One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(57)

“You.” Her smile fell. With a shake of her head, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “That came out wrong. What I meant was, it reminds me of you. Complicated, peppery, with a touch of sweet berries and notes of leather and tobacco that remind me of your rodeo days and that black hat you’re so fond of.”

He took a sip. The flavors burst against the roof of his mouth and tingled over his tongue. “I’ll have to order a case for my house.”

That sly smile returned. She swirled the wine in her glass. “Funny, I was just thinking about how I’ll have to order it for my new restaurant.”

Yes, she would. But he couldn’t think of a way to answer her that didn’t jump the gun about making his decision. Because as soon as that happened, then their deal was done and he wasn’t prepared to give up the pleasure of coming home to her every night. So instead, he cleared his throat. “Decker and I were able to hook up for a fishing lesson earlier this week. It was fun.”

Her only acknowledgment of his abrupt change of topic was a brief flicker of her eyebrows. “Did you catch anything?”

“A few small bass.”

“No sign of Phantom, though?”

Knox rolled another sip of wine over his tongue. “That sneaky fish didn’t even jump out of the water to make his presence known. I told Decker the story about Phantom attacking me, and he thought I was bullshitting him.”

“Keep trying to catch it. Once Decker sees Phantom, he’ll believe you.”

“That’s the plan. Decker loaned me his fishing gear, said he wasn’t going to need it for a while with the baby on the way, so if you feel like trying your hand at catching Phantom, be my guest. It’s in the boathouse. I could even share the pointers Decker told me, if you’d like. Maybe between the two of us, we’d stand a chance at catching Phantom.”

He could imagine himself and Emily sitting on his dock, spending an afternoon fishing and chatting amicably like they were tonight. The intense need for physical connection still crackled in the air between them, but rather than being a hindrance, it served to sharpen his awareness of every little detail of her, from the way she pressed the wine glass to her lips or tucked her chin and cast her eyes down when she smiled to every story she told and the inflection of her voice.

To the suggestion that they fish together, she raised her eyebrows in a show of skepticism. “Maybe we should try chumming for him from the dock. I just so happen to have a spoiled pot of Frito Pie at your house. It’s your dad’s favorite dish, and I get the feeling Phantom and your dad might have known each other, way back when, so who knows. Maybe the fish has a soft spot for Frito Pie, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “I know that probably sounds crazy.”

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.”