Either way, I needed Sunny to look at me after the score and still see someone worth choosing.
Caprice clapped once beside the center table. “This is the final round, people. I need cameras up. Nobody sees that card until Ed tells me he has focus.”
Ed shifted behind his camera, ball cap low, headset crooked, one hand on the lens. “I have focus. Whether any of you have focus remains an open question.”
Joelle stood near the ingredient table with her clipboard, wearing a pale blue utility shirt, dark shorts, and the same calm expression she’d had while moving hot pans, sponsor product, and Sunny’s temper all weekend. “Cameras are rolling. Ingredients are covered. Both stations are cold.”
Sunny lifted her hand. “I’d like the record to show I’ve touched nothing hot.”
“The day is still young,” Ed said.
“I’m choosing to hear confidence in that.”
I looked at her station because staring at Sunny on camera would get me in trouble with the woman, the producer, and my own concentration. Her table was set up cleaner than it had been Friday. It still looked like hers, with peach-colored towels, asmall glass bowl of honey, a white apron tied neatly at her waist, and a line of utensils with enough space between the pretty and the practical.
She’d listened.
That made me want her worse.
Caprice stepped into the marked center area, her black cropped pants dusted with meadow grit and her sleeveless white top already wrinkled from production stress. Statement earrings swung against her neck when she lifted the envelope higher.
“Round Three,” she said toward Ed’s camera. “The final mystery round of the Get Fired Up! Cook-Off. The score is tied one to one. Sunny took Round Two with elevated campfire-main magic. Flint took Round One by making everyone believe marshmallows had moral value.”
“That’s correct,” I said.
Sunny pointed at me without looking away from camera. “He’s very proud of his goo discipline.”
“Goo discipline wins rounds.”
“It wins concerns.”
Caprice snapped her fingers. “I need both of you to save thirty percent of this for usable footage. The final prompt is sealed, neither competitor knows the theme, and the winner takes the twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize.”
She tore open the envelope.
Sunny’s shoulders went still. Mine did the same.
Caprice pulled out the card, read it, and smiled in a way that meant trouble with a shot list.
“Breakfast for Dinner.”
Sunny blinked once. Then slowly, beautifully, she grinned.
My hands went to the flour before I finished thinking. Cast-iron biscuits. Sausage gravy. Eggs. Bacon. Potatoes crisped hard at the edges. Food a crew could eat after a long day, heavyenough to hold a man upright and simple enough to prove it knew what it was.
Across from me, Sunny reached for cornmeal before Caprice finished reading the rest.
“Competitors have ninety minutes,” Caprice said. “Use the supplied ingredient table and your declared prep bins. Each final plate needs one main campfire breakfast-for-dinner dish and one supporting element. Judges are Joelle, Ed, and me. Camera gets process, plating, and tasting. Nobody invents a fire tornado for visual appeal.”
Ed adjusted his headset. “That was one suggestion.”
“It was a terrible suggestion,” Joelle said.
“It was a phrase, not a plan.”
Sunny tied her apron tighter. “Breakfast for Dinner? Caprice, this envelope has taste.”
“The envelope is currently the most cooperative person on set,” Caprice said.
