One Hot Summer (44 page)

God, he felt like a moron, talking to his dead father like that. No way was Knox a believer in hocus-pocus, but even if his dad weren't haunting the '85 Chevy Half Ton, then at the very least he was up in heaven pulling some strings. Even in death, it seemed, his dad had decided to stubbornly hold his ground against the father and brother who'd excommunicated him from the family before Knox's birth—Knox's grandfather Tyson and his uncle Ty. Even in death, his dad refused to let his prized truck lay one speck of rubber down on Ty's property.

Soon to be Knox's property, if he could get his damn truck to start back up.

Behind the wheel again, he gripped the key in the ignition and closed his eyes.
Please work. Please.

Click. Click. Click.

“Okay. But this sucks. I didn't want to show up in a town car with a driver like a mobster goon who's there to shake them all down. I wanted you—”

A wisp of grief swirled like smoke around his heart, threatening his composure far more than his frustration had. He shook his head. Foolish heart. He'd wanted his dad there with him to watch Knox take control of the very business his dad had been robbed of. Poetic justice. Vengeance. The cost of doing business. Whatever the history books would end up labeling this not-so-friendly takeover.

He grabbed his messenger bag—his sister, Shayla, refused to allow him to carry anything as stodgy as a briefcase—and stepped out of the truck, rummaging around the copies of the Briscoe Ranch shareholder contract his lawyers had prepared until he found his cell phone.

He was pacing behind the truck as the phone rang with his office in Dallas when he spotted a
for sale
sign ahead of him, demarcating a gated driveway a few yards from the lake. He walked along the road to it, the phone to his ear. Was there a house at the end of that twisty, tree-lined driveway? Did the property border the resort? Perhaps he'd buy it and expand the resort even more than he'd originally planned.

Max, his private equity firm's office manager, picked up on the fourth ring. “Don't tell me Ty Briscoe's giving you shit already. I told you that you should've brought Yamaguchi and Crawford with you.”

Maybe another boss would've bristled at such insubordination, but Knox had developed a deep mistrust of kiss-asses over his years as an entrepreneur. Linda Yamaguchi and Diane Crawford were his firm's lawyers, and Max was right. Knox probably should have brought them along as he usually did for acquisitions. But he wanted to close this deal on his own, eye to eye with the uncle he'd never met—the uncle he was going to ruin, just as Ty had ruined Knox's family. Not that he confessed as much to his equity firm team.

“You can tell me ‘I told you so' later, but that's not why I called. My truck broke down three miles from Briscoe Ranch. I need a driver, and I need him to get here in—” He lifted the flap of a clear plastic box affixed to the
for sale
sign and pulled out a flyer.

The photograph gracing the center of the flyer caught his eye. A grand, modern house sitting on a hill overlooking the lake. It was exactly the kind of dwelling Knox was hoping to move into somewhere in the vicinity of Briscoe Ranch since he couldn't very well run the show from his home base of Dallas, five hours away.

“In what, Mr. Briscoe?”

“Sorry. Something caught my eye. If you could have the driver here in less than an hour, that would be great. Can you find me someone?” His meeting with Ty Briscoe wasn't for another two hours, but he wanted to take one last walk around the resort without any of the employees knowing who he was or why he was there.

“I can't imagine that being a problem.” He heard the fast click-clack of keyboard typing. “And … let's see … Nope, no problem. Your car will be there within the half hour.”

As the call ended, a crackle of tires on gravel snagged Knox's attention. He pivoted around, expecting to see a good Samaritan pulling to the shoulder to see if Knox needed help, but his truck was the only vehicle in sight—and it was rolling backward, straight toward the lake.

Dropping the flyer, his messenger bag, and his phone, he took off at a sprint. “No! No, no, no. Shit.”

Surely he'd engaged the emergency brakes—hadn't he?

With every passing second, the truck was picking up speed. Knox lunged toward the door handle. He was dragged along a few feet before finding his footing again. He dug his heels into the ground and yanked. The door swung open. He staggered and hit his back against the side of the hood, but managed to rebound in time to throw himself in the cab as it lumbered perilously near the water.

He stomped on the parking brake. It activated with a groan, but the truck wouldn't stop. He pumped the manual brake. Nothing happened. The truck bounced over rocks hard enough to make Knox's teeth rattle. He turned the key. Again, nothing. Nothing except a splash as the back of the truck hit the water.

“Jesus, Dad! Help me out, here!” he shouted.

The truck slammed violently to a stop, pitching Knox forward. He bit his tongue hard. The burst of pain and taste of blood was nothing compared to his relief that the truck, with him in it, hadn't submerged any deeper in the water. Through the pounding of his pulse in his ears, he could hear his labored breaths.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his throat tightening. “I can't lose your truck in some stupid lake.”

With a hard swallow, he thumped a fist against his chest, jolting himself back into composure. All this talking to ghosts was getting out of hand. Today of all days, he could not afford to devolve into blubbering sentimentality. He fixed his Stetson more firmly on his head and gave himself a stern mental lecture on calming the fuck down.

All business again, he assessed the situation. Not knowing what had caused the truck to stop or if any sudden movements would jostle it back into motion, he rolled the driver-side window down and peered over the edge to stare at the brown-green water, thick with silt and mud that roiled through the liquid like thunderstorm clouds. The water lapped at the bottom of the door, not too deep, but the back tire and back bumper were fully engulfed. If the truck had rolled only a few more feet into the lake, Knox would've been in real trouble.

As things stood now, though, Knox's main problem now was that there was no way for him to avoid getting wet on his walk back to shore. Carefully, so as not to jar the truck back into motion, he unlatched his belt, then opened the zipper of his pants. Shoes off, socks off, then pants. If he got to his first day at Briscoe Ranch on time, in one piece and dry, it would be a miracle.

Clutching his pants, socks, and shoes to his chest, and dressed in only his shirt, a pair of boxers, and his black hat, he opened the door and stepped into the water, sinking knee-deep. Silt and muck oozed between his toes. The cold ripped up his bare legs, making his leg hairs stand on end on and his balls tighten painfully. Grunting through the discomfort, he shuffled away from the door until he could close it.

A series of exuberant splashes sounded from farther in the lake. It sounded like two fish were having a wrestling match right up on the water's surface. He turned, but only saw ripples. Setting his mind back on the task at hand, he pulled his foot off the lake bottom, muscles working to overcome the suction, and took a carefully placed step toward shore.

From seemingly out of nowhere, something blunt and slimy smashed into his calf. The surprise of the hit knocked Knox off-balance. With a yelp totally unbefitting a thirty-two year old Texan and former rodeo cowboy, he danced sideways, fighting for his footing and clutching the clothes in his arms even tighter.

He desperately scanned the water around him, but the swirling silt had reduced the visibility to almost nothing. He held still another moment, listening, watching.

“Holy shit, are you okay?”

The man's voice startled him. He looked up and saw a young guy of maybe twenty-two standing on the bank of the lake, dressed in a suit and with a panicked expression on his face. Behind him, a black sedan idled on the shoulder of the road.

“I'm fine. I think. Are you my driver?”

“Yeah, Ralph with the Cab'd driving service app. Max at Briscoe Equity Group ordered a premium lift for Knox Briscoe. I'm guessing that's you since your truck's underwater.”

And observant, too.
“Yep. You see a cell phone and messenger bag somewhere up there, Ralph?”

“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 onto 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 was 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 hair to feet 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.”

Well, 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 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 hat 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 to be on his A game 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 onto it tight, 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.

Max answered on the first ring this time. “Hey, Knox. If you're calling about a tow truck, one's already on its way.”

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Max McCaffery, World's Best Office Assistant.
“Thanks for that.”

“Figured you'd need one for that ridiculous truck you insist on driving. Most unreliable truck ever. Like,
ever.
”

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?” Max said. “Should be, any minute.”

“He's here. Just 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 Max again. When the call ended, he turned to Ralph and sized him up. The two of them were roughly the same height and build. “You're, what, six-one? Two hundred?”

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. “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.