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

from nearby, she raised her head to find him leaning over the front of the desk, clearly able to see her.

      This was much, much worse than when she was six and had been caught with her fingers in the icing of his twin sisters’ birthday cake. His mother Eleanor had been kind and understanding. But there was nothing kind or understanding in Tate McCord’s face at that moment.

      Summoning what little dignity she could—and with the papers still in hand—Tanya stood.

      It was the first time she and Tate McCord had set eyes on each other in the seven years since Tanya had left for college. And even before that—when Tate had come home from his own university and medical school training for vacations or visits while Tanya still lived on the property with her mother—there weren’t many occasions when the McCord heir had crossed paths with the housekeeper’s daughter. Plus, Tanya had been very well aware of the fact that, more often than not, when any of the McCords had seen her, they’d looked through her rather than at her.

      So she wasn’t sure Tate McCord recognized her and, as if it would make this better, she said, “You probably don’t remember me—”

      “You’re JoBeth’s daughter—Tanya,” he said bluntly. “What the hell are you doing in here at this hour and—”

      He glanced down at the papers and held out his hand in a silent demand for her to give them to him.

      She did and he looked over what—before she’d been interrupted—she’d discovered to be some sort of mock-ups for ads for a suggested line of jewelry using canary diamonds set in old Spanish designs.

      Tanya had taken the papers from a file that was still open on the desk in front of her. After Tate McCord’s initial look at them, he pulled the entire file toward him to see what else she might have gotten into.

      While he sifted through what she already knew were similar pages, Tanya was wishing she wasn’t dressed in a shabby, oversize, cut-up old sweatshirt and a pair of drawstring black pajama pants with cartoon robots printed on them. She also wished she wasn’t completely makeupless and that her shoulder-length espresso-colored hair wasn’t pulled up into a lopsided ponytail at the top of her head. Looking as if she were ready for bed made her feel all the more at a disadvantage. When she realized that the wide neck of the sweatshirt had fallen from her shoulder, she tugged it back into place.

      It was something Tate McCord saw because just as she did it, he raised his gaze from the file and eyes that were bluer than she remembered drifted momentarily in that direction.

      Noticing did not, however, change his attitude toward her—his expression remained stern and angry.

      “So, I repeat—JoBeth’s-daughter-Tanya, what the hell are you doing in here, at this hour, going through things that you have no right to go through?” Tate McCord finished by tossing the papers he’d taken from Tanya back in the open file.

      “I know this can’t look good,” she said.

      But he definitely did look good! Better even than she remembered him.

      Unlike her in-for-the-night apparel, he was dressed in a dark suit that accentuated the fact that he was tall and lean, with broad shoulders and a more toned, muscular physique than he’d had in his earlier years. His face had matured into sharply defined angles that gave him a decisive chin and high cheekbones. His mouth at that moment was a stern line beneath a strong, thin nose and his penetrating, clear blue eyes seemed to have taken a bead on her, which should have kept her from thinking that she liked his dark blond hair slightly longish, the way he was wearing it now…

      But it was the expression that said he was waiting for an explanation that she knew she really had to address.

      “My mother dropped her sweater when she came through here today after she finished work—” Tanya pointed to the plain white cardigan that had been her excuse for this foray. She’d picked it up from the floor where it had fallen and tossed it across the back of a chair before beginning her snooping. “Mom likes to wear it when she walks over from the bungalow in the mornings. She was just going to leave it and get it tomorrow, but I thought I’d come back for it tonight so she’d have it.”

      All true, but feeble at this point. Very feeble.

      “And while you were here, you thought you’d take a look around, at things that you shouldn’t look at, and then hide under the desk so you didn’t get caught eavesdropping on what Blake and I were saying in the other room? Or are you going to pretend you didn’t hear anything?”

      There was that facetious tone again. It could be harsh. And it didn’t help that his assumptions of what she’d done were right.

      Maybe offense was the best form of defense…

      “I heard enough to know that there’s a whole lot going on. That all the suspicions about McCord’s Jewelers’ business being way down have some foundation. That the rumors that the McCords came into possession of the Santa Magdalena diamond when you all got the Foley’s land and silver mines could also be the truth. I heard enough to know that your family does think the diamond can be found.”

      “So you heard plenty.”

      “And I’ll admit,” she continued, “that when I came for Mom’s sweater and saw the file, I got curious, and since it was open I looked at those pages—” That was a lie, not only had she opened the file herself, but she’d come to get the sweater hoping that there might be something of interest to her in the library where business was sometimes conducted. “But now that I know things are popping here, it seems to me that there’s a story in it that I could use.”

      “You’re going to make me sorry I did what your mother asked and send your résumé over to my friend at WDGN, aren’t you?”

      WDGN was one of the local independent news stations.

      “I didn’t know which of you got me the interview, but thanks for it,” she said as if that mattered at this point.

      “Oh, believe me, you’re welcome,” he said snidely.

      “But here’s the thing—” she went on, ignoring his disapproval “—I’ve been making my living in the world of broadcast journalism for a while now and this is how it works—at least for me because I haven’t made any kind of big splash yet—a new position means I start at the bottom. The bottom is filling in for other reporters or doing whatever the seasoned reporters have moved on from or refuse to do—”

      “Was I supposed to see if I could have you hired at the top?”

      “That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is that between the story of the diamond—whatever it might be and especially if you do actually find it—and the story of the McCords’ feud with the Foleys, well, let’s face it, if the McCords or the Foleys sneeze it makes the news so stuff like this could get me an anchor chair.” Not to mention the other tidbit the staff was whispering about that wasn’t public knowledge—that Tate’s mother Eleanor had an affair with Rex Foley and that the youngest brother, Charlie, was Rex Foley’s son…

      If Tate’s sky-blue eyes had had a bead on her before, it was nothing compared to the way they were boring into her now and it made Tanya’s tension level rise another notch. Especially when she began to wonder if she’d gone too far. The McCords were her mother’s employers after all…

      Then Tate McCord said, “Or how about a story where the housekeeper’s daughter gets arrested for breaking and entering, for trespassing, for who knows what else should something turn up missing…”

      Tanya took issue with that last part. She might be willing to do a little nosing around for a story, but she wasn’t a thief!

      “Should something turn up missing?” she repeated. “Go ahead, look around. Take inventory. I haven’t so much as touched anything but my mother’s sweater and the papers in that file. I have done almost nothing wrong!”

      “Almost nothing wrong?” Tate