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

stop,” Eleanor said. “I know you’ve been in a bad way since we lost Buzz, Tate. But I honestly think the path out of it is to finally do what you should have done long ago—stop this seesaw you and Katie have always been on and take a definitive step into your future with the woman you know you’re going to end up with eventually.”

      “In other words, little brother,” Blake said, “it’s time for you to grow up.”

      Tate could have taken issue with that but he didn’t. “What it is time for,” he said instead, “is for Katie and me to get off the seesaw once and for all.”

      “What can you possibly be thinking?” Blake demanded, surprising Tate with a reaction that was stronger than Tate had expected from his brother. Blake should have had enough on his mind with the current business problems and trying to find the Santa Magdalena diamond to make this low on his list of concerns. “Why don’t you open your eyes and take a look at what you have in Katie?” Blake continued. “You keep going back to her—you must recognize on some level how terrific she is. What will it take for you to just accept that you aren’t going to do better?”

      “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Blake,” Tate said calmly. “I do know how terrific Katie is. But when there isn’t that…certain something…between two people, you can be terrific, she can be terrific, it just doesn’t make any difference. And I’m sure you think this was my idea, but the truth is, it came about at her instigation.”

      “Isn’t that exactly what I told you the other night?” Blake said with disgust. “You took her for granted, you neglected her and now she’s called things off.”

      “Ultimately, it was a mutual decision,” Tate said, borrowing from Katie. “At her instigation, but a mutual decision. We both agreed that all these years have been more about what the families wanted, what the families pressured us into, and not about our feelings for each other. But the bottom line—” Tate said, thinking that his brother was a bottom-line kind of person “—is that we don’t have the kind of feelings that end in marriage. At least not a happy, lasting marriage. And since—for some reason—you seem to have adopted the role of Katie’s champion, isn’t that what you’d want for her? To be married to someone she’s actually in love with and has a chance to be happy with for the rest of her life?”

      “It goes without saying that that’s what I’d want for her. For you both,” Blake added impatiently.

      “Well, we’ve come to the conclusion that that isn’t what we’d have together.”

      “That’s the conclusion you’ve come to this week. Or this month,” Eleanor said as if she was at her wits’ end with him. “But next week or next month, you’ll be telling us you’re back together again. Just stop this on and off!”

      “We have stopped it, only we’ve stopped it at off,” Tate said, concealing how much he wanted this to end because he was itching to get to Tanya to go through the family albums the way they’d planned. “This is it for Katie and me, whether the families like it or not,” he concluded firmly.

      “And families shouldn’t enter into a person’s relationships,” Penny said then, chiming in for the first time.

      Tate appreciated his younger sister’s support but it surprised him, too. Penny was the quieter, more introverted of the twins. She didn’t often venture into a family fray unless she had to.

      “Talk to us when you have a relationship that the family enters into, Penny,” Blake said sardonically.

      “That’s what I’m worried about—the family entering into my relationship,” Penny muttered under her breath and with some defensiveness that seemed out of place.

      “What does that mean?” Blake asked with a chuckle, as if Penny were six years old rather than twenty-six.

      Tate saw how much that irked Penny—she sat up straighter, her lips pursed. Then she said, “I’ve…”

      She stopped herself as if to gauge her words.

      “It’s okay, Penny,” Tate said. “I appreciate that you’re on my side, but you don’t have to fight my battles.”

      “It isn’t only your battle,” his sister answered as if she’d just that moment come to some kind of decision.

      Then she made an announcement of her own. “I’ve been seeing Jason Foley.”

      That came as far, far more of a shock than Tate’s broken engagement and brought several moments of stunned silence before Blake broke it.

      “Jason Foley?” he repeated in disbelief.

      “What do you mean you’re seeing him? As a friend?” Eleanor asked in a controlled tone.

      “More than friends,” Penny said.

      “You’re dating?” their mother pressed, beginning to sound alarmed.

      Penny hesitated. She was a private person and Tate realized this wasn’t easy for her.

      But then she said, “Yes, we’re dating.”

      “That’s bad, Penny,” Blake decreed. “You know the Foleys hate us, that they’ve been convinced for decades that we cheated them out of the land, and now with the potential that the diamond could be—”

      “This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” Penny insisted.

      “Don’t kid yourself!” Blake said in a louder voice. “Don’t you think it’s just a little suspicious that now—of all times—there’s a Foley sniffing around? They’re looking for a way in, Penny! For information about the diamond!”

      “You haven’t actually given me any information about the diamond except to enlist me to design jewelry that will tie into it if you find it.”

      “I don’t want the Foleys knowing even that much. That’s what they’re after—any crumb they can get their hands on and use!” Blake shouted.

      Tate was aware of how invested Blake was in the business, in finding the diamond, in using it to salvage McCord’s Jewelers. He knew his brother was under pressure he wasn’t willing to share unless it was absolutely necessary because Blake always believed he was the best person to shoulder the load. And Tate thought that because of all that, it didn’t occur to Blake how insulting to Penny it was to imply that Jason Foley was interested in her only as some kind of ploy. Even though Tate agreed that it was a possibility.

      “We don’t know that that’s why Jason Foley is seeing Penny, Blake,” he said.

      “I know nothing good can come of a McCord getting involved with a Foley.”

      “Charlie came of it,” Penny said, using the information their mother had only recently shared with them that the youngest McCord was the result of an affair Eleanor had had with Rex Foley twenty-two years earlier.

      But it was information that had caused all of Eleanor’s children to give her a wide berth ever since. To Tate’s knowledge, none of them had discussed it with their mother in any depth, even since Eleanor’s return that morning to take care of the last details of the Labor Day party. So Tate could hardly believe his ears when Penny used that information for her own purposes now.

      Glancing at his mother, Tate found her unruffled by it, though. Instead, venturing delicately into the subject that still wasn’t easy for any of them to accept, Eleanor said, “Yes, Penny, Charlie did come of my involvement with a Foley. But that’s why I can speak from experience and tell you that a tie between a Foley and a McCord is a rocky road.”

      “We just don’t want you to get hurt, Penny,” Tate added.

      “That’s true,” Eleanor confirmed.

      “What’s true,” Penny countered, “is that whatever is between two families shouldn’t interfere with what might—or