One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(29)
“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.