The whole situation was crazy,
Tate told himself. There could never be anything between him and lush, leggy reporter Natalie Grant.
She was a threat to his family. He felt nothing but disdain for her job. And he… Sweet hell, he was lying to her with every conversation, every look, every damned breath he took.
All excellent reasons to keep his distance and ignore his rampant attraction to the sweet Southern redhead.
But that might be easier said than done.
For one thing, in a ranch house normally filled with male voices and Okie twangs, Natalie sounded like a songbird among crows. Undeniably Southern, achingly feminine, her voice was made for whispering sweet, seductive invitations.
But not to Tate.
After all, he wasn’t even the man she thought he was. He was an impostor, telling her sweet, loving lies….
The Truth About Tate
Marilyn Pappano
MARILYN PAPPANO
brings impeccable credentials to her writing career—a lifelong habit of gazing out windows, not paying attention in class, daydreaming and spinning tales for her own entertainment. The sale of her first book brought great relief to her family, proving that she wasn’t crazy but was, instead, creative. Since then she’s sold more than forty books to various publishers and even a film production company.
She writes in an office nestled among the oaks that surround her country home. In winter she stays inside with her husband and their four dogs, and in summer she spends her free time mowing the yard that never stops growing and daydreams about grass that never gets taller than two inches.
You can write to her at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK, 74067-0643.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chapter One
The letter came in Tuesday morning’s mail—a pale-green envelope postmarked Alabama, addressed to J. T. Rawlins in a delicate script and lacking a return address. Alabama, the Heart of Dixie, home to a decent college football team, the venerable and newly retired U.S. senator, Boyd Chaney, and an incredibly determined, tenacious reporter by the name of Natalie Grant, who was writing said senator’s biography.
The single sheet of stationery inside the envelope was also pale green, textured. The tone was polite, professional, but the letter was a warning all the same. It was enough to justify a gathering of all four members of the Rawlins family at a time when each of them needed to be someplace else.
Tate Rawlins sat in his usual seat, to the left of his mother, Lucinda, who claimed the head of the dining table. His sixteen-year-old son, Jordan, sat on her right, and Tate’s half brother, Josh, was beside him. Tate’s and Josh’s fathers had never been part of the family. Ditto for Jordan’s mother. As families went, they were small, and not exactly traditional, but they were close.
Everyone wore the same somber expression, except Lucinda, who also looked guilty, worried and ashamed. So far she hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even hinted at what she wanted, except for this whole mess to go away.
But Natalie Grant wasn’t going to go away. In fact, according to the letter lying in the middle of the table, she would be appearing on their doorstep first thing in the morning, and she wasn’t leaving until, one way or another, she’d gotten the information she wanted. That was a fact, she’d written in the last line of the letter.
A threat, to Tate’s way of thinking.
“Well?” Josh prodded.
Tate felt three pairs of brown eyes, identical to his own, turn his way. While they’d waited for him to come in from the pasture, they’d hatched a plan for dealing with the reporter. No, correct that—a plan for Tate to deal with the reporter. Josh and their mother had already made arrangements, before the letter’s arrival, to spend the next few weeks at her parents’ ranch down in southern Oklahoma, and they wanted—needed—to go ahead. Grandpop had broken his leg two days before, and while Gran was convinced she could look after the place just fine by herself, the rest of the family wasn’t about to let her prove it.
Let me help Grandpop, Tate had suggested, and Josh could handle Ms. Alabama. After all, though they shared the same initials, Josh was the J. T. Rawlins she wanted.
Even Jordan had winced at the idea. Josh wasn’t the most cautious or even-tempered person around. Lucinda excused his behavior as impulsive. Grandpop said he let his mouth run without engaging his brain first. In his twenty-nine years, he’d sometimes talked his way into more trouble than Tate could get him out of. He’d gotten the two of them suspended from school, thrown out of bars and, on a few occasions, thrown into jail. There was no telling what kind of trouble he could stir up with a nosy reporter—especially one who was bound and determined to uncover every last detail in all the Rawlinses’ lives.
All because of a stupid affair Lucinda had had thirty years ago.
Tate shifted to face his mother. “What do you want me to do?”
Her gaze dropped to the tabletop, but not before he caught another glimpse of the guilt in her eyes. “This has to be your decision.”
His decision, when he was the one least affected by Alabama’s snooping. Josh was the reporter’s prime target, and Lucinda came next. Tate and Jordan were of interest only in that they were family.
“Why don’t you go on down to Grandpop’s? When she shows up, I’ll tell her you’re out of town and won’t be back for several weeks.”
“Read the letter again, Tate,” Josh said angrily. “The part about staying ‘as long as it takes.’ Besides, how hard would it be for her to find out where we’ve gone from someone in town? You want her showing up unannounced at Gran’s?”
No, Tate admitted silently. To this day, the mere mention of Boyd Chaney’s name could make AnnaMae Rawlins spittin’ mad or sorrowful and weepy. With Grandpop in the hospital, the last thing she needed was Natalie Grant’s questions about the bastard child.
Josh’s chair scraped the floor as he stood up. “Can I talk to you outside?”
Tate followed him onto the porch. It was a miserable day. The heat index had climbed past 110 for eighteen days in a row, they hadn’t had rain in more than a month, and things were likely to get worse before they got better. Hell had nothing on Oklahoma in August.
Josh rested his hands on the rail cap and stared at the horses in the pasture across the yard. “Look, I know you don’t want to do this. I know it’s sneaky and underhanded. But she’s not exactly playing fair, either. I told her I wanted no part of her project. I told her politely, and I told her rudely, and she’s coming here, anyway. I don’t owe her anything else. Mom for damn sure doesn’t owe her anything. Now it’s time to look out for our best interests.”
For an instant the tightness in Tate’s chest made it difficult