Texas Cinderella

by Victoria Pade

  But still…

  He was looking forward to seeing the housekeeper’s daughter again.

  And continuing to see much more of her for a while to keep her contained?

  That didn’t feel like a hardship either….

  “What are you doing here?”

  Tanya could see that Tate was surprised to find her waiting for him when he left the operating suite of Meridian General Hospital at eight o’clock Saturday night.

  “I told you you were going to talk to me whether you liked it or not,” she countered heatedly.

  “When did you tell me that?”

  “At the end of the sixteenth voice mail I left you today.”

  “I got called in for an emergency surgery early this morning. I’ve been standing at an operating table for the last—” he glanced at a clock on the wall “—eleven hours and twenty minutes. Not a lot of message checking goes on when I’m up to my elbows in a man’s gut.”

  “Gross,” Tanya said reflexively.

  Tate merely raised an eyebrow at that, giving her the impression that that was the response he’d been going for.

  But if he thought disgusting her was going to make her back down, he needed to think again.

  “Eleven hours and twenty minutes of surgery or not, we’re going to talk,” she insisted.

  “If I’ve inspired sixteen voice mails I guess we’ll have to,” he said sardonically but sounding weary nonetheless. “First I have to let the family know how my patient is—” he nodded in the direction of a group of people she hadn’t noticed before but now realized were also waiting for him “—then I have to write orders to get this guy into recovery. After that my plan is for a quick bite to eat at the deli across the street before I have to operate on the other passenger from this car accident. So if you’re determined that we talk right now, you can either wait for me here and go over to the deli with me, or go ahead of me to the deli—but one way or another there’s only going to be a small window before my next patient is prepped and ready to be opened up.”

  It irked Tanya all the more to have him dictate to her, but she wouldn’t let that stop her.

  “Fine, I’ll wait here,” she said cuttingly.

  Now that she’d finally found him, she had no intention of letting him slip away from her. After calling his cell phone all day, she’d questioned almost the entire house staff before finding someone who knew Tate was at the hospital. When she’d called the hospital she’d been told she couldn’t speak to him because he was in surgery. That had prompted her to come here to ambush him as soon as he got out. But she’d been lying in wait for nearly two hours and was not willing to go ahead of him to the deli and risk him not showing up.

  So she perched on the edge of the same seat she’d occupied for the last two hours and watched him intently.

  When he was finished talking to his patient’s family, they headed for the elevators and Tate moved to the nurses’ station. He said something to the nurse there and while she went to do his bidding, Tanya continued to keep him in her sights.

  As she did, it occurred to her that while, over the years, she’d seen Tate McCord in tennis whites, in tuxedos, in suits and ties and casual clothes of all kinds, she’d never seen him in scrubs. And that he looked too sexy to believe in the loose-fitting, teal blue cotton garments that resembled pajamas more than street clothing.

  Then, adding to that sexiness he seemed unconscious of, he rolled his shoulders, arched his spine and raised his elbows to shoulder height to pull his arms back until even Tanya heard something crack—obviously working out the kinks that hours of surgery had left.

  But regardless of the fact that she was overly aware of every little thing about him, she refused to let any of it influence her. She was steaming mad and she was going to let him know it. Nothing—including being one of the best-looking, sexiest men she’d ever seen—gave him license to mess with her career! Not even if she had overstepped her bounds the previous night.

  The nurse brought him a metal clipboard then, and when he was done writing the orders for his patient, he handed the chart back to the nurse and finally turned to Tanya.

  “Ready?”

  “You don’t need to change clothes?” she asked, hoping he would and that different clothes might help lessen the effect he was having on her in scrubs.

  But he shook his head. “Hadn’t planned on it. Like I said, I have another surgery scheduled tonight and the deli doesn’t have a dress code. Unless it offends you in some way…”

  “I couldn’t care less what you’re wearing,” she lied.

  “Then let’s go get something to eat before I pass out from hunger.”

  The trip through the hospital and across the street was filled with Tate greeting and exchanging quips with nurses, attendants, volunteers, other doctors and even the janitor. Then they reached the deli and he was right—there were more customers dressed the way he was than in anything that resembled the slacks and shirt Tanya was wearing.

  Not that she felt out of place, but it did occur to her as she peered at the other men in scrubs that she didn’t find any of them particularly attractive….

  Still, she did everything she could to overlook Tate’s appeal as he ordered his “usual.” She rejected his offer of food and accepted only a lemonade before they went to one of the booths that lined the walls of the small restaurant.

  Despite what he’d said, Tate seemed more tired than hungry. After setting his pastrami sandwich and iced tea on the table, he left them untouched while he sat lengthwise on his side of the booth to put his feet up. He also rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes—probably to wind down and relax the way he’d intended to do without her company.

  But Tanya wasn’t going to be ignored.

  “So how did you have time to ruin my life if you were up to your elbows in someone’s insides all day and most of tonight?” she demanded before she’d even sipped her lemonade.

  Rather than add to Tate’s stress, that actually brought an indication of amusement in a slight upward curl of the corners of his mouth even before he opened his eyes to look at her. “How did I ruin your life?”

  “I got a call at nine o’clock this morning from the owner of WDGN—not the station manager who hired me, but the station owner—”

  “Chad Burton.”

  “Your friend,” Tanya said derisively.

  “We’re more acquaintances than close friends. I went through school with his son, Chad Junior. I helped Junior pass chemistry and physics, although he ended up an interior decorator, not a doctor the way Chad Senior had hoped. But Chad Senior has always been grateful. Chad Senior and I have also been on a lot of committees together, we play golf now and then—”

  “You’re friends enough to have called him sometime between last night and nine o’clock this morning to persuade him to put me on a leave of absence—”

  “With pay,” Tate pointed out, not bothering to pretend he hadn’t been behind today’s turn of events.

  “With or without pay, from today forward—indefinitely—I’m on special assignment to work the McCord story. That means no on-air time, no other duties, no other stories, no other assignments, no chance to prove myself in any other way or gain any other ground after just two weeks of working there. I was told I’m not to show my face at the station until I have the whole McCord thing ready to be put together.”

  “But you’re still on the payroll, so—”

  “This isn’t about money!” Tanya said, ferociously whispering to keep from shouting. “If I don’t go back with something good—like the discovery of the Santa Magdalena diamond itself—I’ll be lucky to be doing the agriculture reports on the predawn weekend newscasts. Plus they’ll probably hire someone else to do my job in the meantime and that someone else could just replace me if the McCords don’t come up with the diamond and all I have is a human-interest piece. You may have put in a good word for me to get this job, but my credentials and abilities actually got it for
me, and you don’t have the right to pull it out from under me just to suit your purposes!”

  He sat up straight in the booth, putting his feet on the floor and finally unwrapping his sandwich to take a bite. Not until he’d chewed, swallowed and washed it down with a drink of his iced tea, did he say, “I had to make sure you didn’t have the opportunity to go back on your word to keep quiet.”

  “I could still do that—I could go to a Foley-owned station.”

  He remained unruffled by her threat. “You could,” he said. “But that talk about loyalty last night got me to thinking—your mom has worked for us for twenty-two years. She oversees the whole staff. She’s my mom’s right hand around the house. I’m not going to say we’re all family, but there’s a connection that you sure as hell don’t have with our archrivals. You must feel some amount of loyalty.”

  “How much loyalty did you feel when you called Chad Burton?”

  “Today or when I called him to say I was sending over your résumé?”

  Tanya glared at him. “That was something my mother did without telling me until after it was done because she wanted me to move back here. The résumé you sent over wasn’t even a recent one. It was the first one I did out of college—my mother found it in an old file. I faxed them the real, current résumé, which is what got me the interview.”

  Tate ignored all of that and merely went on to answer her question about his loyalty.

  “I wasn’t being disloyal. I was only playing it safe. And Chad was thrilled with the idea of getting an insider’s view of the McCords. Plus, even though I didn’t do anything but allude to the diamond, I let him know that there was the potential for big news to come along with the human-interest stuff, and he was nearly drooling over the chance for WDGN to be the one to break that big news. This really could put you on the map.”

  “I lose ground not being there, not having my face in front of a camera every chance I can get,” she insisted. “There’s no reason I couldn’t still be doing my job there and compiling the McCord information.”

  “But now you don’t have to do anything but focus on the McCords.”

  “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—t
hat’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-today 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.