Only extra early.

It was the first morning of the Sweet Magnolia Food Truck Race. Ten food trucks from across the Southeast United States were competing for a fifty-thousand-dollar grand prize. Even if I didn’t win the cash, the race was being shown on national food networks, which would be good publicity for the Biscuit Bowl.

How great was that?

The organizers had made it clear the day before the race started that there would be plenty of challenges, and even a few tricks, along the five stops beginning in Charlotte and ending in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama.

They weren’t kidding.

We’d spent the night in Charlotte to be up early the first morning. Lucky for me, the race sponsors were footing the bill for the hotel and food. There was big money involved from businesses across the South, and for the charities that would receive donations from the race. The promotion was getting lots of media attention. I was happy to be part of it.

I hadn’t been sure if my old Airstream RV, which had been converted to a food truck, was up for the long drive, but it came through like a champ. Lucky I had Uncle Saul with me to work on it as needed.

The challenge for today had been announced the night before once all the food truck teams were in Charlotte. We were starting off with each food truck making their specialty item with sweet potatoes replacing one ingredient. Once the item was made, we had to sell at least one hundred of them in the heart of the city, and get twenty people to say they were delicious.

I hoped my team was ready.

“Yeah, you can make ’em,” Ollie said. “But what are they gonna taste like?”

“They’re going to be great!” I enthused to make up for my team’s lack of excitement. “You’ll see. Get the flour.”

My specialty was the biscuit bowl. A delicious, large biscuit made with an indentation in the middle, and deep-fried. My truck was named for it. My hopes and dreams were pinned on it.

I made my biscuit bowls fresh every day, filling the centers with either sweet or savory foods. It could be anything from chili to spicy apples. I tried to mix it up as much as possible.

Someday, I hoped to own a restaurant that brought people in from all over the world. I had the restaurant—well, a diner—but it needed about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of renovation to bring it up to code.

That’s why I’d started my food truck business. It was also a good reason to enter the food truck race.

“So you’re gonna use the sweet potatoes with the flour, egg, and milk to make the biscuits?” Uncle Saul was struggling to understand what he’d come to call food truck madness.

His frequent rant was: I owned a restaurant for years in Mobile. I had a standard menu. Customers ordered from it. I never went through crazy changes and looked for new kinds of food to make each day.

I knew that to keep food truck customers—my customers—coming back each day, I had to have a good mix of old and new foods. If I didn’t, they’d go somewhere else. There was a big jump in competition between when Uncle Saul had his restaurant and now.

“That’s right.” I pushed a curl out of my face. It had escaped the scarf I’d used to keep my curly black hair down. “My problem isn’t using the sweet potatoes. It’s baking one hundred biscuit bowls in this little oven.”

Normally, I would’ve baked my biscuits at home in the diner where I lived. I tried not to spread that information around too much. It wasn’t really legal to live in the diner. But I had to give up my apartment to afford the other payments.

You have to do what you have to do to find your dream, right?

I got up five mornings every week and made biscuits. I waited to deep-fry them in the Biscuit Bowl truck as I received orders for them. That way, they were as fresh as they could be when my customers ate them.

It wasn’t an easy process, but it had worked for me. I was on the radar now. That meant a few food truck websites monitored where my truck was located each day, and a local radio station announced what my menu was. I had fans who followed me—at least thirty of them, by my last count.

For the race, however, the judges required that everything had to be done in the food truck. I had to purchase a small camping oven for the task. We’d tried it out a few times at home. It had worked fine—as long as there were no other electric appliances running in the truck.

You see my dilemma.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to bake so many biscuits,” I explained. “It takes twenty minutes to warm up the deep fryer. We only have two hours before we start selling.”

“It’s gonna be fine.” Uncle Saul grinned. His wild, curly black hair was like mine, but streaked with gray. He lived with an albino alligator named Alabaster in the swamp outside Mobile in a log cabin he’d built. He seemed to like it that way.

“That’s why I brought you along.” I mixed the orange biscuit dough. “You’re the best cheerleader I have. And I appreciate you offering to leave the swamp for a few days. I know you hate being away.”

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I’d pretty much do anything for you, Zoe girl. Leaving Alabaster isn’t easy, since she likes to sneak into the neighbor’s chicken coop for a few free snacks. But I think Bonnie will keep a good eye on her.”

“How’s it going with Bonnie?” I asked about the wildlife officer who was sweet on him.

He grinned. “Don’t worry about my personal affairs. I think you’ve got enough of your own to mind!”

“What about me?” Ollie towered above us in the food truck. He was a big man, an ex-marine, six-foot-six with a skull tattoo on the back of his bald head and neck. “Don’t I count as a cheerleader? I think I’m always cheerful.”

“Cheerful as a rock.” Delia laughed at him. “If I had to get up every morning with you as my alarm clock, Ollie, I’d probably go jump in Mobile Bay.”

Delia Vann had lost her job as a cocktail waitress in a sleazy dive back home. She’d been working with me in the food truck ever since. Not a big step up, but at least I respected and envied her.

She was as beautiful as any model or actress you see on TV—tall and thin, long legs, and gorgeous hair. I was short and on the plump side. Too much good food, I guess. It was hard not to taste when I cooked.

Ollie frowned. He had a secret crush on Delia and was trying to work out the details. The movement affected his whole face from forehead to chin. “I don’t know why you’d say that. I work well with others and maintain my cool. What more is there?”

I saw him ogling Delia’s long legs, now in tiny white shorts. Her cocoa-colored skin was flawless. The summer had put highlights into her long, dark hair.

Delia also had a way of handling things—mostly men—that I admired. She was so confident and poised. I was like Ollie—still trying to figure out the opposite sex.

I thought I knew what there was to know about relationships until I broke up with my boyfriend. I’d thought Tommy Lee and I were made for each other. Then I found out he was seeing someone else. It had dented my confidence a lot. If I couldn’t figure out Tommy Lee, who could I figure out?

“There’s a lot more to life, Ollie.” Delia smiled as she took the tray out of the small oven for me. “Sometimes I think customers run away because they’re scared when they see you.”

I knew Ollie might be big and tough-looking, but he had a soft heart. Delia’s words had to hurt. I felt bad for him.

Ollie had been homeless and living at the shelter a few doors down from the diner when I’d bought it. He’d led me to the diner accidentally after helping me and Uncle Saul fix up the Biscuit Bowl.

We’d clicked right away, and he’d stood faithfully by me after I got started. He was still homeless and living at the shelter. He seemed to like it that way.