Texas Cinderella

by Victoria Pade

  Tate grinned. “Cursed? Now that sounds more like myth or folklore than fact.”

  He was hedging and she knew it as surely as she knew she wanted to run her hands through his hair.

  “The cursed part may be myth or folklore, but none of the rest of this is,” Tanya said, standing her ground. “What you and Blake were talking about on Friday night came through loud and clear in the library—I know that your family is looking for the diamond. And with reason to believe that it can be found. So don’t waste my time trying to make me think for a minute that we’re talking fiction rather than fact.”

  “You’ll never just roll over and make it easy for me, will you?” he said with more of that grin that let her know he liked the challenge.

  Had Katie Whitcomb-Salgar not provided that for him? Tanya wondered. Or would not getting his own way with her be what drove him back to the heiress?

  Not that it made any difference to Tanya. She wasn’t changing her position regardless. Although the image of rolling over for him did have its own appeal…

  Then Tate said, “I thought we were talking history.”

  “In other words, let’s stick to the safe subject of the past.”

  Tate’s smile turned very Cheshire cat and it was so sexy it blew her away.

  She took a bite of her lunch and used the moment to get a grip on herself so she could redevote her attention to her work.

  “All right, that’s the diamond’s background,” she said then. “Let’s get into the feud and how the McCords became the owners of Foley land and silver mines.”

  “Fairly,” Tate said defensively. “But that’s not the way Gavin Foley saw it.”

  “How did Gavin Foley see it?”

  “He and my grandfather—Harry McCord—were playing poker. Gavin put up the deed to his land and the five mines on it—mines that his family had started and never stuck with long enough to make them pay out. Gavin lost, my grandfather won the hand and the deed.”

  “Fair and square,” Tanya said.

  “Only Gavin figured he couldn’t have lost unless my grandfather cheated. Which he didn’t. But Gavin swore to his dying day that the game was fixed.”

  “His dying day was when?” Tanya asked, taking notes.

  “I’m not sure. A while ago—eight, nine, ten years—you’ll have to get the exact date from somewhere else if you need it. I know it was after my mother persuaded my father to offer the Foleys the opportunity to lease the land from us.”

  “Why did your mother do that?”

  “She was hoping it would end the feud that started with that card game. It was always Gavin Foley’s goal to get back on that land, and while the lease didn’t return ownership to him, it did give him the chance to start a ranch there. He was pretty old by then but the family pitched in to start it up for him, and his grandson—Travis—helped him run it until he died. Travis Foley still runs it now.”

  “But lease or no lease, the feud didn’t end?”

  Tate shook his head. “The Foleys—being the Foleys—took the lease and just went on acting as if we’d done something wrong.”

  “Did Elwin Foley hide the diamond somewhere on the land? Is that why Gavin was so determined to get back onto it—to look for the stone and the treasure?” Tanya asked.

  The Cheshire cat smile came out again. “Do I look like a mind reader? All I know is that Gavin Foley wanted back on the land but getting there through leasing it didn’t appease him. He still said the land was rightfully his and he still hated us because it wasn’t. He apparently kept his family fired up about it, too, and the lease didn’t end the Foleys’ dislike of us.”

  “Or the McCords’ dislike of the Foleys,” Tanya pointed out.

  Tate’s only answer was to raise his iced tea glass as if in toast before he took a drink.

  “Did the lease essentially give the land back to the Foleys indefinitely?” Tanya asked.

  Tate shook his head. “It’s a fifty-year lease—it’ll be up in thirty years or so—”

  “Then—doing the math—your mother pushed for the lease for the Foleys right about the time she was pregnant with your brother Charlie, Rex Foley’s son….”

  Tate had a mouthful of shepherd’s pie when she said that and he chewed very, very slowly, all the while staring at her in a way that made it obvious he hadn’t liked her figuring that out.

  When he’d swallowed he went on as if she hadn’t said it.

  “So in thirty years when the lease is up we could just kick Travis off the ranch and the land if we wanted to. And the lease is for the land only—we retained the mineral rights to the mines—the Foleys have no business anywhere near any of them.”

  Message received—he was not going to talk about his younger brother’s parentage.

  Since that wasn’t her focus today anyway, Tanya conceded and stuck to the subject at hand.

  “Are you still taking silver out of the mines?”

  “No. It was my family who ended up digging deep enough to actually strike substantial silver. But the five mines themselves were played out years ago. They were the foundation for the jewelry business. Retaining the mineral rights is more on principle than anything. The mines don’t do us any good anymore and they wouldn’t do the Foleys any good either.”

  “Besides, the Foleys made their money in oil, didn’t they?”

  “That they did.”

  Tanya had barely touched her lunch but Tate was finished with his and sat back in his chair. It didn’t help her to now have his penetrating eyes so steadily on her. It did improve her posture, though….

  Work—just stick with work, she commanded herself.

  “So, I’m not sure I understand how the feud has been fueled over the years,” she said. “It seems as if when the Foleys made their own fortune in oil they should have stopped resenting the McCords.”

  “That’s where it gets more personal,” Tate said.

  “Because of your mother originally dating both your father and Rex Foley?” Tanya guessed, referring to what Tate had told her when they’d looked through his family albums.

  “There was definitely bad blood over that,” Tate admitted. “Like I said before, I don’t know much about it, but I do know that there was a rivalry that breathed new life into the feud. I also know that my mother dated Rex Foley all through high school and thought he was the man she would marry, and that my father was jealous of that. I don’t have any idea what happened for her and Rex to break up, but that was when she got together with my father.”

  Tanya hesitated, wondering if what she wanted to explore next was going to make Tate angry. But she ventured it despite the risk.

  “In my research I made note of some dates. Blake was born less than nine months after your parents married….”

  “Is that right?” Tate said but in a way that made it clear it was no news to him.

  “So…the union of your parents was a shotgun wedding?”

  “I’ve never been told there were weapons involved. And to be honest, it isn’t something I’ve ever had a heart-to-heart talk about with my mother. I’m sure it isn’t something she’d want on the news, though.”

  Second message received—the advantage of having Tanya do the story was that that was a tidbit that should be omitted as a courtesy.

  But she wasn’t interested in doing a sleazy tabloid-type report so Tanya didn’t pursue that, either.

  She did say, “It’s strange, isn’t it, how intertwined the Foleys and the McCords are even though you all hate each other? Especially now with Charlie being a Foley….”

  Tate gave her that glare again to warn her away from talking about Charlie.

  “Okay, I know you’re probably protective of him,” Tanya said. “I respect that, and I’m not going to put any of that too-personal stuff in, so you can relax.”

  That must have eased his mind because he seemed to have let down his guard when he said, “You’re right, though, about how intertwined we always are with the Foleys. I just found
out that Penny is involved with Jason Foley.”

  “Really?” Tanya said. She had the sense that they had just somehow stopped working, that Tate was actually confiding in her. And being offered that kind of trust from him gave her an entirely new kind of rush.

  “That’s what Penny said at dinner the other night,” he confirmed. “I’m not sure to what extent she’s involved with Foley, but you’re right, there does always seem to be some intertwining.”

  “Your family can’t be happy about a relationship between Penny and a Foley,” Tanya observed.

  “Definitely not happy about it, no. Decidedly leery of it. Unanimously worried for her. For my part, I’d like to be happy for her but a Foley coming into the picture right now just seems a little too convenient to me.”

  “Right now when it looks as if their ancestor really did get away with the diamond and probably stashed it on the land they lost to you. At a time when the diamond could be up for grabs to the first person to find it,” Tanya summarized.

  Tate answered only with an arch of his eyebrows.

  “Still,” Tanya said, “Penny has a lot to offer—it’s possible that Jason Foley just likes her, isn’t it?”

  Tate looked as though he wanted to believe that but wasn’t convinced.

  There was no opportunity for him to answer her question, however, because just then Edward, the McCords’ butler, appeared from around the side of the bungalow carrying a garment bag.

  “Excuse me for interrupting. But Tanya, this just arrived from Mrs. McCord’s favorite shop. The deliveryman insisted it was for you. I told him he must be mistaken, especially since he also said the bill that goes with it is for you, Doctor McCord. But it is your name on the ticket, Tanya, and the envelope is addressed to Doctor McCord. Can that be right?”

  And just like that Tanya went from feeling perfectly fine to feeling awkward and uncomfortable and humbled….

  “It’s right, Edward,” Tate said. “The dress is for Tanya. The bill was supposed to go to my office but it’s for me regardless. You can leave it on my desk.”

  Tanya sat there frozen and speechless, looking up at the man who had worked for the McCords as long as her mother had, knowing that reality was staring back at her from his questioning eyes.

  She was well aware of what the staff said—and thought—about any employee who foolishly tried to step from the oven or the dust cloth or the garden shears into the McCord family ranks. And as Edward stood there with that garment bag, she knew he was wondering if she had become one of them.

  No pride, no dignity, no brains because it never actually happened—that was what was said of those who hadn’t known their place and had attempted to climb that particular social ladder.

  Now, for sure, there would be gossip about her, whispers. Her mother would be embarrassed to have to admit that Tate McCord had bought her a dress that likely cost more than any one of the staff earned in a month’s salary. And Tanya wanted to crawl into a hole and hide from the shocked expression of a man she was fond of and respected and didn’t want thinking badly of her.

  But sitting there like a statue wasn’t helping anything so she got up to take the garment bag.

  “Thanks, Edward,” she muttered as she did, unable to meet him eye to eye, wishing she could say it isn’t what you think. Suffering some guilt over the fact that the kisses she and Tate had shared didn’t make her altogether innocent, either….

  “I’ll leave this other on your desk, Doctor,” Edward said then, leaving.

  For Tanya there was so much tension in the air it seemed palpable, but if Tate picked up on it, it didn’t show. And he didn’t have a chance to say anything because his cell phone rang just then.

  “It’s one of my nurses, I’ll have to take this,” he said after checking the display. Then he flipped the phone open to answer it.

  While he did, Tanya gave him some privacy by carrying the garment bag into the house.

  In spite of the negatives that had just come of it, once she’d hung the bag over the top of the pantry door she couldn’t resist unzipping the zipper to look at the dress.

  It was even more beautiful than she remembered. Too beautiful to have caused such ugly feelings.

  But now there were both the negatives and the positives churning inside of her.

  “I have to go back to the hospital—”

  Tanya jumped at the sound of Tate’s voice coming from behind her where he was poking his head through the screen door. “One of my patients is having some problems. But I should be back in time for tonight.”

  Tanya nodded, thinking that as she stood there, with the beautiful dress on one side and Tate’s handsome face on the other, it just seemed so unfair that there had to be any negatives at all.

  But the lingering sense that she was somehow doing something to be ashamed of remained just the same.

  “Thanks for lunch,” Tate said then.

  “You’re welcome,” Tanya answered even as doubt washed over her about whether she should wear the dress and go with him tonight.

  Or stay at home in the housekeeper’s bungalow with her mother.

  Where she belonged…

  Tanya and what they’d talked about over lunch was still on Tate’s mind as he drove to the hospital.

  He’d made sure he told her only what wouldn’t do any harm for her to know, what was common knowledge. He hadn’t told her that at about the same time the sunken ship had been discovered and it was confirmed that the diamond wasn’t on it, Blake had been going through their father’s personal papers hoping for ideas to help boost the business. In the process of that, Blake had found the deed their grandfather had won from Gavin Foley.

  Tate hadn’t told Tanya that in looking at that deed, Blake’s memory had been triggered from his boyhood spent exploring those played out mines on the land. That Blake had realized that there could well be a clue in the drawings that decorated the deed’s border. That the mines themselves were each marked by a stone bearing a petroglyph of its name—the Turtle mine, the Eagle, the Bow, the Lizard, the Tree—and that images of those petroglyphs were drawn on the border.

  Tate hadn’t told Tanya that all but one of the drawings were identical to the petroglyphs that Blake knew well. But that in the drawing of the eagle there was a diamond in the bird’s talons. A diamond that wasn’t on the petroglyph itself.

  Tate certainly hadn’t told Tanya that because of that one tiny discrepancy, Blake was banking on the Santa Magdalena diamond and the treasure chest of coins being hidden in the Eagle mine. Or that Blake had enlisted their sister Paige to secretly find the diamond—which she was about to try to do—in the deserted mine that was now a part of the ranch the McCords had leased to Travis Foley.

  It wasn’t that he wouldn’t give Tanya all of that information when the diamond and the treasure were safely in McCord hands—in fact he was hoping it would make not only a career-building revelation for her, but would generate the publicity McCord’s Jewelers needed to rebound from the current slump. He just couldn’t tell her any of that now.

  He also hadn’t gotten into the more personal aspects of his family’s history, but those he might never give her. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her that not only had his mother been pregnant with Blake when she’d married his father, but that it was relatively clear to the whole family that their parents’ marriage had never been a love match. Or that his mother had always treated Blake differently, that she’d never seemed to bond with him the way she had with Tate, the twins or certainly with Charlie, whom she doted on.

  That was just not information that needed airing.

  And yet he had told her about Penny and Jason Foley….

  Not that he’d told her that with any forethought—the words had just come out.

  His sister being involved with a Foley had been weighing on him and he’d felt the urge to get it off his chest. And all of a sudden he had. To Tanya.

  But not in terms of giving her information for her news report. Just
because she was who he’d felt inclined to tell. The one person he’d had the urge to open up to. The first person since Buzz…

  Was he honestly finding similarity between his relationship with Tanya and his friendship with Buzz?

  That didn’t seem possible.

  And yet there was something similar in how easy it was to be with Tanya. To be himself with her.

  Of course the other things she stirred in him couldn’t have been more unlike his friendship with Buzz. But still, what was there about Tanya that seemed to draw him out of himself?

  He couldn’t explain it even after trying for several miles to figure it out.

  He just knew that he liked the way he felt when he was with her.

  More than liked it—he was beginning to crave it.

  And it was over and above the fact that he liked her. That he craved her in so many other ways….

  But liking her, craving time with her, craving her, was all there, too. And growing so much, so fast that last night’s sleeplessness had been solely due to that kiss ending too soon and forcing him to go home more frustrated than he’d been since puberty.

  And all through lunch today? He might have been talking poker games and lost diamonds and feuds, but what he’d been thinking about was the reddish streaks glistening in her shiny hair. About the way her skin turned nearly translucent in the sunshine. About how natural light let him see tiny lines of topaz in her dark eyes. And how when she sat up straight her breasts pressed against her tank top the way he’d wanted them pressed against him last night.

  What he’d been thinking about was how he’d just wanted to pull her over that table and onto his lap and kiss her again….