“Turn on your portable burner!”
“Use more garlic! He’s not a vampire.”
Everyone went into a mixing and measuring frenzy. Everyone, that is, except Daphne.
Totally focused, she stood there and took stock of all the items in front of her. She picked up a bottle of something, chewed on her lip as she read the label, then carefully set it back down. Her teammates were yelling at her to get going, but Daphne seemed oblivious to them. She was in her own little world.
Intrigued, I kept watching as she sniffed a jar of spices andsprinkled a little on her hand. Taking a taste, she looked over at me, cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, as if she were trying to figure out if this flavor was something I would like. She did this with virtually every ingredient on her table. Unconventional, yes, but the way she picked up each bottle with her pinkie finger extended was so fucking adorable. And every time she looked at me, I felt the heat of her stare. Unable to keep my eyes off of her, I barely watched the others.
"Come on," Mia screamed. “Get moving!” I thought the woman was going to pop a blood vessel.
But Daphne clearly wasn't one to be rushed. When she finally started mixing the ingredients she’d assembled, she did it slowly and methodically. She put the pan on the burner, adjusted the heat, and took a taste. Then her eyes locked on mine again, a thoughtful expression on her face. She reached for a jar, hesitated, then grabbed another, sprinkling a little of whatever it was into the pan before stirring again. This went on a few more times—taste, adjust, stir—until finally, Jada was counting down from ten to one.
“Time!”
The women threw their hands in the air and stepped away from their tables.
Jada made a show of shooing me away so that she could arrange the sauces into a blind taste test. As I walked off with a cameraman trailing behind, I overheard Mia berating Daphne for not listening to her—something about the wrong ratio of ketchup to vinegar. I bristled at her caustic tone, but Daphne told the woman to zip it and held her ground.
Good girl.She wasn’t about to let someone else second guess her. Not even a vampire.
While I was sequestered on the far side of the barn, one of the producers asked for my opinion about what made the perfect barbeque sauce so they could get it on camera. Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. I just liked what I liked. So, Imade up some bullshit about it having to be the perfect amount of tangy and sweet.
I returned to find a table covered in a red and white tablecloth, four plates of ribs slathered in sauce, each marked A, B, C and D.
“They all look delicious,” I said as I sat in the hot seat. “How am I going to pick just one?”
The women laughed, some a little too exuberantly.
I tucked a napkin into my shirt and began sampling the ribs. They were fall-off-the-bone tender, thanks to the ranch’s longtime cook, a bear shifter named Elvis Marsh.
“Elvis,” I called to the old man standing behind the grill. “You’ve outdone yourself again.”
He tipped his hat to me.
The barbeque sauces were all very different from each other. One was cloyingly sweet with a gritty texture, like the sugar hadn’t completely dissolved. Another was too tangy, almost sour, with an overpowering vinegar flavor. The third? It was just plain odd. I couldn’t place why…only that I didn’t like the taste. Too many strange, competing flavors. This sauce was probably Daphne’s.
Only one of them was a good combination of tangy, sweet and spicy. I took another bite. It was really delicious.
I filled out the form and handed it to Jada before I changed my mind. Part of me wanted to choose Daphne’s sauce so that I wouldn’t have to send her home tonight. Even though it was the right thing to do in the scheme of things, I still felt pretty shitty about it.
Jada looked at the form then shot me a withering glance.
“What?” I mouthed.
She gave her head a curt little shake then she held up the bullhorn. “The winner of the barbeque challengeandthe overall Ranch Challenge is…”
When the show aired, this was the part where they’d cut toclips of the women waiting nervously for the results as tense, dramatic music played in the background. The producers would draw it out, panning over each woman to catch every chewed lip and worried look on camera. Maybe they’d even go to a commercial break first.
The only one who didn’t seem to be holding her breath was Daphne. She was licking her thumb, trying to clean off a splotch of barbeque sauce on her purple apron, as if that was her most pressing concern at the moment.
“…the purple team!” There were gasps and shrieks. “Congratulations, ladies. You’re safe from elimination and will go on a group date with our bachelor tomorrow.”
Daphne’s head jerked up in surprise. “We won?”
Mia pulled her into a bear hug. “I knew you could do it.”
“Good going, Travis,” Jada muttered under her breath as I studied the winning plate of ribs again.Thisone was Daphne’s? Given the unconventional way she’d made her sauce, I’d assumed the bizarre-tasting one was hers.
