“We’ve come a long way.”
We stopped at the door and he grabbed the doorknob, but I placed my hand on his shoulder to stop him before he could turn it.
“Stu, can I ask you something?”
“What’s up?”
“Was I . . .” I took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to say what I wanted to say. “Did I come across okay? On the show, I mean?”
“You mean apart from your continual two-syllable mispronunciation of the word mayonnaise?”
“Hey!” I fired back. “I know you’re from Baltimore, but you’ve been in Nashville more than a decade now. You’re the one mispronouncing it. But that isn’t what I’m talking about. I mean on America’s Fiercest Chef.”
He did a double take and his hand fell from the doorknob, and his arms quickly crossed.
“What are you talking about?”
I shrugged and began regretting I had brought it up. Stuart had been witness to it all, and he was protective and defensive of me—always. He wasn’t the right one to ask. But at the same time, he was the only one. Since college, there hadn’t been anyone else I trusted as much—with my emotions and for the truth.
“How could you not come across very well?” he pushed. “No security guards had to forcibly remove you from the premises that day, to my knowledge.”
I chuckled. “No. Not that day.” Not any day, of course. I was the good girl. But I was worried that on that day, I hadn’t been quite good enough.
“I don’t know,” I continued with a sigh. “I just worry I may have missed an opportunity.”
“What kind of opportunity?”
“Never mind. This is stupid.”
“Seriously, what’s going on, Had?” He leaned back against the door, arms still crossed. “Why are you thinking about this?”
“I just . . . well, I watched it.”
An exasperated groan escaped his lips. “Why did you do that? What happened to doing everything in your power to never lay eyes on Chef Cava-nasty, ever again?”
I laughed. “Cava-nasty? That’s what you landed on?”
“Do you have something better?”
“I liked Cava-gnarly.”
Stuart pondered that for a moment. “Yeah. That’s better. So what happened? Why did you watch it?”
I leaned my back against the door next to him. “It’s just been bugging me, you know? All this time I’ve been getting credit for the way I handled it, but it was all such a blur. I didn’t really know how I handled it.”
“Then you should have asked me.” He stood up straight and faced me. “You were strong, Had. That was the thing that stood out for me more than anything else. You held your own. Under unfair, cruel pressure, you still managed to make a dish no one else would have thought to make, and that you had never made in your life, and you won. I’d like to know how you think you could have handled that any better. How you think anyone could have.”
He stared me down, having had lots of practice waiting out my obstinacy.
I smiled. “Thanks, Stu.”
“You’re welcome.” He nodded, and his arms finally relaxed to his sides.
We stood in silence for a moment, each of us staring goofily at the other. Me trying to decide whether to voice the unspoken part of my worry; him, no doubt, waiting to see if I was actually going to let it go—since I was never very good at letting things go.
He tilted his head and studied me. “Do you think maybe you should talk to somebody?”
“About what?”
“You know . . .” He wagged his head back and forth. “About all of this.”
“Oh, gosh, Stu! No! It’s not worth all that. I’m fine.” And I meant it. “I just shouldn’t have watched the stupid episode.” I meant that too.
“Yes. That’s the moral of the story.”
My eyebrow rose. “What? Always listen to you?”
“Well, that goes without saying. But, no.” He placed his hand on the doorknob once again and prepared to finally head out. “The moral of the story is everything will be fine as long as you never have to see Chef Cad-anagh ever again.”
I scrunched up my nose and shook my head. That one wasn’t my favorite. He laughed and pulled me in for a quick hug.
“See you tomorrow.”
He turned the knob and opened the door, and we each took an involuntary step back in response to the surprise of finding someone standing just on the other side of the doorway. But the involuntary quickly became extremely deliberate, at least for Stuart, as he stepped forward and to the right, so that he was standing directly between me and the unexpected guest.
It was none other than the cad himself, live and in the flesh.
5. Season generously.
MAX
It was a mistake. He’d known it was a mistake long before he threw a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, some socks, underwear, a phone charger, deodorant, toothpaste, and his toothbrush into his trusty backpack that had traveled around the globe with him more times than he could remember. He’d certainly known before hopping in his Range Rover and navigating through Manhattan, on to the interstate, and toward Nashville. In fact, it had been about the time he crossed into Pennsylvania that he’d realized there was probably no good whatsoever that would come from the endeavor.
But by then he was enjoying the solitude of the open road, and there was no way he was going to head right back into the city.
His hand had been frozen in place, poised to ring the doorbell, for probably a solid thirty seconds, and it stayed in place as the door opened.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” the man on the other side of the door asked, stepping in front of Hadley as if she was the president and he was Gerard Butler in one of those movies. That would make Max pretty much every outlandish action movie threat that could be conceived, he figured. Seemed about right.
He was thrown off by the abruptness of the door being opened—not that he’d been cool and collected prior to that happening—and for the life of him, he didn’t know what he should say.
“I asked you what you’re doing here,” the man repeated.
Seeing Hadley peek out from behind her protector—looking almost like a little kid, curious about the Santa Claus at the mall but not quite ready to walk up to him and present her list—jarred him into action.
“Um, I’m sorry,” Max said, pulling himself together. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“We’re not startled,” he replied tersely. “What do you want?”
“Hadley,” Max said quietly, maintaining the eye contact he’d finally acquired from her. “Chef Beckett,” he corrected himself. “I was hoping we could talk.”
The man in front of Hadley rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, and in response Max lost Hadley’s focus. She looked instead up at her bodyguard—Friend? Boyfriend? Husband? Secret Service agent?—and placed her hand on his arm. Max looked at the man then, and realized for the first time that he looked familiar.
“We’ve met, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Chef. We’ve met,” he replied with disgust in his voice. “It was my job to keep you well hydrated on the set of America’s Fiercest Chef, if you recall.”