“I take it your grandparents do live in the real world?”
“They’re regular working people—before they retired my grandfather was in construction, my grandmother was an elementary school custodian. And I saw firsthand through them what I didn’t see living with my mom inside the walls of your world even if I wasn’t a part of your world.”
“What did you see?” Tate asked as if he were genuinely interested.
“I saw firsthand what it was like for people to have to stretch a dollar to make ends meet when they didn’t have leftovers from the McCord kitchen to supplement their groceries, for one,” she said, trying not to bask in the intensity of his interest in her at that moment—even though it was nice to have such undivided attention from him…. “I saw firsthand what can happen when someone gets hurt on the job and loses income,” she continued. “I saw how medical expenses can cost people their savings, their house, everything, and how those people might not know where to turn—”
“Did that happen to your grandparents?” he asked with what sounded like alarm.
“Some of it. Some happened to their good friends, to their next-door neighbors who ended up having to move in with their son when hard times hit. It was all heart-wrenching no matter who it was happening to. I just saw what it is to live the life I was born to, not the life you were. My grandparents also made sure I knew things my mom had protected me from—”
“Such as?”
“How hard it had been for Mama to have my father walk out on her and leave her with a kid and no child support. My mom didn’t want to burden me with her own problems, and I was only two when my father took a hike, so my earliest memories are of living in the housekeeper’s cottage, playing in your kitchen or on the grounds of your house while my mother worked. I didn’t have any idea what my mom had been through or how tough it had been for her, or how easy it was for a man to dump his family, not support his kid and get away with it.”
Tate had finished eating and he wadded up his sandwich wrapper. But then he sat back, laid a long arm across the back of the bench on his side of the booth and seemed in no hurry to move on. Instead, his attention was still on her, studying her.
“It’s strange, it seems as if you’ve always been around and because of that I thought I knew you—some, anyway. But I really don’t, do I?”
“I guess you’re getting to,” Tanya pointed out. “Although I don’t know why knowing me would be one of your priorities.”
“Because you’re an interesting person?”
“Oh, I know,” she said facetiously, laughing. “I’m fascinating.”
Tate ignored that. He went on watching her as if she was intriguing him regardless of what she thought. “So your mom sent you out to learn what the real world is like but now she’s thinking you might get sucked into my world after all?”
“Into wanting to be a part of your world,” Tanya amended. “What she doesn’t realize is that since she made sure I did grow up seeing the real world, I also grew up feeling strongly that I should do something to shine a light on all the things that make the real world harder for people.”
“That’s why you went into the news business?”
“I’ll grant you that it isn’t saving someone’s life on an operating table. Or doing the everyday work at the shelters—although I have volunteered and will again once I’m completely settled in in Dallas again. But through broadcast journalism I have the chance to air wrongs when I find them, to announce to a whole lot of people at once that there’s help to be had and where to find it. I believe that that kind of guidance, that kind of exposure can make things change—”
“Exposure can make people change all right,” Tate said, again as if it held meaning for him.
But before Tanya could explore it, he said, “A story about a rare diamond is hardly shining a light on the plight of the working man, though.”
“Or the working woman,” she added. “But I’m hoping it’s my ticket to a position where that’s what I can do. As it is now, standing in an ice storm reporting on slick roads doesn’t make much of a difference. The diamond, the McCords, the feud with the Foleys—I’m just hoping it will earn me an anchor chair where I can do more.”
Those clear, sky-blue eyes of his seemed to be boring into her. “I admire that drive to help. And you for being so determined.”
That was gracious. And cordial. It wasn’t you’re so hot I can hardly stand not to pull you under this table right now and make you mine. But it still should have been gratifying.
And definitely the way things should have been between them.
It was just that she felt slightly disappointed by the impersonal sentiment it seemed to convey.
“It’s not admirable, it’s just why I became what I became and what I’m trying to do,” she said. “It’s also probably more than you wanted to hear and boring you to tears.”
It was her own misplaced dejection that she was dodging when she gathered up the debris of his dinner and her own dessert and took it to the trash. She just didn’t want to want anything more personal from him. She didn’t want to want him….
And she had to nip it in the bud.
“We should probably get going,” she announced when she returned to the table and found Tate still sitting where he had been before.
“It wasn’t more than I wanted to hear,” he said as if she’d just made that comment.
“Why? Because you’re trying to get in touch with your employees and their families?”
She knew she was doing the same thing she had the night he’d told her he wasn’t engaged anymore—being curt and somewhat abrasive to protect herself, to put distance between them.
But tonight he didn’t seem to let it get to him. Very patiently, he said, “One thing I never am when I’m with you, Tanya, is bored. I like talking to you. Listening to you. Being with you.”
Oh, that just made it worse….
“You don’t have to—”
He laughed. “No one said I did. I just do.”
He did stand, however, motioning toward the door to let her know he’d leave because she’d made it so obvious that was what she was ready to do.
As he opened the shop door and then the passenger door of his car for her he said, “I’m betting the next thing you’re going to say is that the only reason we’re spending time together is for your job, and that’s what we need to do—get back to business.”
That had been what she was going to say. Basically.
“Well, my mom was right about tonight—it would be hard to sell what we’ve been doing as work.”
“Think of it as being fitted for your uniform and then taking a lunch hour,” he said wryly before he closed her door and went around to get in behind the wheel.
It was a short drive home and neither of them said anything during the trip.
Tanya had no idea what was on Tate’s mind as he drove, but she was trying like mad not to be as aware as she was of every little detail—from the faint scent of his cologne, to the way his longish hair grazed the collar of his shirt, to his big, masculine hands on the steering wheel.
Her mother was right, she kept telling herself. To him, she was nothing but a brief stepping-outside-of-his-circle that he seemed to need right now. When that need passed, he’d go back inside the circle. Without her. And likely with Katie Whitcomb-Salgar.
No matter what he said….
When they got home Tate didn’t immediately get out of the car. After turning off the engine he pivoted and stretched his arm across the top of her seat the way he’d been sitting at the restaurant, and said, “I have to make rounds in the morning but I’ll be home by noon or so. Would you like to use the afternoon for Foley feud facts and diamond lore?”
The way he said that made Tanya smile in spite of herself. “Okay.”
“When would you like to do it?”
Without thinking about it, she’d angled in her seat, too, and was looking at his traffic-stopping face and supple mout
h, and suddenly remembering all too vividly that kiss of the night before.
“Why don’t you come to the cottage?” she suggested. “Mama said she has electricians stringing the lights for the Labor Day party around the pool and the grounds tomorrow. The caterers are coming to put the final touches on the menu, and I think the tent people might be starting the set-up on top of everything else. So it seems like there will be too much going on to get any work done in the middle of all that.”
“You know more about what’s happening at my house than I do.”
“That’s my mother’s job,” she reminded him. “But if you come to the cottage I’ll make lunch and we can sit on the patio back here, away from the fray.”
Tate smiled a slow smile. “You’re going to make me lunch?”
“It’s the least I can do since you keep buying me dinner…and tonight’s cookie. Don’t expect anything fancy—just something we can munch on while you tell me about the skeletons in the McCord closet.”
“Ah, yes, the skeletons…” he said with a comical wiggle of his eyebrows.
But even with their plans for the next day set, he didn’t move. He merely went on looking at her for a moment longer before he said, “I keep wondering if things would be different if you and I had just met. If I was just Joe Somebody and you were just Fledgling Newscaster, and our paths crossed—”
“You mean if you weren’t a McCord and a member of the family that employs my mother, and I wasn’t the housekeeper’s daughter?” Another reminder to him.
“If we maybe met in the E.R. when you had a hot appendix that I had to remove—”
“Or we could meet because I was doing a story on up-and-coming surgeons in Dallas—at least then no blood would have to be spilled.”
He laughed. “Okay, no blood. But then if I asked about your background, your family, where you grew up, you’d just think I wanted to know.”
“No excess baggage,” Tanya said.
“It might be nice….”
“Mmm,” she agreed, thinking that it would be very, very nice. And make all of this so much different.
“Would you spend time with me then, just because I asked you to?” he probed.
“Not if your goal was to cut me open,” she joked because she was leery of admitting too much.
“How about if my goal was just to be with you? Would you give me a chance?”
Should she lie and say no? Or should she go out on a limb with the truth?
“I’d probably give you a chance,” she said tentatively. “But that isn’t how things are.”
He moved his hand from the back of her seat to her nape, toying with the stray wisps of hair that were free of the twist that held the rest, sending goose bumps down her spine.
“Still,” he said, “if we’d have a chance under different circumstances, it seems as if we should have a chance under these.”
“Different circumstances would change things,” she said, wondering how her voice could have been so soft when she’d wanted it to be firm.
He nodded, agreeing with her. But as his eyes held hers she didn’t have the sense that he completely concurred. “It’s hard to care about circumstances, sometimes, when they seem so far removed from what’s here and now….”
“They aren’t so far,” Tanya said with a glance in the direction of the bungalow.
“Seems pretty far,” he nearly whispered, compelling her to look at him again, to let him peer into her face, search her eyes with his.
His hand went from her nape to brush her cheek with the backs of his fingers and it felt so good she knew she should run. That she should open that car door, get out and just plain flee before this went any further.
But she didn’t. Instead, somewhere along the way, she’d tipped her head into his caress.
She tipped it enough so that when he leaned forward to press his mouth to hers, she didn’t even have to make an adjustment for it to happen.
And then there they were, kissing again. With a little familiarity tonight. With lips that were parted, with breath mingled, and nothing else seemed to matter from the moment it began.
Tate’s hand returned to the back of her neck, cradling her head as he deepened the kiss, as his lips parted even more.
His other hand came to the side of her face then, while his mouth opened wider and his tongue made an appearance. Just the tip at first, testing the inner edge of her teeth, urging her to give him more leeway so he could meet and greet her tongue.
And her tongue seemed to have a mind of its own when he did, because the very second it encountered his it was just plain wanton. She gave as good as she got, every bit as adroitly, as adeptly, as aggressively until mouths were open wide and that kiss had turned wild and untamed.
Mouths clung and his arms came around her and pulled her to him. She let hers circle him, too, her breasts straining for his chest, their tips only barely finding him in the awkwardness of being separated by a gearshift. If only he’d waited until he’d walked her to the door tonight!
But then her mother might have seen this….
The thought of her mother cooled things for Tanya. Even though there was nothing in her that wanted it cooled. Even though everything in her was urging her on to more.
But this time her reminder was to herself—these weren’t different circumstances. He wasn’t Joe Somebody. Things were what they were and losing sight of that was not wise.
Tanya slipped her arms from around him and pressed her hands against his chest to push just enough to let him know this couldn’t go on.
And yet she didn’t push so much that she ended the kiss, it was Tate who had to do that—in stages, slowly, reluctantly.
But he did it, sighing softly when he had.
“We need to remember—” Tanya said, her voice a much sexier whisper than it should have been “—that I’m the housekeeper’s daughter and that you’re—”
“The guy who doesn’t want any of that to matter.”
“But it does,” Tanya insisted.
He shook his head, denying it, but still Tanya moved the rest of the way away from him to make it clear she meant what she said.
“Don’t walk me to the door,” she commanded because in her mind she could see them there—him kissing her again, her up against him in a seamless meeting of their bodies while mouths renewed what she was craving so much she could hardly stand it. She knew it would only make it more difficult to put the brakes on again. “Call me when you leave the hospital tomorrow so I’ll know when to expect you,” she added just before she opened the car door and left Tate behind. All without another word from him, only a frown that said he didn’t like that she was going.
But Tanya went anyway, not glancing back, making a beeline for her mother’s tiny house, feeling Tate’s eyes on her the whole way.
Tate who would leave and return to his so, so much bigger house.
Where he belonged.
Where she didn’t.
But that kiss? When their mouths met it was definitely in some no-man’s-land in the middle, between his world and hers.
And as Tanya let herself into her mother’s place she couldn’t help wishing that there was some way to stake a claim of her own on a little of that no-man’s-land.
Where she might actually be able to have something with Tate…
Chapter Nine
“I know I said that I was going to start my report with your grandfather Harry and Gavin Foley because the feud began with them, but after doing more research I think I have to take it a generation back from there—at least on the Foley side—to get the diamond in,” Tanya said.
It was Friday afternoon and she and Tate were sitting at her mother’s patio table outside the bungalow’s back door. They were eating shepherd’s pie and salads that Tanya had made. There were also two glasses of iced tea and a pitcher nearby for refills. But Tanya was less interested in the food than in trying to keep her mind off of Tate in order to concentrate on her work.
It wasn’t easy. The table was small and even sitting across from each other their knees kept brushing together under it. And every contact caused those same little goose bumps that had gone down her spine when his hand had closed around the nape of her neck last night.
“The Santa Magdalena diamond goes back to Elwin Foley—Gavin’s father,” Tate supplied, obviously unaware of what merely being near him did to her.
Tanya picked up the story from there, reciting what she’d learned on the Internet. “And it was Elwin who—so the story goes—was sailing on the ship that was possibly a ship of thieves. The ship was carrying the diamond and other treasures of some sort when it went down. Not many of the crew survived but Elwin did, and rumor had it that he somehow made off with the diamond and a jewel-encrusted chest of coins.”
“That’s what I’ve always heard,” Tate confirmed between bites.
“But according to my research,” Tanya continued, “it wasn’t verified that anything but the few crew members had made it off the ship until divers located the ship a few months ago. When no jewel-encrusted chest of coins and no Santa Magdalena diamond were found on it, the possibility that Foley could have made off with them increased.”
“Or the diamond and the treasure weren’t ever on board in the first place and the whole thing was a tall tale,” Tate said.
Tanya had to glance up from her notes to look at him. She’d been trying to avoid too much eye contact because every time it happened she flashed back to that kiss they’d shared in his car the night before and all she really wanted to do was jump the man’s bones. But she wasn’t going to let him get away with pretending that there was no foundation to any of what she was hoping would be the pinnacle of her report—the Santa Magdalena diamond and its discovery.
“I’ve read the history of the stone,” she said. “It was mined in India. It’s a flawless forty-eight-carat canary diamond with perfect clarity, and it’s said to be even more beautiful than the Hope Diamond. There’s no question that it exists—in case your next move is to try to convince me that even that was never any more than legend. There’s also no question that the diamond’s last known location was on that same ship that Elwin Foley was on. It’s now known that the diamond hasn’t been at the bottom of the ocean all this time, which means the likelihood that Foley got away with it is all the greater. And since the McCords ended up with the only Foley assets years ago…” Tanya let that conclude itself. But she did add, “And—supposedly—the diamond has also brought only bad luck to any hands it’s fallen into and is believed to be cursed. Maybe a curse that’s responsible for the McCord empire hitting its current slump?”
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