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

“Still, you’re just plain serious, as far as I’ve seen. Maybe your mom and her cohorts should be worrying more about you than me.”

Okay, so there hadn’t been a whole lot of levity to any of the times they’d encountered each other since Friday night.

“This is business for me,” she reminded him.

He smiled again, a pleased, warm smile that she liked entirely too much. “I’m glad you said business and not work. I don’t think I like being work for anyone.”

“Just make sure business gets done from here on,” she pretended to chastise.

“Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.,” he countered.

She wondered if she was going to arrive at the address on the paper and find him sitting behind a desk. And if she would be expected to spend from then until five o’clock on the opposite side of that desk taking dictation on the story of his life.

She wouldn’t put it past him.

But she knew better than to try to get any more information out of him about that, so she merely said, “Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.”

That seemed to satisfy him. It showed in his smile as he went on peering into her face for a moment more before he said, “You can tell your mother that you aren’t.”

“That I aren’t what?”

He laughed. “That is some really rotten grammar for a journalist.”

“That I’m not what?” she corrected the mistake she’d made on purpose, trying not to bask in the sound of his laugh or the fact that she’d inspired it.

“You’re not bothering me. In fact, you’re kind of a little spitfire and I’m getting a kick out of it.”

“Little spitfire? You’re aware that that’s very condescending, aren’t you?” she said even though it gave her a tiny rush to hear that she was rousing something in him.

“Hey, I’m just a sheltered, pampered, out-of-touch rich boy, what do I know?” he joked.

Again Tanya smiled, adding a hint of a laugh to it. And maybe her lighter side really was a novelty to him because several minutes lapsed while Tate just seemed to study her as if he couldn’t quite figure her out.

Several minutes that made something else flash through Tanya’s mind—that people in this position, saying goodnight at the door after having spent an evening together and sharing a nice dinner, very often kissed…

Which of course was not going to happen, she told herself in no uncertain terms.

And it didn’t. Because then Tate said, “I’ll see you at nine,” and turned to retrace his steps to his car.

Tanya watched his retreating back, giving herself a silent but stern talking-to as she did.

There could not ever—ever—be thoughts of kissing when it came to Tate McCord.

That was absolutely, positively unthinkable.

Unthinkable and undoable.

Absolutely. Positively.

And if she was still standing there even after he was out of sight, even after she could hear his car engine restart, even after she’d heard him drive away?

It was because she was still silently lecturing herself about how she also—absolutely, positively—shouldn’t be wondering what it would be like to kiss the mighty Tate McCord, either…

Chapter Four

“Rosa, this is Tanya Kimbrough. Tanya, this is Rosa Marsh—Rosa pretty much runs this place. Rosa, Tanya is going to pitch in for us today as a volunteer. I know you can use her,” Tate said as he introduced Tanya to the heavyset nurse.

Then he leaned in close enough to Tanya’s ear to whisper so only she could hear, “I thought I’d give you the chance to see how one McCord spends Mondays. And since you’re so in touch with the real people, I figured you’d probably want to do more than just follow me around and take notes.”

Tanya could tell that Tate was enjoying this—there was pure satisfaction on his handsome face as he left her to the woman named Rosa.

When Tanya had arrived at the address Tate had written in her notepad she definitely hadn’t found a lead on an apartment for rent. She’d found a surgical clinic for the underprivileged in an extremely neglected portion of Dallas.

She’d also discovered that Tate was known there as Dr. Tate and that if anyone realized he was a McCord, it wasn’t an issue. He was just Dr. Tate.

And Tanya was a volunteer for the day.

She didn’t mind. It allowed her to watch him in action and pitching in was something she’d been taught to do even as a child. So Tanya followed Rosa’s instructions and went to work herself.

She primarily did the nurses’ bidding, performing cleanup and making sure patients were comfortable.

The small, inner-city facility was nothing at all like Meridian General Hospital. Sanitary conditions were met but that was about the best that could be said of it. Equipment was old, linens were clean but ragged, the linoleum floor was worn down to the cement beneath it in several places, and watermarks decorated the walls and ceiling.

Tanya would never have imagined Tate practicing there. Or fitting in with the two physician’s assistants and four nurses who were all earthy, outspoken and irreverent. But there wasn’t a single indication in anything she saw that made her think he held himself above any of them and they made it clear to her even when he wasn’t around that they liked and respected him, and that they felt lucky to work with a surgeon of his caliber.

And the patients—some of them homeless, almost all of them lacking insurance or the ability to pay, many not English-speaking—were nothing like the majority of patients at Meridian General either.

Yet never did she see Tate treat any one of them without respect or compassion.

Plus it wasn’t only their outpatient surgical needs—or even their general health needs—he met. He also seemed genuinely concerned for their well-being once they went beyond the peeling walls of the clinic. Numerous times Tanya overheard him ask if the patient had a home in which to recuperate. She saw him slip money to more than a few who clearly needed it. He even took the time to make phone calls to get additional assistance for two patients before he would release them.

She saw him go the extra mile over and over again, but not once did she have the sense that his actions were due to the fact that she was watching, or just to make himself look good. Most of the time he didn’t even know she was anywhere near, and there were several instances when she learned what good deed he’d done through the nurses talking to each other. She also saw the nurses take many patients’ nonmedical problems to him as if it were a common occurrence for them to enlist him, as if they knew from long before Monday that he was the person to go to.

By the end of the day Tanya wasn’t ready to paint him as a saint—with people who weren’t under his care he could be demanding and dictatorial. He could be outspoken about any slipups or oversights, and curt with patients’ friends or family members who rubbed him wrong. But she had to admit that he wasn’t what she’d expected. Or anything like what she’d known of him before. The image she’d had of him as she’d grown up on the peripheries of his life was suddenly altered.

Which didn’t help her personally.

Because while finding him awesomely sexy in scrubs was one thing, being impressed by him, discovering that he might actually have some substance, some character, some depth, was much more of a bump in the road for her. It made him more the kind of man she liked, which also made him attractive to her on a whole other level.

Just when she didn’t want him to be attractive to her at all…

The last patient wasn’t ready to leave the clinic until nearly eight o’clock that night. Then the staff closed up and they all went out together.

Tate made sure his female coworkers got to their cars safely in the unsavory neighborhood. Once he had, he walked Tanya to hers.

“What do you say we meet at the guesthouse in an hour and I pay you for your services today with a little dinner?” he said as they reached her sedan.

It had been a long day and Tanya was tired, but that simple suggestion was enough to wipe it all away. Which she knew was a warning sign and yet she still said, “Dinner?”