LITMIR.BIZ

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reached her front door when Tate said, “We haven’t talked about tomorrow.”

      “No, we haven’t,” Tanya answered glibly, slowly settling down and coming to grips with herself and his news.

      “I have to make my rounds in the morning, but I’m free in the afternoon. I thought I’d give you a tour of the McCord contributions to the city and end with an evening under the stars.”

      Tanya glanced up to the sky and then dropped her gaze to blue eyes that were watching her intently. “Isn’t that what we just had? An evening under the stars?”

      “I have something a little bit different in mind. What do you say?”

      “Is it all for my report?” she asked to make it clear that that was the only thing she would agree to.

      “Every bit of it,” he assured without hesitation.

      “Then okay.”

      “You still haven’t answered my question about if my being un-engaged is somehow scary, though,” he said then, smiling slightly.

      “No, you’re being un-engaged is not scary,” she said as if the question itself was silly.

      “You honestly did just decide on the spur of the moment that it was time to stop working tonight?”

      “Yes. Why would I care if you’re engaged or not?”

      Okay, she’d been doing so well and then she’d gone and taken it too far by sounding defensive.

      “I care,” he said quietly, pointedly, continuing to gaze into her eyes.

      And then she felt rotten. If he had been anyone else and this had been any other situation, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she had to the revelation that he and the woman he’d intended to marry had ended things. She would have been more caring, more compassionate. She wouldn’t have thought about herself.

      “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I guess I was kind of callous. Even if you have had a lot of ups and downs in your relationship, that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be upset—”

      “I’m not upset,” he said. “And I don’t mean to sound callous either, and maybe sometime I’ll tell you why this didn’t upset me, but what I do care about is that now I don’t have to pretend that I’m committed to something—or someone—I’m not committed to.”

      “Because you’re a bad secret-keeper?”

      “Because I wanted to do this and I couldn’t,” he said, surprising her by coming in for the briefest, lightest, faintest of kisses.

      A kiss Tanya didn’t even have time to close her eyes for or respond to. And yet, a kiss that still managed to leave her lips tingling and her pulse racing.

      But in spite of that, when it was over she shook her head at him. “Engaged or not, you can’t do that,” she said firmly.

      “Why not?” he asked, smiling as if it was him who wasn’t taking her seriously now.

      “My mother works for you.”

      “I know that doesn’t make for the most ideal situation, but—”

      “But nothing,” Tanya managed to sound so much stronger in her convictions than she felt. Especially since she was willing him with every ounce of her being to kiss her again…

      Tate’s smile went crooked—and almost too sexy and endearing to resist—before he said, “I do love a challenge.”

      “I’m not a challenge, I’m the housekeeper’s daughter.”

      He nodded but she wasn’t convinced that their very different social positions meant as much to him as it needed to.

      Then, rather than address it again, he merely said, “I’ll call you when I finish with rounds tomorrow. Plan on all afternoon and evening.”

      “To compile data for my report and that’s it?” she said with a warning note in her voice.

      “Nose to the grindstone all the way,” he assured her.

      “Okay,” Tanya agreed a second time.

      “See you then,” he said.

      Tanya nodded and watched him go, trying not to drink in every detail of his backside, of the confident swagger to his walk. Trying not to wish he was still standing in front of her instead, kissing her again. Kissing her more thoroughly than he had. His arms around her. Hers around him. Her hands slipping down to that very, very fine derriere she watched disappear into the shadows of the trees.

       He’s not engaged anymore…

      The thought ran through her head like a wood nymph, taunting her. Tantalizing her.

      But she chased it away.

      Engaged, not engaged, it was all the same to her. She had more reasons than that not to give in to the attraction that kept sneaking in and taking over.

      But it did keep sneaking in.

      And taking over.

      And the only way she had to combat it at that moment was to also remind herself that the odds of his not-engaged status lasting were slim to none.

      And there was no way she was going to let herself be his hiatus-honey.

      Chapter Seven

      Tate was still thinking about Tuesday night—and Tanya—on Wednesday as he drove home from making rounds at the hospital.

      Not that it was unusual these days for him to be thinking about Tanya. But what had her on his mind today was trying to figure out what had happened last night. One minute they’d been talking and—he’d thought—having a good time, and the next minute the tone had changed and she was up and out of there. In a hurry.

      It had been obvious that it was the news about his broken engagement that had put a damper on things. But why? Why should that have caused her to shy away?

      Certainly there was nothing about it that should have sent her running into the night. Or reacting like his family, either.

      He had no idea what would put Tanya’s response in the same category as his mother’s and Blake’s, but even if it was just in the same general ballpark—even if Tanya had felt some kind of affront to all of womankind—he hated the thought that something about him or something that he’d done had put her off like that.

      It didn’t bother him that his family might be disgusted that he was once again not following through with Katie. But Tanya? That was something else entirely. It bothered him that Tanya might think badly of him.

      It bothered the hell out of him…

      And that was new.

      Caring what someone thought of him? He’d gone through his life not really considering what anyone thought about him. Let alone what the staff had thought about him. Or a member of the staff’s family—most of whom he’d never so much as met or heard about.

      Yet here he was, being eaten up by the thought that the housekeeper’s daughter might think he was a jerk.

      The housekeeper’s daughter—that had been Tanya’s sticking point last night, that he couldn’t kiss her because she was JoBeth’s daughter. But while that was also what he’d been raised to believe—that there was to be no fraternizing with the help and, certainly, not with the help’s daughter—he was wondering now if Tanya had only used that as an excuse. If the real reason had been that she didn’t think much of him and so didn’t want him kissing her. Or doing anything that might make things more personal between them. If the real reason was that her opinion of him was that low…

      Oh, yeah, he definitely hated that thought. It was actually something he’d considered to be a possibility earlier, too—when

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