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

“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—”