I was told I’m not to show my face at the station until I have the whole McCord thing ready to be put together.”
“But you’re still on the payroll, so—”
“This isn’t about money!” Tanya said, ferociously whispering to keep from shouting. “If I don’t go back with something good—like the discovery of the Santa Magdalena diamond itself—I’ll be lucky to be doing the agriculture reports on the predawn weekend newscasts. Plus they’ll probably hire someone else to do my job in the meantime and that someone else could just replace me if the McCords don’t come up with the diamond and all I have is a human-interest piece. You may have put in a good word for me to get this job, but my credentials and abilities actually got it for me, and you don’t have the right to pull it out from under me just to suit your purposes!”
He sat up straight in the booth, putting his feet on the floor and finally unwrapping his sandwich to take a bite. Not until he’d chewed, swallowed and washed it down with a drink of his iced tea, did he say, “I had to make sure you didn’t have the opportunity to go back on your word to keep quiet.”
“I could still do that—I could go to a Foley-owned station.”
He remained unruffled by her threat. “You could,” he said. “But that talk about loyalty last night got me to thinking—your mom has worked for us for twenty-two years. She oversees the whole staff. She’s my mom’s right hand around the house. I’m not going to say we’re all family, but there’s a connection that you sure as hell don’t have with our archrivals. You must feel some amount of loyalty.”
“How much loyalty did you feel when you called Chad Burton?”
“Today or when I called him to say I was sending over your résumé?”
Tanya glared at him. “That was something my mother did without telling me until after it was done because she wanted me to move back here. The résumé you sent over wasn’t even a recent one. It was the first one I did out of college—my mother found it in an old file. I faxed them the real, current résumé, which is what got me the interview.”
Tate ignored all of that and merely went on to answer her question about his loyalty.
“I wasn’t being disloyal. I was only playing it safe. And Chad was thrilled with the idea of getting an insider’s view of the McCords. Plus, even though I didn’t do anything but allude to the diamond, I let him know that there was the potential for big news to come along with the human-interest stuff, and he was nearly drooling over the chance for WDGN to be the one to break that big news. This really could put you on the map.”
“I lose ground not being there, not having my face in front of a camera every chance I can get,” she insisted. “There’s no reason I couldn’t still be doing my job there and compiling the McCord information.”
“But now you don’t have to do anything but focus on the McCords.”
“Who are not the center of the universe, just in case you were wondering!” Tanya said, her voice raised enough to garner a glance from the couple at the nearest table.
“It’s just a precaution,” Tate said calmly.
“You’re trying to control me,” Tanya accused.
“Yes, I am. But only in this and only for the sake of the greater good.”
“As if that makes it all right.”
“Was it all right that you broke into my family’s home last night to spy on us and try to get information to expose things that could hurt us if they got out at the wrong time?” he reasoned.
“So you’re exacting revenge?”
“Nooo, not at all. You still have your job and your paycheck. You have the chance to do an exclusive story on the McCords and be the reporter who tells the world if we find the Santa Magdalena diamond. You just won’t be doing anything but that for now.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes at him. “You’d better give me a good story,” she warned.
“And you’d better put all your energy into me and getting a good story,” he countered.
“Into you? Why would I put my energy into you?”
He smiled. A slow, lazy, sexy smile. “I guess because I’m the teller-of-the-tale, and the happier I am, the better the tale-telling?”
“And what does that mean? That not only do I have to climb the mountain to get the answers from The Great One, but that I have to bring enticements, too?” she asked facetiously.
His smile stretched into a grin and he didn’t at all look like the sad, somber, lackluster shadow of his former self that her mother and the rest of the staff described him as.
“Enticements?” he repeated as if he hadn’t been thinking that until she suggested it. “I like the sound of that.”
“Well, get over it,” she advised bluntly, knowing he was merely having some fun at her expense. “There’s no way I’m bringing enticements to get you to tell me about your family.”
“Too bad,” he pretended to lament.
“I’m serious, Tate,” she said, using his name for the first time as an adult.
“Yes, you are, Tanya,” he agreed, barely suppressing a smile. “You are very serious.”
“I mean it—you’d better give me something good enough to make this sabbatical worth my while.”
He seemed to take that in a different—and lascivious—vein than how she’d intended it because his smile appeared full force again and it was laced with wicked amusement.
But before he said anything else, the pager clipped to the bottom of his shirt went off, drawing his attention.
He glanced down at it. “I have to get back,” he announced, grabbing another quick bite of his only half-eaten sandwich and then rewrapping the rest to take with him.
As he did, he returned to what they’d been talking about. “All I meant when I said that you should put your energy into me was into spending time with me to get your story—as part of the job you really are still doing.”
He stood, guzzled most of his iced tea and, after replacing the glass on the table, added, “And to that end, why don’t we start with a real dinner tomorrow night? My treat and we can both eat.”
“Since it’s now my job, I guess so,” Tanya conceded.
“Eight o’clock? I’ll meet you at the pool and we’ll go somewhere from there?”
Tanya nodded and that was all it took to send him rushing out of the deli.
As she watched him go her anger at him began to waver. Maybe it was the sight of him from behind in those scrubs that loosely covered his broad shoulders and barely grazed a derriere to die for.
But instead of thinking about the influence he’d used to keep her under his thumb, she was thinking
