It did, but she was in sympathetic company. “Come on, you’re talking to the guy who thinks his truck’s haunted.”
“Well, it is haunted,” she deadpanned.
They shared a conspiratorial smile as their server laid out the dishes they’d ordered, a sampling from every section of the menu. In companionable silence, they dug in, critiquing the dishes as they went. After one bite of the pecan wood-smoked pork, Emily pushed the plate away.
“Uh-oh, you look queasy,” Knox said.
“That’s not queasiness, it’s disgust. What a waste of an opportunity. This pecan wood is muddling the flavors of what should have been a complex profile. And, by the way, what’s up with the chef adding a pecan-sage cream sauce to pecan wood-smoked pork—how is that, in any way, a cutting-edge flavor combination?” She scooped a bit of the cream onto her spoon and held it out to him. “If you lick this and let it roll around in your mouth, what do you feel?”
Before he knew what he was doing, he’d leaned across the table and let his lips close over the spoon as she held it, as though she were feeding it to him. Their gazes locked, making the back of his neck tingle with the electric shock of their connection. She snagged her bottom lip with her teeth as her gaze dipped to his mouth. God, he could imagine it, what it would feel like to lose his hands in her hair as he kissed those full, strawberry lips.
“Now use your tongue,” she said.
Shit.
Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. “To taste the cream sauce, I meant. Spread it over the roof of your mouth to release the flavors.”
He couldn’t very well swallow past the tightening of his throat, so he did as he was told, squishing the sauce against the roof of his mouth. A woodsy sage flavor bloomed over his tongue. Tasty, but rather flat. The flavor faded fast. “Nutmeg,” he said.
“But how do you feel?”
Was that a trick question? How he felt at that moment, sitting across the table from Emily Ford, had absolutely nothing to do with the pecan sage cream sauce. All he could manage was a shrug.
Emily threw her hands up. “There you go. A shrug. The worst review a chef could get.”
He could see how someone as passionate as she would be averse to mediocrity and bland feelings, especially given that every dish of hers he ate resulted in one big tempest of emotion. He took another bite of pork, redoubling his efforts to keep their night platonic and easy. “All I can think about now is you serving up your version of smoked pork. What would you do differently?”
She paused, considering the question. “Nothing I could say would capture the taste. You’d have to experience it.”
He felt the smile her answer elicited from him all the way to his heart, as a kind of delicious ache. “Okay, when? And don’t say, when you have your restaurant.”
“Okay, then. When I’m good and ready,” she said in a playful tone.
He would never tire of the give-and-take battle of their conversations. Never. “I’ve been thinking of hosting a dinner party next weekend for my equity firm partners and their wives. Smoked pork would be perfect. I mean, assuming you’d agree to cater it.”
“Only if you don’t make me hobnob with the dinner guests.”
The condition made him smile even bigger—made his heart ache even more deliciously—it was so her. “Not a big fan of schmoozing clients?”
“I don’t do small talk. I’m terrible at it.”
It came as no surprise that for as confident and capable as she was in the kitchen, she was insecure about being the person in the spotlight. “It scares you.”
She cast him a wary look. “Yes, it scares me,” she said finally. “But who said we have to do everything that scares us? Humankind evolved to have fear for a reason, so why would we suppress it? Because some inspirational poster with a tightrope walker tells us that facing our fears is a virtue? That’s bullshit. Maybe we’re scared for a reason. Maybe we don’t have to be great at everything. That’s such a stupid American construct.”
“There you go sounding like you’re rationalizing your choice to labor in obscurity at the resort. How can we evolve if we don’t conquer what scares us?”
She set her glass down and leaned forward. The fire in her eyes was something a man could get addicted to. “There is a noodle maker in Hong Kong who’s been making noodles the same way for sixty years, the same way his father did, the same way as generations before him did, bouncing on a bamboo pole. That’s it. That’s his life. That’s his skill. He has perfected noodle making. Do you have any idea how few people in this world ever perfect the art of anything?”
Almost no one, ever. Which begged the question, which struck more fear into hearts—spending sixty years on a single goal or accepting mediocrity for the manufactured concept of personal growth? It was a point Knox had certainly never considered before. And the fact that Emily Ford was telling him the noodle maker story, that she dared to strive for a level of perfection that might take a lifetime to achieve, made her the most fearless person in his life right now. Possibly, in the whole of Texas.
“I rendered you speechless,” she said.
“I was thinking about how it is the rarity of diamonds that makes them so valuable.”
She rolled her eyes melodramatically. “Oh my God, it’s like you’re an inspirational poster come to life. The point is, I am a culinary artist. That’s what I’m striving to perfect, and I’m not going to waste my time pretending to be someone I’m not or learning a skill that useless for me, like making vapid small talk at dinner parties when I’d rather be in the kitchen honing my art.”
Knox pushed the plate nearest him in Emily’s direction. “Here’s another dish that misses the mark, like that pork.” The dish was a deconstructed mole involving two quail breasts floating on pasilla chili-chocolate foam, surrounded by caviar-like gelatin balls, each containing a different spice used in the sauce. It looked and tasted like a gastronomical chemistry experiment gone bad.
“The mole? I loved it, but I knew it would leave you feeling empty. Remember, I told you that when I ordered it?”
He hadn’t put that all together, but she was correct. “How did you know?”
She pulled a bite of quail meat from the plate with her fork and dredged it through the caviar gelatin. “Because deconstructed mole is not what you need.”
What he needed to do was slide his fingers through her unruly curls of hair. What he needed to do was call for the bill so they could leave this loud, pretentious restaurant and he could have her to himself. What he needed to do was kiss—
Stop it, you dirty bastard. She is not your wife or your lover or yours in any way. A ten-minute fuck in your childhood bedroom does not a personal relationship make. And even if that could have been the start of something, it would all come crashing down the moment she learned of Knox’s eventual plans for the resort. And then she’d probably never speak to him again.
Regret knifed through him. Suddenly, acutely. He’d thought his strategy for revenge was flawless. He would have never guessed that a small-time chef would prove to be the chink in his armor.
But never mind that tonight. He wouldn’t allow anything to interfere with this one perfect evening with her. He had to reach back, struggling to remember the conversation at hand. Ah, yes. The mole that left him empty. “All right, then, what do I need, if not mole?”
She met his gaze with a triumphant smile. “I’ve been trying to show you since day one. You keep resisting. Are you ready to surrender? Are you ready to let me feed you like you need to be fed, every meal, unequivocally?”
He’d never heard a more erotic line of questions.
Their server appeared tableside. “How’s everything, folks?”
Emily sat back in her chair. Knox did the same. Both of them watched the server pour more wine.
“You can take the smoked pork,” Emily told the server. “It didn’t satisfy us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Would you care for something else?”
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll look at some menus.”
Damn this interruption. He still hadn’t gotten his answer from Emily, and he suddenly, quite desperately, needed to know what it was that Emily thought he needed. Then again, perhaps a better question was why was he intrigued by the idea that someone whom he’d only just met would know what he needed better than he would. He already knew what he needed. He forged his own path. He didn’t take advice from anyone outside his close circle of advisors. And Emily was not in that circle.
Maybe she should be.
And there he had it, the answer to his own question. What he needed, more than anything, more than smoked pork or mole or Frito pie, or even peach soup, was her.
He studied her as she perused the menu, feeling like he was seeing her for the first time all over again, marveling at his epiphany. She’s what you need, what you’ve always needed but could never find.
“What should we get?” she said without looking up.
He had to clear his throat before speaking. “Anything you want.”
She shone her bright green eyes at him. “I like the sound of that.”
So did he. “Tell me, Emily. What are you feeding me next?”
Her expression turned saucy. She gave a toss of her hair as she signaled the waiter. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see. But I think you’re going to love it.”
“I think I already do.”
Chapter Thirteen
For the first time since moving to Briscoe Ranch, Knox didn’t sleep a wink. Rather, he’d lain in bed, replaying every moment he’d spent with Emily in his mind. He’d never seen it coming, how deeply he’d grown to feel about her. He’d come a long way from the restlessness and lust that had led to their brief, intense sex in his childhood bedroom.
Oh, the lust was still there, all right, but it had evolved into so much more. When they’d returned to the resort after dinner, it had been torture to walk her to her office, where she’d insisted she needed to go in order to make notes about upcoming menus she was planning, and leave her there—when all he wanted to do was press her to the wall and kiss her. He wanted to gather her up in his arms and cart her off to his bed where they could dissolve into a naked, sweaty mess of passion, then lie in the dark and talk for hours about Hong Kong noodle makers and wines and fishing until the sun rose.
Are you ready to let me feed you like you need to be fed?
Yes, by God, he was.
At dawn, Knox gave up the fruitless pursuit of sleep and dressed in his running clothes and shoes, then stepped outside into the foggy morning. He stood a long time and stared at the lake, considering his next move. Usually, no matter how late he’d gone to bed the night before, or how fitfully he’d slept, he loved the shot of energy being up this early infused him with. The illusion of beginning at the starting line of the day instead of coming in during the middle of the race gave him a better sense of control. But he couldn’t get Emily out of his head.
After a brief stretch, he took off jogging down his driveway. As he turned onto the road, he touched the sign indicating that Briscoe Ranch Resort was three miles ahead. The perfect distance for a morning jog. Perhaps putting in a few hours at the office would give him a much-needed reprieve from his wayward thoughts about Emily. And there was plenty of work to be done, especially since the equity firm had approved a plan for repairs that would keep the resort open, before launching into a three-hundred-room expansion and complete remodeling of the main building, and the bids would be coming in any day on revamping the golf course into a competitive one that rivaled the best in the world.
The resort office was as quiet as one might expect on an early Saturday morning and smelling faintly of brewing coffee. Knox snagged the spare suit he kept in his office, then detoured to the employee locker room on the basement level for a shower.
He couldn’t help but glance into the catering kitchen as he passed. Emily’s domain. On a whim, he ground to a stop. With a look over his shoulder, dogged by the illogical feeling that he was trespassing, he stepped inside.
The kitchen was a sea of spotless, gleaming stainless steel—a blank canvas for Emily’s artistry. How late had she stayed the night before, scribbling notes? She’d had to be exhausted when she finally went home. He glanced through the window into her office. In his mind’s eye, he could see her at her desk, bent over her computer, typing out ingredient lists and flavor profiles with the passion of a mad genius.
Setting his spare suit on the nearest counter, he took a step closer to her office. The top edge of her sofa came into view. Haylie had told him during their tour of the resort that Emily slept there often. At the time, he’d thought of that as evidence of Emily’s ambition. But that was before he’d seen the world-weary look in her eyes the night before, when she’d spoken of the abusive relationship her friend was in. The words she’d chosen and the look on her face made it clear that her knowledge of battered women’s mentality was rooted in personal experience.
What if she didn’t sleep in her office because of the long hours she worked? Rather, what if she worked those long hours and slept in her office because there was someone at her home from whom she was trying to escape? What if she were asleep on the sofa right now?
Heart racing, he crept closer, torn between a heady desire to discover what she looked like as she slept and the hope that the sofa was empty and his instinct about her home life was wrong.
The breath caught in his throat at the sight of her bare knee poking out from beneath a quilt. Damn it.
Something definitely wasn’t right, and he intended to find out what it was. Yes, Emily deserved privacy. She deserved better than a boss who snooped into her personal life. But she also deserved a good home situation instead of working herself to the bone and bunking in her office night after night. He grabbed his suit from the counter and tiptoed out of the kitchen.
He showered and changed with mechanical indifference, his mind a swirling stew of questions and ideas on how to go about his search for answers.
When he passed the door to the kitchen again, his steps faltered at the sight of her office lights on, the door open. He swallowed hard. Talking to her now would be a mistake. He couldn’t take the chance of letting on to her about his concerns, not when he wasn’t even sure there was something to be concerned about.
He kept walking and didn’t stop until he was in his office with the door closed. Emily’s personnel file was easy to find in the company’s human resources database. He typed her address into an internet search engine.
The address came up as a business, not a residence. Murph’s, a boxing gym in a dead-end town forty-five minutes from the resort. He clicked the street view on the map and stared at the two-story building, a banner splashed over a window advertising that it was open twenty-four hours, seven days a week. The ground floor was dominated by a boxing ring surrounded by free weights and pulley machines, while the floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor revealed empty fitness classrooms with walls of mirrors.
It didn’t make sense.
On a whim, he started a new search, this time for her name. There were several Emily Fords in Texas, and it only took a few clicks for him to decide that wading through the Facebook pages and high school photos of random Emilys was a poor use of his time. Instead, he navigated to a private investigation database he’d once seen Shayla use to research a potential employee for the firm.
The first mention of an Emily Ford with her birthday and social security number happened thirteen years earlier, the year she’d started culinary school when she was eighteen. She’d never owned property, never purchased or leased a car. She had a credit card, with a credit history also beginning at age eighteen, as well as a bank account. Before that, there was no record of her in Texas or otherwise—not even a birth certificate or a high school transcript. It was as though she’d materialized from thin air when she turned eighteen. That’s when he noticed that the social security number on record had also belonged to another
Emily Ford, one who’d died more than fifty years ago.
After nearly an hour of digging and crosschecking the information he found, he could no longer deny what his findings were telling him. Whoever the woman who fixed his meals each day was, her real name wasn’t Emily Ford.
He thought back to their first encounter when he’d cut her down with questions about why she was holding herself back, why she hadn’t made a name for herself, if she was such an extraordinary chef. Now it made sense. Whoever she really was, she must have had a good reason to forge all identifying information about herself and disappear into the hills of Texas to toil away anonymously at a resort as a catering chef, careful not to draw too much attention to herself.
It didn’t take him long to connect the rest of the dots. He could think of only one reason that a woman would forge her identity as Emily had. Escaping an abuser. No wonder she’d sounded so intimately familiar with the domestic abuse her friend was suffering.
He stood, his instincts urging him to immediate action. He scribbled Emily’s address of record onto a sticky note, then stuffed it into his pocket. He strode from the room, summoning a Cab’d driver using the app on his phone as he walked. Of all the days to have left his truck at his house.
Ty stood in the doorway to his office across the hall as though he’d been waiting for Knox to emerge. Ever since they’d clashed after the meeting with the structural engineers and their mentor/ingénue illusion had fallen away, Ty had watched Knox like a hawk, all day, every day. Knox wouldn’t be surprised if Ty were rifling through Knox’s desk drawers every chance he got. Knox tried to take Ty’s overbearingness for what it was, the last, gasping power play of a defeated man. Soon enough, Ty would be gone, and Knox would have free rein of the place.
One More Taste Page 18