That had been about when Edward had shown up with the dress.
Everything had changed then.
Tanya had seemed so uncomfortable. So self-conscious. Her face had turned the color of the stoplight he was paused at at this very moment.
Did she think the butler was judging her? Disapproving?
Was Edward judging her?
The butler hadn’t liked that the dress did belong to Tanya or that Tate had paid for it—Tate had gotten that impression. And as for disapproving? There had been that, too, he thought.
Damn.
He regretted that he’d inadvertently put Tanya in that position.
So take her out of it, he told himself.
But taking her out of the position she was in meant delegating her back to the staff side of things while he stayed firmly on the other side of the line that divided them.
And while he knew intellectually that that was probably what he should do, he also knew he couldn’t. Not when it could cost him nights like last night and afternoons like today. Not when it would cost him having Tanya by his side tonight at the damn charity ball he didn’t want to go to.
Because the only thing that was making him look forward to tonight was the thought that he was going to be with her.
And more than that, what was helping him to increasingly see daylight through the darkness was Tanya.
And he just couldn’t give that up.
At least not before he had to…
Chapter Ten
E verything about Friday evening fell just short of being perfect.
Tanya’s dress was even more fabulous than she remembered it—or maybe it was the minor alterations that had made it even better. Her hair worked exactly the way she wanted it to—it was just full enough, just wavy enough, and it cascaded around her shoulders just the way she wanted it to. She did on-camera makeup to make sure she didn’t look washed-out, and yet the only thing her mother said when JoBeth took in the complete picture was a very flat, “You look nice,” before reminding Tanya that she didn’t think this was a good idea and warning her to be careful in a tone as dire as she might have used if Tanya was about to walk through a field of land mines.
Not the most perfect of send-offs.
When Tate picked her up he seemed duly impressed by his initial look at her—his eyebrows shot up, he breathed an appreciative breath that would have blown out a birthday candle and said, “Wow!” And he looked dashing and sophisticated in a black peak-lapel tuxedo with a shadow stripe, a white shirt and a tie that was also white but with a silver cast to it.
Yet there was something subdued about him that Tanya thought was an example of what her mother and the rest of the staff had said about his recent moods—he was quieter than he’d been at any time since he’d discovered Tanya in the library a week ago, and he seemed somehow removed, distant.
Again, not quite perfect.
The charity ball was everything Tanya had imagined as a child. The country club’s ballroom was large and elegantly decorated. Crystal chandeliers hung overhead. The tables were linen covered and set with fine china and silver and adorned with an abundance of roses.
The women were all dressed impeccably in gowns as fine as Tanya’s, the men in tuxedos as well tailored as Tate’s. There was subtle music being played by a twelve-piece orchestra, and the food was some of the best Tanya had ever eaten. Tate introduced her to more people than she could keep track of, and Tanya was relieved that his former fiancée hadn’t yet returned to Dallas and so wasn’t there.
His family was courteous and friendly in an awkward sort of way. But despite the fact that not everyone knew she was the housekeeper’s daughter, at no time during the evening did Tanya feel warmly welcomed into Tate’s social circle. Instead, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was a fish out of water. It made her wonder if she should have let the afternoon’s doubts prevail over her desire to be with Tate.
Once more, not exactly perfect.
And maybe that had as much to do with Tate as it did with Tanya’s acceptance—or lack of it—with his peers. Because all through the evening she continued to be aware of that “something different” about him that she couldn’t completely pinpoint. Or explain.
He was flawlessly attentive and considerate of her, but he was somber and he made only minimal effort to mingle with anyone else. Plus he seemed barely able to tolerate the many, many people who approached him to welcome him home from the Middle East, to applaud him for the year he’d spent there, to let him know they were happy to be contributing to his cause. It was as if with each time that happened, Tate became more stiff, and Tanya could sense the tension in him was growing.
So no, not quite the perfect evening.
After dinner and several people taking the podium to applaud Tate for his war efforts and to talk about the silent auction and where the proceeds would go, the orchestra began playing music to dance to. That was when Tate leaned close to Tanya’s ear and said, “My family will stay to the end but I think my obligations here are about done. Would you mind if we cut this short and left?”
Because it wasn’t quite the perfect evening, Tanya assured him that she wouldn’t mind at all and let him guide her from the ballroom without a backward glance.
On the drive home she was still trying to figure out what was going on with him so once they were well on their way she said, “That patient you had to go back to the hospital for today—did they do okay?”
“Fine,” he answered, still sounding as if his mind was elsewhere. “He just needed an increase in his pain meds.”
“And what about you? Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine, too,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
But he didn’t offer her any more than that and in this mood, she was slightly wary of pushing him. She left him to his silence, recalling what her mother had said about the McCords having the weight of the world on their shoulders. Looking at Tate and how troubled he seemed, Tanya thought her mother might be right.
Tonight when they reached the estate Tate pulled up to the front of the main house rather than going nearer to the housekeeper’s bungalow.
He still didn’t say anything and had opened her door by the time Tanya had gathered her purse and tugged on her skirt to make sure she didn’t catch a heel in the hem when she got out.
Then Tate closed a strong hand around her elbow and steered her through the mansion’s front door.
It was not a door Tanya had gone through more than a few times in her life, and never with a McCord. And it made her think that he really was distracted.
Maybe he’d forgotten where she lived. Or that she wasn’t Katie Whitcomb-Salgar.
Or maybe tonight he was so enmeshed in his own doldrums that it was just up to her to make her way through the house and let herself out the back to get home on her own….
But once they were inside, Tate took a right turn at the far end of the foyer and suddenly Tanya found herself in the den with only a single desk light on to cast a dim glow in the large room.
“How about a drink?” he asked.
Tanya had had champagne at the ball, while Tate had nursed nothing but sparkling water. “I get sick if I mix liquors so I think I’ll pass. But you go ahead—you haven’t had anything all night.”
He just shook his head as if he’d changed his mind and a drink didn’t appeal to him after all.
Then he surprised her by taking her hand and giving her an endearingly shamefaced smile. “Come and sit with me and let me apologize to you,” he said, pulling her along with him to the sofa.
Every other time he’d touched her throughout the evening it had been the lightest of contacts—on her back, her arm—all absolutely appropriate and proper, and still each one had set off those goose bumps again. But none of it had been anything like the warmth that flooded her at having his big hand close completely around hers as if it was something he’d done a million times before.
She tried not to let it be su
ch a big deal to her.
But then they reached the couch and after urging her to sit he released her hand and she felt disappointment.
There was some compensation for the loss in watching him shrug out of his tie, though, and toss it aside. In watching him open his collar button as if he needed air and take off the tuxedo jacket—rolling the tension out of his broad shoulders in a way that made her mouth go dry before he draped the coat over the sofa’s arm.
Where her mother or one of the other staff would probably find it and have to pick it up tomorrow morning….
Tanya had no idea why that crossed her mind.
But it was fleeting because then Tate sat down, leaving only enough space between them to angle toward her and stretch his left arm along the sofa back, faintly brushing her bare shoulder. That brought out the goose bumps again and made her wish he would curve that arm around her instead and pull her close….
“I’m sorry about tonight,” he said then, drawing her out of her mental wanderings.
“I don’t know what there is to be sorry for.”
“I know I was lousy company.”
“You weren’t lousy company. Just…Well, it didn’t seem as if you were enjoying yourself,” she answered.
“I was enjoying being with you. Just not there.”
“At the country club? You didn’t mind it when we had dinner there,” she pointed out.
“It’s these big splashy affairs. I haven’t had a lot of patience for them since—” he cut himself off, then “—in a while.”
“Since your friend Buzz’s death?” she asked. She hadn’t pushed him on this before because she’d known it would bring down his spirits. Tonight they were already down and she thought it might do him some good to talk about it.
But once she’d asked that question she held her breath, unsure what his reaction would be.
“Actually,” he said without any anger or compunction that she could see, “after Buzz died I didn’t go to anything like this. I wasn’t into socializing. It’s just been since I got back from the Middle East that I’ve been expected to do it all again. And I’m finding it grating.”
“Why is that?”
“A lot of reasons, I guess.”
“You miss your friend all the more in places where you would have ordinarily seen him? Like tonight?” she guessed.
“Sure, there’s some of that.”
He made it sound as if missing his friend was not the major component but since he seemed to be willing to talk about Buzz, Tanya opted for going in that direction.
“His death must have been awful for you.”
“It was a nightmare all the way around,” Tate confirmed.
He swallowed hard enough for his Adam’s apple to bob and Tanya was sorry she hadn’t accepted that drink he’d offered earlier. She thought if she had, he might have had one, too, and she thought he could use it now.
But when she asked if he wanted one, he still declined.
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see someone who was as close to you as a brother hurt so badly,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say and she couldn’t imagine it.
“It was…something,” he said as if it had been too horrible to put into words.
“What made you want to go from that to the place where it had happened to him?” she asked because she was baffled by it.
“My family made the same argument. And I’m not sure I can explain it any better now than I could to them then. The contact I had with Buzz while he was over there was through letters and e-mails, an occasional phone call. But in every one of them he said he was glad he’d gone. That he thought he was helping and that was important. After he died…I don’t know, I just had this drive to contribute something—something more than money—to what had been worthwhile to him at the end of his life. He’d said a lot about how much need there was outside of the military for medical care. That most of the organizations that go in and give aid weren’t doing it—either because it was too dangerous or because the countries those organizations came out of didn’t agree with what was going on. And when he died I wanted to do what he’d felt needed doing.”
“In honor of him,” Tanya said, feeling tears flood her own eyes.
But he hadn’t let any fall and she didn’t either. Blinking them back, she said, “So you joined the International Medical Corps—where the money from tonight’s silent auction will go.”
“The IMC, right.”
“And you spent a year in Baghdad?” Tanya asked because she didn’t know if she had the details straight.
“Primarily Baghdad, yes.”
“What was it like?”
“Nothing like tonight,” he said with a hint of distaste echoing in his tone. “It was intense. Eye-opening. There’s nothing here to compare it to, that’s for sure.”
He went on to describe working until he dropped day after day under less-than-ideal conditions. Seeing patients injured in bombings and in the destruction that came with war. Operating on small children who would suffer a lifetime of infirmity due to their injuries.
He told her about what he’d seen of the hardships there, of his own rudimentary living arrangements, of eating food that was hardly country-club fare.
“If you want a rude awakening, I recommend it,” he concluded.
“Being a war correspondent isn’t really what I aspire to,” she said. “I think I’ll stick to the problems at home and trying to do what I can here. But it’s no wonder you came back affected by it all.”
His tight smile this time was more knowing. “But not affected the way everyone seems to think,” he said. “I’m not depressed. I’m not suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. But I am…different.”
“You don’t like parties anymore…” she said, attempting to inject some levity.
“It isn’t that I don’t like them. I’m just having some trouble…feeling as if I fit in the way I did before. Embracing the excess after being where I’ve been and seeing what I’ve seen. It wasn’t that spending my life wrapped in cotton—as you so colorfully put it the other night—made experiencing what I experienced in Iraq more than I could handle. It’s that now I can’t just roll myself back up in the cotton and go blithely on.”
“Ohhh…” Tanya said as she finally understood what was happening with him. “Iraq was for you what living with my grandparents was for me—it took you out of the comfort of the cocoon and put you face-to-face with the real side of things.”
“Exactly.”
“And now you work in the clinic for the underprivileged and don’t just stroll in, cut and stroll out,” she said, repeating what he’d given as one of the reasons he’d chosen surgery as his specialty. “Now you get involved with your patients—I know you made sure the ones who needed more help on Monday got it whether from other organizations or even by taking money out of your own pocket. You’re hands-on.”
He didn’t seem to want his good deeds talked about because he shrugged all of that away and instead said, “Now I’m having trouble with all of this—” he motioned to the well-appointed room around them.
“Is that why you’re staying in the guesthouse?” she said as another light dawned for her.
“That’s certainly part of it.” He used an index finger to move her hair over her shoulder, brushing her bare skin in the process before he put his hand on the sofa back again.
“So how do you do it?” he asked then.
“How do I do what?”
“How do you go from reporting on people sleeping on the street to sleeping peacefully in your own warm, comfortable bed?”
“Is it guilt you’re feeling?”
“Hey, you’re the one who rubbed in the fact that I’ve led a pampered, useless life—are you going to tell me now that you don’t think I should feel guilty?”
“Okay, I was basing that on the Tate I knew before. But that isn’t who you are now,” she said, meaning it because tonight he’d let her see just how tr
ue that was and why. “If you ask me, this Tate is a better one than the old, good-time-Charlie Tate. I believe you when you say you aren’t depressed or suffering PTSD. I think you’ve just grown up. Matured. Developed a third dimension. Only now you have to learn to strike a balance—a middle ground between constant good-time-Charlie and the guy who has so much conscience—not guilt, conscience—that he can’t go to a party and enjoy it. And yes, what I think is that guilt is the wrong label, I think it’s conscience, and that developing a conscience that might not have been too evolved before is a good thing.”
“And how do you strike that balance?” he challenged.
“When you went to the Middle East you didn’t think you’d stop the war or be able to bring back your friend, did you?” she asked him rather than answering his question directly.
“Of course not.”
“You just wanted to do what you could, right?”
“Right.”
“And that’s something. Even a drop in the bucket is still a drop. That’s how I see it. You do what you can for others, then you take comfort where you can for yourself. It’s like money in the bank—you spend some, you put some back. You can’t feel guilty for replenishing, replenishing is what allows you to go on giving. If you only spend, after a while you’re spent and you can’t do any good at all because you don’t have anything left to give. It’s just that your replenishment is more lavish than most.”
That made him laugh slightly, the way she’d hoped it would to ease a bit of the tension.
“In other words, I should just shut up and accept what I have?” he joked in return.
“As long as that isn’t all you do—the way I think it was for you before. But from what I’ve seen of you this week, that isn’t all you do now. I just don’t think that means you can’t go to a fancy country-club party or live in this house. Appreciate what you have. Share and do what you can. Balance.”
“I appreciate you in that dress,” he said, dropping his glance downward for a split second.
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