Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret: Texas Cinderella / The Texas CEO's Secret. Victoria Pade

from that initial jewelry shop.

      “You’ve come a long way,” she observed.

      “That was my father’s doing. And Blake’s. I take no credit for what goes on with the jewelry business.”

      “I’d like to use this picture of the original store.”

      “Go ahead.”

      Tanya took it to put with the others she was collecting.

      Then they moved on to the next album. It contained pictures of Devon McCord’s wedding to Tate’s mother, the beautiful, blond Eleanor Holden.

      “Huh,” Tanya said as she glanced through them.

      “What?”

      “Your mother is the most somber-looking bride I think I’ve ever seen, and your father looks more victorious than smitten.”

      “That seems about right,” Tate said, leaning in for a closer look and giving Tanya a better whiff of his cologne that was more heady than the wine she was slowly sipping.

      “Why does that seem about right?” she asked.

      “That my father looked victorious? That was always how he was when it came to my mother.”

      Devon McCord had only died a year ago but while Tanya remembered the man, she had never paid any attention to his relationship with his wife, so this was news to her.

      “What do you mean?” she said.

      “Some of it goes back to the problems with the Foleys—my mother dated both my father and Rex Foley, you know?”

      “No, I didn’t know that,” Tanya said, her interest sparked.

      “I don’t really know much about it except that she did. The only thing I know is that my father would say—Rex Foley wanted her but I got her. Only he didn’t say it as if it made him a lucky man—which was how I always thought he should have said it. He’d say it as if she were the spoils of war. Just one more thing he’d won out over the Foleys, as if it wasn’t my mother who mattered as much as his victory over Rex Foley.”

      “And now your dad is gone and you find out that Rex Foley is Charlie’s father…”

      Tanya knew her mother would be furious with her if JoBeth found out she was taking such a liberty with a McCord. The McCords probably didn’t even realize that the staff was aware of what was going on within the family, and certainly no employee—or employee’s daughter—was at liberty to inquire about it.

      But at that moment Tanya wasn’t there as the housekeeper’s daughter. She was there as an investigative reporter. And that meant asking even the probing, off-limits questions.

      Tate didn’t answer it readily. He sat back, he took a drink of his wine, he raised a single eyebrow at her. “Hard to keep a secret from the staff,” he said.

      Tanya raised both of her eyebrows back at him, committing blame to no one.

      “It’s a private matter,” he said then in a tone that warned her not to pursue the subject. “We’re all still trying to come to grips with it. We definitely don’t want it announced in a news report. But then, that seems to fall more into the category of gossip than what you said you want to do.”

      Tanya had to smile at his attempt to manipulate her. “I don’t know—two of Dallas’s preeminent families who have been in a long-standing feud, now connected by blood because the head of one of the families had an affair with the head of the other? That makes for a thin line between gossip and news. Especially in a piece like this.”

      “Affair?” Tate repeated as if she were overstating.

      “It wasn’t an affair?”

      Tate’s sky-blue eyes bored into her for a moment as if he were sizing her up. Or judging just how much of a problem she could be for him. Gone was the openness she’d seen more of recently, replaced by a cool aloofness and the much harder edge she’d seen in him on Friday night in the library.

      Then he sighed again and said, “I’m going to be straight with you—I don’t really know what went on between my mother and Rex Foley. I know—have always known—that she dated Rex Foley when they were teenagers. I don’t think there was anything between them once she married my father, and how they got together again is a mystery to me. I know—hell, you might even remember—that my parents’ marriage hit a rough patch and they separated. Charlie was conceived during that separation so obviously my mother turned to Rex Foley then, but I have no idea how that came about. Has she been involved with Rex Foley since then? I don’t know and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know. Whatever happened is my mother’s business.”

      There was no question in Tanya’s mind that she’d just poured salt into an open wound. And what that had done was reawaken the new—and not necessarily improved—Tate, just when she’d been getting a little more of the old.

      Tanya had to admit that the new Tate was far more daunting. But it was her job to be undaunted.

      “How is the fact that your mother had—or has—a relationship with Rex Foley affecting your family?”

      “Right now, I’d say that we’re all just a little dumbfounded. Who knows what will happen in the future?”

      “Have feelings changed toward Charlie?”

      “No. Charlie is what he’s always been—our brother.”

      “Now he’s also brother to the Foleys…”

      Tate didn’t like this direction. He frowned at her. “We all have our flaws,” he said in a clipped voice she’d never heard him use before.

      “Being half Foley is a flaw?” she ventured anyway.

      “Are you going to make me sorry I agreed to do this?” Tate demanded suddenly.

      “Probably.”

      There was a moment of silence during which Tate gave her the hardest stare she’d ever had. Tanya actually thought he might get up, walk away and let her suffer the consequences of snooping through the library on Friday night. She thought it was a very real possibility that he might just have her fired from the studio, fire her mother as housekeeper and generally wreak havoc on her life rather than continue this.

      But then his handsome face eased into an unexpected smile again and he shook his head. “I don’t know if being half Foley is a flaw or not,” he finally answered. “Right now it’s confusing for us all—especially for Charlie—and I think we just have to wait and see how it plays out.”

      He said that with enough finality to let her know he wasn’t going to say any more on this topic.

      So Tanya switched gears.

      “I suppose McCord’s Jewelers’ financial woes are more of a priority than Charlie’s parentage at this point, anyway,” she said.

      “Strike two! You really are aiming to tick me off tonight, aren’t you?” Tate said, though with a hint of humor infusing his words.

      “Just doing my job. There are rumors that the family business is floundering and from what I overheard Friday night, the rumors have some foundation in truth—that makes it part of the story,” she insisted.

      “The jewelry business is Blake’s bailiwick and the only thing I’ll say, the only thing I know to report, is that he’s working to increase sales the way any number of businesses do—with new advertising or new packaging or new whatever. That doesn’t mean anything is floundering.”

      “I’ve seen the ads—A Once In A Lifetime Experience,” Tanya said. “Coffee and pastries for morning shoppers. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres later in the day. One-on-one customer service—”

      “And Gabby—don’t forget Gabby is available by e-mail for personal shopping advice for