One More Taste

by Melissa Cutler

  She fixed her eyes on Knox, studying, learning. “What’s your mom like?” she asked.

  “My mom?”

  “Yes. Does she still live in Hutchins, where you grew up?”

  He seemed surprised that she knew that.

  “I do my research,” she added quietly.

  “Yeah, she still lives in the Hutchins house, even though it’s way too big for her needs now.”

  “Alone, or does she have someone new in her life?” Research had provided the answer to that question, but she wasn’t asking because she wanted to know more about Knox’s mother. She fixed her eyes on Knox, studying, learning.

  His eyes lightened at the question. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s seeing anyone, a nice man from church or the neighborhood. I hope she’s out having fun, for her sake. She would never admit it to me and my siblings, though. I think, out of a misguided notion of respect for us kids’ memory of my dad.”

  “Your father’s been gone three years. That’s a lifetime to some. But your dad’s still very much on your mind, especially now that you’re working at Briscoe Ranch.”

  “That’s true. He is on my mind a lot. In a good way. Sometimes that three years feels like a lifetime, and others, it feels like yesterday. It’s a hell of a thing, losing the person you loved and idolized most in this world.”

  “It doesn’t sound like he’s lost. It sounds to me like he’s still watching over you.”

  Knox rolled his eyes heavenward, a wistful smile playing on his lips. “That’s a very good point.”

  Emily couldn’t tear her eyes from Knox and the fascinating play of emotions on his features. It was as though being on the water had completely disarmed him.

  Seemingly unaware of Emily’s focused gaze, Knox once again fixed his attention on the business of rowing. Not long after that, he skimmed an oar in the water, turning the boat. He nodded toward the shore. “Oh, wow. Look.”

  Emily had been so focused on their conversation that she was surprised to see that their little boat had rounded the bend in the lake. Briscoe Ranch in all its glory sat before them, rising up from the lakefront golf course like a castle on a hill. Lights blazed from the balconies and rooftops. The unlit golf course sloped down to the lake’s edge. She followed the snaking trail of lights demarcating the pathways through the golf course and meandering to the main building. And there was the stable, its main arena lit with floodlights. She stared for a long time at the chapel on the hill behind the resort, the beating heart of the Briscoes’ empire.

  She often fought against complacency about her good fortune to wind up in such a beautiful, safe place as Briscoe Ranch. She fought not to take the fresh air and the sense of community for granted. It was stunning, all the many ways being homeless had scarred her, even now, after years of comfortable living and regular meals and career success.

  Over the years, she’d gradually learned to trust that such luxuries would last, and that she didn’t need to be so hyper-vigilant about her safety. She caught herself opting not to bask in every single sunset or smell every rose she encountered, secure in the knowledge that there would be another beautiful sunset the next day, more roses, more beauty.

  Knox’s plans for the resort jarred her from her security like nothing else had since the day she’d left home as a sixteen-year-old. She simply could not fathom a life away from Briscoe Ranch. He’d been correct that she’d missed chances by not apprenticing for accomplished chefs. But the peace of mind that life at Briscoe Ranch had brought her had superseded her need for prestige.

  “It’s so beautiful.” The hitch in her voice surprised her. What a surreal, emotionally charged night this had become for both of them.

  “It will be even better when I’m done with it.” His words were loaded with ambition and confidence. In that moment, she believed him absolutely.

  She pointed to the east side of the main resort building. “The restaurant I’m proposing would look out over the golf course and the lake.”

  It felt weirdly inappropriate to discuss business while immersed in the hushed majesty of the lake and the night, with the grand view of the resort before them. Granny June definitely wouldn’t approve.

  “I know. You want to put it on the southeast end of the main building, in the basement where housekeeping is right now. We would need to excavate around the basement to create the sunken patio you envision to create a subterranean feel. That’s right under my office, so it’d have that same world-class view.”

  “You really did read my restaurant proposal thoroughly.”

  “It’s been a little crazy these past couple days, but yeah, I did read it. I told you I was going to give you an honest chance, Emily. I’m a man of my word.”

  She pulled her focus away from the resort to offer Knox a smile of gratitude but found him watching her with an earnestness that made her breath catch. As they held each other’s gaze, the oddest sensation washed over her, as though her spirit, her very cells, were shifting toward him, reaching out, yearning for connection.

  A puff of breeze brought with it the fragrance of the night once more. Their little boat rocked ever so gently in the calm water. Somewhere near the shore came the lone call of a duck. How would this strange and wondrous night translate into a meal? What flavors could encapsulate the scents and sounds of the lake at night? What textures and tastes could capture the complexities of the way she felt alone with Knox under the moonlight?

  Culinary inspiration hit like an electric current zipping along her veins and over her skin, and with such force that she nearly levitated off the bench. Ingredients for a bourbon-glazed jambonette of duck tumbled through her mind with haphazard purpose. “Oh! That’s it!”

  “What’s wrong? Did a bug get you?”

  “I have to write something down about tomorrow’s dinner. Give me a minute.”

  The spike of adrenaline turned her blood hot. She peeled out of her chef’s jacket and draped it over the bench on which she sat. The white tank top she wore beneath it was damp with perspiration that turned downright cold in the night air. Goosebumps broke out on her arms as she took out her cell phone.

  She felt his eyes on her as she typed away on the memo app of her phone, getting all her good ideas out of her mind before she forgot them. She barely noticed a splash of water hitting her arm, but she definitely noticed Knox’s shouted curse and the slap of a large, slimy tail against her leg.

  A massive fish had landed in the boat and was flopping around at her feet.

  With a shriek, she dropped her phone and scrambled to her feet. She and Knox lunged at the panicked, flopping fish at the same time. The rowboat rocked precariously. Emily had to let go of the fish and pinwheel her arms so she didn’t fall overboard, unlike the fish, who wriggled and flopped itself over the edge and into the water with a splash. It took Emily a moment to register Knox’s hand on her hip, steadying her.

  “Holy shit, that was crazy,” Knox said through a laugh. “I think that was Phantom. I saw the same scar on its back.”

  Emily sank to the bench. “You were right. He really is an attack fish. It’s too bad we couldn’t keep it in the boat. I would’ve changed tomorrow night’s dinner plans to fish.”

  Knox chuckled again, shaking his head. He draped a friendly arm around Emily’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’m just glad you didn’t fall overboard.”

  Too late, Emily noticed herself leaning into his touch, craving the contact. She’d long ago suppressed the need for another’s touch, so much so that her unexpected appetite for it felt like an alien invader inside her trying to take over her mind and body. To yearn for the feel of her bare skin coming into contact with someone else’s, with another’s hands, with his mouth.

  Just for a moment, just to satisfy the craving, she rested her cheek on his shoulder and nuzzled her face into his arm. She brought her hand up and splayed it over his chest. Goddamn, it felt good to be held. The only sounds she heard were the lapping of water against the boat, Knox’s labored b
reathing, and the pounding of her pulse, so loud she wondered if Knox could hear it, too.

  Knox’s hand slipped from her shoulder to her waist. He held her close and released a stuttering breath that fanned over her neck. Chills wracked her body, and not only from the cold air on her damp skin. She allowed herself one last, long moment of touch. So inappropriate. So necessary. How have I lived without this for so long?

  Stifling a groan, she pulled away and found her chef jacket on the floor of the boat. It was drenched with water and smudged with fish slime and dirt from their shoes.

  “Is your jacket ruined?” Knox asked in a wooden voice, completely devoid of emotion.

  “Looks like it. That’s okay.” She could only hope he wouldn’t make a big deal out of that hug. Maybe they could both agree to forget it had happened.

  She sat on the bench and wrapped her arms around herself, staving off the cold.

  Knox took hold of the oars. “I’d better get you back before you freeze to death.”

  He turned the boat around. Within minutes, Briscoe Ranch disappeared again from view. This side of the lake seemed darker, now that their eyes had adjusted to the glow from the resort’s lights. In the silence, there was nothing to do but consider what had just happened, and the raw, primitive need Knox had stirred to life within her with his touch. It hadn’t been enough. If anything, she felt the craving for touch, for connection with a man building force within her.

  She wanted nothing more than to put this new awakening back in its jar, close the lid tight, and toss it into a deep cave. She didn’t want lust or men or physical need complicating her life. She was too busy for that, damn it all. The trouble was, she had a feeling that would be impossible. She couldn’t ignore it any longer—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She had a feeling she’d just learned the hard way that some things just wouldn’t stay buried forever.

  Chapter Seven

  Thank goodness Knox was a master at compartmentalization. It was the only thing getting him through nightly dinners alone with Emily after that surreal boat ride earlier in the week. He still couldn’t believe he’d embraced her like that. What the hell had gotten into him? He’d probably never know because he refused to think any more about it. From the moment she’d left his house that night, he’d vowed to redouble his efforts to walk the straight and narrow line as Knox Briscoe, successful businessman, and not Knox Briscoe, the emotionally unstable fool who went around getting teary-eyed with his grandmother over old memories and taking his personal chef for moonlit boat rides to name the fish in his lake.

  Today, Friday, he had enough on his plate to distract him from any errant thoughts of Emily, what with Ty’s mentorly advice and overeager attempts to bond, then a team of structural engineers scheduled to arrive that afternoon to determine the efficacy of the resort expansion plans and the structural integrity of the existing buildings.

  Of course, Knox already knew the existing resort buildings were foundationally unsound. A building inspector buddy of his had accompanied him to the county records office, where they’d pored over the archived blue prints, appraisals, and permits of the resort. After only a few hours of looking, one thing became glaringly clear: there was no way the original hotel that Tyson Briscoe had built in the 1950s with his own two hands was up to code, despite clear evidence that County Fire Marshal Micah Garrity had taken Ty to task on various other building code violations over and over again throughout the years. There were just some aspects of the Texas building code that even the most vigilant fire marshal couldn’t determine, especially given the evidence Knox and his buddy had uncovered that Tyson Briscoe—and then Ty—had systematically paid off county building inspectors and structural engineers to feed the fire marshals and county officials falsified data on the original building’s hydrological and geological stability.

  In other words, one of these years, after a particularly rainy season, Briscoe Ranch Resort’s foundation would likely fail, sending it on a downhill creep toward the lake. The resort guests weren’t in any kind of immediate danger, but the overall valuation of the property was grossly inflated. The resort was worth a fraction of what it was valued at on paper. And even less when one considered the slew of loans and refinancing funds Ty had taken out over the years based on the inflated value.

  So today was a very big day. Because the sooner the building inspectors and structural engineers told Knox what he already knew, the sooner Knox could have the business’s worth reevaluated and the sooner he could buy his equity firm’s investors’ shares at a bargain-basement price, making him the controlling partner, with Ty as his subordinate.

  Knox had always prided himself on his professional ethics. He’d built his career on it, in fact, having decided during the first business ethics class he’d taken in college that he’d never stoop to being a shady businessman who took advantage of others—unlike his grandfather, Tyson, or his Uncle Ty. Everything Knox earned in this life, he’d wanted to earn by the rules, fair and square. No cutting corners, no backroom deals, no bribes or manipulations.

  He still believed that, and still strove tirelessly to live by that creed—except that Briscoe Ranch wasn’t just any business, and Knox’s agreement to invest in the company wasn’t just any deal. It was about justice for his father. And to accomplish that, he needed to beat Ty Briscoe at his own game.

  With Shayla on speakerphone, calling from his house, working from her laptop, the two of them were in the process of reviewing the resort’s previous year’s profit and loss statements when Knox’s office door opened. The scent of cinnamon and baked sugar had him tearing his gaze away from the computer screen to watch Emily enter the room pushing a stainless steel rolling tray that was laden down with a place setting, a carafe of orange juice, and a silver-lidded plate.

  The room seemed to hum to life with her energy, jolting Knox’s system awake.

  “Hope you’re ready for an apple pancake with mascarpone filling and maple sage sausage,” Emily said as she positioned the cart in front of his desk, her eyes averted as though she was avoiding him. She’d rarely looked him in the eye since that boat ride, in fact. But maybe he was reading too much into that. Maybe she was just busy. And maybe she was just as skilled at compartmentalization as he was.

  Over the phone, Shayla gasped. “Did someone bring you breakfast? Is that—”

  Knox snatched his phone up and took the call off speaker. “Yep, looks like breakfast.” He offered Emily an awkward smile. She didn’t return it; she was so busy bustling around the tray table.

  “Your new girlfriend brought you breakfast,” Shayla said in a singsong voice.

  “Stop with that,” he muttered.

  “How late does she stay at your house after dinner? Does she linger over dessert? Or does she leave at all?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” To Emily, he added, “Not you. Though I am sorry you wasted your time again this morning. Like I tell you every morning, I don’t eat breakfast.”

  “And as I told you yesterday and the day before and the day before that, I have the right to keep trying.”

  “Ambitious,” Shayla mused.

  His eyes tracked Emily as she plated a slice of thick, fluffy pastry oozing with baked apples. Yes, she is.

  Shayla made a clicking noise, the same sound of disapproval their mom had made when they got in trouble as children.

  “What does that mean?” Knox asked, though he regretted it immediately. He really didn’t want to open himself up to any more of Shayla’s teasing.

  “I should be asking the same to you,” Shayla said.

  What he should have said was I’ll call you back later, but what came out of his mouth was, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Emily walked to the back of the desk and unceremoniously stacked his paperwork off to the side in preparation to lay out a linen placemat. He waved her away. “I don’t want breakfast. I swear.”

  “You have to eat in the morning,” Emily said. “I know you get up early
and work out. Even if you only think of food as fuel, you still need that fuel. And don’t tell me you had a protein shake.”

  Too bad for her, that was the God’s honest answer. “I had a protein shake.”

  Emily planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “You and I have a deal. At the very least, you need to give me the chance to entice you.”

  In his ear, Shayla made that clicking sound again.

  A deep pink color rose on Emily’s cheeks. “To eat breakfast,” she added with an exaggerated tone. With a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes, she unceremoniously set a plate piled high with sliced, cooked apples floating in a cinnamon sauce amid layers of dough and thick, oozing cream, and bracketed by a pair of succulent-looking sausages. With a mumbled excuse, she turned on her heel and marched with the tray from the room, closing the door behind her.

  The apple pancake looked as decadent as it smelled. It also looked like the kind of meal he’d have to run a half-marathon after, to work off all the calories. He turned his attention back to Shayla.

  “Okay, she’s gone now. So what’s with the clicking? What are you getting at?” he asked.

  “What I’m getting at is that I saw the way you two watched each other the other night. And then she freakin’ went on an evening stroll with you and Granny June. And she’s at your house every night, just the two of you.”

  Guess he wouldn’t mention that boat ride. “So?”

  “So, you can’t have it both ways,” Shayla said. “You can’t dangle this job opportunity over her head while you’re also angling to sleep with her. It’s one or the other, bro. That’s called ethics.”

  Sleep with her? That was jumping to an awfully absurd conclusion. “I’m not planning to sleep with her. Or anyone at the resort, for that matter. The situation at the resort is complicated enough already. What I’m doing, apparently, is working Emily to death. God only knows how early she had to get up to make me this pancake breakfast. When she and I agreed to this arrangement, I challenged her to prove herself as a chef. So that’s what she’s doing. I’ve never seen such a hard worker. I admire her a lot. And that’s the end of the story.”