Texas Cinderella

by Victoria Pade

  And the truth was, Tanya wanted him too much not to hang her every hope on believing that, too.

  Because if her mother was right, that where there’s a will there’s a way, Tanya definitely had the will to be with Tate. And if the way was to accept that he meant what he’d said when he’d told her he was through with Katie, then that was what Tanya had to do.

  She just had to.

  To do anything else was to deny herself Tate.

  And more than anything in her entire life, he was what she wanted.

  And if she could have what she wanted, she should….

  That was something else her mother had said and suddenly Tanya was in complete agreement.

  She nearly jumped up from the kitchen table and ran for the bungalow’s front door.

  Then she heard the strains of music coming from the other side of the bushes.

  Somewhere in the midst of being lost in her own head, the party had begun….

  That’s where Tate would be now. And in order to get to him, to see him, to tell him she’d changed her mind, the party was where she would have to be, too.

  “So I guess I’m going to my first McCord private party as an invited guest,” she said as she took a deep breath to steady herself.

  But then she realized how she was dressed.

  Her mother had said that the invitations had recommended casual dress, but cutoffs, a tank top and her hair in a ponytail were a little too casual.

  Besides, she didn’t want to be anywhere near Katie Whitcomb-Salgar without looking her best.

  “Just a little while longer,” she muttered to herself as she spun on her heels and made a dash for the shower.

  Just a little while longer before she could find Tate and tell him that if it wasn’t too late—and if he’d really been asking her to marry him—the answer just might be yes….

  Chapter Fourteen

  F lowered halter sundress. Three-inch high-heel sandals. Slightly less than on-camera makeup. Hair washed, dried and left flowing loosely around her bare shoulders—that was how Tanya left her mother’s house and went into the Labor Day evening where darkness had fallen and the white glow of bright party lights lit the night on the other side of the bushes.

  Music was playing and the muffled sound of voices and laughter drifted to her as she stepped onto the path that cut through the bushes and trees separating the McCord mansion from her mother’s bungalow.

  Her shower and party preparations had been tinged with doubts and concerns about everything from the possibility that Tate might have had second thoughts about her by now, to the chance that he hadn’t been proposing at all and she’d grossly misunderstood him, to the fear that because she’d turned him down he’d already reconnected with Katie.

  So as Tanya went along the path she was a bit of a wreck inside.

  The closer she got to the McCords’ backyard the louder was the music, the voices, the laughter, and the brighter was the glow of light from beyond the path.

  That bright glow cast deeper shadows from the bushes and trees and Tanya was startled to suddenly happen upon two people in a small clearing almost at the path’s end. Two people standing facing each other, talking intently enough to be unaware of her.

  Tanya hesitated. She had to pass by that clearing to get to the party. To Tate. But by then she could tell the people were a man and a woman, and although she couldn’t hear what they were discussing, they were very involved in it.

  Plus, there was something familiar about the man’s broad-shouldered back that gave her pause….

  Then the woman moved inches to one side and Tanya caught enough of a glimpse of her to realize who it was.

  Katie Whitcomb-Salgar….

  And if that was Katie standing in a relatively private cove with a broad-shouldered man….

  Tanya held her breath. She thought her heart actually stopped beating as the worst-case scenario flooded through her mind.

  Was Tate the man whose back she was staring at? The man with Katie?

  Were they getting together again?

  Was that what they were talking about?

  Frozen now with her own fears, as Tanya looked on, the man took a step forward, closer to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar.

  They could just be talking, Tanya reasoned.

  But what if there was more to it….

  She didn’t want to witness it if there was. If it was Tate with Katie.

  Should she make her presence known?

  Or should she just turn around and go back to her mother’s house? Should she forget everything about this last week with Tate? Everything he’d said to her? That he may have proposed to her? Should she ignore everything she’d hashed through this afternoon? Everything that had brought her here to talk to him?

  Better that, better that he never know she’d changed her mind, better that she salvage her pride if he was proving that she’d been wrong to decide to trust him. To believe that he really had grown or matured. To believe that he had meant it when he’d said he was finished with Katie….

  Hot tears flooded Tanya’s eyes and she hated herself for being so gullible….

  And then there was another adjustment in the positions of the two people she was spying on. The man shifted and turned, putting him in profile, allowing her to see that it wasn’t Tate with Katie.

  It was Blake….

  It was Blake!

  Tanya blinked away her tears, realizing at that moment that she was just being a basket case. She had no idea why Blake would be in a somewhat secluded spot with his brother’s former fiancée but she didn’t care. The only thing she cared about was that it wasn’t Tate.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding, veered far enough off the path for Katie and Blake not to see her as she slipped past them, and then there she was, at the end of the path, peering into a sea of Dallas’s elite and the people serving them.

  But there was only one face she was searching for in the crowd. That one face she wanted to wake up to every morning for the rest of her life….

  And then she spotted it.

  Tate was standing near the guesthouse’s front door. Alone, looking out over the festivities, removed from them.

  He was dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. He had a drink in his hand, but his expression said he was only going through the motions. And not putting much effort into even that.

  Tanya summoned strength with another deep breath and stepped off the path’s edge and into the crowd, making her way through it with her eyes trained on Tate.

  Please don’t let it be too late….

  She was several yards away when he saw her coming. His eyes opened wider, his brows arched. But he didn’t smile. He just watched her close the distance between them and she knew that repairing things was going to be up to her….

  “Hi,” she said when she reached him, hating the quavery tone in her voice and hoping he hadn’t been able to hear it over the music and the party sounds.

  He didn’t return her greeting. He merely raised his eyebrows higher, acknowledging her that way but offering no more than that.

  “I wondered if we could talk,” she said, not knowing what else to do but get right to the point.

  “If you’re worried about your job or your mother’s, don’t be. In fact, when it comes to your job, I just talked to Chad Burton—”

  “The station owner of WDGN is here?”

  Tate nodded in the direction of the crowd of guests. But Tanya didn’t want to look away from him. As important as her career was to her, at that moment it wasn’t as important as he was, as what she’d come to talk to him about.

  Still, before she’d said anything else, Tate said, “I told him to put you back on the air.”

  “You did?”

  “He thinks there’s enough material to stretch out your reports, to start them with family history and go from there. I agreed. I’m just hoping that you won’t burn us—that you’ll keep any information on the diamond for a big finish only if and when we fi
nd it.”

  He was trusting her. That meant more to her than the fact that she was getting her job back. And it also brought her around again to what she really wanted to say to him.

  “Thank you,” she said first. “But my job and my mother’s job aren’t what I came to talk about.”

  “What did you come to talk to me about?” he asked in a challenging tone.

  “I wanted to talk about us….” If there was an us…“Could we go somewhere quiet? And private?”

  His expression remained blank but he motioned with his glass to the guesthouse.

  Tanya’s heart was back to beating like a drum as she preceded him to the door. Since it was his home, she waited for him to open it and only went in when he said, “Go ahead.”

  She stepped into the guesthouse where a single table lamp was the only light and it was actually dimmer inside than it was outside.

  Tate came in after her, closing the door behind them, muting the noises. And suddenly Tanya was on the spot without being sure what she was going to say.

  She walked as far as the island counter that separated the kitchen and the living area, turning to lean against it and grab on tight to the granite’s edge on either side of her hips as if she needed anchoring.

  But before she’d thought how to proceed from there, Tate set his glass on an end table half the room away from her and said, “So there’s an us? You told me at the planetarium that there wasn’t.”

  “I hope now that there is. Or can be,” Tanya admitted.

  “It was you who didn’t want there to be,” he reminded her.

  “It isn’t that I didn’t want there to be an us,” she amended. “I was just…worried about what it might mean if I let there be.”

  “But now you aren’t worried?”

  “Well, less,” she admitted with a nervous laugh, thinking that she couldn’t in all honesty say she was completely unconcerned after the scare she’d just had on the way here.

  “But I talked to my mother,” she continued, going on to tell him what she and JoBeth had discussed, how JoBeth’s support had cleared the way to rethinking everything else that had caused her stance on Sunday morning.

  “You said I gave you a new perspective—but I guess I needed one myself,” she concluded when she’d told him the whole thing. “But maybe you should tell me how you see things after having a little more time to think about it,”

  “There’s only one thing I see, Tanya,” he said, coming to stand in front of her, taking her upper arms in his hands. “What I see is you and that I want you. A life with you. Close to my family or far away from it—all I want is you. I told you, the details can be sorted out. The only thing that’s important to me is that you and I are together.”

  “In what way, exactly?” she asked quietly, tentatively, because as good as what he’d said sounded, it still wasn’t a proposal.

  He broke into a slow, one-sided smile. “What do you think?”

  “I think you were asking me to marry you yesterday morning, but maybe not and I don’t want to accept a proposal that isn’t one.”

  A wide grin spread over his handsome face and obliterated even the last remnant of the dour expression she’d been greeted with.

  “It was a proposal yesterday. It’s a proposal today. I love you, Tanya. I want you to be my wife.”

  “I’d like to be your wife,” Tanya said, intending it to sound more lighthearted but instead her voice had come out quietly and heartfelt.

  And in response Tate’s grin became a soft smile just before he pulled her toward him and leaned to meet her so he could kiss her as if it had been far too long since the last time.

  Or maybe that was just how it seemed to Tanya as his arms came around her and hers went around him, and she melted into him, starved for that kiss, for him.

  Almost instantly the kiss wasn’t only a kiss that reunited them and sealed their commitment, though. It was a kiss that sparked a hunger in them both and ignited a flame of passion.

  Passion that quickly had his hands on her eager breasts.

  But when he untied the halter from around her neck, Tanya reluctantly broke away, holding her top in place with one hand pressed to her chest.

  “The party…” she reminded him breathlessly.

  “…can go on without us for a while,” Tate finished her sentence before he retook her mouth with his.

  Tanya couldn’t refuse herself what he was offering in favor of any party. Or anything else she could think of as her mind emptied of everything but the wonders of Tate’s mouth on hers, of his hands on her bare breasts, of her hands unfastening the buttons of his shirt as fast as she could.

  The island counter was the perfect height and once clothes had been flung aside, Tate lifted Tanya onto it, making good use of it. Still kissing, and with her legs wrapped around his hips, and hands exploring and tantalizing, nothing penetrated their absorption in each other or the tiny universe of pleasure that surrounded them and carried them away.

  Until the pinnacle had been achieved and the sounds of the party in full swing just outside the guesthouse seeped back into Tanya’s consciousness.

  “I hope you locked that door,” she said with her forehead resting on his shoulder as if it were a shelf.

  He nipped at her collarbone and said, “I don’t think I did.”

  “So anybody—one of your family—could just walk in any minute looking for you….”

  That made him laugh. “I guess they could.”

  Tanya pushed away from him and crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “We have to get dressed and go out there before that happens.”

  Tate placed a sweet, sexy kiss on each of her breasts where they bulged above her arms. “I could lock it now and we could take our time…” he offered, sucking lightly on the side of her neck.

  “I think it’s better if we can slip out of here before anyone comes looking for you and finds the door locked or unlocked.”

  He took a deep breath and sighed it out in a warm gust that brushed her bare skin. “The voice of reason—how much fun is that?” he said before he kissed her again and gave her second thoughts about having him lock the door after all.

  But then he stopped kissing her and lifted her off the countertop. “I suppose I should track your mother down anyway and ask for your hand in marriage,” he pretended to concede against his will.

  The idea of him asking her mother for her hand in marriage made it Tanya’s turn to grin. “Have I told you that I love you?” she asked him when the feeling welled up in her so much she couldn’t contain it.

  Tate kissed her, a brief peck of a kiss, and said, “No, but now that you finally have, I’ll want to hear it at least seven times a day, every day.”

  “Should we make a schedule?” she joked as they both began to gather their clothes and dress again.

  “I think spontaneity might be nicer.”

  Which he proved when he used the time during which he was buttoning his shirt to kiss her neck again and say, “But I do love you, Tanya Kimbrough. More than you’ll ever know.”

  After a few swipes of his brush through both of their hair and a little damage control of her makeup, they shared one more long, lingering kiss before they did as Tanya had suggested and slipped back into the Labor Day festivities.

  As they did Blake was in the process of quieting the music so he could take over the microphone at center stage.

  When he had, he said, “On behalf of my mother and the rest of my family, we want to welcome everyone here tonight.”

  Tanya was surprised when Tate moved to stand directly behind her where he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly against him and propping his chin on top of her head.

  With wide eyes, Tanya glanced around to see if anyone was looking. But no one seemed to be taking any notice and since it was so nice to be there like that with him, so nice to be publicly claimed by him, she just curled her own arms up and clamped her hands around his forearms.

  “…I als
o wanted to take this opportunity,” Blake was saying, “to say congratulations to my cousin Gabby and her new husband, Rafe—who have just come back from their honeymoon in Italy.” Blake held up his glass in toast as he went on. “Rafe, we’re happy to have you as a part of the family now.”

  Applause and congratulations went up all around and Tanya was heartened somewhat by the warmth that went with it. The man Blake was so openly admitting into the McCord clan was Rafael Balthazar, who had been employed by the McCords to provide security for McCord’s Jewelers and, more recently, as Gabby McCord’s bodyguard. If the security consultant and bodyguard could become a McCord without anyone wincing, maybe Tate marrying the housekeeper’s daughter wouldn’t be so difficult to accept either….

  But as Blake urged Gabby and Rafe to join him on stage, and the crowd chimed in their encouragement, Tanya looked out over the splendor that was the McCord home and lifestyle and knew in her heart that it didn’t make any difference if she was ever truly a part of it.

  The only thing she wanted to be a part of was what she and Tate would have together. The rest was nothing more than the border around the edges of the bigger picture.

  And as she stood there, fitted to him as if they were meant to come together as one, the last of her doubts, of her fears and worries, seemed to float off in the evening breeze.

  Because at that moment she knew deep down that nothing he could have ever had with anyone else, nothing thrust upon him, nothing he’d drifted in and out of, could be anything like what the two of them had found with each other.

  And that what the two of them had found with each other really would hold them steady through family approvals and disapprovals, through feuds and diamond hunts and lost treasures and financial woes. Through anything that they had to face.

  For a lifetime that they had already begun to carve out together.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3915-3

  TEXAS CINDERELLA

  Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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