One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(42)
Emily was struck once again by how similar in appearance all the Briscoe men were. They all looked related, but Knox was the spitting image of young Ty and Knox’s Grandpa Tyson, down to the stiff jaw and ambitious gleam in his eyes, while Wade’s face was rounder, more closely resembling Clint and Granny June, and then all with echoes of each other, including Carina and Haylie. No doubt about it, the Briscoe bloodline was strong. Emily couldn’t wait to see how that lineage manifested in Carina and Decker’s baby boy.
Knox and Wade’s room was marked with a sign taped to the door that looked like it had been printed out on an old dot matrix printer, the perforated edges still attached. Knox and Wade’s Private Lair—Enter at Your Own Risk.
After another look over her shoulder, Emily pushed the door open.
The room was divided in half, much like a college dorm room, with each side containing a twin bed and a desk. One of the two boys had been into comic books and WWF as a kid, as evidenced by the posters of oiled-up musclemen in costumes and masks that plastered his wall and the rows of colorful comic books that lined his bookshelves. The other side of the room had been done up in a rodeo motif. There was even a line of cowboy hats hooked on the wall, as well as a line of trophies on bookshelves, all with Knox’s name, all declaring him a junior rodeo champ. What a nice, sweet life they’d all had in this house.
Jealousy hit her hard, as though it had been waiting quietly in the shadows since the church service, ready to pounce. For all the material wealth Clint’s family lacked compared to Emily’s own upper-class youth, they’d had something far richer than she’d ever known. Real, familial love. There was a time she would’ve given anything—anything in the whole world—for the unconditional love of her parents, to go to bed without being terrified of being awoken in the middle of the night by her drunk father, to not have suffered her mother’s emotional distance and half-baked rationalizations.
Knox’s childhood home was filled with the same sort of authentic love that Emily had been chasing her whole adulthood through her cooking. Her hand closed over a framed photo on Knox’s desk of him and his father. She couldn’t stop staring at the pride in Clint’s eyes. The goddamn fatherly pride. No wonder Knox held his father’s memory in such reverence. Emily was certain that no one had ever looked at her like that.
There was nothing more for her to learn in this house tonight, not with bitterness and jealousy and the ache of longing that was bulldozing over her professional detachment. There was no room in her mind for her muse to work. She was straightening the framed photograph in preparation to leave when footsteps behind her caught her attention.
“You had no right to come my mother’s house. No right at all.”
She cursed internally, because, of course, Knox’s anger was justifiable. With nowhere to run or hide, she pulled a cowboy hat from the wall and turned, then set the hat on his head. “Are you sure your mom’s okay with you being alone in your room with a girl?”
He ripped the hat off his head and tossed it on the bed. “Don’t play cute. I refuse to allow you to use my mother.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“I sent Mom to the store for wine to have with dinner. That gives you plenty of time to leave.”
Emily’s heart sank, even though she’d known that was coming. “I didn’t mean her or you any harm by doing this. I wanted to learn more about you and—”
“Then you should have asked me instead of dragging my mother into your … your…” He waved a hand at her, as though her mere presence articulated plainly enough the point he was getting at.
“My what? My evil plan to succeed at the challenge you’ve laid out for me? My dastardly intention to tap into your love for your father by fixing you his favorite meal? Buttering you up with nostalgia?” A wry huff escaped her lips. “But guess what? The trick’s on me. I’m the one who let sentimentality get the best of me today. This room, your mom and her church, the love in the house itself. I can feel it in the walls and in every room. It’s nothing that money can buy. I know you feel like you were cheated out of the life you were owed by being cut out of the Briscoe fortune, but you have to believe me when I say that money can’t buy everything. It can’t buy love. It can’t—” Wincing, she closed her eyes and fought to get a grip. She’d already said too much and taken the conversation way past the boundaries of professionalism.
She raised her lashes again. Knox was standing close, watching her with those dark, enigmatic eyes that drew her in every time.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said quietly.
No, she shouldn’t have. “But I am here. Why does that scare you so much? What are you trying to hide?”
He stepped even closer, so near that his shoes bumped hers. His lips parted as though he were on the verge of speaking. She chanced another look in his eyes, but flinched back at the presence of anguish in them—anguish that mirrored her own.
Her attention dipped to his neck, and to the press of his shirt collar against his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard. How could he breathe in that choker of a suit? Her fingers twitched with the urge to undo the button at his neck and unmake him in the same way he’d shed his business attire in his bedroom on that first night of their agreement. That was the man she wanted to feed, the man free of his armor, the one who drove his father’s old truck and named the fish in his lake. The one whose eyes glowed with warmth when he looked at his grandmother. Emily wanted to feed the former rodeo champion who brought flowers to his mom on Sunday morning. The tender, loving soul behind the fierce Briscoe name and CEO title.