“It makes a difference what the housekeeper’s daughter thinks of you?” Tanya asked.

“It makes a difference what you think about me,” Tate said, staring deeply into her eyes.

Then he leaned forward and it was obvious he wanted to kiss her. But rather than doing it, he waited, poised, giving her the chance not to let it happen. And she knew she shouldn’t let it happen. But there he was, the man who, in the past few days, had let her see past the charm, into the vulnerable part of him. There he was, his starkly chiseled face only inches above hers, wanting to kiss her. And she wanted him to.

So she didn’t say no.

Texas Cinderella

By

Victoria Pade
The Texas CEO’s Secret

By

Nicole Foster

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Texas Cinderella

By

Victoria Pade

VICTORIA PADE is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form.

She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.

Dear Reader,

Tanya Kimbrough is not as trusting as Cinderella when Prince Charming presents himself in the form of Dr. Tate McCord. Tanya knows the score—she’s merely the daughter of the McCords’ housekeeper.

And this particular McCord heir is earmarked for Katie Whitcomb-Salgar, longtime friend of the family and Tate’s on-again, off-again girlfriend since they were both teenagers. Tate and Katie may be off-again at the moment, but Tanya is convinced that that has more to do with the rough patch Tate has been going through since the death of his best friend in Iraq than with any permanent breakup. And there’s no way she’s willing to be nothing more than Tate’s interim distraction. Even if he can put her on a slow simmer with just one glance. Will she be able to hold out? Or will she risk crossing social barriers to be with a McCord? Turn a few pages and find out…Here’s hoping you’ll all have happily-ever-afters.

Victoria Pade

Chapter One

“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Blake. You open up enough to let me know the business is in a slump, that you think we really can find the Santa Magdalena diamond and use it to pull us out of the fire. But you bite off my head for asking how things are going.”

Tanya Kimbrough froze.

It was nearly eleven o’clock on Friday night and she had no business doing what she was doing in the library of the Dallas mansion of the family her mother worked for. But her mother had gone to bed and Tanya had known the McCords were all at a charity symphony that should have kept them out much later than this. And she’d gotten nosy.

But now here she was, overhearing the raised voice of Tate McCord as he and his older brother came into the formal living room that was just beyond the library. The library where she’d turned on the overhead lights because she’d thought she would be in and out long before any of the McCords got home…

Make a run for it the way you came in, she advised herself.

She certainly couldn’t turn off the library lights without drawing attention since the doors to the living room were ajar. But maybe Tate and Blake McCord would only think someone had forgotten to turn them off before they’d left the house tonight. And if she went out the way she’d come in, no one would guess that she’d used her mother’s keys to let herself in through the French doors that opened to the rear grounds of the sprawling estate. If she just left right now…

But then Blake McCord answered his brother and she stayed where she was. What she was listening to suited her purposes so much better than what she’d already found on the library desk.

“Finding the Santa Magdalena and buying up canary diamonds for a related jewelry line are in the works,” Blake was saying. “And we’ve launched the initial Once In A Lifetime promotional campaign in the stores to pamper customers and bring in more business. That’s all you have to know since you—and everyone else—are on a need-to-know-only basis. Your time and interest might be better spent paying some attention to your fiancée, wouldn’t you say?”

“What I’d say is that that isn’t any of your business,” Tate answered in a tone that surprised Tanya.

The sharp edge coming from Tate didn’t sound anything like him. The brothers generally got along well, and Tate had always been the easygoing brother. Tanya’s mother had said that Tate had changed since spending a year working in the Middle East and suddenly Tanya didn’t doubt it.

“It may not be my business, but I’m telling you anyway because someone has to,” Blake persisted. “You take Katie for granted, you neglect her, you don’t pay her nearly enough attention. You may think you have her all sewed up with that engagement ring on her finger, but if you don’t start giving her some indication that you know she’s alive, she could end up throwing it in your face. And nobody would blame her if she did.”

Katie was Katerina Whitcomb-Salgar, the daughter of the McCord family’s longtime friends and the woman everyone had always assumed would end up as Mrs. Tate McCord long before their formal engagement was announced.

“You’re going to lose Katie,” Blake shouted, some heat in his voice now. “And if you do, it’ll serve you right.”

“Or it might be for the best,” Tate countered, enough under his breath that Tanya barely made out what he’d said. Then more loudly again, he added, “Just keep your eye on finding that diamond and getting McCord’s Jewelers and the family coffers healthy again. Since you want to carry all the weight for that yourself, you shouldn’t have a lot of spare time to worry about my love life, too. But if I want your advice, I’ll be sure to ask for it.”

“You need someone’s advice or you’re going to blow the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Tate said facetiously.

And then there were footsteps.

But only some of them moved away from the library.

The others were coming closer…

Too late to run.

Tanya ducked for cover, hoping that since she was behind the desk whoever was headed her way wouldn’t be able to see her when he reached in and turned off the lights.

“Tate hasn’t even been staying in the house since he got back. He’s living in the guest cottage…”

Tanya’s mother’s words flashed through her mind just then and it struck her that merely having the lights turned off might not be what was about to happen. That Tate might use the library route to go to the guesthouse that was also out back…

Tanya’s heart had begun to race the minute she’d heard the McCords’ voices. Now it was pounding. Because while she might have been able to explain her presence in the library at this time of night, how would she ever explain crouching behind the desk?

Or holding the papers she’d been looking through—because until that minute she hadn’t even realized she’d taken them with her when she’d ducked.

Please don’t come in here…

“What the hell?”

Oh, no…

Tanya had tried to turn herself into a small ball but when Tate McCord’s voice boomed from nearby, she raised her head to find him leaning over the front of the desk, clearly able to see her.

This was much, much worse than when she was six and had been caught with her fingers in the icing of his twin sisters’ birthday cake. His mother Eleanor had been kind and understanding. But there was nothing kind or understanding in Tate McCord’s face at that moment.

Summoning what little dignity she could—and with the papers still in hand—Tanya stood.

It was the first time she and Tate McCord had set eyes on each other in the seven years since Tanya had left for college. And even before that—when Tate had come home from his own university and medical school training for vacations or visits while Tanya still lived on the property with her mother—there weren’t many occasions when the McCord heir had crossed paths with the housekeeper’s daughter. Plus, Tanya had been very well aware of the fact that, more often than not, when any of the McCords had seen her, they’d looked through her rather than at her.

So she wasn’t sure Tate McCord recognized her and, as if it would make this better, she said, “You probably don’t remember me—”

“You’re JoBeth’s daughter—Tanya,” he said bluntly. “What the hell are you doing in here at this hour and—”

He glanced down at the papers and held out his hand in a silent demand for her to give them to him.

She did and he looked over what—before she’d been interrupted—she’d discovered to be some sort of mock-ups for ads for a suggested line of jewelry using canary diamonds set in old Spanish designs.

Tanya had taken the papers from a file that was still open on the desk in front of her. After Tate McCord’s initial look at them, he pulled the entire file toward him to see what else she might have gotten into.

While he sifted through what she already knew were similar pages, Tanya was wishing she wasn’t dressed in a shabby, oversize, cut-up old sweatshirt and a pair of drawstring black pajama pants with cartoon robots printed on them. She also wished she wasn’t completely makeupless and that her shoulder-length espresso-colored hair wasn’t pulled up into a lopsided ponytail at the top of her head. Looking as if she were ready for bed made her feel all the more at a disadvantage. When she realized that the wide neck of the sweatshirt had fallen from her shoulder, she tugged it back into place.

It was something Tate McCord saw because just as she did it, he raised his gaze from the file and eyes that were bluer than she remembered drifted momentarily in that direction.

Noticing did not, however, change his attitude toward her—his expression remained stern and angry.

“So, I repeat—JoBeth’s-daughter-Tanya, what the hell are you doing in here, at this hour, going through things that you have no right to go through?” Tate McCord finished by tossing the papers he’d taken from Tanya back in the open file.

“I know this can’t look good,” she said.

But he definitely did look good! Better even than she remembered him.

Unlike her in-for-the-night apparel, he was dressed in a dark suit that accentuated the fact that he was tall and lean, with broad shoulders and a more toned, muscular physique than he’d had in his earlier years. His face had matured into sharply defined angles that gave him a decisive chin and high cheekbones. His mouth at that moment was a stern line beneath a strong, thin nose and his penetrating, clear blue eyes seemed to have taken a bead on her, which should have kept her from thinking that she liked his dark blond hair slightly longish, the way he was wearing it now…

But it was the expression that said he was waiting for an explanation that she knew she really had to address.

“My mother dropped her sweater when she came through here today after she finished work—” Tanya pointed to the plain white cardigan that had been her excuse for this foray. She’d picked it up from the floor where it had fallen and tossed it across the back of a chair before beginning her snooping. “Mom likes to wear it when she walks over from the bungalow in the mornings. She was just going to leave it and get it tomorrow, but I thought I’d come back for it tonight so she’d have it.”

All true, but feeble at this point. Very feeble.

“And while you were here, you thought you’d take a look around, at things that you shouldn’t look at, and then hide under the desk so you didn’t get caught eavesdropping on what Blake and I were saying in the other room? Or are you going to pretend you didn’t hear anything?”

There was that facetious tone again. It could be harsh. And it didn’t help that his assumptions of what she’d done were right.

Maybe offense was the best form of defense…

“I heard enough to know that there’s a whole lot going on. That all the suspicions about McCord’s Jewelers’ business being way down have some foundation. That the rumors that the McCords came into possession of the Santa Magdalena diamond when you all got the Foley’s land and silver mines could also be the truth. I heard enough to know that your family does think the diamond can be found.”

“So you heard plenty.”

“And I’ll admit,” she continued, “that when I came for Mom’s sweater and saw the file, I got curious, and since it was open I looked at those pages—” That was a lie, not only had she opened the file herself, but she’d come to get the sweater hoping that there might be something of interest to her in the library where business was sometimes conducted. “But now that I know things are popping here, it seems to me that there’s a story in it that I could use.”

“You’re going to make me sorry I did what your mother asked and send your résumé over to my friend at WDGN, aren’t you?”

WDGN was one of the local independent news stations.

“I didn’t know which of you got me the interview, but thanks for it,” she said as if that mattered at this point.

“Oh, believe me, you’re welcome,” he said snidely.

“But here’s the thing—” she went on, ignoring his disapproval “—I’ve been making my living in the world of broadcast journalism for a while now and this is how it works—at least for me because I haven’t made any kind of big splash yet—a new position means I start at the bottom. The bottom is filling in for other reporters or doing whatever the seasoned reporters have moved on from or refuse to do—”

“Was I supposed to see if I could have you hired at the top?”

“That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is that between the story of the diamond—whatever it might be and especially if you do actually find it—and the story of the McCords’ feud with the Foleys, well, let’s face it, if the McCords or the Foleys sneeze it makes the news so stuff like this could get me an anchor chair.” Not to mention the other tidbit the staff was whispering about that wasn’t public knowledge—that Tate’s mother Eleanor had an affair with Rex Foley and that the youngest brother, Charlie, was Rex Foley’s son…

If Tate’s sky-blue eyes had had a bead on her before, it was nothing compared to the way they were boring into her now and it made Tanya’s tension level rise another notch. Especially when she began to wonder if she’d gone too far. The McCords were her mother’s employers after all…

Then Tate McCord said, “Or how about a story where the housekeeper’s daughter gets arrested for breaking and entering, for trespassing, for who knows what else should something turn up missing…”

Tanya took issue with that last part. She might be willing to do a little nosing around for a story, but she wasn’t a thief!

“Should something turn up missing?” she repeated. “Go ahead, look around. Take inventory. I haven’t so much as touched anything but my mother’s sweater and the papers in that file. I have done almost nothing wrong!”

“Almost nothing wrong?” Tate took a turn at parroting in the midst of a wry laugh. “Believe me, with the McCord connections, almost can still get you arrested. And how would your mother like to hear that you’re using the trust we have in her to do something like this?”

“You’re threatening to tell my mommy?” Tanya said with some sarcasm of her own even though the threat to tell JoBeth carried more weight than the threat to call the police.

Tate didn’t respond to her flippancy. He merely glanced down at the file again, closing it and laying his hand flat on top of it as if that could seal it away from her.

Then those eyes pinned her in place again and he said, “I’ll tell you what this family doesn’t need right now—a traitor in our midst.”

“I’m hardly that,” Tanya countered, chafing under that comment more than anything he’d said yet.

“So it’s loyalty that brought you in here tonight?”

There was that facetiousness again.

“I was just hoping for an inside story. The discovery of that sunken ship that the Santa Magdalena supposedly came from has renewed interest in the diamond and I thought—”

“That you’d use your mother’s position here as a way to get the scoop.”

Despite pretending not to take seriously his threat to bring her mother into this before, Tanya was becoming increasingly worried that she’d done damage to the position that her mother had held since Tanya was barely two years old. She definitely didn’t want that.

“I’m sorry, okay?” she conceded. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But now that you have—”

“Fine. If you want to have me arrested then do it. But leave my mother out of it. She doesn’t have anything to do with this. She’s sound asleep and doesn’t even know I’m here or that I had any intention of coming over here.”

He seemed to consider that and Tanya had started to wonder how the robot pants and Flashdance sweatshirt were going to go over in jail when he said, “I’ll make a deal with you.”

Tanya raised her eyebrows at him and waited.

“I’ll keep your secret about this little escapade tonight if what you heard and saw here, stays here.”

Jail in robot pants and a Flashdance sweatshirt was easier to accept.

“You want me to just sit on the fact that the McCords honestly do believe they have the Santa Magdalena diamond?” she said incredulously. “That you’re so convinced of it that your brother is planning the family’s business future around it?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“I think that’s unfair of you!” Tanya said with a little heat in her own tone now. “This is something that could make my career and you want me to do nothing with it when we both know it’s going to come out sooner or later, and potentially be a coup for someone else? I’ll grant you that I may have stepped over the line using my mother’s position here, but I don’t think I should be penalized because she works for you.”

Tate McCord gave her the hard stare. But if he thought she was going to back down because of it, he was mistaken.

Maybe he saw that in the fact that she didn’t waver in the stare down they were engaged in because he took his hand from the file, stood straight and said, “Okay, how about this—whether or not we do have the diamond and where it might be and if it can be found are all questions that have yet to be answered with any kind of certainty. What you think Blake is planning the business’s future around is really—honestly—a gamble we’re taking. But if—big if—we should end up finding the diamond and everything pans out, I’ll promise you an exclusive.”

“In other words, you want to buy some time,” she said.

His eyebrows were well shaped and one of them rose in reply.

“My price is higher than that,” Tanya said, deciding that if she was in for a penny, she might as well be in for a pound.

“Your price?” He was obviously astounded by her audacity.

But Tanya didn’t let that daunt her. “I want the whole story—and I mean the whole story, so that if the diamond ends up being a bust, I’ll still have something to launch me. Like I said before, if the Foleys or the McCords sneeze, it’s news. But there are a lot of details and history and background that even I don’t know. And if I don’t have the complete picture after growing up here, I have to think not many other people do either. So it can give meat to the bigger story of the Santa Magdalena diamond finally, actually, being found. Or it can at least give me a well-rounded, juicy human-interest piece about Dallas’s two most illustrious—and infamous—families. And why they hate each other.”

“What kind of details, history and background are we talking about?” Tate said in a negotiator’s voice.

“Inside information on the family—the personal things that haven’t been in press releases. I want to know about the feud with the Foleys—the truth. I want to know all about the McCord jewelry empire—including if it’s hurting. I want the full package, enough to make it interesting even if it turns out that the search for the diamond is nothing but a wild-goose chase.”

“Meat,” Tate repeated the word she’d used moments before. “You want to treat us like meat.”

“I just want the truth and not what’s already common knowledge. Think of it this way, you got me a job at an independent news station that isn’t owned by the Foleys so there won’t be any pressure to make you guys look bad. My mom works for you, I grew up here—if anyone will do the story without painting you in a bad light, it’s me.”

“Or I could just have you arrested and fired and—”

“And then I could go to one of the Foley-owned stations or newspapers or what have you and do the story from their angle.”

Once more Tate McCord stared at her long and hard.

“You know, I like your mother.”

Meaning he didn’t like her. Tanya had absolutely no idea why that bothered her. But it did.

Still, she wasn’t about to show him so she merely raised her chin in challenge.

Then he surprised her and laughed. “And I’m assuming I get to be your source?”

“You’re the one proposing we make a deal.”

She wasn’t sure if he liked that answer or if he had something up his sleeve, but he smiled and said, “All right. Deal—you keep quiet for now, I’ll give you the inside story and the exclusive on the diamond if we find it.”

He held out his hand for her to shake.

Tanya took it, clasping it firmly to let him know she wasn’t intimidated by him.

But what she hadn’t anticipated was how aware she would be of the way her hand felt in his. Of the strength emanating from his grip. Of the texture of his skin. Of the tiny goose bumps that skittered up her arm…

Then the handshake ended and something made her sorry it had.

But that couldn’t be…

“For now I guess I’ll just say good-night, then,” Tanya said, thinking that in all that had happened since she’d first heard Tate McCord’s voice this evening, she hadn’t wanted to get out of there as much as she did at that moment, before anything else totally weird came over her. Or overcame her…

“Good idea,” he confirmed.

So Tanya stepped from behind the desk, snatched her mother’s sweater from the back of the chair on her way to the French doors and finally went back out into the night air.

And the entire time she held her head high, knowing that Tate McCord had followed her to the door to watch her go—probably to make sure she did, she thought.

But it also occurred to her, as she took the path that led through the woodsy grounds to the housekeeper’s bungalow she was temporarily sharing with her mother, that she wasn’t sure what her mother and the rest of the staff was talking about when it came to Tate. He didn’t seem dark and brooding and withdrawn and dispirited to her.

To her, he seemed full of life, full of fire.

Fire enough to have nearly set her aflame with a simple handshake…

Chapter Two

A good night’s sleep had been hard for Tate to come by in the last year and a half, and Friday night hadn’t broken that pattern. He’d had trouble falling asleep and he was wide awake before the sun was even up on Saturday morning. And once he was awake there was no going back to sleep. Luckily he’d gotten used to functioning on only a few hours rest during internship, residency and surgery fellowship.

By 6:45 he’d made himself a pot of coffee and he took his first cup out of the guesthouse to sit at one of the poolside tables with the newspaper that Edward—the McCord’s butler—hadn’t failed to leave at his doorstep since he’d returned from the Middle East and opted to live outside of the main house for a while.

Tate didn’t open the paper, though. He knew there would be articles on the war in Iraq, on situations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Unlike when Buzz had been over there and Tate had been anxious for any news, since Buzz’s death, since spending the year in Baghdad himself, some days he just didn’t want the reminders. He sure as hell never needed them…

Don’t make me kick your ass!

He knew that’s what Buzz would be saying to him if Buzz was around now. If Buzz saw him staring at that newspaper and wanting to toss it into the pool. There was no way Buzz would have stood for this damn black mood he’d been in since his best friend’s death.

Bentley—Buzz—Adams. Like Katie, Tate’s fiancée, Tate had known Buzz all his life, despite the fact that they’d come from different backgrounds. Politics and the military—that’s where Buzz’s roots were. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been high-ranking army officers who each served as military advisors to presidents. But Buzz’s own father hadn’t wanted his family to live the nomadic military life, so Buzz had been raised at his grandparents’ estate, just down the road.

Tate and Buzz had gone to private school together. They’d gone to college together. They’d even gone to medical school together and applied for residency at the same hospital. Their paths hadn’t veered until residency was over and Tate had opted for a specialty in surgery while Buzz had followed his family’s tradition and joined the army to serve as a doctor overseas.

Going to war was the first thing Tate and Buzz hadn’t done together.

If only Buzz hadn’t broken his tradition with Tate to follow his family’s tradition…

But he had.

And everything else was water under the bridge now.

Everything but this funk Tate couldn’t seem to shake.

He knew he was one hell of a downer these days, that everyone was wondering where the old Tate was. Most of the time he was wondering it himself. But the old Tate just didn’t seem to be there anymore.

He also knew his lousy mood was going to factor in when the news about his engagement to Katie came out, and he regretted that. He didn’t want people saying that Katie had bailed because he wasn’t much fun anymore. Katie didn’t deserve that.

She hadn’t ended their engagement because he couldn’t seem to lighten up. She’d made that clear and he didn’t doubt it. That just wasn’t Katie. In fact, he thought that if he’d put any effort into talking her out of breaking their engagement, the bad mood would have likely kept her around because she would have felt guilty for leaving him at a low point.

But he hadn’t put any effort into keeping things going with her. Why should he have when she was right? She’d said that she’d been thinking that maybe long-term friendship and family pressure and the general belief that they’d end up together shouldn’t, ultimately, be why they did end up together. That she didn’t think she had the kind of feelings for him that she should have going into marriage. That she didn’t feel passionate about him.

Maybe that should have been insulting, but it hadn’t been. Instead, he’d understood it. His own feelings for Katie had never been all-consuming or particularly passionate. Which was probably why calling things off just hadn’t mattered a whole lot to him.

Of course, it also didn’t really matter to him that Katie wanted to keep the breakup a secret until she could see her parents in Florida and explain it to them.

It didn’t matter to him that Katie wasn’t head over heels for him.

It didn’t matter to him that they’d broken up.

It didn’t matter to him that he needed to maintain the pretense that they hadn’t.

Since Buzz’s death, and even more so in the six months since he’d been back from Baghdad, it had just been tough for things like that—for most of what mattered to the people around him—to have the importance they might have had before…

He took a drink of his coffee and then replaced the cup on the table, staring into the steaming beverage that still remained.

He liked his coffee strong and black, and looking into the brew now made him think of Tanya Kimbrough’s eyes. They were the color of Italian espresso—dark, rich, liquid pools of espresso…

Recalling that made him think of one thing that had mattered to him—last night and finding Tanya Kimbrough in the library. That had definitely mattered.

When he’d found her there he’d taken a mental inventory of what he and Blake had said because what was going on with the business did matter. He’d recalled that they’d said the jewelry business was in a slump, that they believed they knew where the Santa Magdalena diamond was, that Blake was buying all the canary diamonds to use as a tie-in.

Then there were the papers Tanya had seen on the desk, too—Blake must have forgotten the file and while there hadn’t been anything in it but preliminaries for the advertising campaign, it was still information they didn’t want released.

And after cataloging what Tanya Kimbrough could have known, the wheels of Tate’s mind had started to turn, imagining her prematurely revealing that they were looking for the Santa Magdalena diamond. No, he and Blake hadn’t talked about the crucial clue Blake had discovered in the border of the deed to the land and silver mines they’d taken over from the Foleys decades ago. Still, if word leaked that there was a very real reason to suspect the diamond might be found? Any number of treasure hunters could descend on them to complicate the search. And possibly accidentally find the diamond before they did.

Not good.

Tate had considered what would happen if word leaked that Blake was cornering the market on canary diamonds and coming out with a new line of Spanish-influenced designs to coincide with the discovery of the Santa Magdalena. Their competitors would launch lines of their own to steal their thunder and undermine their sales and, potentially, leave Blake at a disadvantage in breathing new life into the business.

Also not good.

And let the world know that the renowned McCord’s Jewelers was in a decline? That the family fortunes were compromised?

Certainly not good.

And since Blake was up to his eyeballs in the family’s problems already and—as usual—trying to bear the burden as much on his own as he could, rotten mood or not, Tate had decided that it was better if he dealt with the housekeeper’s daughter rather than dumping any more on his brother.

Which was why he’d struck that bargain with her for an insider’s look at the McCords and an exclusive on the diamond if they found it. Left to her own devices, Tanya Kimbrough could cause trouble and he was going to do whatever he had to to prevent that. If that meant sticking to her like glue to keep a close eye on her for the time being, then that’s what he was going to do.

It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it…

Tate knew that’s what Buzz would be saying to him if he told his friend he was only taking on Tanya Kimbrough to spare Blake.

Yeah, okay, it was hardly as dirty a job as studying a dusty deed or digging around in the dirt of a deserted old silver mine. Keeping an eye on a beautiful woman was definitely not drawing the short straw.

And Tanya was a beautiful woman.

The scrawny, funny-looking kid had grown into a knockout—there was no question about that.

Her hair was as dark as her eyes—coffee-nib brown—and so shiny it looked like satin. Coupled with those eyes against a fair, flawless complexion, she’d been the freshest-faced burglar in existence. Fresh-faced and beautiful even without any visible signs of makeup, with that thin nose and those pale pink lips, those high cheekbones and the slightly squarish jawline sweeping up from a chin that looked as if it could be a little sassy.

Unlike her taller, slightly stocky mother, Tanya was petite—no more than five-four he was guessing. She was thin, but not too thin, and she had curves in all the right places—at least he thought she did even though that chopped-up sweatshirt she’d had on had done more camouflaging than revealing.

Of course it had revealed one shoulder before she’d yanked the fabric back into place. And the mere sight of that creamy skin had made him suddenly aware of his own heartbeat. And the fact that it had sped up…

Only slightly.

But still, that was more than most things had done to him lately. A simple bare shoulder…

Hell, he was a doctor. He saw naked shoulders—and naked everything else—all the time. Why had a simple glimpse of Tanya Kimbrough’s shoulder done anything at all to him?

Maybe it had been an adrenaline rush, he reasoned. He’d just had that argument with Blake and then spotted someone he’d initially thought to be a stranger lurking behind the desk. He hadn’t actually been alarmed, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that his subconscious had set off an alert response. After Baghdad, that seemed likely.

And if it had felt like something other than that?

He was likely only misinterpreting it.

He did know one thing, though—he wasn’t hating the idea of keeping an eye on Tanya Kimbrough.

In fact, if he analyzed it, he’d say he might even be looking forward to it.

He might say he’d even gotten a small rush out of that back-and-forth with her last night. A small rush that he wouldn’t mind having again…

But that couldn’t matter, he told himself.

The charge he’d gotten out of their verbal exchange and the fact that she’d held her own with him, the smooth skin on a shoulder he’d been inclined to mold his hand around, the silky hair he’d wanted to see fall free, the lips he’d had a fleeting thought of tasting, the tight little body hidden behind funny-looking pants and a sweatshirt that someone had taken scissors to—none of that was as important as protecting his family, or as important as his promise to Katie to pretend they were still engaged until she told him otherwise.

But still…

He was looking forward to seeing the housekeeper’s daughter again.

And continuing to see much more of her for a while to keep her contained?

That didn’t feel like a hardship either…

“What are you doing here?”

Tanya could see that Tate was surprised to find her waiting for him when he left the operating suite of Meridian General Hospital at eight o’clock Saturday night.

“I told you you were going to talk to me whether you liked it or not,” she countered heatedly.

“When did you tell me that?”

“At the end of the sixteenth voice mail I left you today.”

“I got called in for an emergency surgery early this morning. I’ve been standing at an operating table for the last—” he glanced at a clock on the wall “—eleven hours and twenty minutes. Not a lot of message checking goes on when I’m up to my elbows in a man’s gut.”

“Gross,” Tanya said reflexively.

Tate merely raised an eyebrow at that, giving her the impression that that was the response he’d been going for.

But if he thought disgusting her was going to make her back down, he needed to think again.

“Eleven hours and twenty minutes of surgery or not, we’re going to talk,” she insisted.

“If I’ve inspired sixteen voice mails I guess we’ll have to,” he said sardonically but sounding weary nonetheless. “First I have to let the family know how my patient is—” he nodded in the direction of a group of people she hadn’t noticed before but now realized were also waiting for him “—then I have to write orders to get this guy into recovery. After that my plan is for a quick bite to eat at the deli across the street before I have to operate on the other passenger from this car accident. So if you’re determined that we talk right now, you can either wait for me here and go over to the deli with me, or go ahead of me to the deli—but one way or another there’s only going to be a small window before my next patient is prepped and ready to be opened up.”

It irked Tanya all the more to have him dictate to her, but she wouldn’t let that stop her.

“Fine, I’ll wait here,” she said cuttingly.

Now that she’d finally found him, she had no intention of letting him slip away from her. After calling his cell phone all day, she’d questioned almost the entire house staff before finding someone who knew Tate was at the hospital. When she’d called the hospital she’d been told she couldn’t speak to him because he was in surgery. That had prompted her to come here to ambush him as soon as he got out. But she’d been lying in wait for nearly two hours and was not willing to go ahead of him to the deli and risk him not showing up.

So she perched on the edge of the same seat she’d occupied for the last two hours and watched him intently.

When he was finished talking to his patient’s family, they headed for the elevators and Tate moved to the nurses’ station. He said something to the nurse there and while she went to do his bidding, Tanya continued to keep him in her sights.

As she did, it occurred to her that while, over the years, she’d seen Tate McCord in tennis whites, in tuxedos, in suits and ties and casual clothes of all kinds, she’d never seen him in scrubs. And that he looked too sexy to believe in the loose-fitting, teal blue cotton garments that resembled pajamas more than street clothing.

Then, adding to that sexiness he seemed unconscious of, he rolled his shoulders, arched his spine and raised his elbows to shoulder height to pull his arms back until even Tanya heard something crack—obviously working out the kinks that hours of surgery had left.

But regardless of the fact that she was overly aware of every little thing about him, she refused to let any of it influence her. She was steaming mad and she was going to let him know it. Nothing—including being one of the best-looking, sexiest men she’d ever seen—gave him license to mess with her career! Not even if she had overstepped her bounds the previous night.

The nurse brought him a metal clipboard then, and when he was done writing the orders for his patient, he handed the chart back to the nurse and finally turned to Tanya.

“Ready?”

“You don’t need to change clothes?” she asked, hoping he would and that different clothes might help lessen the effect he was having on her in scrubs.

But he shook his head. “Hadn’t planned on it. Like I said, I have another surgery scheduled tonight and the deli doesn’t have a dress code. Unless it offends you in some way…”

“I couldn’t care less what you’re wearing,” she lied.

“Then let’s go get something to eat before I pass out from hunger.”

The trip through the hospital and across the street was filled with Tate greeting and exchanging quips with nurses, attendants, volunteers, other doctors and even the janitor. Then they reached the deli and he was right—there were more customers dressed the way he was than in anything that resembled the slacks and shirt Tanya was wearing.

Not that she felt out of place, but it did occur to her as she peered at the other men in scrubs that she didn’t find any of them particularly attractive…

Still, she did everything she could to overlook Tate’s appeal as he ordered his “usual.” She rejected his offer of food and accepted only a lemonade before they went to one of the booths that lined the walls of the small restaurant.

Despite what he’d said, Tate seemed more tired than hungry. After setting his pastrami sandwich and iced tea on the table, he left them untouched while he sat lengthwise on his side of the booth to put his feet up. He also rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes—probably to wind down and relax the way he’d intended to do without her company.

But Tanya wasn’t going to be ignored.

“So how did you have time to ruin my life if you were up to your elbows in someone’s insides all day and most of tonight?” she demanded before she’d even sipped her lemonade.

Rather than add to Tate’s stress, that actually brought an indication of amusement in a slight upward curl of the corners of his mouth even before he opened his eyes to look at her. “How did I ruin your life?”

“I got a call at nine o’clock this morning from the owner of WDGN—not the station manager who hired me, but the station owner—”

“Chad Burton.”

“Your friend,” Tanya said derisively.

“We’re more acquaintances than close friends. I went through school with his son, Chad Junior. I helped Junior pass chemistry and physics, although he ended up an interior decorator, not a doctor the way Chad Senior had hoped. But Chad Senior has always been grateful. Chad Senior and I have also been on a lot of committees together, we play golf now and then—”

“You’re friends enough to have called him sometime between last night and nine o’clock this morning to persuade him to put me on a leave of absence—”

“With pay,” Tate pointed out, not bothering to pretend he hadn’t been behind today’s turn of events.

“With or without pay, from today forward—indefinitely—I’m on special assignment to work the McCord story. That means no on-air time, no other duties, no other stories, no other assignments, no chance to prove myself in any other way or gain any other ground after just two weeks of working there. I was told I’m not to show my face at the station until I have the whole McCord thing ready to be put together.”

“But you’re still on the payroll, so—”

“This isn’t about money!” Tanya said, ferociously whispering to keep from shouting. “If I don’t go back with something good—like the discovery of the Santa Magdalena diamond itself—I’ll be lucky to be doing the agriculture reports on the predawn weekend newscasts. Plus they’ll probably hire someone else to do my job in the meantime and that someone else could just replace me if the McCords don’t come up with the diamond and all I have is a human-interest piece. You may have put in a good word for me to get this job, but my credentials and abilities actually got it for me, and you don’t have the right to pull it out from under me just to suit your purposes!”

He sat up straight in the booth, putting his feet on the floor and finally unwrapping his sandwich to take a bite. Not until he’d chewed, swallowed and washed it down with a drink of his iced tea, did he say, “I had to make sure you didn’t have the opportunity to go back on your word to keep quiet.”

“I could still do that—I could go to a Foley-owned station.”

He remained unruffled by her threat. “You could,” he said. “But that talk about loyalty last night got me to thinking—your mom has worked for us for twenty-two years. She oversees the whole staff. She’s my mom’s right hand around the house. I’m not going to say we’re all family, but there’s a connection that you sure as hell don’t have with our archrivals. You must feel some amount of loyalty.”

“How much loyalty did you feel when you called Chad Burton?”

“Today or when I called him to say I was sending over your résumé?”

Tanya glared at him. “That was something my mother did without telling me until after it was done because she wanted me to move back here. The résumé you sent over wasn’t even a recent one. It was the first one I did out of college—my mother found it in an old file. I faxed them the real, current résumé, which is what got me the interview.”

Tate ignored all of that and merely went on to answer her question about his loyalty.

“I wasn’t being disloyal. I was only playing it safe. And Chad was thrilled with the idea of getting an insider’s view of the McCords. Plus, even though I didn’t do anything but allude to the diamond, I let him know that there was the potential for big news to come along with the human-interest stuff, and he was nearly drooling over the chance for WDGN to be the one to break that big news. This really could put you on the map.”

“I lose ground not being there, not having my face in front of a camera every chance I can get,” she insisted. “There’s no reason I couldn’t still be doing my job there and compiling the McCord information.”

“But now you don’t have to do anything but focus on the McCords.”

“Who are not the center of the universe, just in case you were wondering!” Tanya said, her voice raised enough to garner a glance from the couple at the nearest table.

“It’s just a precaution,” Tate said calmly.

“You’re trying to control me,” Tanya accused.

“Yes, I am. But only in this and only for the sake of the greater good.”

“As if that makes it all right.”

“Was it all right that you broke into my family’s home last night to spy on us and try to get information to expose things that could hurt us if they got out at the wrong time?” he reasoned.

“So you’re exacting revenge?”

“Nooo, not at all. You still have your job and your paycheck. You have the chance to do an exclusive story on the McCords and be the reporter who tells the world if we find the Santa Magdalena diamond. You just won’t be doing anything but that for now.”

Tanya narrowed her eyes at him. “You’d better give me a good story,” she warned.

“And you’d better put all your energy into me and getting a good story,” he countered.

“Into you? Why would I put my energy into you?”

He smiled. A slow, lazy, sexy smile. “I guess because I’m the teller-of-the-tale, and the happier I am, the better the tale-telling?”

“And what does that mean? That not only do I have to climb the mountain to get the answers from The Great One, but that I have to bring enticements, too?” she asked facetiously.

His smile stretched into a grin and he didn’t at all look like the sad, somber, lackluster shadow of his former self that her mother and the rest of the staff described him as.

“Enticements?” he repeated as if he hadn’t been thinking that until she suggested it. “I like the sound of that.”

“Well, get over it,” she advised bluntly, knowing he was merely having some fun at her expense. “There’s no way I’m bringing enticements to get you to tell me about your family.”

“Too bad,” he pretended to lament.

“I’m serious, Tate,” she said, using his name for the first time as an adult.

“Yes, you are, Tanya,” he agreed, barely suppressing a smile. “You are very serious.”

“I mean it—you’d better give me something good enough to make this sabbatical worth my while.”

He seemed to take that in a different—and lascivious—vein than how she’d intended it because his smile appeared full force again and it was laced with wicked amusement.

But before he said anything else, the pager clipped to the bottom of his shirt went off, drawing his attention.

He glanced down at it. “I have to get back,” he announced, grabbing another quick bite of his only half-eaten sandwich and then rewrapping the rest to take with him.

As he did, he returned to what they’d been talking about. “All I meant when I said that you should put your energy into me was into spending time with me to get your story—as part of the job you really are still doing.”

He stood, guzzled most of his iced tea and, after replacing the glass on the table, added, “And to that end, why don’t we start with a real dinner tomorrow night? My treat and we can both eat.”

“Since it’s now my job, I guess so,” Tanya conceded.

“Eight o’clock? I’ll meet you at the pool and we’ll go somewhere from there?”

Tanya nodded and that was all it took to send him rushing out of the deli.

As she watched him go her anger at him began to waver. Maybe it was the sight of him from behind in those scrubs that loosely covered his broad shoulders and barely grazed a derriere to die for.

But instead of thinking about the influence he’d used to keep her under his thumb, she was thinking more about the fact that her job now was essentially spending time with Tate McCord.

And how, as much as she should be resenting that, she was actually a little excited by the prospect…

Chapter Three

“I don’t like it, Tanya. And I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“It’ll be fine, JoBeth.”

Calling her mother by name and in the special teasing, cajoling tone Tanya used usually made her mother laugh. Now it barely elicited a smile.

When Tanya hadn’t gone in to do the early Sunday newscast, JoBeth had asked why. Tanya had had to tell her mother what was going on with Tate and the special assignment to do the McCord story—although she’d omitted the fact that it was the result of being caught snooping in the library on Friday night.

“The McCords have always been good to us, Tanya. When your father walked out and left me with a two-year-old and no money and no education and no skills, Mrs. McCord—”

“—not only gave you a job, but since the housekeeper at the time wasn’t living here, she let us live in this bungalow when none of the other maids got that kind of accommodation,” Tanya said, repeating what her mother had said many times as she’d grown up. Then she continued with what she knew JoBeth was going to say. “Mrs. McCord promoted you from maid to housekeeper to overseeing the whole staff. She gave you flexible hours whenever I was sick or you wanted to go to my school meetings and functions. She wrote my recommendation letter to college and to the scholarship committee that paid my tuition for four years. I haven’t forgotten any of that.”

“But now you’ll try to dig up dirt on the McCords to get yourself more on-air time? That’s not right.”

They were at the kitchen table with coffee and toast, both of them in their bathrobes, not long out of bed. JoBeth had Sunday mornings off and Tanya regretted that rather than relaxing, her mother was stressed about this.

“I’m not going to dig up dirt,” she assured JoBeth, deciding to put a positive spin on the turn of events to ease her mother’s mind. “Some of this even came at the suggestion of Tate, who also talked to the station owner—that’s why I won’t be doing anything but devoting myself to this for a while. Tate is going to be walking me through the family history, including the reasons why there’s a problem with anyone named Foley—which I’ve never understood. Hopefully, he’ll let me have an insider’s look that will include finding the Santa Magdalena diamond—if they actually do—and it will all give me a leg up here in Dallas. So really, this is still a lot like the little extra help Mrs. McCord has given along the way—think of it like that.”

But apparently Tanya’s mother was not won over by that argument because JoBeth narrowed her dark eyes at Tanya, increasing the lines that fanned out from their corners. “These people are my employers, Tanya. I’m dependent on them for my livelihood. For my whole day-to-day existence.”

“And I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize that.” If what she’d done Friday night didn’t count…

But suddenly Tanya took stock of JoBeth sitting across from her at the tiny table they’d eaten most of their meals on.

Her mother worked long hours that had aged her—something Tanya saw in the single shock of prematurely white hair at JoBeth’s temple. But Tanya knew that her mother was not only grateful for the job, JoBeth enjoyed it and the camaraderie and closeness of the household staff that went with it.

And if that hair that was down now would soon be in a bun that was as tightly wound as her mother had always had to be, that control was something Tanya knew her mother took pride in. If the milkiness of JoBeth’s skin was evidence that vacation sun rarely touched it, it wasn’t for want of time off, it was because JoBeth preferred her routine here to sitting on a Caribbean beach. If JoBeth’s slight pudginess came from caring for the McCords rather than paying attention to exercise or cautious eating for herself, Tanya knew that her mother would say it was a treat to get to taste the delicacies prepared by the McCords’ chef.

And Tanya was also well aware of the fact that while the cottage with its two small bedrooms and this area that combined kitchen and living room was hardly luxury living, her mother loved the housekeeper’s bungalow and considered it her home—a home she’d refused to leave even when Tanya had tried to persuade her to move to California with her.

Which all added up to more than a livelihood that JoBeth didn’t want to lose, it was the life her mother had made for herself. And Tanya realized even more than she had before that she had to be careful not to do anything that would compromise that or put it at risk.

“Who better to do this story?” she said to her mother then. “I’m obligated to report on any skeletons I might find in the McCord closets, but I won’t sensationalize them. I’ll do a fair and honest piece that will come primarily from information Tate relays—so you know there aren’t going to be a lot of negatives in the mix—and I won’t go searching for them the way someone else might. I’ll take what Tate gives, hope it all leads to the bigger story of the discovery of the diamond and leave it at that.”

“Tate,” her mother echoed. “You shouldn’t be imposing on him. He has too much on his mind as it is. Since his friend died in Iraq, since he came back from there himself, he’s troubled, Tanya. You can’t be bothering him to get yourself—”

“He offered, Mama. I won’t be bothering him.”

“He offered?” JoBeth parroted ominously.

“He volunteered,” Tanya amended because she’d caught the sudden switch in her mother’s concerns. Now it wasn’t the McCords who JoBeth was worried about, it was Tanya. And that was a more fierce protectiveness.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Tanya—”

“Says my mother.” Tanya dismissed the compliment.

“Tate has eyes.”

“And a fiancée,” Tanya reminded. Then, in an attempt to calm her mother’s fears, she said, “Tate is engaged to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—the person he’s been promised to since they played together in the sandbox. And it wouldn’t matter even if they hadn’t finally gotten engaged—I know better than to get involved with Tate McCord, of all people. This is strictly business. For both of us. He’s going to walk me through some family history and give me the exclusive on the outcome of whatever it is that’s going on with the Santa Magdalena diamond—that’s all there is to it. There’s nothing personal in it for either of us.”

“For your own sake, you’d better make sure of that,” JoBeth said, her round face reflecting the fact that Tanya had failed to ease her mind. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt, Mama. I told you, it’s strictly business.”

JoBeth stared at her for a long moment as if she were hoping to be able to see the future in Tanya’s face. Then, with no indication of whether or not she thought she had, she took her obvious concerns and her crossword puzzle into the living room.

Tanya interpreted that as a sign that her mother was tentatively accepting what she’d told her.

But while she stayed where she was at the kitchen table to finish her breakfast, Tanya was still thinking about it all.

This was strictly business between her and Tate—she hadn’t said that simply to appease JoBeth. Tanya had outgrown wanting to be a McCord a long time ago. Yes, as a very young, starry-eyed girl she’d fantasized about being a part of what went on at the big house. But as soon as her mother had realized that was what she was doing, JoBeth had taken measures to keep Tanya’s feet firmly planted on the ground. And ultimately—eventually—Tanya had come to see for herself that the McCords’ life was not a life she wanted.

Of course mountains of money would be nice, but other than that? The McCords were under constant scrutiny, their every movement watched. They were talked about and criticized, envied and resented. And none of that appealed to Tanya.

Plus, the McCords existed in an insular world where everything remained the same from generation to generation. Where the names, the faces, the cliques never changed. Where new blood was seldom let in. Where some fight, started long, long ago for reasons Tanya wasn’t sure even they knew, was still burning. It all just seemed so stagnant to her.

And in keeping with that, Tate was engaged to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—the daughter of his mother’s and late father’s close friends and someone who had moved within that same small, insulated circle his entire life, too.

But Tanya understood why the fact that Tate was engaged didn’t put her mother’s mind to rest. Both Tanya and JoBeth had been around the McCords long enough to know that the relationship between Tate and Katie ran a pattern—together, not together, together again.

Just because they’d finally gotten formally engaged didn’t mean this was the time they made it to the altar. One or the other of them could still decide to put the wedding off, to separate the way they had dozens of times in the past.

And if that happened and Tanya caught Tate’s attention during the interim? He could be very persuasive. But in the end Tanya would only be a dalliance for Tate before he went back to Katie anyway. Which he always did.

That was what Tanya knew her mother was worried about.

But JoBeth didn’t need to be. Not only would Tanya never knowingly get involved with anyone who was already involved with someone else, there was no way she would allow herself to be one of Tate McCord’s fleeting detours from the woman his family had chosen for him.

No, the whole thing—what it meant to be a McCord and interrupting Tate’s destiny to be with Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—was just not for Tanya.

Regardless of how terrific Tate might have looked in those scrubs last night.

But he had looked terrific…

Still, after a moment’s indulgence in that mental image, Tanya shoved it aside.

That man was off-off-off-limits, as far as she was concerned. The only purpose he served was to provide her with a good story that she could use to boost her standing at the station and launch her career in Dallas.

And the fact that he was the drop-dead gorgeous, charming, smart, accomplished Tate McCord was merely something she needed to overlook in order to keep a professional and personal distance.

Which she had every intention of doing.

“Dinner with you meant the country club—I suppose I should have guessed, but I was thinking we were going somewhere low-key where we could get down to business,” Tanya said as they left the club’s fine-dining—and fanciest—restaurant.

The valet had Tate’s sports car waiting for them. Tate went around to the driver’s side. One valet opened the passenger door for Tanya, while another opened the driver’s door for Tate. Only as their doors were closed for them and they were both fastening their seat belts did Tate say, “I can get down to business, if that’s what you want. I just thought we were having a friendly dinner,” he said with an innuendo-laden tone that purposely misinterpreted her words.

“What I want is to get down to the business I’m being paid to do—a profile on you and your family,” she qualified, not taking his slightly flirtatious bait but also making sure her tone was amiable. There had been confrontation between them on the last two nights and that was not a pattern she wanted to set.

Tate pulled out of the wrought-iron gates of the country club and into traffic without responding.

“Nothing work related was accomplished at all,” Tanya continued anyway. “You ended up talking more to your cronies than giving me any useful information about the McCords.”

“My cronies?” Tate repeated as he headed for his family’s estate.

“The rest of the country-club set. Or was that the purpose of dinner at the club—to avoid doing what you agreed to do and at the same time show me that the McCords hobnob with Dallas’s richest, most famous, most powerful and influential? And how even among the richest, most famous, powerful and influential, it was still you who was catered to to the point of the bartender counting the number of ice cubes he put in your predinner private reserve scotch?”

“Would I do something like that?” he said with no inflection at all, leaving her clueless as to whether or not that had been his motive.

“And for future reference,” she went on, still conversationally, “you should warn the person you’re bringing to the country club ahead of time. I was the only woman not in pearls.” In fact, she’d been underdressed in a pair of linen slacks and simple camp shirt, while Tate was dressed more appropriately in a cocoa-colored suit with an off-white shirt and brown tie.

“Pearls are not mandatory,” he informed her as they gained distance from the private club where memberships were primarily inherited and only the first names on the roster varied from decade to decade.

Tate took his eyes off the road to glance at her, his expression showing a hint of curiosity now. “So let me see if I have this straight—you’re mad because we just had a nice dinner?”

“I’m not mad,” she insisted. And she wasn’t. “The food was fantastic and the waitstaff treated me like a queen.” And in between the avalanche of obligatory hellos and small talk that had demanded Tate’s attention while Tanya was barely given dismissive nods after her introductions, he’d been a perfectly pleasant dinner companion. “But I thought tonight would be the kickoff to my collecting information—or else why should we be together? And it’s frustrating that nothing along those lines got done.”

And as a result, she hadn’t had work to keep her from noticing how easy it was to be with Tate.

“I don’t need to see what a hotshot you are,” she added.

“Ouch! Hotshot? That sounds bad.”

“I’m just saying that the country-club side of you and of your family is not news. That kind of thing is in the society columns every day. You promised me the private side and that’s not what tonight was.”

“What tonight was,” Tate said as they neared home, “was to make amends for costing you your on-air time and leaving you hanging yesterday. It’s also Sunday and the club’s regular chef takes Sundays off. His understudy—or whatever the guy who fills in for him is called—takes over in the kitchen on Sundays and the understudy goes all out to show his stuff when he gets that chance. I like to see what he comes up with. It’s usually different and innovative and interesting. Like tonight—thin slices of Kobe beef that we cooked ourselves over a hot rock—so country club or not, why shouldn’t we have gone there for dinner? Pearls notwithstanding?”

“Because that’s all this turned out to be—a nice dinner—”

“And that’s a crime?”

“I’m with you to do an assignment, not to go on a date,” she said reasonably.

“This wasn’t a date, it was just dinner,” he said.

Which was part of what she knew she needed to guard against—what seemed like a really great date to her was nothing but an ordinary, everyday dinner to him…

“Or is that how this has to be?” he went on. “Strictly business? Do we need to sit on opposite sides of a desk, only between nine and five, and be formal and stuffy?”

Strictly business—that’s what she’d told her mother this was. That was what she wanted it to be, what she needed it to be. But stuffy and formal? Sitting on opposite sides of a desk? Not only was that unlikely to get her the same kind of intimate portrait that came when an interviewee was relaxed and talking freely, but it definitely didn’t appeal to her when it came to Tate McCord.

And that was another warning sign—the fact that Tate was striking a personal note in her that had nothing to do with work.

On the other hand, her first priority was getting the best story she could, and to that end, friendly and casual was the route to take.

“No, I don’t want this to be done sitting opposite each other at a desk,” she answered his question a little belatedly. “But I want to see the side of the McCords that isn’t about being greeted by name by a state senator or where everyone in the place knows what you eat and drink—like tonight and last night, too. I’m well aware of the fact that the McCords are Texas royalty—even walking through the hospital with you was like being in a parade. What I’m hoping is that there’s something else to you all. Something that gets you outside of your comfort zone and puts you in touch with the rest of the world—you know, those of us who are real?”

They’d reached the McCord estate but Tate hadn’t pulled up to the garages. He’d gone around the other way to stop as near to the housekeeper’s bungalow as he could get. When he turned off the engine he angled in his seat to look at Tanya.

“And just how far outside of your comfort zone have you ventured? How in touch with the rest of the world are you—as a real person? Because worldly is not how you strike me at the ripe old age of…what? Twenty-three?”

He was apparently not opposed to more confrontation tonight.

“Okay, I’m not worldly,” Tanya agreed. “But I think there’s a huge portion of our society and the everyday life that most people live that you are out of touch with,” she said, still calm but pulling no punches.

“I’m out of touch?” Tate said as if he were challenging her. But at the same time, something about this debate also seemed to have amused him because his eyes were bright and alive and he was barely suppressing a smile.

And as long as she wasn’t alienating him, she didn’t back down. “If you’re talking about having gone to the Middle East like I’ve been told that you did, then no, that isn’t an experience I’ve had or can relate to. And while I don’t know why you went or where you were or how close to the war you got, or anything but that you spent a year somewhere over there, what I’m thinking is that you don’t even have a concept of what life is like for the everyday person here, outside of your cushy existence. Given that, it’s no wonder that what you must have encountered there was difficult for you to handle, and maybe if you hadn’t been wrapped in cotton before—”

Tanya stopped herself because she realized suddenly that she was talking out of school. She was only guessing at what was going on with him, guessing that the reason he was so affected by his year away was because he’d gone from a virtual cocoon into something his life—of all lives—hadn’t prepared him for. And she was doing that guessing based solely on what she’d heard from her mother and the other house staff.

“I’m sorry, that was out of line,” she apologized in a hurry. “It’s just that there’s a lot of talk about you being depressed and changed and—”

She was getting in deeper and deeper.

“I should shut up,” she concluded.

“And you think that because I spent my life wrapped in cotton that seeing what I saw in Iraq was more than I could take?”

Oh, she was sooo far over the line…

“I’m not even sure how we got into this so let’s back up. Even when I lived here as a kid what I saw was more the trappings of your family’s money and status and what it allowed you all. But that isn’t the story I want. Or the story I thought you agreed to give me. Whatever is going on with you—in your head—is your own business and none of mine. I shouldn’t have shot off my mouth about it.”

“But that’s what everybody in your circle is saying? That I’m depressed?”

She wanted to kick herself. She also didn’t want to get anyone into trouble and knew she had to do some damage control.

“Whether you realize it or not, people like my mom and some of the other staff who have been around a long time care about you. They’re worried about you. They’re only saying that you seem to have a lot on your mind, and my mom—in particular—doesn’t like that I’m bothering you when you don’t seem to be yourself. It’s not like you’re being gossiped about.”

He stared at her for a long moment and beyond the fact that he still appeared entertained by her discomfort, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Then he said, “You can reassure everyone that I’m not depressed and that they don’t need to worry.”

“Good to know,” Tanya said, not feeling at all relieved.

She was hoping for more from him that might let her know he wasn’t going to make a big deal about this with the staff but there was no more to come.

Instead Tate pivoted in his seat again and got out, coming around to her side. But it seemed strange to wait for him to open her door. This wasn’t a date, after all.

It also felt odd to have him walk her through the tree-lined path that led to her mother’s cottage but that was what he did.

“Is living with your mom again a permanent arrangement?” he asked along the way, apparently returning to small talk.

“No, I’m just staying with her until I recoup some of my moving expenses and can find a place of my own.”

“Do you have paper and something to write with?” he asked as they came through the trees on the other side and stepped onto the bungalow’s front stoop.

Tanya didn’t know what he was getting at, but she opened the small purse she was carrying and handed him a pen and a notepad she’d brought with her thinking that she was going to be working tonight.

He wrote an address on the paper and handed it back to her. Tanya assumed it was a lead on an apartment.

“Meet me there tomorrow morning at nine,” he commanded.

Tanya looked from the paper to him, trying not to notice that the porch light illuminated the high spots of his handsome face and threw the hollows and angles into sharp shadows that only made him look dangerously attractive.

“I really won’t be able to afford an apartment for a couple of months so it would be a waste of time—”

“It isn’t an apartment.”

“Oh. Then where am I going?” she asked.

“You’ll see when you get there. No pearls. Come comfortable and ready to dig in.”

“Shall I bring a shovel?” she joked.

“No pearls, no shovel,” he answered but he obviously wanted to be mysterious and wasn’t going to give her any other details.

“Oka-ay,” she muttered. Then, rather than pursue a subject he wasn’t going to expand on, she said, “Thanks for dinner.”

That made him chuckle. “Even though it wasn’t what you had in mind?”

“The food was still great. You’re right, the understudy chef does do interesting things.”

“Maybe next Sunday I’ll just see if he’ll do them takeout so we can avoid the dreaded country club,” Tate said wryly, making Tanya smile this time.

“Wow, you can do that,” he mock marveled.

“What?”

“Smile. I was beginning to wonder. And it’s nice, too. Who would have thought Miss Serious had a nice smile…”

“Miss Serious?”

“Well, there was nothing lighthearted about catching you in the library. You took me to task last night over stepping in with the news station. And tonight you’ve been all business even when business wasn’t going on, and then you took me to task again on the way home. Plus you said yourself last night that you’re serious—”

“That was a figure of speech. What I said was that I was serious about getting a substantial story out of this.”

“Still, you’re just plain serious, as far as I’ve seen. Maybe your mom and her cohorts should be worrying more about you than me.”

Okay, so there hadn’t been a whole lot of levity to any of the times they’d encountered each other since Friday night.

“This is business for me,” she reminded him.

He smiled again, a pleased, warm smile that she liked entirely too much. “I’m glad you said business and not work. I don’t think I like being work for anyone.”

“Just make sure business gets done from here on,” she pretended to chastise.

“Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.,” he countered.

She wondered if she was going to arrive at the address on the paper and find him sitting behind a desk. And if she would be expected to spend from then until five o’clock on the opposite side of that desk taking dictation on the story of his life.

She wouldn’t put it past him.

But she knew better than to try to get any more information out of him about that, so she merely said, “Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.”

That seemed to satisfy him. It showed in his smile as he went on peering into her face for a moment more before he said, “You can tell your mother that you aren’t.”

“That I aren’t what?”

He laughed. “That is some really rotten grammar for a journalist.”

“That I’m not what?” she corrected the mistake she’d made on purpose, trying not to bask in the sound of his laugh or the fact that she’d inspired it.

“You’re not bothering me. In fact, you’re kind of a little spitfire and I’m getting a kick out of it.”

“Little spitfire? You’re aware that that’s very condescending, aren’t you?” she said even though it gave her a tiny rush to hear that she was rousing something in him.

“Hey, I’m just a sheltered, pampered, out-of-touch rich boy, what do I know?” he joked.

Again Tanya smiled, adding a hint of a laugh to it. And maybe her lighter side really was a novelty to him because several minutes lapsed while Tate just seemed to study her as if he couldn’t quite figure her out.

Several minutes that made something else flash through Tanya’s mind—that people in this position, saying goodnight at the door after having spent an evening together and sharing a nice dinner, very often kissed…

Which of course was not going to happen, she told herself in no uncertain terms.

And it didn’t. Because then Tate said, “I’ll see you at nine,” and turned to retrace his steps to his car.

Tanya watched his retreating back, giving herself a silent but stern talking-to as she did.

There could not ever—ever—be thoughts of kissing when it came to Tate McCord.

That was absolutely, positively unthinkable.

Unthinkable and undoable.

Absolutely. Positively.

And if she was still standing there even after he was out of sight, even after she could hear his car engine restart, even after she’d heard him drive away?

It was because she was still silently lecturing herself about how she also—absolutely, positively—shouldn’t be wondering what it would be like to kiss the mighty Tate McCord, either…

Chapter Four

“Rosa, this is Tanya Kimbrough. Tanya, this is Rosa Marsh—Rosa pretty much runs this place. Rosa, Tanya is going to pitch in for us today as a volunteer. I know you can use her,” Tate said as he introduced Tanya to the heavyset nurse.

Then he leaned in close enough to Tanya’s ear to whisper so only she could hear, “I thought I’d give you the chance to see how one McCord spends Mondays. And since you’re so in touch with the real people, I figured you’d probably want to do more than just follow me around and take notes.”

Tanya could tell that Tate was enjoying this—there was pure satisfaction on his handsome face as he left her to the woman named Rosa.

When Tanya had arrived at the address Tate had written in her notepad she definitely hadn’t found a lead on an apartment for rent. She’d found a surgical clinic for the underprivileged in an extremely neglected portion of Dallas.

She’d also discovered that Tate was known there as Dr. Tate and that if anyone realized he was a McCord, it wasn’t an issue. He was just Dr. Tate.

And Tanya was a volunteer for the day.

She didn’t mind. It allowed her to watch him in action and pitching in was something she’d been taught to do even as a child. So Tanya followed Rosa’s instructions and went to work herself.

She primarily did the nurses’ bidding, performing cleanup and making sure patients were comfortable.

The small, inner-city facility was nothing at all like Meridian General Hospital. Sanitary conditions were met but that was about the best that could be said of it. Equipment was old, linens were clean but ragged, the linoleum floor was worn down to the cement beneath it in several places, and watermarks decorated the walls and ceiling.

Tanya would never have imagined Tate practicing there. Or fitting in with the two physician’s assistants and four nurses who were all earthy, outspoken and irreverent. But there wasn’t a single indication in anything she saw that made her think he held himself above any of them and they made it clear to her even when he wasn’t around that they liked and respected him, and that they felt lucky to work with a surgeon of his caliber.

And the patients—some of them homeless, almost all of them lacking insurance or the ability to pay, many not English-speaking—were nothing like the majority of patients at Meridian General either.

Yet never did she see Tate treat any one of them without respect or compassion.

Plus it wasn’t only their outpatient surgical needs—or even their general health needs—he met. He also seemed genuinely concerned for their well-being once they went beyond the peeling walls of the clinic. Numerous times Tanya overheard him ask if the patient had a home in which to recuperate. She saw him slip money to more than a few who clearly needed it. He even took the time to make phone calls to get additional assistance for two patients before he would release them.

She saw him go the extra mile over and over again, but not once did she have the sense that his actions were due to the fact that she was watching, or just to make himself look good. Most of the time he didn’t even know she was anywhere near, and there were several instances when she learned what good deed he’d done through the nurses talking to each other. She also saw the nurses take many patients’ nonmedical problems to him as if it were a common occurrence for them to enlist him, as if they knew from long before Monday that he was the person to go to.

By the end of the day Tanya wasn’t ready to paint him as a saint—with people who weren’t under his care he could be demanding and dictatorial. He could be outspoken about any slipups or oversights, and curt with patients’ friends or family members who rubbed him wrong. But she had to admit that he wasn’t what she’d expected. Or anything like what she’d known of him before. The image she’d had of him as she’d grown up on the peripheries of his life was suddenly altered.

Which didn’t help her personally.

Because while finding him awesomely sexy in scrubs was one thing, being impressed by him, discovering that he might actually have some substance, some character, some depth, was much more of a bump in the road for her. It made him more the kind of man she liked, which also made him attractive to her on a whole other level.

Just when she didn’t want him to be attractive to her at all…

The last patient wasn’t ready to leave the clinic until nearly eight o’clock that night. Then the staff closed up and they all went out together.

Tate made sure his female coworkers got to their cars safely in the unsavory neighborhood. Once he had, he walked Tanya to hers.

“What do you say we meet at the guesthouse in an hour and I pay you for your services today with a little dinner?” he said as they reached her sedan.

It had been a long day and Tanya was tired, but that simple suggestion was enough to wipe it all away. Which she knew was a warning sign and yet she still said, “Dinner?”

“I’m thinking something quick and easy thrown into my wok after I shower. Are you up for it?”

Tate McCord owned a wok and knew how to use it?

“I can’t believe you cook, so I guess I should see it for myself.”

“Great. Be there in an hour, then,” he ordered, opening her car door, waiting for her to get in then closing it.

Recalling her manners slightly late, Tanya started the engine in order to roll down her window and call to him as he went to his own car, “Can I bring anything?”

“Only yourself,” he called back.

His tone, his attitude, were nothing but friendly. Completely aboveboard. There wasn’t even the vaguest insinuation of anything else. So it was okay for her to have agreed to have dinner with him again, Tanya told herself as she rolled her window up.

And it was, after all, only for the sake of her story. Only to get to know him better—especially now that she’d learned there was more to know than she’d thought before.

And if she was instantly looking forward to what remained of this evening in a way she hadn’t been until then?

It wasn’t about the man. It was about the work and getting to the root of the McCords by getting to the root of Tate.

And maybe if she chanted that through the entire drive home, it might start to be true…

At the stroke of nine Tanya was knocking on the door to the guesthouse.

She’d showered. She’d shampooed the antiseptic smell out of her hair. She’d changed into a pair of white cotton pull-on pants and a peach-colored cap-sleeved T-shirt, scrunched her hair into waves and applied some blush, mascara and lip gloss to improve upon the haggard way she’d thought she looked when she’d arrived home.

But not because of Tate. Just because she’d wanted to. Or so she’d insisted both to herself and to her mother when JoBeth had voiced her concerns about another dinner with Tate and the fact that Tanya was primping for it.

“Right on time,” Tate announced when he opened the door in answer to her knock.

She could tell that he’d showered, too. His hair was still slightly damp, the stubble that had shadowed his face when they’d left the clinic was gone and he smelled of a clean, fresh mountain-air cologne that Tanya couldn’t resist breathing deeply of because the scent was too enticing.

He’d changed from his scrubs into a plain white T-shirt and a pair of jeans Tanya knew her mother—and his—would consider ready for the ragbag because they were frayed and faded. But even so they looked fabulous on him, riding low on his hips and hugging his rear end like a dream.

And you have no business looking at his rear end! she reprimanded herself as she followed him into the guesthouse in response to his invitation to come in.

“There’s wine opened near the fridge over there,” he informed her with a nod in that direction as he went straight to the island counter, obviously returning to what he’d been doing before her arrival—cutting vegetables.

And once more Tanya recognized the purely friendly overture that didn’t smack of anything inappropriate or the slightest bit flirtatious.

Which was good. If they both stuck with that everything would be fine…

She glanced around at the guesthouse that was about the same size as her mother’s bungalow and arranged the same way—the small kitchen space and living area were one wide open room divided by the island of cupboards with the granite countertop where Tate prepared their food. The place was equally as nice as her mother’s cottage but no nicer and it seemed odd for Tate to be staying there when he had space of his own in the luxurious main house.

“So, you’re living out here?” she fished as she poured herself a glass of wine and then joined him at the island counter.

“I have been for the last few months, yes,” he confirmed.

“Why?” she asked bluntly since he hadn’t offered more information.

He smiled a mystery-man smile and shrugged without taking his eyes off the peppers he was expertly slicing into strips. “Hard to explain,” he said. “I suppose the easiest answer is that I’m not sleeping really well these days. I do a lot of getting up and walking around, trying to go back to sleep, getting up and walking around again. Out here I don’t have to worry about disturbing anyone else. And I guess I just needed some time on my own.”

He didn’t seem to want to say any more about it because he pointed with his chin toward the vegetables still piled in a colander and said, “Dry those for me, will you?”

“Sure,” she agreed, setting down her glass of very mellow red wine and using a paper towel to do as he’d asked.

“Where did you learn to cook?” she asked then, attempting a new subject.

“Trial and error. During residency, Buzz—do you remember Buzz?”

“I do. From what I recall, the two of you were inseparable, closer even than you were with your own brother. And I know he was killed in action in Iraq. I was sorry to hear it.”

Tate nodded but he didn’t remark on her condolences. Instead he went on with what he’d been about to say.

“During residency, Buzz and I got an apartment across the street from the hospital—we were working insane hours, we were on call more than off, and never getting enough sleep. We decided that it might help if we didn’t have to commute. But losing the commute also cost me having a chef to fix my meals and Buzz having his grandmother to cook for him. We got sick of frozen dinners and takeout, and that was when we both learned how to make a few quick and easy dishes to get us through.”

Tanya had the impression that talking about his late friend raised a mixed bag of emotions in him so she didn’t encourage him to say more.

She didn’t have the burden of keeping the conversation going, though, because then Tate said, “What about you? Do you cook?”

“Some. As soon as I could, I moved out of the dorm at college. I couldn’t afford takeout or anything fancy, but I got my fill of tuna and canned soup in a hurry and I had to figure something else out. Plus I put in some time working in the restaurant industry—I came away from that with a few tips.”

“College was where?”

“Los Angeles. I went to the University of Southern California—your mother actually wrote one of my letters of recommendation and helped me get a scholarship.”

“I didn’t know,” he admitted. “What’s your degree in?”

“Broadcast journalism.”

He took more vegetables to slice. “Putting your energy into a degree like that is kind of risky, isn’t it? What do you do with it if—”

“If someone does something underhanded and gets me taken off air?” she challenged.

He had the good grace to smile with some contrition. “Let’s say, what if you grow a huge, unsightly, unremovable wart on the side of your nose and no news station on the planet will put your face on camera—what do you do with a broadcast journalism degree then?”

“There are jobs behind the camera that I could still do, but it’s on-air time I’m after,” she said, emphasizing each word to bring home her point.

He apparently decided to ignore her second jab because rather than respond to it, he said, “Why did you decide to come back here to work? Dallas is a big market for everything, but I’d think it would be flashier and more impressive to do the news in L.A. or New York or Washington.”

“I interned in L.A. and worked there after I graduated. But the flashier, more impressive markets are also harder to break into and I didn’t feel like I was on the fast track. Plus Mom never liked my living out of state or that far away from her, but she wouldn’t move to where I was, so I finally decided to come back here. There’s still the potential for climbing the ladder from a local independent station to a local network affiliate to one of the bigger markets, and maybe if that happens I’ll be able to persuade her to come with me then. But the potential isn’t there at all when…I’m…banned…from…even…the…local…independent…station,” she said, speaking with even more exaggeration.

“I get the idea—I’m a low-down, dirty dog for sabotaging your big chance here. But let’s not forget that what prompted my actions were your actions.”

“All right, we’ll call it a draw,” she said as if she were being the bigger person.

It made him smile again as he finished with the vegetables and brought a plate of already-sliced beef from the refrigerator.

He tossed everything into the preheated wok where the sound of sizzling was loud enough to make it difficult to talk. Tanya didn’t try and merely enjoyed the sight of Tate cooking.

He was as adept with that as he’d been with everything she’d seen him do at the clinic, and as she watched him it occurred to her that all the way around today she was getting a glimpse of him as not just someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

When he judged their meal ready he urged her to the small table nearby where two places were set. There was also a rice cooker and a plate that displayed three small bowls of what appeared to be sauces.

“Sweet, hot and spicy, not so hot,” he described the sauces, aiming a long middle finger at each one and for some inexplicable reason, causing Tanya’s focus to be on that finger rather than on the sauces. Or that finger and the thought of how even that was somehow sexy…

Then he retrieved the bottle of wine from where she’d left it after pouring her glass, and as they both sat down to eat Tanya determinedly reined in her mental wanderings.

“Did you wait tables or work in a fast-food place or a diner—or what—through college?” he asked after they’d tasted the food and Tanya had complimented his culinary skills.

She was a little surprised that he’d listened closely enough to what she’d said to recall her comment about having worked in the restaurant industry.

“We’re supposed to be talking McCords and the jewelry business and the diamond, remember?” she reminded him before she got carried away thinking the fact that he was paying attention to what she said was anything special.

“The whole day was stuff you can use—the clinic is funded by my mother’s charities and donations from McCord’s Jewelers. I work there and oversee the rest of the staff to make sure the quality of care is the best that it can be. Now work is over for both of us,” he decreed.

Tanya supposed she could concede to that. His small talk was staying within the bounds of propriety—it was only her own thoughts that had strayed. And while she would have liked to go on gathering material, she’d seen the day he’d put in and she had the sense that he needed a plain, ordinary, small talk-filled dinner, so she let him have it his way.

“Okay,” she said, after another bite of the Asian-influenced cuisine. “Yes, I worked in a fast-food place—I was the bagel butterer on an assembly line at a sandwich shop. I also waited tables at one of those places that only serve breakfast—but I don’t think you could call it a diner. And there was an upscale, fancy restaurant where I did some hostessing.”

“So basically, you worked your way through college completely in the food industry.”

“Basically, but not entirely. I also worked as a motel maid before I did any of that. But only for three days—”

“Three days?”

“That was all I could take. You can’t imagine what kind of mess some people will leave in a motel room and the morning I found a dead guy was the day I quit—”

“You found a dead guy?” he asked, trying not to be amused.

“He’d died in his sleep, of a heart attack. But that was it for me—that was when I went with the restaurant work. Then, as soon as I could get on with a news station even just running errands, I grabbed it.”

“I take it the scholarship wasn’t all that great?” he said apologetically.

“No, it was,” she assured him, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “I wasn’t complaining. The scholarship paid my full tuition. But I had to earn money for books and fees and living expenses.”

“I know you weren’t complaining. I think I was just feeling guilty because I partied and played my way through college.”

“You partied and played your way through middle school and high school, too,” she reminded him.

He smiled sheepishly. “That I did. In fact, I was thinking about you last night—about what I remembered of you growing up—”

“Not much, I’ll bet,” Tanya said, pushing away her plate because she’d eaten all she could.

His smile widened as he sat back, apparently finished eating as well. “Actually, I remembered that you were the you-shouldn’t-do-that kid.”

“You’ve lost me,” she said, not sure what he was talking about.

“My most vivid memories of you are of looking up from something Buzz and I were about to do and seeing this big-eyed kid who had appeared out of nowhere to stand on the sidelines, very stoically shaking her head at me, and saying, you shouldn’t do that…”

Tanya laughed. “I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember because you were usually right. Of course I just thought you were some annoying little kid sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong. But you were still right. The day Buzz and I tried out our dirt bikes on the front lawn—we were thirteen so you had to be—”

“Six.”

“And you said, you shouldn’t do that, the gardener will get mad…”

“And you did it anyway.”

“And tore up the lawn. And the gardener did get mad, and so did my parents. I was grounded for two weeks. Then there was the time when we set up a ramp at the edge of the pool. We had new scooters and we were sure that with enough height we could jump the shallow end. There you were, doing your you-shouldn’t-do-that thing again. I’m pretty sure I said something rude to you and told you to go away. You wouldn’t go away and I figured I’d show you that you were nothing but a dumb kid. I ended up in the pool, destroyed the scooter and broke my leg. That cost me another two weeks of grounding.”

Tanya laughed. “I honestly don’t remember ever saying you shouldn’t do anything.”

“Then there was my party—”

“I remember the party. You were seventeen, I was ten. I watched from the bushes until my mom caught me. But I still don’t recall a ‘you shouldn’t do that.’”

“Oh, yeah. I had permission to have twelve people over to swim that night. But nobody was going to be home so Buzz and I handed out flyers to everyone we knew and some people we didn’t. We paid an older guy to buy beer and we were sneaking the kegs in the back and talking about what a huge, blowout bash the party was going to be. And again you appeared from out of nowhere to say—”

“You shouldn’t do that?”

He pointed an index finger at her. “The you-shouldn’t-do-that kid.”

They both laughed.

“That one cost me a month out of my summer—I was going to get to stay home while my family vacationed in Italy but because of the party, my parents decided I couldn’t be trusted and made me go with them.”

Tanya shrugged. “Guess you shouldn’t have done that,” she joked as she stood and began to clear the table.

She half expected Tate to remain seated there while she did the work but he got up, too, and, side by side, they cleaned the dinner mess.

“What about you?” he asked as they did. “Did you go through your teens toeing the line like you thought I should have?”

“I kind of did, actually,” she answered. “We might have grown up in the same general vicinity for the most part but, believe me, my life was completely different than yours. From the minute I was old enough to work I was expected to show responsibility by getting a job. So when I was here I worked in the ice cream shop—more food service. When I was with my grandparents I worked—”

“When you were with your grandparents? I didn’t know you spent time away from here.”

“Quite a bit of time. But that’s a whole other story.” And since the dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, his kitchen was in order again and it was getting late, she said, “A whole other story I’ll save so we can call it a night—I promised my mother I’d be back before she went to bed and you must be tired yourself.”

“Trouble sleeping, remember? But I wouldn’t want you to keep JoBeth up waiting for you.”

And worrying that she was staying any later than was necessary…

Tate walked Tanya to the door and put his hand on the knob to open it for her. But rather than doing that, he stayed in that position while pausing to look at her with the door still closed.

“This was nice,” he said as if that surprised him.

“It was. Thanks for dinner. You get points for today and points for your cooking talents, too.”

“Points? I didn’t know there was a scorecard.”

“Not literally.”

“And why did I get points for today?”

“Because what I saw of you was so eye-opening.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t remember the ‘you shouldn’t do thats.’ But I do remember you doing some wild and reckless things in pursuit of fun and frolic—which was all I thought you were about. Mr. Good-Time. But today I saw for myself that there is more to you…”

Why had her voice gotten softer by the end of that? Why had it sounded almost intimate? And why was she staring up at him and thinking that she really was seeing him through new eyes? And that she liked what she was seeing so much more than when she’d thought he was just a handsome face…

“Anyway,” she said, trying for a more normal tone and to halt the thoughts and feelings that were suddenly running through her. “I admired what I saw of what you did today and it will definitely be a part of the collage of the McCords.”

He smiled. “I was impressed with you today, too,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you were all talk or not, but you dug right in. And you didn’t even flinch when old Nesbit came wandering out of recovery in the buff.”

Tanya laughed. “That I won’t be reporting on,” she said. “Though you were really quick with that chart you held in front of his dangling participles so the lady I was giving juice to didn’t see much.”

“Dangling participles? Things were definitely dangling…” he said wryly, laughing too.

Tanya was having a much better time than she wished she was. It made it hard for her to make herself leave. And Tate wasn’t encouraging it—he was still standing there with the door closed, looking down at her.

And it wasn’t just any look in those clear blue eyes. He was looking at her in a way other men had looked at her. Just before they’d kissed her…

Was he thinking about it? Tanya wondered.

Because she was…

You shouldn’t do that—the phrase that had been repeated so much tonight echoed through her head. And she knew it was true, that kissing him wasn’t what she should do. Or let him do.

Even if something in her was shouting for him to go ahead and do it…

Then he cocked his head just a bit to one side. But Tanya couldn’t tell if he was even aware that he’d done it because he was staring so intently, so deeply into her eyes.

He leaned forward. Barely. Almost not at all.

Her chin went up about the same amount, on its own.

Shouldn’t do that…

Except that she wanted to.

She really, really wanted to…

But maybe the mere thought that they shouldn’t do that somehow transmitted to Tate, who finally took heed of it. He straightened up again and turned the handle to open the door so she could go out.

Which was exactly what she knew she had to do. She had to get out of there before she did something stupid…

“Tomorrow?” she said as she stepped across the threshold, stopping only when she felt the cooler night air on her face to turn and look at him from a greater distance than had separated them in the house.

“I have surgeries scheduled all day and dinner with the family tomorrow evening. But I’ve left orders for all the family albums to be dragged out of storage—I thought maybe we could go through them tomorrow night after dinner. That should give you a fairly decent family history.”

Why did tomorrow night seem so far away? And why was she thinking about how endlessly the hours would drag on instead of being aggravated by the fact that the entire next day would be wasted?

But that was how it was and she couldn’t help it. She could only hope the time would pass quickly…

“Okay,” she heard herself say compliantly. “If that’s how it has to be.”

“Unfortunately…” he said so quietly that she had the feeling he regretted having to wait, too.

But that couldn’t be, Tanya told herself. He’s engaged—don’t forget that…

She said good-night then and headed in the direction of her mother’s bungalow. But since she hadn’t heard the guesthouse door close, just before she stepped onto the path that led through trees and bushes and would take her out of sight, she glanced over her shoulder.

There was Tate, standing in the doorway watching her.

And thinking what? About kissing her?

Had he almost kissed her or had she been wrong about that?

She must have been wrong.

But right or wrong, there would be no kissing of Tate McCord! she told herself.

Still, she thought he had almost kissed her.

And even though she knew it would have been a mistake, even though she knew it couldn’t happen, as she slipped out of his sight down the path to the bungalow, she was wishing that this might have been one of those times—like all those others—when he’d ignored the you-shouldn’t-do-that and done it anyway…

Chapter Five

“Katie. Hi,” Tate said into his cell phone when it rang on his way to work Tuesday morning and the display let him know in advance who his caller was.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Katie replied to his greeting.

“No, I’m about five minutes away from the hospital. How’s everything?”

“Okay. As well as could be expected, I suppose,” Katie said.

Tate had known her long enough to think he knew all of her moods, but he couldn’t pinpoint this one. Trying to, he said, “You sound tired.”

“I didn’t have the chance to tell my parents that the engagement is off until last night. You know how it is—there have been dinners and parties and people around since I got to Key West and I had to wait for a moment alone with them.”

“And I don’t imagine that they welcomed the news,” Tate guessed, not eager to tell his own family for just that reason.

“No, they certainly didn’t welcome it. They were actually very impatient with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Tate said sympathetically.

“It was no worse than I thought it would be, but still…” Katie sighed. “After all this time they were sure their dreams were finally coming true. I knew they weren’t going to be happy to have me wake them up.”

“What about you?” Tate asked point-blank because he still wasn’t getting a clear read on Katie’s feelings. And while he knew breaking up was for the best, he was concerned about her.

“Well, I am tired—you were right about that. We were up arguing until very late and I had an early hair appointment this morning so I couldn’t sleep in. But otherwise…”

There was a pause that didn’t convince Tate that Katie was merely worn out.

Then she continued. “I’m a little at loose ends. You were always sort of my guy,” she said with a laugh that helped him believe she wasn’t doing too badly despite the fact that she might be a little down in the dumps over the way things had turned out.

“Even when we weren’t together,” she went on, “there was always just that thought that we’d probably end up with each other some day. And it isn’t as if I don’t care about you, Tate—”

“Same here.”

“But I truly do think there’s more out there for both of us.”

Why did Tanya pop into his mind at that exact moment?

But Katie was still talking and he forced himself to pay attention.

“—it just isn’t easy to start over. I keep thinking that I haven’t ever been in a single, long-term, committed relationship with anyone of my own choosing. That was part of the argument last night—I said I needed to be able to decide who the man for me would be. But just between us, the whole time I was wondering if I’ll know how to choose someone for myself.”

Tate laughed. “I’m pretty sure you just go with whoever you have the strongest feelings for,” he said. And again—for no reason that made sense—Tanya came to mind.

“What about you?” Katie asked then. “How are you?”

“I’m doing all right,” he said.

“You sound better than all right. You sound a little more like your old self. Were you that glad to get rid of me?”

“Come on, you know better than that,” he chastised. “And I didn’t get rid of you. If anybody got rid of anybody—”

“I’m saying it was a mutual decision. And now you can, too—that’s why I wanted to talk to you first thing this morning. My mother is threatening to call yours. I asked her to wait but I don’t know how long she will. So don’t put off telling Eleanor or it’ll be my mother who does.”

“I’m having dinner with the family tonight. I’ll tell them then.”

“I hope it goes smoother with yours than it did with mine.”

“Even if it doesn’t, it’ll all blow over before long,” Tate assured her as he pulled into the doctors’ parking lot of Meridian General.

“It’s nice that we can still chat like this, though,” Katie said then. “And be friends…”

“That isn’t going to change—we’ve always been friends, we always will be friends. You know if there’s anything you need from me you just have to ask, right?”

“Same here,” she echoed his earlier words. “I should let you go, though, I just heard the parking lot attendant say good morning to you so you must be at the hospital. I’ll try to keep my mother from calling yours at least until tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

“And I’ll see you at the Labor Day party—I should probably apologize to you ahead of time for anything my parents might say to you at that.”

The McCords were throwing one of their lavish soirees to mark the end of the summer season and Katie’s family was always at the top of the guest list.

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine,” Tate assured her once more.

“I hope so,” Katie said. “I hope everything will be fine for us both.”

“It will be.”

“Well, one way or another, I just wanted you to know that you’re free to tell whoever you want now. And thanks for letting me go first with the families.”

“Sure.”

They said their goodbyes then and Tate turned off his phone as he parked in his assigned spot.

But the freedom he now had to get the word out that he was no longer engaged to Katie was still on his mind.

Of course it was his family who had to be next to know.

But right after that?

For the third time it was Tanya who made an instant appearance in his head.

Because Tanya was really the only person he wanted to tell…

“The engagement is off? Oh, Tate…”

Tate had waited until everyone was finishing dessert Tuesday evening to make his announcement. Not that everyone was there. His mother, Eleanor, was at the head of the table and her response to the news was rife with disappointment and disapproval. His older brother Blake was sitting across from him, and one of his younger twin sisters, Penny, was to his right. But even without the rest of the family there, Tate knew word would spread to Penny’s twin, Paige, and to his youngest brother, Charlie, and he hadn’t wanted to delay telling his mother until Paige and Charlie were around, as well.

“These breakups are never for good,” Blake said with an annoyed sigh.

“It’s time the breakups stop,” Eleanor said. “I know you’ve been in a bad way since we lost Buzz, Tate. But I honestly think the path out of it is to finally do what you should have done long ago—stop this seesaw you and Katie have always been on and take a definitive step into your future with the woman you know you’re going to end up with eventually.”

“In other words, little brother,” Blake said, “it’s time for you to grow up.”

Tate could have taken issue with that but he didn’t. “What it is time for,” he said instead, “is for Katie and me to get off the seesaw once and for all.”

“What can you possibly be thinking?” Blake demanded, surprising Tate with a reaction that was stronger than Tate had expected from his brother. Blake should have had enough on his mind with the current business problems and trying to find the Santa Magdalena diamond to make this low on his list of concerns. “Why don’t you open your eyes and take a look at what you have in Katie?” Blake continued. “You keep going back to her—you must recognize on some level how terrific she is. What will it take for you to just accept that you aren’t going to do better?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Blake,” Tate said calmly. “I do know how terrific Katie is. But when there isn’t that…certain something…between two people, you can be terrific, she can be terrific, it just doesn’t make any difference. And I’m sure you think this was my idea, but the truth is, it came about at her instigation.”

“Isn’t that exactly what I told you the other night?” Blake said with disgust. “You took her for granted, you neglected her and now she’s called things off.”

“Ultimately, it was a mutual decision,” Tate said, borrowing from Katie. “At her instigation, but a mutual decision. We both agreed that all these years have been more about what the families wanted, what the families pressured us into, and not about our feelings for each other. But the bottom line—” Tate said, thinking that his brother was a bottom-line kind of person “—is that we don’t have the kind of feelings that end in marriage. At least not a happy, lasting marriage. And since—for some reason—you seem to have adopted the role of Katie’s champion, isn’t that what you’d want for her? To be married to someone she’s actually in love with and has a chance to be happy with for the rest of her life?”

“It goes without saying that that’s what I’d want for her. For you both,” Blake added impatiently.

“Well, we’ve come to the conclusion that that isn’t what we’d have together.”

“That’s the conclusion you’ve come to this week. Or this month,” Eleanor said as if she was at her wits’ end with him. “But next week or next month, you’ll be telling us you’re back together again. Just stop this on and off!”

“We have stopped it, only we’ve stopped it at off,” Tate said, concealing how much he wanted this to end because he was itching to get to Tanya to go through the family albums the way they’d planned. “This is it for Katie and me, whether the families like it or not,” he concluded firmly.

“And families shouldn’t enter into a person’s relationships,” Penny said then, chiming in for the first time.

Tate appreciated his younger sister’s support but it surprised him, too. Penny was the quieter, more introverted of the twins. She didn’t often venture into a family fray unless she had to.

“Talk to us when you have a relationship that the family enters into, Penny,” Blake said sardonically.

“That’s what I’m worried about—the family entering into my relationship,” Penny muttered under her breath and with some defensiveness that seemed out of place.

“What does that mean?” Blake asked with a chuckle, as if Penny were six years old rather than twenty-six.

Tate saw how much that irked Penny—she sat up straighter, her lips pursed. Then she said, “I’ve…”

She stopped herself as if to gauge her words.

“It’s okay, Penny,” Tate said. “I appreciate that you’re on my side, but you don’t have to fight my battles.”

“It isn’t only your battle,” his sister answered as if she’d just that moment come to some kind of decision.

Then she made an announcement of her own. “I’ve been seeing Jason Foley.”

That came as far, far more of a shock than Tate’s broken engagement and brought several moments of stunned silence before Blake broke it.

“Jason Foley?” he repeated in disbelief.

“What do you mean you’re seeing him? As a friend?” Eleanor asked in a controlled tone.

“More than friends,” Penny said.

“You’re dating?” their mother pressed, beginning to sound alarmed.

Penny hesitated. She was a private person and Tate realized this wasn’t easy for her.

But then she said, “Yes, we’re dating.”

“That’s bad, Penny,” Blake decreed. “You know the Foleys hate us, that they’ve been convinced for decades that we cheated them out of the land, and now with the potential that the diamond could be—”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” Penny insisted.

“Don’t kid yourself!” Blake said in a louder voice. “Don’t you think it’s just a little suspicious that now—of all times—there’s a Foley sniffing around? They’re looking for a way in, Penny! For information about the diamond!”

“You haven’t actually given me any information about the diamond except to enlist me to design jewelry that will tie into it if you find it.”

“I don’t want the Foleys knowing even that much. That’s what they’re after—any crumb they can get their hands on and use!” Blake shouted.

Tate was aware of how invested Blake was in the business, in finding the diamond, in using it to salvage McCord’s Jewelers. He knew his brother was under pressure he wasn’t willing to share unless it was absolutely necessary because Blake always believed he was the best person to shoulder the load. And Tate thought that because of all that, it didn’t occur to Blake how insulting to Penny it was to imply that Jason Foley was interested in her only as some kind of ploy. Even though Tate agreed that it was a possibility.

“We don’t know that that’s why Jason Foley is seeing Penny, Blake,” he said.

“I know nothing good can come of a McCord getting involved with a Foley.”

“Charlie came of it,” Penny said, using the information their mother had only recently shared with them that the youngest McCord was the result of an affair Eleanor had had with Rex Foley twenty-two years earlier.

But it was information that had caused all of Eleanor’s children to give her a wide berth ever since. To Tate’s knowledge, none of them had discussed it with their mother in any depth, even since Eleanor’s return that morning to take care of the last details of the Labor Day party. So Tate could hardly believe his ears when Penny used that information for her own purposes now.

Glancing at his mother, Tate found her unruffled by it, though. Instead, venturing delicately into the subject that still wasn’t easy for any of them to accept, Eleanor said, “Yes, Penny, Charlie did come of my involvement with a Foley. But that’s why I can speak from experience and tell you that a tie between a Foley and a McCord is a rocky road.”

“We just don’t want you to get hurt, Penny,” Tate added.

“That’s true,” Eleanor confirmed.

“What’s true,” Penny countered, “is that whatever is between two families shouldn’t interfere with what might—or might not—be between two individual people. Not when it comes to you and Katie, Tate, and not when it comes to whoever I’m with, either. Jason and I are seeing each other and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m a McCord and he’s a Foley. It doesn’t have anything to do with an old feud, or with land that changed hands a gazillion years ago, or with a diamond. It’s in spite of all that and it’s only about Jason and me.”

“I hope you’re right,” Eleanor said with worry lines creasing her brow.

“I’m telling you,” Blake seemed unable to keep from reiterating, “you don’t know what the Foleys could be up to.”

“It may be perfectly innocent,” Tate contributed. “Jason Foley may just be carried away by how terrific you are. But be careful—that’s all we’re asking. When it comes to a Foley, be really careful…”

Chapter Six

Tate was sitting at one of the poolside tables when Tanya came out from the wooded path after leaving her mother’s cottage Tuesday night. The moment she stepped through the clearing in the bushes and magnolia trees she saw that he was watching for her and a small smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

Why that sent something gooshy through her, she didn’t know, but that bare hint of him being pleased to see her was all it took to heat her from the inside out.

Then his gaze went from her free-falling hair, down the teal T-shirt she was wearing to her flowing wide-leg slacks as she crossed to him. His smile grew bigger. And that internal heat took on a rosy, sensual glow.

Stop it! she ordered herself, trying to keep uppermost in her mind that in spite of the fact that it was late evening, that they were suddenly together again, under a clear moonlit sky, this was about work. Only work…

“Finally!” Tate muttered when she reached him, before she’d even said hello.

“You just called me five minutes ago to tell me to come over,” she said, thinking he was making a comment about having to wait for her.

He shook his head. “Finally we can get to what we had planned tonight.”

“Ah,” Tanya said as she took the chair nearest him.

What they had planned tonight was to look through his family albums. And since there was a stack of them on the table, she sat where they would each be able to see them. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she wanted to sit close to him. Want to or not, she swore that she wasn’t going to let this evolve into anything more than doing her job tonight.

“I brought the wine I started on at dinner. Will you have some?” Tate asked then, picking up the open bottle and refreshing his own glass while he indicated the clean glass beside it.

“This is supposed to be work for me,” Tanya reminded them both, holding up her notepad and pen to prove it.

“Sometimes mixing business and pleasure is a good thing,” he enticed.

“I hope that isn’t your philosophy when you do surgery,” she countered.

That merely made him laugh and question her again by holding the bottle higher.

She shouldn’t. This was work.

And yet she heard herself say “Maybe just one glass.”

She set her pad and pen on the table as he poured, using his averted glance as an opportunity to give him the once-over. The pool area where they were sitting was well lit and she could tell that he’d dressed for dinner and then undone some of it for this. There wasn’t a suitcoat or tie anywhere around, but he had on gray slacks and a crisp white shirt with the long sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was also clean shaven, the scent of his cologne just barely wafted to her and his slightly longish hair was neatly combed.

Would it have helped if he’d looked grungy? she asked herself, knowing her vow to keep this out of the realm of another datelike evening with him was already weakening.

But somehow she doubted that the way he was dressed made any difference. The man just seemed to hold an appeal for her that she didn’t fully understand. Maybe he’d unearthed some kind of deep-seated attraction to unavailable men that she hadn’t known she possessed.

But he was unavailable—in so many ways—and she told herself not to forget that.

When the wine was poured and the bottle replaced on the table, Tate handed her her glass and lounged back in his chair with a deep sigh of what sounded like relief.

“Rough day?” Tanya asked as she took a sip of the wine.

“Rough dinner,” he amended.

There was talk among the staff about the tense state the family had been in since rumors had begun to surface that Tate’s mother had announced that her youngest son, Charlie, was a Foley. None of the staff knew any of the details, but they did know that Charlie had almost instantly gone off to settle back into college early, and that Eleanor had taken some time away herself.

Tanya assumed that tensions over Charlie’s paternity were still the cause of the rough dinner, but Tate didn’t offer her any explanation as she took another sip of wine.

“So, how far back would you like to go?” Tate asked with a nod toward the albums.

Good, he is getting right down to business, Tanya told herself to ward off a ridiculous sense of disappointment that he wasn’t bothering with small talk tonight.

“I did some background research today and thought about how I’d like to do this,” she said, trying to sound purely professional. “I’d like a clear picture of the McCords and your family history first. Once that’s accomplished, I can get into the story of the diamond and the treasure and of the feud with the Foleys, and the land and silver mines that changed hands, too. But for tonight, how about starting with just the family stuff?”

“Whatever you want.”

“And since it looks as though the feud between the Foleys and the McCords began with Gavin Foley and Harry McCord—”

“My grandfather.”

“—that seems like the furthest we need to go in McCord family history.”

“Okay, Harry McCord it is,” Tate said, sitting up and reaching for the albums. He discarded two of the more ragged ones before settling on one that displayed old, poor-quality black-and-white photographs of a man who bore a clear resemblance to him. “These are of my grandfather in front of the silver mines that launched the McCord fortune and, ultimately, McCord’s Jewelers,” he informed her.

Tanya flipped through page after page, noting that there were five mines, all of them with a large stone at their entrance, each with a petroglyph carved into it to name it. The Turtle mine. The Eagle mine. The Lizard. The Tree. The Bow.

“Can I have a few of these pictures to use? I’ll make sure they’re returned,” Tanya said when she’d reached the end of that album.

“I don’t see why not,” Tate agreed, taking them out and giving them to her.

“So, was your father Harry McCord’s only child?” Tanya asked then.

“No. My father was the oldest son. The younger—my Uncle Joseph—lives in Italy. You must know Gabby? My cousin?”

Gabriella McCord was a famous model and it was nearly impossible to pick up any magazine, newspaper or tabloid and not find her face on the cover. So Tanya felt a little stupid for not having considered from where on the family tree Gabby McCord had sprouted. She didn’t admit it, though.

“I know of her,” Tanya said. “The whole world knows of her. But it isn’t as if she was ever introduced to the housekeeper’s daughter on one of her visits, and I had no idea how she fit into the family—I guess I’d never really thought about it.”

“Well, Gabby’s father is Joseph. Joseph married an Italian actress descended from royalty over there. They made their home in Italy, and Joseph oversees and manages the European branches of McCord’s Jewelers. My grandmother died in childbirth with Joseph.” Tate found a picture of his grandmother and a few of Joseph growing up and as an adult, showing them to Tanya.

“So Harry McCord raised Devon—your father—and your uncle on his own?”

“That’s the story. My father said one of his earliest memories was of going out to the mines with my grandfather, and that was where he and Joseph spent most of their time growing up—if they weren’t in school, they were working alongside my grandfather.”

Tate moved on to the next album, flipping through more shots of the brothers Devon and Joseph until he reached one of them with Harry McCord, standing outside of McCord’s Jewelers.

“That was the first store,” Tate said.

Tanya took a close look at the nondescript glass storefront that could hardly compare to the current McCord’s Jewelers. Now they were known for their marble entrances, their plush lavender and gray carpeting, their mirrored cases and velvet displays, their leather club chairs for shopping in comfort. And their new customer-pampering campaign had only increased the level of luxury that was a world of difference from that initial jewelry shop.

“You’ve come a long way,” she observed.

“That was my father’s doing. And Blake’s. I take no credit for what goes on with the jewelry business.”

“I’d like to use this picture of the original store.”

“Go ahead.”

Tanya took it to put with the others she was collecting.

Then they moved on to the next album. It contained pictures of Devon McCord’s wedding to Tate’s mother, the beautiful, blond Eleanor Holden.

“Huh,” Tanya said as she glanced through them.

“What?”

“Your mother is the most somber-looking bride I think I’ve ever seen, and your father looks more victorious than smitten.”

“That seems about right,” Tate said, leaning in for a closer look and giving Tanya a better whiff of his cologne that was more heady than the wine she was slowly sipping.

“Why does that seem about right?” she asked.

“That my father looked victorious? That was always how he was when it came to my mother.”

Devon McCord had only died a year ago but while Tanya remembered the man, she had never paid any attention to his relationship with his wife, so this was news to her.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Some of it goes back to the problems with the Foleys—my mother dated both my father and Rex Foley, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Tanya said, her interest sparked.

“I don’t really know much about it except that she did. The only thing I know is that my father would say—Rex Foley wanted her but I got her. Only he didn’t say it as if it made him a lucky man—which was how I always thought he should have said it. He’d say it as if she were the spoils of war. Just one more thing he’d won out over the Foleys, as if it wasn’t my mother who mattered as much as his victory over Rex Foley.”

“And now your dad is gone and you find out that Rex Foley is Charlie’s father…”

Tanya knew her mother would be furious with her if JoBeth found out she was taking such a liberty with a McCord. The McCords probably didn’t even realize that the staff was aware of what was going on within the family, and certainly no employee—or employee’s daughter—was at liberty to inquire about it.

But at that moment Tanya wasn’t there as the housekeeper’s daughter. She was there as an investigative reporter. And that meant asking even the probing, off-limits questions.

Tate didn’t answer it readily. He sat back, he took a drink of his wine, he raised a single eyebrow at her. “Hard to keep a secret from the staff,” he said.

Tanya raised both of her eyebrows back at him, committing blame to no one.

“It’s a private matter,” he said then in a tone that warned her not to pursue the subject. “We’re all still trying to come to grips with it. We definitely don’t want it announced in a news report. But then, that seems to fall more into the category of gossip than what you said you want to do.”

Tanya had to smile at his attempt to manipulate her. “I don’t know—two of Dallas’s preeminent families who have been in a long-standing feud, now connected by blood because the head of one of the families had an affair with the head of the other? That makes for a thin line between gossip and news. Especially in a piece like this.”

“Affair?” Tate repeated as if she were overstating.

“It wasn’t an affair?”

Tate’s sky-blue eyes bored into her for a moment as if he were sizing her up. Or judging just how much of a problem she could be for him. Gone was the openness she’d seen more of recently, replaced by a cool aloofness and the much harder edge she’d seen in him on Friday night in the library.

Then he sighed again and said, “I’m going to be straight with you—I don’t really know what went on between my mother and Rex Foley. I know—have always known—that she dated Rex Foley when they were teenagers. I don’t think there was anything between them once she married my father, and how they got together again is a mystery to me. I know—hell, you might even remember—that my parents’ marriage hit a rough patch and they separated. Charlie was conceived during that separation so obviously my mother turned to Rex Foley then, but I have no idea how that came about. Has she been involved with Rex Foley since then? I don’t know and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Whatever happened is my mother’s business.”

There was no question in Tanya’s mind that she’d just poured salt into an open wound. And what that had done was reawaken the new—and not necessarily improved—Tate, just when she’d been getting a little more of the old.

Tanya had to admit that the new Tate was far more daunting. But it was her job to be undaunted.

“How is the fact that your mother had—or has—a relationship with Rex Foley affecting your family?”

“Right now, I’d say that we’re all just a little dumbfounded. Who knows what will happen in the future?”

“Have feelings changed toward Charlie?”

“No. Charlie is what he’s always been—our brother.”

“Now he’s also brother to the Foleys…”

Tate didn’t like this direction. He frowned at her. “We all have our flaws,” he said in a clipped voice she’d never heard him use before.

“Being half Foley is a flaw?” she ventured anyway.

“Are you going to make me sorry I agreed to do this?” Tate demanded suddenly.

“Probably.”

There was a moment of silence during which Tate gave her the hardest stare she’d ever had. Tanya actually thought he might get up, walk away and let her suffer the consequences of snooping through the library on Friday night. She thought it was a very real possibility that he might just have her fired from the studio, fire her mother as housekeeper and generally wreak havoc on her life rather than continue this.

But then his handsome face eased into an unexpected smile again and he shook his head. “I don’t know if being half Foley is a flaw or not,” he finally answered. “Right now it’s confusing for us all—especially for Charlie—and I think we just have to wait and see how it plays out.”

He said that with enough finality to let her know he wasn’t going to say any more on this topic.

So Tanya switched gears.

“I suppose McCord’s Jewelers’ financial woes are more of a priority than Charlie’s parentage at this point, anyway,” she said.

“Strike two! You really are aiming to tick me off tonight, aren’t you?” Tate said, though with a hint of humor infusing his words.

“Just doing my job. There are rumors that the family business is floundering and from what I overheard Friday night, the rumors have some foundation in truth—that makes it part of the story,” she insisted.

“The jewelry business is Blake’s bailiwick and the only thing I’ll say, the only thing I know to report, is that he’s working to increase sales the way any number of businesses do—with new advertising or new packaging or new whatever. That doesn’t mean anything is floundering.”

“I’ve seen the ads—A Once In A Lifetime Experience,” Tanya said. “Coffee and pastries for morning shoppers. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres later in the day. One-on-one customer service—”

“And Gabby—don’t forget Gabby is available by e-mail for personal shopping advice for certain clients who want to know what a high-profile trendsetter would buy.”

“That sounds like you’re putting in a plug for Blake’s new public relations campaign.”

Tate merely smiled as if that was exactly what he was doing and was pleased to be able to again control the information that would go into her story.

But she couldn’t let him get too comfortable. “And I heard you and Blake talk about him stockpiling canary diamonds to use as a tie-in with the Santa Magdalena diamond when he finds it.”

Tate sobered and sighed again. “You’re just digging around all over the place, aren’t you?”

Tanya gave him the that’s-my-job shrug.

“Let’s just say,” Tate said, “that it wouldn’t do any harm to have the Santa Magdalena diamond appear. And I hope that that happens and the focus of your report leans more in that direction—in a direction that can help rather than hurt.”

“In other words, you’d like it if my report could be more in the way of free advertisement than anything really revealing.”

He just grinned.

“So you’re using me? Is that why your fiancée isn’t putting the kibosh on your spending so much time with me?”

“My fiancée…” He took a drink of his wine, looked at the glass as he set it back on the table then said, “No more fiancée. No more engagement.”

“Oh…” she said, not impressed by the announcement.

He cocked his head at her. “You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, sure,” she said flimsily.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Believe you, don’t believe you—it isn’t really a matter of that. If the engagement was on yesterday and off today, it’ll just be on again tomorrow.”

“Even the staff—and the staff’s family—has been keeping track of that?”

“Hard not to. One day you’re an item, the next you aren’t.”

He shook his head. “Well, I hate to switch things up, but it’s not the same this time. The engagement is definitely off.”

Something about the way he said that gave Tanya a strange moment of elation that she tempered in a hurry. Then she shook her head at him, denying her own response and his claim all at once.

“You still don’t believe me?” Tate interpreted that part of the head shake.

“It doesn’t matter. This is how things go with you two. It stands to reason that you wouldn’t make it to the altar the first time around. There will probably be a couple of engagements and breakups before that will happen. But do I think it will eventually happen? Sure.”

Tate rolled his eyes. “This is tonight’s dinner all over again.”

So the subject that had made his family meal rough hadn’t been the Charlie issue, it had been Tate’s broken engagement…

“Your family didn’t take it seriously either?” Tanya asked.

“Only seriously enough to be annoyed. But I am serious—Katie and I are—”

“I know, broken up.”

“Once and for all.”

Why was there that part of her that wanted so much to buy the finality he was selling? To think that it was even a possibility that Tate McCord and Katie Whitcomb-Salgar could be no more for real? It shouldn’t have any impact on her at all, one way or another.

And yet it did. It raised a hope in her that was completely out of place. That shouldn’t have been there. That she didn’t want there. It made her feel as if she were walking a tightrope and had just discovered she didn’t have a safety net. It shook her.

And she suddenly felt the need to get out of there. To get some distance in which to gather her wits and regain some balance. Some distance that would take her where Tate wasn’t right there beside her, smelling so good, looking so good, and now not engaged…

“I think we’ve done enough here tonight,” she said, getting to her feet. “We’ve laid the groundwork. We can probably call it quits.”

She knew that had come out of the blue and the hastiness of it had obviously confused Tate. “We haven’t even talked about the present-day McCords—with the exception of Gabby,” he pointed out.

“I know about the present-day McCords,” Tanya said as she closed her notebook, clipped her pen to it and began to make a pile of the photographs she was taking. “Your mother looks after the household and family and does charity work. Blake is the CEO of McCord’s Jewelers. You’re a surgeon. There’s the twins, Penny and Paige—Penny is a jewelry designer, Paige is a geologist and gemologist. And there’s Charlie, who’s a student at Southern Methodist University and who we’ve also talked about tonight. Did I leave anyone out?”

“No, that’s the lot of us,” Tate confirmed, his tone still perplexed.

He stood then, too. And while Tanya hoped it was just a polite acknowledgment that she was about to leave, instead he said, “I’ll walk you back to your mother’s place.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” she said, wishing it hadn’t sounded so panicky.

“I want to,” he assured her.

“Whatever,” Tanya said, trying for aloofness and failing as she picked up everything and held it in front of her like a schoolgirl carrying books. Carrying books close and tight and protectively.

“Did I tick you off somehow?” Tate asked as they headed for the path that wound away from the pool.

“No. I don’t know why you would think that.”

“Maybe because you’re acting as if I just grew fangs or something. Is my not being engaged scary to you?”

Terrifying. Although she wasn’t exactly sure why, except possibly that she was terrified that she might give in to that wave of elation that had washed through her when he’d told her his engagement was off and let down her guard with him.

But if she let down her guard, then what? She could end up just another person he occupied his time with while he was on one of his innumerable breaks from Katie Whitcomb-Salgar. And all Tanya could think was, Oh, no, not me.

She just wasn’t sure she could stick to it.

Although there was still the issue of her mother and her mother’s job, and the fact that Tate was her mother’s employer…

Reminding herself of that helped. It actually allowed her to begin to relax again.

Even if Tate wasn’t engaged any longer, there was still a good—a very good—reason why she absolutely couldn’t and wouldn’t let anything happen with him. Anything even like last night when she’d thought he might be on the verge of kissing her.

Then something else that seemed completely unlikely occurred to her and compelled her to say, “When did this particular breakup come about? I didn’t think Katie was even in Dallas.”

“We broke up about a week ago but she wanted to tell her parents before word got out and I agreed to that. She is in Florida with them. She called this morning to let me know our private gag order was lifted and I could tell whoever I wanted.”

So the engagement had been axed before Tate had found Tanya in the library on Friday night. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he might be entertaining some notion of diddling the help’s daughter.

Tanya was relieved that that hadn’t been the case. That she hadn’t had anything to do with this particular breakup. She was also glad that she hadn’t said anything along those lines that would have embarrassed her. She was a little embarrassed anyway that she’d even had such a thought. Which was probably—like her thoughts of him kissing her—nothing but some kind of flight of fancy that she wasn’t even sure why she was having.

And she should just stop it, she told herself. Stop the flights of fancy, stop thinking anything was going on between them. And while she was at it, stop thinking about him every minute of the day and night, the way she had been!

They’d reached her front door when Tate said, “We haven’t talked about tomorrow.”

“No, we haven’t,” Tanya answered glibly, slowly settling down and coming to grips with herself and his news.

“I have to make my rounds in the morning, but I’m free in the afternoon. I thought I’d give you a tour of the McCord contributions to the city and end with an evening under the stars.”

Tanya glanced up to the sky and then dropped her gaze to blue eyes that were watching her intently. “Isn’t that what we just had? An evening under the stars?”

“I have something a little bit different in mind. What do you say?”

“Is it all for my report?” she asked to make it clear that that was the only thing she would agree to.

“Every bit of it,” he assured without hesitation.

“Then okay.”

“You still haven’t answered my question about if my being un-engaged is somehow scary, though,” he said then, smiling slightly.

“No, you’re being un-engaged is not scary,” she said as if the question itself was silly.

“You honestly did just decide on the spur of the moment that it was time to stop working tonight?”

“Yes. Why would I care if you’re engaged or not?”

Okay, she’d been doing so well and then she’d gone and taken it too far by sounding defensive.

“I care,” he said quietly, pointedly, continuing to gaze into her eyes.

And then she felt rotten. If he had been anyone else and this had been any other situation, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she had to the revelation that he and the woman he’d intended to marry had ended things. She would have been more caring, more compassionate. She wouldn’t have thought about herself.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I guess I was kind of callous. Even if you have had a lot of ups and downs in your relationship, that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be upset—”

“I’m not upset,” he said. “And I don’t mean to sound callous either, and maybe sometime I’ll tell you why this didn’t upset me, but what I do care about is that now I don’t have to pretend that I’m committed to something—or someone—I’m not committed to.”

“Because you’re a bad secret-keeper?”

“Because I wanted to do this and I couldn’t,” he said, surprising her by coming in for the briefest, lightest, faintest of kisses.

A kiss Tanya didn’t even have time to close her eyes for or respond to. And yet, a kiss that still managed to leave her lips tingling and her pulse racing.

But in spite of that, when it was over she shook her head at him. “Engaged or not, you can’t do that,” she said firmly.

“Why not?” he asked, smiling as if it was him who wasn’t taking her seriously now.

“My mother works for you.”

“I know that doesn’t make for the most ideal situation, but—”

“But nothing,” Tanya managed to sound so much stronger in her convictions than she felt. Especially since she was willing him with every ounce of her being to kiss her again…

Tate’s smile went crooked—and almost too sexy and endearing to resist—before he said, “I do love a challenge.”

“I’m not a challenge, I’m the housekeeper’s daughter.”

He nodded but she wasn’t convinced that their very different social positions meant as much to him as it needed to.

Then, rather than address it again, he merely said, “I’ll call you when I finish with rounds tomorrow. Plan on all afternoon and evening.”

“To compile data for my report and that’s it?” she said with a warning note in her voice.

“Nose to the grindstone all the way,” he assured her.

“Okay,” Tanya agreed a second time.

“See you then,” he said.

Tanya nodded and watched him go, trying not to drink in every detail of his backside, of the confident swagger to his walk. Trying not to wish he was still standing in front of her instead, kissing her again. Kissing her more thoroughly than he had. His arms around her. Hers around him. Her hands slipping down to that very, very fine derriere she watched disappear into the shadows of the trees.

He’s not engaged anymore…

The thought ran through her head like a wood nymph, taunting her. Tantalizing her.

But she chased it away.

Engaged, not engaged, it was all the same to her. She had more reasons than that not to give in to the attraction that kept sneaking in and taking over.

But it did keep sneaking in.

And taking over.

And the only way she had to combat it at that moment was to also remind herself that the odds of his not-engaged status lasting were slim to none.

And there was no way she was going to let herself be his hiatus-honey.

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