubted your ability in the kitchen, Lara. See you tomorrow.”

She swallowed hard as she watched him walk away. No, she thought, he’d just doubted her.

* * *

By the final week of competition, four chefs remained: Lara, Finn, Angel and Ryder.

“You’re going down,” Ryder assured her in the greenroom before the day’s competition began. “You’ve stayed on too long already.”

“We’ll see,” she replied mildly.

At her prep station half an hour later, she swore under her breath when Garrett announced they would have thirty minutes to prepare a dessert, and the celebrity chef who would be helping to score their dishes just so happened to be a renowned pastry chef.

“This sucks,” she heard Finn mutter.

“If you know how to make the shortbread your mom served at her party, you’ll be staying,” she murmured.

He glanced sideways, looking surprised and, she wanted to believe, grateful.

Lara wound up making an apricot tartlet with cinnamon-infused whipped cream.

“Your crust looks good,” Finn remarked after time was called.

“I’m worried it’s not flaky enough.”

“It’s fine.” He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “And thanks for the suggestion.”

He nodded toward his plates, where he’d turned shortbread cookies into sandwiches with a creamy raspberry filling and dipped one side in dark chocolate.

“I didn’t suggest all that.” She squeezed his hand back. “And nice plating, by the way.”

He’d included some fresh raspberries and a sprig of mint.

Half of his mouth rose. “I just asked myself, ‘What would Lara do?’”

A little while later, after their desserts had been scored by the judges, the chefs once again stood at their stations, hands clasped in front of them, as Garrett read off the name of the latest casualty.

“Angel, I’m sorry, but you have been eliminated,” the host said, tilting his head to one side in feigned sympathy.


Under the set’s bright lights, the woman’s eyes glittered, not with tears, but with pure hatred.

“Blind tasting, my ass! I know what’s going on here.” She flipped Garrett her middle finger before pointing the neighboring digit in Lara’s direction. “We all know the judges have been told which dishes are hers so that she will wind up winning.”

“That’s not true,” Garrett replied mildly, although the complexion under his salon tan paled a little. “All of the judges commented that your ice cream was neither the right consistency nor sweet enough.”

Trying to reason with Angel now, however, was like trying to reason with a charging bull. She saw red and wasn’t about to stop until she had gored someone. She spouted out half a dozen more accusations, accompanied by language that a longshoreman would have hesitated to use. All of those four-letter words were going to have to be bleeped out before the segment aired on television. Fifteen minutes into her tirade, security was called to the set.

As two uniformed guards escorted Angel off the set, she warned Lara, “Watch your back, bitch!”

“That was unpleasant,” Garrett said, adjusting the French cuffs on his designer shirt.

Since several cameras were trained on Lara, waiting to catalog her reaction, she remained stoic. The network wanted drama, but she would be damned if she would provide any more of it than she already had.

After that, the chefs were sent home early. Angel’s unbecoming exit had cast a pall over the set. None of the contestants, judges or even the crew felt much like continuing with business as usual.

Lara’s plan was to go home, pour herself a glass of wine, draw a hot bath and then soak in it until her skin was shriveled and prunelike. She was surprised when she spotted Finn milling about near the curb, especially since she’d given him a good fifteen minutes of lead time.

“Waiting for a cab?” she inquired.

“Actually, I was waiting for you. I have something I’ve been meaning to say.”

“Now?” Because she was still feeling raw from Angel’s scene in the studio, she wasn’t sure she had the fortitude for another confrontation. And, despite their pleasant exchange at the prep station, she didn’t trust Finn. He’d pulled the rug out from under her once already. So, she said, “Other than today, you’ve barely said a word to me since the filming started, and now you want to talk?”

“I do.” Finn tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and regarded her with the very eyes that had been haunting her dreams.

“Can we go someplace, maybe sit down and have coffee?”

She wanted to say no. To protect that broken heart that was far from becoming mended. But more than anything, she wanted Finn, so she agreed.

“Isadora’s?”

* * *

Finn waited till they’d ordered coffee and biscotti to begin. Just in case she told him to go to hell, he wanted to savor her company.

“Lara, about what I said that day in the greenroom.” His voice cracked from nerves, forcing him to clear his throat before he could go on. “I was surprised and angry. Trust, well, it isn’t my strong suit.”

“I know that, Finn. And I know why.”

“I—I should have asked for an explanation before jumping to conclusions.”

Her eyes widened and she blinked before nodding slowly. “Is that what you’re doing now? Are you asking me for an explanation?”

“No.” He shook his head. “My mom told me right away that I owed you the benefit of the doubt until we talked.”

“Your mom said that?” A smile tugged briefly at the corners of her mouth.

“Yes, she did.”

“I haven’t exactly felt as if you’ve withheld judgment,” she reminded him.

“I know. I’ve had a lot of thinking to do. Not about you as much as the way I treated you.” He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “When you...when you care about someone the way I care about you, you don’t just give them the benefit of the doubt, Lara. You don’t need explanations.”

“Oh.”

He squeezed her hand again, but this time he didn’t let go. He held on firmly when he added, “Lara, I know we just met, but I’ve only felt this way about one other woman in my life. I guess I let the past cloud my judgment.” He shook his head. “Guess? I know I did. No excuse for it. I screwed up. Big-time. And I’m sorry. Give me another chance. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But I promise you this—I’ll never doubt you again.”

She blinked, looking momentarily undone by what he was telling her. Since Finn knew the feeling, he took that as a good sign.

She turned over the hand he’d been holding and twined her fingers through his.

“For the record, other than my choice of career, I’m nothing like Sheryl, Finn. I will never betray you the way she did.”

“I know. I guess my head just needed to catch up to my heart. So, do you forgive me?”

“Yes. I’ve been miserable without you.”

“I’ve been miserable, too.” But he smiled now as the pressure that had been building in his chest finally gave way.

* * *

They went to his apartment since it was closer.

Lara knew a moment of regret that she wasn’t wearing anything spectacularly sexy beneath her clothes. No lacy demi-cup bra or racy thong. Plain white bra and a pair of boy-cut panties whose only bow to femininity or playfulness was their color: hot pink.

But then, when she’d set out that morning, she hadn’t planned to be seduced and eager to return the favor.

“Just to be clear, I still intend to win,” she told him as he lowered her onto the couch.

“That’s fine.”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh. Because I intend to beat you.”

“Okay.” She nipped his lower lip with her teeth before asking, “What do you think about fraternizing with the enemy?”

“I’m all for it.”