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

“He offered, Mama. I won’t be bothering him.”

“He offered?” JoBeth parroted ominously.

“He volunteered,” Tanya amended because she’d caught the sudden switch in her mother’s concerns. Now it wasn’t the McCords who JoBeth was worried about, it was Tanya. And that was a more fierce protectiveness.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Tanya—”

“Says my mother.” Tanya dismissed the compliment.

“Tate has eyes.”

“And a fiancée,” Tanya reminded. Then, in an attempt to calm her mother’s fears, she said, “Tate is engaged to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—the person he’s been promised to since they played together in the sandbox. And it wouldn’t matter even if they hadn’t finally gotten engaged—I know better than to get involved with Tate McCord, of all people. This is strictly business. For both of us. He’s going to walk me through some family history and give me the exclusive on the outcome of whatever it is that’s going on with the Santa Magdalena diamond—that’s all there is to it. There’s nothing personal in it for either of us.”

“For your own sake, you’d better make sure of that,” JoBeth said, her round face reflecting the fact that Tanya had failed to ease her mind. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt, Mama. I told you, it’s strictly business.”

JoBeth stared at her for a long moment as if she were hoping to be able to see the future in Tanya’s face. Then, with no indication of whether or not she thought she had, she took her obvious concerns and her crossword puzzle into the living room.

Tanya interpreted that as a sign that her mother was tentatively accepting what she’d told her.

But while she stayed where she was at the kitchen table to finish her breakfast, Tanya was still thinking about it all.

This was strictly business between her and Tate—she hadn’t said that simply to appease JoBeth. Tanya had outgrown wanting to be a McCord a long time ago. Yes, as a very young, starry-eyed girl she’d fantasized about being a part of what went on at the big house. But as soon as her mother had realized that was what she was doing, JoBeth had taken measures to keep Tanya’s feet firmly planted on the ground. And ultimately—eventually—Tanya had come to see for herself that the McCords’ life was not a life she wanted.

Of course mountains of money would be nice, but other than that? The McCords were under constant scrutiny, their every movement watched. They were talked about and criticized, envied and resented. And none of that appealed to Tanya.

Plus, the McCords existed in an insular world where everything remained the same from generation to generation. Where the names, the faces, the cliques never changed. Where new blood was seldom let in. Where some fight, started long, long ago for reasons Tanya wasn’t sure even they knew, was still burning. It all just seemed so stagnant to her.

And in keeping with that, Tate was engaged to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—the daughter of his mother’s and late father’s close friends and someone who had moved within that same small, insulated circle his entire life, too.

But Tanya understood why the fact that Tate was engaged didn’t put her mother’s mind to rest. Both Tanya and JoBeth had been around the McCords long enough to know that the relationship between Tate and Katie ran a pattern—together, not together, together again.

Just because they’d finally gotten formally engaged didn’t mean this was the time they made it to the altar. One or the other of them could still decide to put the wedding off, to separate the way they had dozens of times in the past.

And if that happened and Tanya caught Tate’s attention during the interim? He could be very persuasive. But in the end Tanya would only be a dalliance for Tate before he went back to Katie anyway. Which he always did.

That was what Tanya knew her mother was worried about.

But JoBeth didn’t need to be. Not only would Tanya never knowingly get involved with anyone who was already involved with someone else, there was no way she would allow herself to be one of Tate McCord’s fleeting detours from the woman his family had chosen for him.

No, the whole thing—what it meant to be a McCord and interrupting Tate’s destiny to be with Katie Whitcomb-Salgar—was just not for Tanya.

Regardless of how terrific Tate might have looked in those scrubs last night.

But he had looked terrific…

Still, after a moment’s indulgence in that mental image, Tanya shoved it aside.

That man was off-off-off-limits, as far as she was concerned. The only purpose he served was to provide her with a good story that she could use to boost her standing at the station and launch her career in Dallas.

And the fact that he was the drop-dead gorgeous, charming, smart, accomplished Tate McCord was merely something she needed to overlook in order to keep a professional and personal distance.

Which she had every intention of doing.

“Dinner with you meant the country club—I suppose I should have guessed, but I was thinking we were going somewhere low-key where we could get down to business,” Tanya said as they left the club’s fine-dining—and fanciest—restaurant.

The valet had Tate’s sports car waiting for them. Tate went around to the driver’s side. One valet opened the passenger door for Tanya, while another opened the driver’s door for Tate. Only as their doors were closed for them and they were both fastening their seat belts did Tate say, “I can get down to business, if that’s what you want. I just thought we were having a friendly dinner,” he said with an innuendo-laden tone that purposely misinterpreted her words.

“What I want is to get down to the business I’m being paid to do—a profile on you and your family,” she qualified, not taking his slightly flirtatious bait but also making sure her tone was amiable. There had been confrontation between them on the last two nights and that was not a pattern she wanted to set.

Tate pulled out of the wrought-iron gates of the country club and into traffic without responding.

“Nothing work related was accomplished at all,” Tanya continued anyway. “You ended up talking more to your cronies than giving me any useful information about the McCords.”

“My cronies?” Tate repeated as he headed for his family’s estate.

“The rest of the country-club set. Or was that the purpose of dinner at the club—to avoid doing what you agreed to do and at the same time show me that the McCords hobnob with Dallas’s richest, most famous, most powerful and influential? And how even among the richest, most famous, powerful and influential, it was still you who was catered to to the point of the bartender counting the number of ice cubes he put in your predinner private reserve scotch?”

“Would I do something like that?” he said with no inflection at all, leaving her clueless as to whether or not that had been his motive.

“And for future reference,” she went on, still conversationally, “you should warn the person you’re bringing to the country club ahead of time. I was the only woman not in pearls.” In fact, she’d been underdressed in a pair of linen slacks and simple camp shirt, while Tate was dressed more appropriately in a cocoa-colored suit with an off-white shirt and brown tie.

“Pearls are not mandatory,” he informed her as they gained distance from the private club where memberships were primarily inherited and only the first names on the roster varied from decade to decade.

Tate took his eyes off the road to glance at her, his expression showing a hint of curiosity now. “So let me see if I have this straight—you’re mad because we just had a nice dinner?”

“I’m not mad,” she insisted. And she wasn’t. “The food was fantastic and the waitstaff treated me like a queen.” And in between the avalanche of obligatory hellos and small talk that had demanded Tate’s attention while Tanya was barely given dismissive nods after her introductions, he’d been a perfectly pleasant dinner companion. “But I thought tonight would be the kickoff to my collecting information—or else why should we be together? And it’s frustrating that nothing along those lines got done.”

And as a result, she hadn’t had work to keep her from noticing how easy it was to be with Tate.

“I don’t need to see what a hotshot you are,” she added.

“Ouch! Hotshot? That sounds bad.”

“I’m just saying that the country-club side of you and of your family is not news. That kind of thing is in the society columns every day. You promised me the private side and that’s not what tonight was.”

“What tonight was,” Tate said as they neared home, “was to make amends for costing you your on-air time and leaving you hanging yesterday. It’s also Sunday and the club’s regular chef takes Sundays off. His understudy—or whatever the guy who fills in for him is called—takes over in the kitchen on Sundays and the understudy goes all out to show his stuff when he gets that chance. I like to see what he comes up with. It’s usually different and innovative and interesting. Like tonight—thin slices of Kobe beef that we cooked ourselves over a hot rock—so country club or not, why shouldn’t we have gone there for dinner? Pearls notwithstanding?”

“Because that’s all this turned out to be—a nice dinner—”

“And that’s a crime?”

“I’m with you to do an assignment, not to go on a date,” she said reasonably.

“This wasn’t a date, it was just dinner,” he said.

Which was part of what she knew she needed to guard against—what seemed like a really great date to her was nothing but an ordinary, everyday dinner to him…