One More Taste (7 page)

“I feel like one of the three bears right now. Goldilocks, is that you sleeping in my bed?”

Emily practically levitated to her feet.

A distinctly male figure appeared in the twilight shadows beyond the bedroom door. “Knox,” she breathed, mortified.

He stepped just inside the room, into the light far enough for her to make note of his amused grin and playful, if onyx eyes. He leaned against the door jam, his thumbs hooked in his pants pockets. He looked intimidating. Confident. And undeniably, gorgeously male.

Awareness pricked through her body like needles of fire. “I would never sleep in your bed,” she announced.

His lips quirked, then he pushed off the door frame and strode toward the vanity. “Whatever, Goldilocks.”

Raising his wrist, he unfastened his watch, then set it into the jewelry dish.

He might have caught her off guard, but she had herself under control again. “Did you mistake me for someone who likes to joke around?”

He had the grace to wipe the grin from his lips, but only just. His eyes still glinted with amusement. “Absolutely not.”

Damn right.
“My hair's not even blonde like Goldilocks'. All I was doing was looking for inspiration on what to feed you.”

He shifted his attention to his sleeves, methodically removing each cufflink. “In my bed?” he asked, glancing up from beneath thick lashes.

Her skin turned impossibly hot. Did he have to keep saying
bed
as though it were the most erotic word in the English language?

“Among other places,” she snapped.

She should leave the room. She should dash back to her kitchen at the resort and load up the black truffles she was going to need for dinner tomorrow. Except Knox was blocking the door and she wasn't sure he'd let her pass before he had a definitive explanation about why she'd been in his bedroom. At least he hadn't caught her rifling through his medicine cabinet.

Her skin flushed even hotter.

“Did you find it?” he asked.

“Find what?” Was something missing?

He tossed the cufflinks into the bowl on the vanity. “Inspiration.”

Ah. “Maybe.”

He looked around, as if the inspiration was something visible. Then his eyes settled back on her.

She swallowed. “How was your day?”

She'd meant for him to find that question humorous in an ironic way, but it seemed to plunge him into deep thought. He walked towards her, then past her, to the bed, shrugging out of his suit jacket as he moved.

“Long. Good.” He tossed the jacket on the duvet, then hooked a finger behind his tie and tugged it loose. So intimate a move, undressing at home after a long day. What the hell was she still doing in his bedroom? She sidestepped towards the door, cutting him a wide berth.

“Haylie had a bit of a rough start today as my secretary,” he added, tossing the tie on top of the discarded jacket. “She was really nervous, which surprised me.”

Shifting his weight to one leg, he slipped out of his shoe, then repeated the move on the other. Until that very moment, Emily had never thought of socks as intimately personal before, but
oh my God
. Knox's stockinged feet, the outline of his toes against the thin weave of the beige fabric, made her feel like he'd shown her a sliver of his most intimate self. She swallowed hard. “I'm sure she'll do better tomorrow.”

As would Emily. No more covert missions to Knox's bedroom.

Knox sat back on the bed and pressed his knuckles into the mattress, looking at her with honest, if troubled eyes, and his face completely devoid of pretense. “Are you sure I'm not making a mistake with Haylie? Ty thinks I am.”

What was Emily, his advisor? Her focus slipped to his stockinged feet again. “No. Not a mistake. She's going to rise to the occasion. I'm sure of it.”

For reasons that turned Emily's stomach if she thought on them too hard, Haylie needed the job perhaps even more than Emily needed the new restaurant.

Knox studied her, perhaps weighing her sincerity. “Why? Tell me about her. Why was hiring her the right move? And why didn't her dad think so?”

What could Emily say without betraying Carina's confidence? Her friend had needed someone to share the burden of the secret Haylie had entrusted her sister with. “The thing about Haylie is that, for her whole life, her parents coddled her and gave her everything she wanted without demanding anything from her. The problem with that kind of princess treatment is that it doesn't build up a person's confidence. It only breaks it down.”

“They didn't coddle Carina?”

The idea brought a smile to her face, it was so preposterous. “No. She was the victim of oldest child syndrome. Until recently, she was kind of the family doormat.”

“What changed?

Emily wished there was a different answer to that question. She wished Carina could've found her own voice and her own power without Decker's help. She wished Carina could have internalized what Emily had been telling her for years, that she needed to follow her heart and stand up to her family, but it took a man sweeping onto the scene and telling her the exact same thing for the words to sink in. But such was life. “She married James Decker. And he helped her find herself.”

Knox popped the top two buttons of his shirt open. If his belt came off next, Emily was out of there, post-haste. But he only laid back on the bed and threaded his hands together behind his head. Her gaze slipped of its own volition to the flatness of his abs, the way his shirt strained and stretched across his chest, then lower, to the curve of fabric outlining his groin. Oblivious to her perusal and lost in thought, he moved a hand down to rest on his stomach. What a hand. Big, strong, a thick wrist and long fingers.

Knox Briscoe was stunning. Way too goddamn stunning for his own good. Disgust arrived with the next wave of lust that rippled through her. How dare she be attracted to this … this … interloper? This invader who'd swept in and assumed power over her and the people she cared about. It had to stop immediately.

“Just because Haylie was dealt a tough hand doesn't mean she's qualified for the job,” he said. “As I told you, I'm not here to run a charity program for the Briscoes and their friends.”

Ouch. “Haylie's life with Wendell, the guy she married, is not…” Emily was dancing perilously close to the truth, but if it helped Haylie hang on to her first good chance to change and grow, then Emily had to try. “She's not happy. And I don't believe she thinks highly enough of herself to change that. She doesn't need your charity, but she could use a lucky break, a chance to rise.”
Like me.

Except not like her because Emily knew her worth, and she'd known it for a long, long time. “Did you agree to this challenge so you could pump me for information on the Briscoes? Because my loyalty is to them, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“I noticed.” He sat up and pinned her with an inscrutable gaze. “And no, I didn't hire you with the hopes that you'd share Briscoe family secrets with me.”

Another thought occurred to her. “But that's why you offered Haylie her job, isn't it?”

His eyebrows flickered.

She was shocked that he was being so honest with her. Then again, he'd been honest all along, hadn't he? Brutally so. He behaved like a creature at the top of the food chain, with no fear of getting eaten. Which, she supposed, was the truth. “You don't expect anyone to surprise you. What a boring way to go through life.”

Only a slight downturn of his lips betrayed his displeasure at her assessment. “Look at you, knowing so much about me.”

The tension in the room was rising again. Emily shifted, unnerved anew by the intimacy of it all, battling him in his bedroom while he undressed. Why did every encounter with this man turn uncomfortably intense? Would they ever have a normal conversation instead of a chess match? “If you'll excuse me, I have ingredients to fetch.”

She'd taken two steps into the hall when he called to her. “Emily?”

She allowed herself a dramatic wince, then turned.

Knox was standing again, bedside, his legs hip-width apart, his hands in his pockets. “I don't want to forget to tell you that my sister will be joining us for dinner tomorrow and staying overnight. But she doesn't eat breakfast either, so don't get any ideas.”

His sister. Excellent. With any luck, she would provide yet another window into Knox's soul.

“One last thing.” He paused as though selecting the perfect words. “I'm looking forward to the meal tonight.”

Emily was, too. A little too much for her own good.

 

Chapter Four

A second day as a Briscoe Ranch owner, a second day spent under Ty's watchful, enthusiastic tutorship. The patience and acting required of Knox to allow Ty to believe he was still top dog at the resort was draining, though Knox had passed the hours in eager anticipation of the visit from his sister and another meal from Emily. The first night, she'd hit it out of the park with a foie gras dish unlike any he'd ever sampled. The fact that he couldn't stop thinking about the meal, or the wild boar hash she'd tried to ply him with that morning, or tonight's meal, for that matter, suggested that perhaps his sixth sense had been right about her. As far as diamonds in the rough went, Emily was a remarkably polished one.

After dark, an hour before Shayla was set to arrive, he set out from his office in a golf cart across the resort grounds. Happy guests strolled about, taking in the resort's gardens, splashing in the pool, and enjoying cocktails at the candlelit pavilion as an acoustic guitarist plucked out a jazzy tune. For all Ty's faults, he'd built one hell of a resort. Knox could hardly wait to make it even better, bigger, and more luxurious. He'd transform the magic of the resort into profit in a way that Ty had never accomplished.

Smiling at the thought, he parked it at the end of the paved road, then walked up and over the hill where his truck was parked just beyond the resort's eastern border along a fire road. It was a hike, for sure, but that had been as close to the property as his dad's truck would get that morning. One of these days, Knox would have to make a trip to San Antonio and purchase a second car. It wasn't as though he couldn't afford one, but his stubborn streak demanded that he give his dad's ghost a little more time to get used to the idea of his truck parking at the resort.

Beyond the fence demarcating the edge of the property, he spied the truck. The twinge of relief he felt was undeniably silly, but a part of him was grateful the truck hadn't decided on its own to randomly lose braking ability and roll away.

He looked the truck in its headlights, as though they were eyes. “What do you think, Dad? How am I doing so far?”

It wasn't until he was even with the front bumper that he noticed someone sitting on the lowered tailgate. His anger was swift and unreasonable. He stormed in her direction. In response, she smiled and lounged back, propping her hands on the truck bed behind her.

“Whatever you were going to say, don't,” he said. A hell of an opening line. What was it about Emily that made him fly off the handle like that?

“So this really is your truck. Hmph.”

He attempted a calming breath. “How did you know I'd parked here?”

“I saw you walking from this direction this morning and I came to investigate.”

“This is none of your business.”

Her smile fell. “That's true.” She hopped off the tailgate. “Were you talking to your dad just now?”

He closed the tailgate. “Nope.”

“Right.”

She smoothed a hand along the side of the truck bed. “Why park here? Is it that you don't want your employees to see you driving this old truck?”

He bristled at the accusation of vanity, but if she were trying to bait him into baring his soul, she was going to be sorely disappointed. Oversharing with his personal chef wasn't on his agenda for the day.

He brushed past her and unlocked the driver's door. “Think what you will.”

She strolled his way, feigning casualness, though her eyes gleamed with her usual sharp intensity.

His heart rate took on an erratic urgency.
Here it comes
,
the wrath of Emily.
At least she wasn't holding a bowl of soup.

She stopped before him, nose-to-nose, and narrowed her eyes. “What are you smiling about, all of a sudden?”

Smiling? Him? Preposterous. “Why are you here? Don't you have a dinner to prepare? My sister's coming, in case you'd forgotten.”

But Emily wouldn't be swayed off course. “You won't let anyone see you in this truck. Your first day, the day you and Ty finalized your deal, you arrived in a fancy car with a driver who pulled right up in front of the main entrance for everybody to see. All I could think about when I was watching you was how cocky and full of power you were. It was quite a show. But this truck … It's old and the paint's deteriorating and it doesn't have any bells or whistles. It's the opposite of powerful and showy.”

She'd been watching him that day? “If you're accusing me of parking here out of vanity, then—”

“That's just it. On the surface, it looks so vain, except that I know how sentimental you are. This truck means everything to you. It's either the exact same truck I saw in old family photos at your house, or it's the same make and model. And yet you park it out of sight. I don't get it.”

How did she
do
that?

She smoothed her hand over a dent above the front wheel. “How'd you get this dent? It seems fairly new because the paint's scraped.”

What was she getting at? First, she rifled through his bedroom and probably every other room in his house, and now she was brazen enough to interrogate him about his truck? Why? He was just curious enough to humor her question. “The day Ty and I finalized the contract, on my way to the resort, the truck broke down and hit a boulder.”