One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(21)
Granny June’s words seemed to disarm Shayla, who reached for her cheddar biscuit and took a nibble. “I didn’t know you were there.”
Granny June swiped at a tear in the corner of her eye and drew herself up proud, then gestured to the stack of albums Emily had set on the hearth near Knox. “Maybe after dinner, we can have a look in that pink album, there. That’s my scrapbook about you that I’ve been updating all these years, hoping someday to share it with you.”
Knox settled back in his chair, studying his grandma with warm, searching eyes.
Emily allowed herself a brief feeling of triumph, then slipped quietly back from the family scene. Assuming the role of the near-invisible household help, she set a place setting for Granny June, then ladled stew into three bowls and delivered them to the table. “Tonight you’ll be dining on stew made with locally raised beef, as well as truffled cheddar biscuits.”
“This is our only course? No first course?” Shayla said.
Emily returned tableside with a fresh black truffle and a shaver. “I wouldn’t want to waste your appetite on an appetizer.”
Shayla glanced between Knox and Emily. “I’m sorry. I guess I just thought this was an audition for a restaurant and assumed…”
Shayla went quiet as Emily shaved thick truffle slices over Granny June’s stew, then hers.
“I think what Shayla’s trying to say is that most restaurants have courses,” Knox said. “Especially five-star restaurants. And so it’s no wonder she figured you’d want to showcase as many dishes every night as possible.” He plucked a truffle slice from on top of his stew as Emily shaved slices over his bowl. He used the slice to gesture to his sister. “Understandable, but Emily’s restaurant would take a different track.” Then he popped the whole truffle into his mouth.
So, then, he had read the restaurant proposal she’d left on his desk. Her esteem for him rose even higher, despite that she tamped down her gratitude in favor of professionalism. “I decided that in order to be truly revolutionary, a high-concept dining experience shouldn’t follow such standard dining patter.”
Shayla raised her eyebrows. “Revolutionary? That’s ambitious.”
“Ambitious is just the word I use to describe my Emily,” Granny June said.
Emily poured Granny June her signature drink of bourbon on ice, then cracked open a can of beer and poured it into a chilled pint glass for Shayla. “I’m pairing the meal tonight with a craft Belgian-style ale from one of my favorite breweries in Austin.”
“A can of beer? Interesting,” Knox said. “You keep surprising us.”
Damn right, she kept surprising them. That was the whole idea.
Shayla smiled. “That you do, so I hope you won’t take it personally if I don’t partake of the beer. I love beer, but I’m training for a marathon and can’t indulge in empty calories and carbs.”
If Emily were personalizing the meal for Shayla, she would have never served beer, but Italian soda with freshly-rendered blackberry thyme syrup, with only the slightest drizzle of cream. Just enough to swirl among the ice like storm clouds—reminiscent of the hint of storminess that complicated Shayla’s bright, joyful eyes.
“Careful, sis,” Knox said. “If you offend the chef, you might end up with a plate of food in your lap.”
Shayla snickered good-naturedly, in a way that told Emily that Knox hadn’t informed his sister about the soup incident. “Should I be worried?” she asked Emily.
“It was a bowl, not a plate. And, of course, you shouldn’t be worried,” Emily said.
Knox made a clicking sound, a subtle I beg to differ protest.
Granny June did a little shoulder shimmy. “I’m guessing there’s a juicy story there.”
Emily winked at her. “Tell ya later.”
Once her diners were eating heartily and reminiscing, oblivious to Emily’s presence, she stoked the fire once more, then grabbed a mug of stew she’d ladled for herself and crept outside to take her meal on the deck. It wasn’t until she was in the darkness of the deck that she allowed a broad smile onto her lips. This was what she lived for, nourishing people. And if it won her the job of a lifetime, then all the better.
Chapter Five
When Knox had accepted Ty’s invitation to buy into the company, both with his own personal money and with his equity firm’s, he’d anticipated a welling of emotions long forgotten. He’d braced for it, not wanting to be taken by surprise. But the emotions he’d expected were grief and resentment. He’d expected to resent the Briscoes for the lack of a supportive extended family and wealth they’d deprived his parents of, and for the legacy that he and his siblings had been denied. He’d expected a fresh wave of grief for the father he lost too soon. He hadn’t expected, in his wildest dreams, to feel this elemental connection to strangers who weren’t really strangers at all. His grandmother, his cousins. Even, perhaps, his uncle.
On his first bite of Emily’s stew, the flavor assaulted him. That was the only word for it. The beef was of the finest quality, as all her ingredients were, but even beyond that, he took one bite and, in an instant, he was at his mother’s table, the plastic protective covering over the tablecloth. His father was there, leading the prayer. They ate canned biscuits with stew made with beef bought at a discount that had to be simmered for hours until it was tender enough to chew. And yet, Emily’s stew was so much more than that one memory. There was a heartiness that touched on the kind of decadence he’d only known since becoming wealthy. And a depth of complex flavors that still left him hungry for more. It was the past, the present, and the future.