“All right. Good.”
Paige patted his arm. “I gotta go get my laptop and work on next week’s schedule. But I wanted to say, those apple cinnamon muffins today?Sogood. I’d say the only appropriate time to use the word ‘moist’ is to describe those muffins.”
“Thanks.”
Paige got up and left, leaving Brad alone with his thoughts. He still felt a little bad about running off the reporter, but not bad enough to dwell on it. Instead, his mind shifted toward Lindsay, as it always did lately when he had any idle time. He hoped she got on well as a judge.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Aaron calling.
“Crazy idea,” Aaron said when Brad answered. “One of my chefs canceled at the last minute. You want to come substitute?”
“Didn’t we talk about this?”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“No, it’s my day off, but—”
“Look, not gonna lie, you were my fifth call. So far everyone has turned me down.”
“I’m not really a savory chef, though.”
“We have a dessert round. And anyway, you don’t need to win, you just need to be on the show.”
“So I’m a warm body.” Brad sighed. After blowing it with theTimesreporter, he was worried about turning down another opportunity. “I’ll do it, but my boss is going to want me to drop the name of the cat café about a hundred times.”
“If you can come film tomorrow, I’ll make the entire episode about the cat café.”
“Okay, fine. Wait, isn’t tomorrow the day Lindsay judges?”
“I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t remember that.”
“Shewon’t judge me, will she? Don’t you film more than one episode a day?”
“Priya Kapoor’s sous-chef showed up one day when she was judging.”
“Notexactlythe same.”
“I can rig it so she doesn’t judge you. We’re filming three episodes tomorrow.”
“Okay. Okay, fine. But you owe me again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
***
“You’ll sit here after hair and makeup,” Aaron explained to Lindsay as he gave her and the other judges a tour of the set. “We should be ready to start taping in about forty minutes.”
Lindsay’s whole body had been thrumming with excitement since the previous night, when it became clear she was too wound up to sleep.
There were actually three episodes being taped today and six judges on hand that would be rotated for the episodes. That was a lot of eating, but Lindsay was game.
Now that they had a handle on the layout of the studio, Aaron led the judges to the makeup room, which was adjacent to the green room where they’d hang out between tapings. Once Lindsay had her makeup done—caked on would be more accurate—she walked into the green room, which was nicely appointed. There were a few big sofas and overstuffed chairs, a TV in the corner showing what was currently airing on the Food Channel, another TV right above it showing the live feed from theMystery Mealset, and the one entire wall dominated with a huge spread of food, with a coffee urn and a water fountain on one end. Lindsay got a cup of coffee and settled into one of the chairs to wait.
The other judges drifted in gradually. Two of them were Food Channel regulars. Amanda Dreyfuss was a sunny blond restaurateur who owned a few restaurants in Manhattan that specialized mostly in southern-tinged New American cuisine. Pedro Santos hailed from Mexico and was the executive chef of a popular Latin fusion restaurant in Harlem. Both had been judges on a half-dozen Food Channel shows and contributed recipes to the Food Channel website, and Lindsay was a little starstruck. Priya Kapoor was an Indian chef who was also a sometimes judge or talking head on various Food Channel properties. She was also breathtakingly beautiful, with shiny black hair and brown skin and big eyes. Lindsay found it hard not to look at her.
Then there was Zachary Talmadge, whom Lindsay instantly disliked. He’d written a series of pretentious vegetarian cookbooks, although he was not a vegetarian himself as far as Lindsay knew. It would be hard to judge this show if he was. He also had a condescending note to his voice that got Lindsay’s hackles up. Rounding out the judging pool was Claudia Rowe, a fortysomething actress best known for her role as the First Lady on a popular primetime political drama that had aired about ten years ago. Lindsay had watched that show religiously and was working up to asking her for a selfie as they all sat together.
As they were chatting and getting to know each other, Pedro pointed at Lindsay and said, “You’re the one that wrote that review of Pepper!” He had a heavy accent but was easy to understand.
