Free The Proof is in the Pudding by Melinda Wells

for nineteen years as an often-married vamp on TV’s longest running daytime soap opera.
    Oona Rogers and Vernon “Coupe” Deville were married-to-each-other action movie stars. As sinewy as gymnasts, approximately the same height, and with matching face-hugging caps of sleek bronze hair, they looked more like brother and sister than like a non-biological couple. According to the entertainment press, they had met a few years ago when they were cast as costars in an espionage thriller. They fell in love among the car chases and explosions. That first picture was such a box office success it had been followed by a series with the same two leading characters.
    The last member of this cooking quartet was British author Roland Gray, whose international espionage thrillers had earned him the distinction of having had the most novels to reach number one on the New York Times best seller list during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Gray, whose hair was more salt than pepper, wasn’t handsome by any conventional measurement, but with his easy smile and blue eyes that fastened like lasers onto the person to whom he was speaking, he was undeniably charismatic. I had started reading his novels during the months after Mack’s death, when I was trying to adjust to sleeping alone in our bed. Classic movies on television, mystery novels, and Gray’s breathtaking plots and his fascinating secret agent hero took my mind off my pain for hours at a time. I appreciated Gray having done that for me.
    Ingram, Yvette, and I surveyed the cooking activities, assessing the individual dishes and checking the skill level of the various celebrity chefs.
    Vernon “Coupe” Deville was sautéing onions for his Philly Cheese Steak. He had his burners on high, with the result that the combination of butter and olive oil he was using sent little dots of hot grease into the air.
    Ingram addressed Yvette. “Step back. You don’t want to get splattered.” Since I hadn’t been included in his warning, I guessed that he didn’t care if grease hit me.
    Oona Rogers, Deville’s wife, wasn’t endangering anyone. Her workspace was much neater than his, and she wasn’t splashing the marinara sauce as she stirred it into her Chicken Parmesan.
    Moving on, we watched Francine Ames take a partially baked strawberry-rhubarb pie from her oven and start to remove the aluminum collar she’d fastened around it to prevent the edges of the crust from becoming too brown. When a big hunk of piecrust came off with the collar of foil, her pretty face screwed up into a grimace.
    “The pie will taste just as good,” she told us as she put it back into the oven for its final fifteen minutes of baking.
    At the last stove in Sector Four, author Roland Gray was stirring a pot on the stovetop. “I’m making Lemon Pudding Surprise, from an old recipe of my mother’s. The ‘surprise’ will be little bits of candied fruit at the bottom.” His cultured British accent conjured images in my head of Number 10 Downing Street and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the audacious secret agent who was my favorite of his literary creations.
    “I was quite inspired by the show you did on comfort foods,” he said. “When I was growing up, this pudding was what my mother made to soften life’s little blows.”
    “I look forward to tasting it,” I said.
    Ingram scowled at me. “You’re not supposed to get chummy with the contestants. We can’t show favoritism.”
    It took all of my self-control not to snap back at the odious creature, but there had been enough confrontations here tonight. I forced my thoughts away from how much I detested Keith Ingram. Instead, I surveyed the room full of enthusiastic amateur cooks.
    The aromas that were coming at me from every corner of the Elysian Ballroom were making my mouth water. I was hungry. Knowing that I would have to taste twenty separate dishes this evening, I hadn’t eaten anything that day except one piece of