Excel 2003.

If in one cell I have the following statement: "Last week I ate [ x ]
apples"

And I wanted to insert a number from another cell into [ x ]. How would I
do that?

I tried have the first part of the setence one one cell. The " [ x ] " in
the second cell and the rest of the sentence in the third. But because of
other things going on in the sheet I cannot get it to line up correctly. What
are my options?