He’s not engaged anymore….
The thought ran through her head like a wood nymph, taunting her. Tantalizing her.
But she chased it away.
Engaged, not engaged, it was all the same to her. She had more reasons than that not to give in to the attraction that kept sneaking in and taking over.
But it did keep sneaking in.
And taking over.
And the only way she had to combat it at that moment was to also remind herself that the odds of his not-engaged status lasting were slim to none.
And there was no way she was going to let herself be his hiatus-honey.
Chapter Seven
T ate was still thinking about Tuesday night—and Tanya—on Wednesday as he drove home from making rounds at the hospital.
Not that it was unusual these days for him to be thinking about Tanya. But what had her on his mind today was trying to figure out what had happened last night. One minute they’d been talking and—he’d thought—having a good time, and the next minute the tone had changed and she was up and out of there. In a hurry.
It had been obvious that it was the news about his broken engagement that had put a damper on things. But why? Why should that have caused her to shy away?
Certainly there was nothing about it that should have sent her running into the night. Or reacting like his family, either.
He had no idea what would put Tanya’s response in the same category as his mother’s and Blake’s, but even if it was just in the same general ballpark—even if Tanya had felt some kind of affront to all of womankind—he hated the thought that something about him or something that he’d done had put her off like that.
It didn’t bother him that his family might be disgusted that he was once again not following through with Katie. But Tanya? That was something else entirely. It bothered him that Tanya might think badly of him.
It bothered the hell out of him….
And that was new.
Caring what someone thought of him? He’d gone through his life not really considering what anyone thought about him. Let alone what the staff had thought about him. Or a member of the staff’s family—most of whom he’d never so much as met or heard about.
Yet here he was, being eaten up by the thought that the housekeeper’s daughter might think he was a jerk.
The housekeeper’s daughter—that had been Tanya’s sticking point last night, that he couldn’t kiss her because she was JoBeth’s daughter. But while that was also what he’d been raised to believe—that there was to be no fraternizing with the help and, certainly, not with the help’s daughter—he was wondering now if Tanya had only used that as an excuse. If the real reason had been that she didn’t think much of him and so didn’t want him kissing her. Or doing anything that might make things more personal between them. If the real reason was that her opinion of him was that low….
Oh, yeah, he definitely hated that thought. It was actually something he’d considered to be a possibility earlier, too—when she’d slipped and let him know she thought he’d lived his life wrapped in cotton he’d had the impression that she didn’t think too highly of him then—but he liked it even less now.
So much less that he decided he couldn’t just let it slide. He was going to have to talk to her about it. And if that meant trotting out details of his and Katie’s private relationship to the help’s daughter?
He knew no one would approve of that.
But this was his business and it was important to him.
Although why it was so important he still wasn’t sure.
He wasn’t sure why it was so important. He wasn’t sure if he should let anything personal develop between them. He wasn’t sure what was going on with him when it came to Tanya.
He was only sure of one thing—that kissing her last night had been something he’d been wanting to do and denying himself because of his agreement with Katie to go on pretending they were engaged until she gave him the go-ahead to stop. And last night, when he’d been given the go-ahead, kissing Tanya had been uppermost in his mind the whole time they’d been looking at those old family photos.
Only the fact that he had kissed her hadn’t left him rid of the desire. It had only made him want to kiss her again. And better.
Which she’d told him not to do. And if she’d told him not to do it because she thought he’d been a jerk to Katie, he needed to amend that impression.
Of course if she’d told him not to kiss her again because she just didn’t like him…
It was probably better to find that out sooner rather than later.
But simply telling himself that brought back the caring-what-someone-thought-of-him thing.
Because damn it all, housekeeper’s daughter or not, he did care what Tanya thought of him, and he cared so much it was unsettling.
He’d lost his best friend to war. He’d spent a miserable year himself in the Middle East. He’d come home unable to look at anything the way he had before. But today this was what was bothering him?
Regardless of how he tried to dismiss it, though, yes, this was what was bothering him. Over and above everything else, he couldn’t shed the idea that Tanya Kimbrough, the housekeeper’s daughter, might not like him.
That was the long and the short of it.
Unfortunately, coming to that conclusion didn’t get him any closer to understanding it.
Or to understanding why it seemed as though Tanya’s effect on him was growing by the day….
“Okay, okay, I get it—the McCords are generous, civic-minded, caring people who have funded, or partially funded, or raised money for, or sponsored innumerable things that all benefit the citizens of Dallas!” Tanya said, crying uncle as Tate pulled into the parking lot of a planetarium that was named for the McCords.
He’d called at one that afternoon to let her know he was back from the hospital. By two they were on a tour of the city. They’d been to the zoo, where the McCords were responsible for a new aviary. They’d been to Meridian Hospital, where an entire surgical suite owed its existence to the prominent family. They’d been to the historical museum, where a new wing was being built by them. They’d driven by two shelters—one for families, another for women and children. They’d been to or driven past a number of other, smaller beneficiaries of the McCord generosity and energies, and it was nearly nine o’clock Wednesday night when they arrived at the planetarium.
“This is where we’re having dinner,” Tate told her.
“I’m not sure Gummi bears are going to do it for me,” Tanya said. “Besides, I think we’re too late—there’s only that truck in the lot and the sign says closed.”
Tate turned off the engine anyway, giving her that mystery-man smile he flashed to intrigue her. Then he got out.
Tanya wasn’t sure what he had up the sleeve of the pale blue shirt he was wearing with a pair of darker blue slacks that fit him like a dream, but she also wasn’t sure she was going to go along with it. So she stayed where she was, watching him come around to open her door.
“Honestly,” she said from her seat, laying a hand on the notebook she’d been writing in for the last several hours. “I have a complete picture of the McCord good deeds. I don’t need to see the stars you provide, too. I’ll just add the planetarium to the list, I promise.”
He didn’t say a word. He merely crooked a long, upturned index finger, motioning for her to get out.
Tanya sighed, took hold of her notebook and pen and complied, hoping he wasn’t thinking that snack food at the planetarium was a meal. She’d been so unreasonably excited about seeing him today that she hadn’t been hungry for lunch and had literally just waited by the phone for his call. But with only a single pancake to tide her over for the entire day, she was starving and worried that her stomach was going to begin growling at any moment.
Once she was out of the car Tate closed the door and led the way to the planetarium’s entrance. When they reached it he didn’t even try the door. He just tapped
on it—three quick raps of his knuckles.
In answer, it was opened from inside by a man who knew Tate on sight. He said, “Nice to see you, Doctor McCord.”
“You, too, Andrew.”
The man stepped aside and Tate ushered Tanya in ahead of him, following behind.
Once they were in the planetarium’s lobby, Andrew closed the doors and Tate again addressed him. “Are we all set?”
“Yes, sir,” the man answered. “You can go right in.”
Tate swept an arm toward the theater and that was where he and Tanya went while Andrew quietly brought up the rear as far as the theater doors.
There was already a night sky projected overhead when Tanya and Tate alone entered the large domed room.
“I give you Paris under a full moon,” Tate said then, pointing to the Eiffel Tower silhouetted on the horizon line.
Andrew closed the theater doors, leaving them bathed in the glow of that moon and the dim, milky illumination of the mock streetlights that also dotted the horizon line, surrounding them as if they were on a Parisian avenue.
They were standing in a clear space at the rear of the auditorium seats that descended around the projection platform. Nearby were two chairs positioned at a linen-covered bistro table that was set with china and silver. A small bouquet of white roses and lit candles drew Tanya there just as soft music began to play over the speaker system.
“Wow” was all she said.
Tate joined her at the table. “You’ll notice that we have French wine, French bread and French cheeses to start,” he said, pointing to the wine that was opened and waiting for them, and at the artfully arranged platter of appetizers. Then he indicated the smaller table nearby and the covered dishes that it held. “When we’re ready, we have roasted pork with fennel and herbs, green salad with mustard vinaigrette, flageolet beans with chervil and butter and—for dessert—pots de crème au chocolat.”
“Let’s start with that,” Tanya joked.
“The chocolate?”
“I’m kidding. Sort of…”
He smiled. “We can if you want.”
“No. But what are those beans?” she asked, feeling uncultured because she didn’t have any idea what they were.
Tate leaned near enough to confide and make her pulse quicken. “I called the best French restaurant I know, took their recommendation and memorized the name but I’d never heard of them before, either. Apparently it’s some kind of light-green bean.”
Tanya laughed, feeling better about her ignorance, and tried very, very hard not to appear as impressed as she was by all the trouble he’d gone to.
“Is this supposed to be a part of my report?” she asked then.
“The planetarium is. But the dinner is just for us.”
“There is no us,” she said reflexively, maybe to counteract the fact that she’d liked hearing it.
“There’s you. There’s me. We have to eat and there’s food. We’ve just put in a full eight-hour workday that’s finally finished. And now we can have dinner. That’s all there is to it,” he assured her.
It didn’t seem as if that was all there was to it. It seemed very datelike and incredibly romantic. Which meant that, under the circumstances, she should put up a fuss.
“You wouldn’t be trying to compromise my journalistic integrity, would you?” she asked.
“Not my intention.”
“What is your intention?” she challenged.
He smiled that mystery-man smile once more. “To have dinner after a long day,” he insisted, holding out one of the chairs for her.
She still thought he had something up his sleeve but she didn’t know what it could be and she was starving, and this was all just too appealing for her to turn down.
So she sat in the chair and slipped the linen napkin from the table to the lap of her khaki slacks while Tate went around and took the other chair for himself.
“This could actually look bad for you,” she goaded him as he poured them both wine and offered her the cheese and bread first.
“Why is that?”
“Well, first you spend the day showing me all the things you and your family do to benefit other people, then you shut down this whole planetarium just to suit yourself. How many small children who need to know where Orion’s Belt is for school tomorrow could fail because they came here tonight and found the place closed just for you?”
“It’s always closed on Wednesday night,” he told her. “And I’m paying Andrew overtime for this, along with getting him seats to some sold-out concert his daughter wants to go to. No one is being hurt, and the only inconvenience is voluntary and well compensated.”
“So all in all, today and tonight were to convince me that you’re perfect. There are no flaws in the McCords,” she teased him slightly as they ate their appetizers and sipped their wine.
“Nobody’s perfect. But I know it’s easy for people with the kind of life we lead to seem shallow and I wanted to show you that we aren’t.”
He paused a split second and then said, “Well, to be honest, shallowness has been true of me to some extent. At least it was. I hope it isn’t anymore, and I wanted to be sure it was clear that it isn’t the case with the McCords in general.”
“Is that why you became a doctor—to stop being shallow?” Tanya asked.
“Actually, it was part of being shallow that led me to be a doctor.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t do it because I was being altruistic or had some higher calling to help humanity,” he said as if he disapproved of his own motivation now. “I did it partly because Buzz was going to do it—I told you, his whole family for generations had been in the military, but Buzz didn’t want to be in combat. He thought becoming a doctor would give him a better way to do his part. My earliest thought was that I’d give medical school a shot so we could party through that the way we had through college.”
“You thought medical school was going to be a party?”
“Buzz and I had a knack for making everything a party. But my next thought about medicine was that I needed my own thing—Blake had the family business, that was his thing. I hated business and didn’t want to share his spotlight. So I figured I’d be a doctor—plenty of splash and sparkle and status and respect in that. Then I went all the way to becoming a surgeon because I liked that it was one of the least personal of the specialties—I could stroll in, cut, stroll out.”
“That’s quite an admission,” Tanya said, surprised that he’d made it.
“I don’t feel that way now or maybe I wouldn’t admit it.”
They moved on to their meal with Tate serving her as she said, “You don’t regret becoming a doctor, then?”
“No. In fact, I think that if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to get through the last year and a half. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going, that’s let me feel as if I could contribute something.”
There were two questions that popped into Tanya’s mind in response to that. But the most obvious went in the direction of his feelings since his friend’s death. And she could already see shadows forming around his mood just at the mention of Buzz, dampening the more lighthearted tone that had followed them through the day and evening. She was loath to explore that and cause those shadows to cover everything. So instead she asked the other question his comment had raised.
“It wasn’t Katie who kept you going during the last year and a half?”
Tate shook his handsome head. “Katie is great, don’t get me wrong. I think the world of her.”
Which was why he’d likely get back with her, Tanya reminded herself to keep this romantic dinner from swaying her too much.
“But the truth is,” Tate continued, “what was between Katie and me was just not enough to make Buzz’s death any easier.”
“Is that why you ended the engagement?” That was private and personal and off-limits for a McCord staff member or a staff member’s daughter to ask—again Tanya knew her mother would
be appalled. But she was doing it anyway because she just couldn’t stop herself. Even though this information was not anything she would include in her story and it was purely her own curiosity that had a hold of her.
“I didn’t end the engagement,” Tate said. “It started out as Katie’s idea.”
“It started out as her idea?”
“It wasn’t a big dramatic breakup. There wasn’t a fight or an argument that made her throw the ring in my face, or had me demanding it back. It was like everything has always been between Katie and me—civilized.” Tate laughed a wry chuckle. “That was the problem—not a lot of passion. She came to me—when we could work it into our schedules—and said she’d been feeling like our getting married might be a mistake because there wasn’t any kind of overwhelming passion between us. That we both might deserve more. And I had to agree with her.”
“That is civilized,” Tanya said a bit facetiously, thinking that such civility was reason enough for her not to take the breakup seriously. If Tate and Katie had had a knock-down, drag-out, relationship-killing fight, it might be easier for her to believe they wouldn’t get back together. But as it was, this sounded like what she knew of their other breakups—a no-harm, no-foul split that was easily repaired.
“Like I said, there was a shortage of passion. Without it, it’s easy to be civilized,” Tate said, apparently not offended by her gentle sarcasm. “I think that’s also why it didn’t upset me to any great degree—once Katie brought it up, not getting married seemed to make more sense than getting married did. I thought she was right—people should get married because they can’t stand to be apart, and that was definitely not Katie and me. I just don’t want you to think that the engagement ended because I treated Katie badly or dumped her on some kind of stupid whim—”
“Like in the past?” Tanya teased him as he served their desserts.
“We never separated because I treated Katie badly,” he defended himself. “That isn’t my style.”
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