Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret: Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret

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.”