One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(3)

“Hold up. Is that an ’85 Chevy Silverado? That’s a hell of a truck.”

“It is.” Except when said truck was haunted and decided all on its own to take a swim despite its owner’s better judgment.

“You’re lucky the tire got snagged on that rock.”

Knox took a look at the front of the truck. Sure enough, the passenger side tire was stopped by a boulder, though he wasn’t entirely sure luck had anything to do with it. “About that cell phone and messenger bag, Ralph. Would you mind?”

“Oh. Yeah. On it.”

With Ralph in search of Knox’s stuff, Knox chanced another step toward shore, keeping his head on a swivel, looking for whatever the hell it was that had slammed into him. An attack beaver? Did hill country even have beavers?

Despite his vigilance, he still startled at the sight of a massive, charcoal gray-green fish swishing through the water, coming straight at him. It had to be longer than his arm. It turned on a dime and surged at him. Knox’s curse echoed off the hills surrounding the lake.

Time to scram.

He made it two more steps before his foot snagged on a rock and pitched him forward. Desperate for balance, he reached out to grab on to his truck, but the fish had other ideas and head-butted his leg again. Knox splashed down, nearly dunking all the way underwater.

The bite of cold stole his breath all over again. He exploded back out of the water and onto his feet, spluttering and gasping.

“Fuck!” he shouted, loud enough that even if his father were in Heaven and not haunting the truck, he would’ve heard him just fine. He held himself back from adding, Thanks for nothing, Dad.

Sloughing water from his face and breathing hard through flared nostrils, Knox shifted his attention to the water in search of the piranha on steroids that had put his ability to keep a cool head to the test. The fish was long gone. Though his pants floated around his knees like dark seaweed swishing in waves, and his shoes bobbed like little black boats only a few feet away, his hat had drifted into deeper water. Terrific. Just terrific.

He was sopping wet from head to toe and standing next to his equally waterlogged truck on the most important day of his life.

“What was that thing?” Ralph asked.

“I was hoping you’d gotten a clear view of it.”

“Naw, but I did find your cell phone and bag.”

That was something, at least. Knox fished his soggy pants from the water, removed his wallet and set it on the roof of the truck, then tossed the pants in the truck bed. Next, he grabbed his shoes and tossed them onto the shore. Maybe they wouldn’t squish too loudly when he walked.

With that taken care of, it was time to get the inevitable over with. He loosened his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off.

“Uh, sir? Are you stripping? I mean, uh, why don’t you get out of the water first?”

“Going after my hat.” It wasn’t until he’d spoken that he realized his teeth were chattering. The sooner he was out of the frigid water, the better. He added his shirt and tie to his pants in the truck bed, then drew a fortifying breath and pushed into the water for a freestyle swim across the lake.

Technically, the hat was replaceable, but this particular one had been the first he’d bought with his own money, back when he was fifteen and working his first real job outside of the local junior rodeo circuit. Over the years, it’d become a habit to wear it to new jobs or when he needed a little extra boost for a negotiation. He believed in good luck charms like he believed in ghosts—which meant surreptitiously and despite his better judgment—but there was no denying the slight edge that the black Stetson with the cattleman’s crease and the rodeo brim provided him.

He was a solid fifty yards into the water when he reached the hat. Grabbing on to it tightly, he ignored the fact that his legs were going numb and made short work of returning to shore. He shook the water off the hat and placed it firmly on his head again, then took his phone from Ralph and dialed his office again.

Shayla answered on the first ring this time. “Hey, Knox. If you’re calling about a tow truck, one’s already on its way. I forgot to mention that before.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Shayla Briscoe, World’s Best Office Manager. “Thanks. You’re awesome, sis.”

“Figured you’d need one for that awful truck. It always was unreliable, even when it was brand new.”

Knox glanced again at the Chevy. It might be a pain in the ass, but some of the best memories of his life involved that truck. “It has its moments.”

“Is the Cab’d driver there yet?” Shayla said. “Should be, any minute.”

“He’s here. One more thing. I need you to email me with some information on a property.” He rattled off the address of the lakefront home from memory and thanked her again. When the call ended, Knox turned to Ralph and sized him up. The two of them were roughly the same height and build. “You’re, what, six-one? One-eighty?”

Ralph gave him the side-eye, apparently on to Knox’s plan. “Six even and one-ninety,” he said hesitantly.

Close enough. Knox took out three, soggy one hundred dollar bills from his wallet. “Ralph, I’m going to need to buy your suit.”

*

It wasn’t the first time Emily Ford had spied on a VIP guest at Briscoe Ranch Resort. In fact, she considered it a mandatory part of her research as the resort’s Executive Special Event Chef. Wowing elite guests with personalized, gastronomic marvels was her specialty. As long as the guests never checked her internet search history or spotted her peering at them through binoculars, she was golden.