Falling for My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Second Place
Brice wins Grand Champion with Neva's brisket and proposes to his producer on stage with her trophy; Neva hands over her badge and walks across the grounds to ask his exiled uncle for a job, and Brice tells the whole lot she's been sleeping with him.
My boyfriend got down on one knee in front of two thousand people, holding the trophy my brisket had won.
It wasn't for me.
"Sherrie Keough," Brice said into the microphone, "will you make this the best day of my life?"
I was standing at the back of the crowd in my apron.
I still had brisket fat under my fingernails.
I'd been awake for thirty-one hours, feeding a fire so he could hold that trophy.
Sherrie put both hands over her mouth.
The camera crew she'd brought from the network swung around to catch her face.
"Yes," she said. "Oh my God, yes."
The whole riverfront cheered.
Somebody next to me said, "Wait, isn't he with the pitmaster?"
Somebody else said, "Not anymore, I guess."
Brice slid a ring on her finger and stood up and kissed her under the banner.
RIVERFRONT SMOKE-OFF. GRAND CHAMPION. KIMBROUGH SMOKE.
His father stood at the edge of the stage, clapping with his big gold ring flashing.
Hal Kimbrough had signed my paychecks for six years.
He didn't look surprised at all.
Then he lifted the trophy over his head.
"I've got to thank my grandmother," he said. "Every bottle of Royal Gold is her recipe. That sauce is why we win."
His grandmother never made a sauce in her life.
Mine did.
I gave it to him two years ago, on a recipe card in her handwriting, because he said it should be in stores.
Lorrie grabbed my arm.
She'd come straight from the trailer with a pan of burnt ends still in her hand.
"Neva," she said. "Neva, look at me. Did you know?"
"No."
"Five years."
"I know how long it was, Lorrie."
On the stage Brice found me in the crowd.
He winked.
It was the same wink he gave me every year when he took the trophy and I took the trailer home.
I looked down at the badge clipped to my apron.
KIMBROUGH SMOKE. HEAD PITMASTER.
I unclipped it.
I took Lorrie's free hand and put the badge in it.
"Give that back to him for me."
"Where are you going?"
"To get a job."
I walked away from the stage.
I walked past our trailer with KIMBROUGH painted down the side in gold.
I walked past the vendor tents and the beer line and the kids with sauce on their faces.
I walked all the way to the last row of the grounds, by the fence, where the small teams park.
There was one rig down there that didn't have a banner.
Just a black thousand-gallon offset smoker, a pickup and a folding chair.
A man was sitting in the chair, scraping his grate with a wire brush.
He'd taken second place.
He'd taken second place to me three years in a row.
I'd never spoken to him once, because I wasn't allowed.
Wick Kimbrough.
Brice's uncle.
The one the family didn't say out loud.
He looked up when my shadow hit the grate.
He was older than Brice by a lot, gray coming in at his temples and in his beard.
He had gray eyes and a burn scar that ran out of his collar and up the side of his neck.
He looked at my apron, then at the empty spot where my badge had been.
"You're lost," he said.
"I'm not."
"Your team's up there."
"It's not my team. It's his."
He went back to scraping.
"Saw the show from here," he said. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Hire me."
The brush stopped.
"I don't hire Kimbroughs."
"I'm not one," I said. "As of nine minutes ago."
He set the brush down.
He stood up, and he was taller than I'd thought, and he smelled like post oak and black pepper.
"You know what you're doing?" he said. "Walking down here, in front of all of them?"
"Yes."
"Do you?"
"Your brisket's too salty on the bark," I said. "You wrap too late, and you slice it like you're mad at it. You'd have beaten me this year if you'd pulled it twenty minutes sooner."
He stared at me.
Then one corner of his mouth went up.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
"Maybe twenty-five."
"I've been trying to figure that out for three years."
"I know. I've been watching you lose."
He laughed, one short surprised sound.
Behind me a microphone squealed.
I turned.
Brice was coming down the row with the stage mic still in his hand, the cord dragging behind him.
The camera crew came with him.
So did half the crowd.
"There she is," Brice said, and his voice boomed out of every speaker on the riverfront. "Everybody, I'm sorry. I didn't want to do this today."
Lorrie was pushing through the people behind him, shouting my name.
Brice stopped ten feet from us.
He looked at his uncle and then at me, and he made his face go sad.
"I've known for months," he said into the mic. "She's been sleeping with him."
The crowd went dead quiet.
"Feeding him our recipes all season. My own uncle." He shook his head. "That's why she's out."
Two thousand phones came up at once.
Every one of them was pointed at me.
I'd known Wick Kimbrough's voice for four minutes.
And now every person on that riverfront believed I was in his bed.
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