“Granny June, m’boy.”
He allowed Granny June to envelop him in a tight hug. “Right. Sorry.”
His apology fell on deaf ears, though, because Granny June’s full attention was on Shayla. She looked like she wanted to reach out to Shayla, but wrung her hands instead as her eyes welled with unshed tears. “Shayla,” she croaked. “That has to be you, doesn’t it? I haven’t seen you in … since…”
Unlike Knox, Shayla stayed rooted to her chair and extended her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said coldly. The storm clouds behind her eyes crowded out her brightness.
Emily wanted to shake some sense into her, to tell her how snitty it was to be so cold to her own kin. Except that Emily could see both sides of the coin. If today her father’s mother miraculously reappeared from beyond the grave, Emily wouldn’t rush to embrace her either—kin or not.
Granny June was undeterred. She took the seat Knox had pulled out for her between the two siblings, her focus remaining on Shayla. “I used to sneak into the back of the auditorium at your school and watch you in all those plays. I used to watch your dance recitals the same way. I was at your high school and your college graduations. All those times, I wanted to meet you, but I could only look on you from afar. I don’t blame your folks. I know they did the best they could, but I sure did miss being a part of your life. I’m hoping we can change that now.”
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.
How could a mere stew do that?
He lifted the truffle cheddar biscuit and took a bite. Too many sensations to name. Another burst of memory. This is what family tasted like. Sharp cheddar, complicated and rich; black truffles, earthy and whole. Even the beer took him back to his high school days, to the smell of his father on Sunday afternoons while watching football. It was as though the whole world had been condensed into this meal and the company he shared it with, along with the stacked albums of family memories on the hearth—tangible proof that their grandmother had loved them their whole lives. That thought alone felt like a blanket of calm he never knew had been missing from his life.
When he’d scraped the last morsels from his bowl, he turned, seeking Emily out to praise her for her creation, but she wasn’t in the kitchen. He hadn’t even noticed her leaving; he’d been so wrapped up in his grandmother’s stories and his meal. He supposed that’s what extraordinary food did—it commanded one’s full attention. Still, she needn’t have left. Dining with him was par
t of their agreement, though he’d hazard a guess that she’d wanted to give him time alone with his family. He would have done the same had their roles been reversed.
As Granny June launched into another story about their father when he was a boy and the trouble he used to get into while running wild over the countryside, Knox slipped his feet out of his shoes and stretched his toes. The fire in the fireplace had warmed the women’s cheeks, turning them pink, probably Knox’s, too. When he’d bought the house, he’d thought this fireplace was a waste of valuable kitchen space. Leave it up to Emily to see the value in it and put it to use, turning a simple dinner into something so much more—a hearth for him and his family to gather around and swap stories of days past and fill their bellies with hearty food meticulously crafted with great care.
When his sister emptied her glass of beer, which she’d almost absentmindedly started drinking as she’d sunk deeper into Granny June’s stories, Knox excused himself from the table and found another couple of cans for them both in the refrigerator.
On the way back to the table, looking at his dinner companions, a sense of belonging—vast and profound—hit him, hard. He was in Dulcet with his grandmother, with his sister. On property that looked out on the very land his father had been exiled from. No matter what, he was a part of the Briscoe Ranch legacy now. His sister, too. This business venture had become so much more complicated than he’d anticipated. He’d assumed his resentment toward the Briscoes would shield him from becoming attached. How naïve.
Why had he thought this was going to be easy? What had made him think he could handle all this … this feeling. Feelings he didn’t want. Yearnings for family and love and connection that he had no use for. This is business. Ty’s family doesn’t love you, and you don’t love them. Remember that …
At the table, Granny June and Shayla were flipping through a scrapbook that Granny June had compiled of newspaper clippings and online announcements and so forth of Shayla’s, Knox’s, and Wade’s accomplishments through the years, including finishing times of various marathons and races that Shayla and Knox had completed.
“Our grandma is a stalker,” Shayla said with an almost sad smile. All vestiges of the cold distance she’d lobbed at Granny June before dinner were gone. Now, her eyes were glassy and she seemed to be falling into melancholy.
Knox set a hand on Granny June’s arm. “A very thorough stalker.”
Granny June patted Knox’s hand. “Family is everything to me.”
“Then how?” Shayla’s voice cracked with the question. “How did you justify shutting my dad out like that? He was your son. I can tell that you loved him.”
Pain shone in Granny June’s face. From the purse she’d set on the floor, she pulled a stack of envelopes and handed them to Shayla. Their dad’s handwriting was instantly recognizable in the angry scrawl across the envelopes with a red marker: DEAD—RETURN TO SENDER.
“These are from you to my dad,” Shayla said in an awed whisper.
Granny June touched the date stamped on the top letter. She’d sent it a month before their dad’s death. “Yes. I never stopped hoping he would forgive me.”
It was in that moment that Knox realized how devastated his grandmother was about her estrangement from his dad, her son. Despite Knox’s memory of her sneaking into his dad’s memorial service, frail and trembling, he’d never thought about the rift from her point of view, not really.
“But … you sent birthday cards to us, and Dad let us have them. Why would he reject these letters?” Shayla said.
Knox knew why. Dad had made sure all three kids understood the reason they got to keep the cards. “The birthday cards had money. That’s why he let us keep them. He thought … well, it doesn’t matter what he thought.” Knox refused to hurt Granny June any more with details of his dad’s bitterness.
“Yes, that was my thought, too, when all the other letters I sent to your father and to you two and Wade were returned, everything except the cards with money.” Granny June didn’t sound resentful, but full of regret. “I should have put money in them all, I suppose.”
Other letters? Knox slipped his shoes on, pushed away from the table, and paced to the window. Damn it, Dad. You never mentioned that to us. You told us she didn’t care about us. Why did you lie?
“I knew that was what your dad was doing, but I wasn’t mad,” Granny June continued. “I was grateful that you three knew I was thinking about you on your birthdays. The truth was, I was thinking about you all the time. Every day. You were always in my heart.”
Through the window, only darkness was visible where Knox knew the lake to be. Above the silhouette of the hill on the opposite bank, the lights of Briscoe Ranch glowed like a golden beacon in the wilderness, rather than the hell his father had painted it to be.
What other secrets did you keep from me, Dad?
As soon as Knox thought that last question, guilt dropped like a stone in his gut. He expunged the words from his mind. No, he refused to entertain such a disloyal accusation. This family dinner was getting under his skin. His grandmother with her photo albums and old stories, his sister’s melancholy, Emily’s stew.
That was it. That’s was had started this whole mess tonight. For all he knew, it was Emily who’d tipped off Granny June that Shayla was having dinner with him. For all he knew, she’d masterminded this dredging up of ancient pain as a way to weaken him, to throw him off his game.
Movement of light on the deck caught Knox’s eye. It was the faint blue glow of a cell phone. Emily. Coherent thought was impossible as Knox flung the door open and stormed outside. His hands curled into fists. He planted his shoes on the decking and stared her down, ready to call her on her manipulation.
Emily shot to her feet. Even in the dim light from the window, he could see a look of innocent concern on her face. “Is something wrong?”
Hell, yes, there’s something wrong.
He opened his mouth. Then it hit him how out of control he was acting. More than his treasonous thoughts about his father keeping secrets, Knox was allowing his emotions to run roughshod over his self-control—and that was just as disloyal to his father’s memory. Was Knox really so weak-willed that a tasty bowl of stew and the ramblings of an old woman would make him crumble?
On his next breath, he looked into Emily’s searching eyes. His fight wasn’t with her or his grandmother or even his father. The only person he was fighting was Ty Briscoe. One more breath, and he’d found the strength to wrestle his anger back into its box and lock it closed.
“The stew was exceptional,” he said.
The stiffness in her shoulders drained away. “I know.”
Her reply diffused the last of his misplaced anger, it was so Emily.
He nodded to the empty bowl on the bench where she’d been sitting. “You and I have a deal. Tomorrow night, you’ll dine with me, and every night after that until the challenge is done.”
Her attention drifted to the view beyond the deck railing. “Why?”
It was a question he refused to investigate too deeply. “Because it suits me.”
The door to the kitchen creaked as it opened. Shayla stood in the doorway. “Hey, Knox, I was going to wait until you came back inside, but I’m tired. I’m headed to bed. I’ve got a long drive back to Dallas in the morning.”
It was only nine o’clock, but Knox knew his sister well enough to know she was as emotionally drained from the meal and Granny June’s stories as he was. But rather than deal with discomfort and painful memories of their past, Shayla was checking out. She’d been that way their whole lives. Perhaps that was the reason she’d avoided the anger issues that plagued Wade or the overdeveloped sense of responsibility that Knox had cultivated.
“Understood. It’s been a long day.”
Shayla offered Emily a little wave. “Dinner was great. Thank you.” And then she was gone.
“I’d better head back in, check on Granny June,” Knox said.
With a nod, Emily sto
od and gathered her dinner dishes, then followed him to the kitchen.
Granny June was up from the table and shrugging her coat on. “Emily, my dear, you outdid yourself with that meal.”
Emily helped her smooth down her coat collar. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Ready to leave? I don’t know how you got here, but I’m happy to take you home,” Knox said. Of course, he’d have to borrow Shayla’s car, since Granny June lived in the Briscoe family compound in the northwest corner of the resort grounds and Knox wasn’t about to take a chance that his truck would agree to get her all the way home.
Granny June took her cane in hand. “I’ll certainly take you up on that offer, but first, I’m curious. Is the old boathouse still standing?”
“It is. You know a thing or two about this house,” Knox said.
“The Madisons, the couple who lived in this place for ages, were good friends of Tyson and mine. They had a boy, Jacob, who was your daddy’s best friend. Those two were inseparable right up until Clint left.”
Knox sifted through his memories but came up blank. Then again, his father rarely spoke of his childhood, and he especially never reflected on happy memories. The sellers hadn’t been the Madisons, but the Rozcowskis, and his dad had never mentioned a friend named Jacob. Had his dad been forced to give up his best friend when he was banished from the family? “What happened to the Madisons?”
“After Jacob and his sisters graduated and moved on with their lives, Agnes and Chuck decided it was time to move on, too. We’re friends on Facebook. They’re in Florida, doing well.” She took Knox’s hand in hers and her eyes twinkled with fondness. “I don’t think it was an accident that you ended up buying this house. I think God brought you back to us and set you down here in this very house for a reason. If that boathouse is still here, then it has a secret I’d like to show you, something about your daddy that I think you’ll appreciate, if you’ll walk with me down there.”
Knox was suddenly envious of Shayla’s graceful escape. He wasn’t sure he could handle any more memories or revealed secrets that night. “Of course. Let me get my coat.”
One More Taste Page 7
