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

“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…