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

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.