“I really won’t be able to afford an apartment for a couple of months so it would be a waste of time—”
“It isn’t an apartment.”
“Oh. Then where am I going?” she asked.
“You’ll see when you get there. No pearls. Come comfortable and ready to dig in.”
“Shall I bring a shovel?” she joked.
“No pearls, no shovel,” he answered but he obviously wanted to be mysterious and wasn’t going to give her any other details.
“Oka-ay,” she muttered. Then, rather than pursue a subject he wasn’t going to expand on, she said, “Thanks for dinner.”
That made him chuckle. “Even though it wasn’t what you had in mind?”
“The food was still great. You’re right, the understudy chef does do interesting things.”
“Maybe next Sunday I’ll just see if he’ll do them takeout so we can avoid the dreaded country club,” Tate said wryly, making Tanya smile this time.
“Wow, you can do that,” he mock marveled.
“What?”
“Smile. I was beginning to wonder. And it’s nice, too. Who would have thought Miss Serious had a nice smile…”
“Miss Serious?”
“Well, there was nothing lighthearted about catching you in the library. You took me to task last night over stepping in with the news station. And tonight you’ve been all business even when business wasn’t going on, and then you took me to task again on the way home. Plus you said yourself last night that you’re serious—”
“That was a figure of speech. What I said was that I was serious about getting a substantial story out of this.”
“Still, you’re just plain serious, as far as I’ve seen. Maybe your mom and her cohorts should be worrying more about you than me.”
Okay, so there hadn’t been a whole lot of levity to any of the times they’d encountered each other since Friday night.
“This is business for me,” she reminded him.
He smiled again, a pleased, warm smile that she liked entirely too much. “I’m glad you said business and not work. I don’t think I like being work for anyone.”
“Just make sure business gets done from here on,” she pretended to chastise.
“Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.,” he countered.
She wondered if she was going to arrive at the address on the paper and find him sitting behind a desk. And if she would be expected to spend from then until five o’clock on the opposite side of that desk taking dictation on the story of his life.
She wouldn’t put it past him.
But she knew better than to try to get any more information out of him about that, so she merely said, “Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.”
That seemed to satisfy him. It showed in his smile as he went on peering into her face for a moment more before he said, “You can tell your mother that you aren’t.”
“That I aren’t what?”
He laughed. “That is some really rotten grammar for a journalist.”
“That I’m not what?” she corrected the mistake she’d made on purpose, trying not to bask in the sound of his laugh or the fact that she’d inspired it.
“You’re not bothering me. In fact, you’re kind of a little spitfire and I’m getting a kick out of it.”
“Little spitfire? You’re aware that that’s very condescending, aren’t you?” she said even though it gave her a tiny rush to hear that she was rousing something in him.
“Hey, I’m just a sheltered, pampered, out-of-touch rich boy, what do I know?” he joked.
Again Tanya smiled, adding a hint of a laugh to it. And maybe her lighter side really was a novelty to him because several minutes lapsed while Tate just seemed to study her as if he couldn’t quite figure her out.
Several minutes that made something else flash through Tanya’s mind—that people in this position, saying goodnight at the door after having spent an evening together and sharing a nice dinner, very often kissed…
Which of course was not going to happen, she told herself in no uncertain terms.
And it didn’t. Because then Tate said, “I’ll see you at nine,” and turned to retrace his steps to his car.
Tanya watched his retreating back, giving herself a silent but stern talking-to as she did.
There could not ever—ever—be thoughts of kissing when it came to Tate McCord.
That was absolutely, positively unthinkable.
Unthinkable and undoable.
Absolutely. Positively.
And if she was still standing there even after he was out of sight, even after she could hear his car engine restart, even after she’d heard him drive away?
It was because she was still silently lecturing herself about how she also—absolutely, positively—shouldn’t be wondering what it would be like to kiss the mighty Tate McCord, either…
Chapter Four
“Rosa, this is Tanya Kimbrough. Tanya, this is Rosa Marsh—Rosa pretty much runs this place. Rosa, Tanya is going to pitch in for us today as a volunteer. I know you can use her,” Tate said as he introduced Tanya to the heavyset nurse.
Then he leaned in close enough to Tanya’s ear to whisper so only she could hear, “I thought I’d give you the chance to see how one McCord spends Mondays. And since you’re so in touch with the real people, I figured you’d probably want to do more than just follow me around and take notes.”
Tanya could tell that Tate was enjoying this—there was pure satisfaction on his handsome face as he left her to the woman named Rosa.
When Tanya had arrived at the address Tate had written in her notepad she definitely hadn’t found a lead on an apartment for rent. She’d found a surgical clinic for the underprivileged in an extremely neglected portion of Dallas.
She’d also discovered that Tate was known there as Dr. Tate and that if anyone realized he was a McCord, it wasn’t an issue. He was just Dr. Tate.
And Tanya was a volunteer for the day.
She didn’t mind. It allowed her to watch him in action and pitching in was something she’d been taught to do even as a child. So Tanya followed Rosa’s instructions and went to work herself.
She primarily did the nurses’ bidding, performing cleanup and making sure patients were comfortable.
The small, inner-city facility was nothing at all like Meridian General Hospital. Sanitary conditions were met but that was about the best that could be said of it. Equipment was old, linens were clean but ragged, the linoleum floor was worn down to the cement beneath it in several places, and watermarks decorated the walls and ceiling.
Tanya would never have imagined Tate practicing there. Or fitting in with the two physician’s assistants and four nurses who were all earthy, outspoken and irreverent. But there wasn’t a single indication in anything she saw that made her think he held himself above any of them and they made it clear to her even when he wasn’t around that they liked and respected him, and that they felt lucky to work with a surgeon of his caliber.
And the patients—some of them homeless, almost