Page 75 of A Teaspoon of Desire
“I gathered from the giant forfeit scene.” Tristan shook his head. “Did I go too far?”
“Not unless you think you did. I’m more worried about you and how this is going to play out.” Henry looked over at the judges, who were still discussing. “Is this going to fuck you hard? Because I can always try to help you out—”
“Did I take your money last time?” And for the first time in way too long, Tristan smiled. A tiny smile, but it lightened up Henry’s entire mood. He’d missed those dimples. “I’m not doing it now, either. I’ll fight you if I have to.”
Dexter separated from Rita and Eli and glanced over his shoulder. “Kristin, Call Mr. McCall. Tell him we need some info on the rules and we might be able to get a big ratings hike. Whatever it takes to get him down here pronto.” He had no smile when he turned toward Willa. “However this turns out, I have to say I’m... disappointed.”
She snorted. “Rules are rules.”
A few minutes later, the short, mustachioed Mark McCall strode out from backstage. He wore a gray suit and a red tie and presented more professionally than anyone else on the set. He walked up and shook Dexter’s hand. “You caught me before I headed home. Lucky for you I had to work late today. What’s urgent?”
“Rules dispute. Big issue here in the semifinals. We need someone in a higher-up position than us. We discussed and we’re at a loss.”
This could be it. The end of it all. Tristan would have stepped in for him and lost so much more than Henry’d ever had on the line. The possibility churned his stomach.
If Tristan could risk everything, Henry wouldn’t simply stand the fuck down.
The man frowned, cutting deep lines into his face and rustling his mustache. “Well, what’s the problem? It was a pretty boilerplate set of agreements everyone signed, I know them backward and forward.”
Dexter nodded. “Is there an issue if two of the contestants end up in a romantic relationship?”
“One that’s been going on a while,” said Willa coldly. “These two are an item.”
“I see.” McCall turned to them. “Are you two together, then?”
Tristan nodded. “Yeah. It happened while we were here.” The slight quiver in his voice betrayed his nerves, but he was otherwise solid. “Once Willa found out, she decided to turn that against us. But I figured that would fall apart if I laid everything out. No more power to her threat.”
McCall actually smiled. Then he sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “It all really comes down to whether you two worked together, then.”
“Well, of course they did.” Willa’s voice had an angry edge to it now, and her arms slipped to her sides, fists balling. “A couple, and you think they’re not out there helping each other stay in this thing?”
“I think that’s not a given.” McCall sighed again, running a hand through his hair. “And if there’s evidence of blackmail on your part, that’s not good either.”
Thatwas Henry’s chance to do something. He slipped out his phone and looked over at Willa. Was she going to call his bluff?
She flinched. “I wasn’t trying to blackmail anyone. Like I said, I wanted them to have a face-saving way out. Ithappenedto mean they would step aside and I would win. Coincidence.”
McCall shook his head. “Frankly, let’s not pretend that makes any sense. Whatever your professed reasons are, blackmail is blackmail. Call a duck a duck.” He turned his gaze back to Henry and Tristan. “Did you help each other out in this competition at all? We’ll start there.”
“No more than any of us helped each other,” said Tristan. “Put bakers in a room and they're going to talk to each other. Baking techniques are inevitably going to come up. But my recipes were mine and Henry’s were his. I’m assuming saying that isn’t enough, though.”
And there was that smile again, just for a moment. McCall, at least, seemed to like Tristan. Henry didn’t know if that was going to help, but it couldn’t bebadfor their case, right?
“The editors have footage. They would have caught anything on filming days. I trust them.” He faced Dexter, Rita, and Eli. “Do you three have any reasons to be suspicious of them?”
They all glanced at each other, but Dexter was the one who stepped up. “There’s no evidence we could think of when we were discussing. They’ve put out very unique products. It’s a totally different situation than what went down with Bertha.” He nodded to Willa. “It’s also worth noting, the only reason we found out someone had used her recipe was because she came forward to tell us.”
“So this isn’t the first time she’s stepped in? But you didn’t suspect her earlier?”
Dexter shook his head. “The crew and us looked for potential wrongdoing, but her story checked out.”
“What was that story?”
“She showed Bertha the recipe to illustrate some techniques. Then Bertha used the recipe in its entirety. Didn’t see any clear sign not to trust Willa. As far as we could see, she’d been taken advantage of, and we didn’t want to punish someone for that.”
McCall nodded and fixed his eyes on Willa. “We can circle back to that later. Do you haveevidencefor your claims about these two boys?”
“I have photo evidence of them holding hands at dinner.”
