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

“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!”