Texas Cinderella

by Victoria Pade

  As if he knew that was what she was thinking, Tate said, “Don’t go anywhere. I just need a catnap. But I don’t want this to end….”

  She assumed he meant that he didn’t want tonight to end yet, and since she didn’t either, she merely said, “Okay.”

  But as she drifted into sleep, too, it did fleetingly cross her mind that he might have been referring to something more than tonight when he’d said he didn’t want this to end.

  She was too tired and replete herself, though, to explore it, and so she just let herself drift closer to sleep in Tate’s arms, feeling more at home there than she’d ever felt anywhere.

  And just this once, letting that be all that mattered.

  Chapter Twelve

  I t was four-thirty Sunday morning and Tate was standing in the doorway of the guesthouse watching Tanya leave. They’d bounced from making love to sleeping to making love to sleeping all night, but even though he’d done his damnedest to persuade her to stay longer, she wouldn’t. Not and risk that any of the staff—especially her mother—might be starting work early and discover that she’d spent the night with him. She wouldn’t even let him walk her home. She’d said that if she was alone and got caught she could say she’d just gone out for an early morning jog.

  But Tate had never been so sorry to see anyone go.

  As he stood there enjoying the view of her compact rear end in those short shorts, of her silky hair falling around her shoulders, hating it when she disappeared down the path to the housekeeper’s cottage, he was also thinking about what he’d said in response to her notion that she was only some kind of distraction for him. He was thinking about the fact that even then he’d told her that she was more than that.

  He hadn’t been able to define exactly what, but now it struck him.

  It had already occurred to him that, with Tanya, he felt some of the same kinship he’d felt with Buzz, the same freedom to open up and be himself. After talking to her about Buzz, about this last year and a half, he knew more than ever just how true that was.

  And when he’d confided in Tanya, she’d altered his view of things. She’d been instrumental in putting so many things that had been bothering him—weighing on him—into focus.

  Conscience, not guilt. Replenishing. Striking a balance—those were all things that Tanya had steered him in the direction of. And the more he’d thought about it since she’d said it, the more he’d realized that she was right.

  Which meant that she had an insight that not even Buzz had had.

  She was insightful, bright, smart….

  Not that Katie wasn’t intelligent, too—she was. And just as caring and considerate and compassionate as Tanya. But where Tanya was different from Katie was in Tanya’s willingness to use her intelligence to go head-to-head with him. Katie could have, but in their relationship, with Katie’s nature, she just wouldn’t do or say anything that might have stepped on his toes or ruffled his feathers. She would have appeased, not challenged.

  Tanya, on the other hand, had no compunction about challenging him. Challenging his opinions, his views. Boldly, bravely, without any signs that she cared who he was or what he might think.

  And he’d liked that. He’d gotten a kick out of it.

  And out of just about everything else he’d done with her.

  Oh, yeah, he had fun with her, there was no doubt about that. She was a breath of fresh air. Her energy, her enthusiasm, were infectious. There was just never a moment when he’d been bored or wished he was anywhere else, with anyone else.

  And that was all on top of the fact that she was beautiful and sexy. That he could look at that exquisite face until his eyes ached and still not have his fill. That his hands itched to be all over her all the time. That his own body was hard to control the minute she got anywhere around him.

  And after these last hours together? He’d meant it when he’d told her that what she did for him in bed was like nothing he’d ever known before.

  Maybe, he thought as he continued to look down the path she’d followed, Tanya wasn’t merely a lot of things to him.

  Maybe she was everything to him….

  That was kind of a crazy thought.

  And yet, the longer he rolled it around in his head, the less crazy it began to seem.

  When he thought about talking through problems, through issues and difficulties, there wasn’t anyone he wanted to talk to more than Tanya.

  When he thought about going anywhere in the world, at anytime, to anyplace, there wasn’t anyone he wanted to be with more than Tanya.

  When he thought about sharing the best—and the worst—life had to offer, there wasn’t anyone he wanted to share any of it with more than Tanya. There wasn’t anyone he knew who he could share even the worst with the way he knew he could share it with her.

  And when he thought about how much he’d just plain wanted her almost since the minute he’d seen her, about holding her, kissing her, making love to her? There wasn’t anyone else.

  And more than that, he suddenly knew there never could be.

  None of that was anything he’d ever thought about Katie. Not that he would want Katie to know that and hurt her, but it was true. Somehow, from out of nowhere, he’d suddenly found the one person who was everything to him. And it wasn’t Katie. It never had been. It was Tanya.

  She’d said that he’d finally developed a third dimension, that he’d grown up, matured. And maybe he had. But the truth for him was that she was what made him feel complete and well-rounded and grounded and able to take whatever it was that had changed in him and use it to the best advantage. She was the reason he’d come to be comfortable with it.

  The truth was that it was Tanya who replenished him. Who struck a balance for him. Who made everything worthwhile.

  He’d just been settling before and he saw that now, too. He’d told Tanya that Katie was great and that was true. But Katie had just never made him feel what Tanya made him feel.

  And what he felt was a driving need to have Tanya in his life. Not just on the peripheries of it—center stage, starring role, main focus.

  But she wouldn’t even stay with him until the sun came up….

  On the other hand, maybe if she—and everyone else—knew how much she mattered to him, how important she was to him, she wouldn’t be so determined to hide what they had together.

  He had to hope so.

  Because now that he knew that she was the world to him, he couldn’t imagine anything without her.

  And as soon as that sun did rise and her mother left her alone, he was going to make sure she knew that….

  After a night of more lovemaking than sleep, Tanya was snoozing pretty deeply at nine o’clock when a demanding knock on the cottage’s front door woke her. And even after she was awake enough to get her bearings and realize what all the racket was, she waited a moment, hoping her mother hadn’t left yet and would answer it so she could go back to sleep.

  But the knocking kept up and she finally got out of bed.

  She’d taken a quick shower when she’d returned from the guesthouse. After that she’d put on a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt—both concealing enough to go to the door in. She wasn’t expecting it to matter so she merely ran her fingers through her hair to push it away from her face and—makeupless—she opened the front door.

  To find Tate—freshly showered and shaved, hair neat and clean, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that fit him like a second glorious skin.

  “Ohhh, I’m not presentable,” Tanya moaned when she glanced blearily into his clear, alert eyes.

  Tate merely smiled as if he liked the bed-head look. “I had to see you. I was watching for your mother to go up to the house so I’d know when she was gone.”

  Tanya was at least grateful for that. Not that she wasn’t glad to see him—she was always glad to see him. Elated, in fact. She just didn’t like being at a disadvantage in the grooming department. And she was a little concerned that he thought they could have privacy h
ere when she knew better.

  “You can’t…come in. Mama could come back anytime or someone could see you….”

  “I want to talk. If your mother comes back and finds us doing that, so what?”

  His expression was happy but there was something intense and insistent in his attitude that Tanya didn’t quite understand. Still, she supposed if all they did was talk….

  “I’m sure Mama left coffee. Why don’t you pour two cups and take them out on the patio where we had lunch? I’ll be right there,” she said.

  “Just hurry.”

  Tanya could hear him in the kitchen and then going out the French doors in back as she rushed through brushing her teeth and her hair, pinching her cheeks and applying a touch of mascara. She didn’t waste time doing more than that, however, because she was too curious about what was going on with him. It didn’t occur to her until she was on her way through the house to join him that maybe he’d had an early morning phone call from Katie. Or a visit. Or some contact that had rekindled things between them. And that now he’d made a beeline here to tell her….

  That put a damper on things and by the time she sat across from him at the patio table she was feeling a whole lot more reserved.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  His smile made him look very pleased with himself. “A lot that I needed to talk to you about right away.”

  Because now that he’d made the conquest of the housekeeper’s daughter he’d come to say it was Katie he should be with after all and he wanted Tanya to keep quiet?

  That seemed too likely to Tanya and her stomach knotted. Which meant that even though she could have used a shot of caffeine, she ignored the coffee because she didn’t think she could get it down. And she just kept thinking that the housekeeper’s daughter might be who a McCord slept with, but a Katie Whitcomb-Salgar was who ultimately got the man himself….

  “I’m listening,” she said in response to his claim that he needed to talk.

  Tate slid his chair around the table so he could be closer to her and then yanked her chair to face his, leaving them sitting knee to knee. Then he leaned his elbows on his thighs and took her hands in his.

  To comfort her when he gave her the bad news? she wondered.

  And yet his touch still felt so good, so familiar, it almost made her melt on the spot….

  “You’ve done a lot to open my eyes since we’ve been hanging out,” he said then. “But this morning when you left, they really opened—”

  “Katie called,” Tanya blurted out what she was so afraid he was going to say.

  Tate smiled a confused smile followed quickly by a dazed frown. “No. Why would that have anything to do with….” Light dawned for him. “No, Katie didn’t call and it wouldn’t have mattered if she had. I told you Katie and I are through. What I realized this morning was that nothing I ever felt for her or had with her could compare to what I feel for you, what you and I have together.”

  “We don’t really have anything together,” Tanya pointed out quietly, still worried about where he was going with this.

  “We have a lot together,” he countered. “Maybe not friends or life experience or lifestyle or what it was that made it seem like Katie was right for me. But what you and I have is so much more. It’s everything….”

  He said that with a small chuckle, as if it had a meaning for him that she wasn’t privy to.

  Then he went on. “That’s what came to me this morning—that you’re everything to me. Sometimes being with you is like being with Buzz—freeing, calming, relaxing, just fun. Sometimes being with you gives me a break from everything—you’re like a tropical vacation. Sometimes it forces me to be on my toes, to keep my debating skills up. It’s always the way I think it should have been with Katie to ever have considered marrying her, only with you it’s even better than I thought it could be—the physical, the emotional, all of it. It’s always just great—there hasn’t been a single minute of it that I’ve wanted to end. I hate it when it does, and I want it to start again as soon as I can make it. What all that boiled down to for me this morning is that I just don’t want it to ever end. So here I am and I know this is quick and unexpected and maybe a little crazy, but I want you to be my—”

  “I’m your housekeeper’s daughter,” Tanya cut him off, not letting him finish what it seemed he might have been about to say. What she would have liked to hear.

  But what if she heard it? Nothing else would be changed, she’d still have to refuse him and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to….

  “It doesn’t make any difference that you’re the housekeeper’s daughter,” Tate persisted.

  “Maybe not to you. It makes a lot of difference to me. And to my mother. And probably to your mother and the rest of your family and friends. Your mother, your family and friends not only wouldn’t like you being with someone from the back side of the bushes, but they’ve already picked out who they do want you to be with.”

  “And I tried to go with that and it didn’t work. For Katie or for me. What works for me is you.”

  Tanya shook her head. “You lost your friend. You spent time in a part of the world where awful things are happening. You’re adjusting to a lot of changes in your life, in yourself, you’ve had problems getting back into the swing of things with the people who have always mattered to you. You just think—”

  “It’s not as if I’m delusional, Tanya. I’ve known what was going on with me all along but it took you to show me how to deal with it, to give me a new and better perspective. And you aren’t only a diversion, either—if that’s what you’re getting at. Thinking that is selling yourself short.”

  “Okay, let’s say that’s true. It doesn’t alter the fact that I am who I am, and you are who you are. I might as well be a Foley—I wouldn’t be any more welcome or at home than they would.”

  “Even the Foleys have wiggled their way in here and there—with my mother and now with Penny.”

  “And you’re none too happy about that!” Tanya pointed out.

  She also thought about the charity dinner. Yes, his friends and family had been cordial, but none of them had known how to relate to her, how to make more than polite, surface conversation with her. They might as well have spoken different languages.

  But more than his family, it was her own situation that held Tanya back. Especially when she thought about Edward the butler bringing her the dress when it was delivered from the designer, when she thought about him learning that Tate would be paying the bill. It had been so awkward. So embarrassing.

  And she wasn’t even as close to Edward as she was to some of the other staff. To her mother….

  “My mother works for you.”

  “A lot of people work for us—”

  “She’s cleaned your house. Served you. She depends on you for the roof over her head.”

  “So if she was my secretary or my surgical assistant, that would be different?”

  “I don’t know,” Tanya said because she didn’t. What she did know was that growing up here had made her well aware that there was a distinct line between the people who served the McCords and the McCords themselves. Between the people who catered to their lives and the people the McCords socialized with and most certainly coupled with. And that she was on the side of the people who catered to them, not the side of the people they socialized and coupled with.

  “All I can tell you,” she continued, “is that I can’t sit at your dining room table and be served by someone I was borrowing shampoo from last week. I can’t be chauffeured by the man who used to fix my bicycle, who put bandages on my scraped shins, who taught me to drive. I can’t sleep in a bed turned down by my mother’s best friend or put my own mother to the tasks she does for your family. I wouldn’t.”

  “So don’t. All of that can be worked out. It isn’t important—”

  “That’s right, it isn’t important to you. Because what goes on with the staff beyond meeting your needs is their problem, their busine
ss. But it is my business and it is important to me—that’s the point.”

  “But you’re talking details that can be sorted out. I’m talking a much bigger picture. I’m talking about your future and mine, about us having a life together.”

  A complicated life—that’s what her mother had said about the life he led. And how he might escape from it for a while with her, but that eventually he would go back to it. Which Tanya thought he could do at anytime now that he seemed on top of what had been bogging him down before. The problem was that he was trying to sign her on for the return trip, and she was too afraid that once he got back in the center of that circle, the fact that she didn’t belong there would be their undoing.

  And then what?

  Her mother would likely be out of a job, for one thing.

  But even worse than that, Tanya didn’t think she could bear discovering that she honestly couldn’t be a part of his world, that he might be ashamed of her, that she might embarrass him. That when the blush of his infatuation with her dimmed, he would take a look at her, a look at Katie Whitcomb-Salgar and realize he’d made a mistake….

  “Yours isn’t a life I want,” she said, holding her chin as high as she could, making it sound as if she was firm in that decision.

  “You don’t want the life, or you don’t want me? Because they’re not the same thing.”

  “They are the same thing. It’s your life. A life my mother was right to remove me from when I was a kid because it isn’t my life. It can’t be. And I don’t want it to be.” Not when she was so convinced that she would eventually come up short in it and lose him anyway. Lose him and her mother’s livelihood and her own pride along with it all….

  “There’s just too much at stake, Tate,” she said. “Last night was…” Why was her voice cracking? She wasn’t going to cry! She wouldn’t let herself.

  She cleared her throat. “The last week, last night—it’s all been amazing, I won’t deny that. But in the cold light of day today, when you’re talking about the future? You still belong on your side of the bushes and I still belong on this one.”