The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby Read online

  “Come with me, Penny. Outside.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s after midnight, I’m in my nightgown and—”

  The rest of the words tumbled back down Penny’s throat when Jason picked her up off her feet. She wriggled and squirmed, hoping to make him set her down again. But he only tightened his grip on her and moved resolutely toward the back door.

  “Put me down right now, Jason,” Penny hissed.

  “Or I’ll scream so loud everyone in this house will wake up.”

  “Is that really how you want our families to learn that you’re carrying my child?”

  Dear Reader,

  Since the publication of my first Silhouette Special Edition novel a little more than four years ago, I’ve had the pleasure of working on four continuity series. Each time, it’s been a privilege to work with a new group of authors, sharing story ideas, discussing character motivations and brainstorming plot problems. During the writing of this series, I also learned a lot of interesting stuff about Texas, mining and jewelry design (which was a lot of fun to research, although I had to continually reassure my husband that I wasn’t shopping online—just writing).

  Anyway, the result of all of this is The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby. In this book, you’ll get to know Jason Foley and Penny McCord, you’ll find out what the other members of their families have been up to since last month and you’ll also catch a glimpse of what the future may hold for all of them.

  Happy reading and happy holidays!

  Brenda Harlen

  THE TEXAS TYCOON’S CHRISTMAS BABY

  BRENDA HARLEN

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Brenda Harlen

  for her contribution to

  THE FOLEYS AND THE McCORDS miniseries.

  Books by Brenda Harlen

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Once and Again #1714

  *Her Best-Kept Secret #1756

  The Marriage Solution #1811

  †One Man’s Family #1827

  The New Girl in Town #1859

  **The Prince’s Royal Dilemma #1898

  **The Prince’s Cowgirl Bride #1920

  ††Family in Progress #1928

  **The Prince’s Holiday Baby #1942

  ‡The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby #2016

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  McIver’s Mission #1224

  Some Kind of Hero #1246

  Extreme Measures #1282

  Bulletproof Hearts #1313

  Dangerous Passions #1394

  BRENDA HARLEN

  grew up in a small town surrounded by books and imaginary friends. Although she always dreamed of being a writer, she chose to follow a more traditional career path first. After two years of practicing as an attorney (including an appearance in front of the Supreme Court of Canada), she gave up her “real” job to be a mom and to try her hand at writing books. Three years, five manuscripts and another baby later, she sold her first book—an RWA Golden Heart Winner—to Silhouette Books.

  Brenda lives in southern Ontario with her real-life husband/ hero, two heroes-in-training and two neurotic dogs. She is still surrounded by books (“too many books,” according to her children) and imaginary friends, but she also enjoys communicating with “real” people. Readers can contact Brenda by e-mail at [email protected] or by snail mail c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

  To the wonderful and talented Nicole Foster,

  Crystal Green, Teresa Hill, Victoria Pade

  and Karen Rose Smith—you proved to me that

  writing doesn’t have to be a solitary occupation.

  Thanks for your help

  and for making this project so much fun.

  Thanks also to Susan Litman, for again thinking of me.

  And to Charles Griemsman,

  because it truly was a pleasure.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prologue

  Penny McCord was smiling when she hung up the phone after Jason Foley’s call confirming their dinner plans. He was in Dallas on business and would stop by after his meetings finished to pick her up for a quiet, romantic evening at his condo. It would give her the perfect opportunity to share the news that had only been confirmed a few hours earlier, and then they could start planning their future together.

  She was excited, of course, and just a little apprehensive. She wanted him to be as happy as she was, but as they had never talked about anything long-term, she couldn’t be certain.

  Still, she believed this was meant to be—fated, as was their meeting at Missy Harcourt’s wedding only four short months ago. It was the only explanation she could think of for the fact that, in a room filled with more than five hundred guests, Jason Foley had noticed her.

  When her own date for the occasion was called away, leaving Penny stranded, Jason had been there. He’d talked to her, danced with her, taken her home. And then he’d kissed her good night.

  A few weeks later, they became lovers. She knew she was fortunate to have fallen in love with the man who’d been her first lover, and if Jason wasn’t in love with her yet, she was hopeful it was only a matter of time before his feelings grew and deepened, as hers had done.

  When the phone rang again, she assumed it was Jason calling her back—as he sometimes did—just to tell her he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “Miss me already?” she asked teasingly.

  There was silence on the other end of the line and Penny mentally berated herself for not checking the call display before grabbing the receiver.

  “Penny, it’s Paige.”

  Her sister’s voice sounded strained, as if she’d been crying. Not at all like her usual cheerful self.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just…I have to tell you something.”

  Aside from e-mail communications, they’d been out of touch for so long, and Penny had really missed talking to her twin. “I have some news, too, but it can wait. You go first.”

  But Paige didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and as the silence lengthened, Penny’s apprehension increased.

  “Paige?” she prompted, wondering what could be so horrible that her sister couldn’t seem to get the words out. Had she been in an accident? Was she ill? What was going on? “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry, Penny. I’m so sorry about this. I love you. You know that, right? And I’ll help you get through this, I promise.”

  Now she was even more confused. “Get through what?”

  “Jason Foley.”

  She fell silent.

  She and her twin had always been close, but it was only recently that Penny had told anyone she was dating Jason Foley. She didn’t usually keep anything from her sister, but she’d justified her silence—at least to herself—on the basis that Paige was too preoccupied with her search for the Santa Magdalena Diamond to focus on anything else. But the truth was, Penny had worried that Paige wouldn’t approve, that she would accuse her of being a fool for getting involved with anyone named Foley, and Penny refused to let an old feud get in the way of her relationship with the first man she’d ever loved.

  “You have been seeing Jason Foley, right?” Paige asked her.

  “Yes, I have,” Penny said defia
ntly. “And I know that no one likes that, that no one understands. I can still hardly believe it myself, but he’s not who you think he is, Paige. He’s not who any of us thought he is. He’s wonderful and sweet and kind, and I’m in love with him. And I think—” she mentally crossed her fingers, desperately hoping it was true “—he’s in love with me, too.”

  “He’s using you to get information about our family,” Paige told her.

  Penny was disappointed. Not in Jason, because she didn’t believe that Jason would do anything like that, but in her sister, for daring to accuse him of such deception.

  She laughed to let her sister know that her relationship with Jason was solid and that she wouldn’t let unfounded accusations undermine it. “No, he’s not.”

  “Yes, he is,” Paige insisted, and the quiet conviction in her voice gave Penny pause.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” she said again. “He’s not like that.”

  “I’m at Travis Foley’s ranch right now, looking for the diamond. Travis was with me when I read Gabby’s e-mail telling me you were seeing Jason, and Travis knew…He knew what his brother was going to do.”

  Penny wasn’t sure which of her sister’s revelations surprised her more. “No,” she said, but with less certainty this time. She didn’t want to listen to anything else Paige said about Jason. She knew there was a lot of bad history between the McCords and the Foleys, but she really believed Jason cared about her. How could he have said the things he’d said, done the things he’d done, if he didn’t care about her?

  Penny gnawed on her lip, considering what her sister had just told her. Jason hadn’t made any mention of the infamous gem in the past several weeks, but she did recall earlier references, questions subtly slipped into a conversation that might have been intended to elicit information from Penny. Or maybe he’d just been making conversation. She wasn’t going to assume the worst just because her sister had done so.

  “That’s crazy,” she said.

  “Honey, listen to me. I’m sorry, but Travis admitted the whole thing. Jason told Travis and their other brother, Zane, months ago what he was going to do. He was convinced our family was up to something to do with the diamond, and that the Foleys needed to know what that was. Jason thought he could get the information from you. By getting to know you. By pretending he was interested in you.”

  Penny didn’t want to believe it, but…

  “I’m so sorry. I could kill him with my bare hands, I swear. I will make him pay. We’ll make all of them pay for what he did to you.”

  “I thought…” Penny could barely choke out the words now. “I thought I was in love with him.”

  I thought he loved me, too.

  And now all of Penny’s hopes and dreams for the future were shattered.

  Chapter One

  Jason Foley pulled into the long, winding drive that led to his brother’s ranch and wondered what the heck he was doing out in the middle of nowhere when he had at least a dozen projects demanding his attention back at his office in Dallas. But Travis didn’t ask for much, so Jason found it hard to refuse when his brother did make a request. And for some reason, it was important to his little brother to have the family all together for Thanksgiving this year. And not just to share the traditional meal, but the whole weekend.

  Jason might not have minded even that so much except that, for some inexplicable reason, Travis had extended the invitation to include the McCord family, as well. It wasn’t so many years ago that the Foleys and McCords would sooner have shot at each other than sat down at a table together, but apparently things had changed.

  Unbidden, an image of Penny McCord’s smiling face came to mind. Yeah, things had changed. And he felt a pang of loss. He still didn’t know what had gone wrong between them, but after weeks of unreturned phone calls and ignored e-mails, he’d finally given up. Obviously, Penny had decided that she was finished with him, and that was fine. The only reason their relationship had lasted as long as it did was that Jason had felt guilty for his deception.

  Truth be told, he still felt guilty. It had been his idea to get close to Penny McCord, to find out what she knew about her family’s search for the Santa Magdalena Diamond. But it had been a plan born out of desperation, and not one that had sat well with him, even from the beginning.

  As he’d grown closer to Penny, his guilt had grown along with his genuine affection for her. So when she stopped taking his calls, he’d almost been as relieved as he was baffled, because he knew that she was better off without him.

  And he was better off without her. And if she did decide to show up at his brother’s house for the holiday celebration, he would be polite and friendly while maintaining an emotional and physical distance. Maybe she’d meant something to him for a while, but that was over.

  Or so he believed, until he walked into the kitchen and found her in his brother’s arms.

  “Well, isn’t this a cozy little scene?”

  The words were spoken through a jaw that was clenched as tightly as the fists that hung at Jason’s sides.

  Travis and Penny sprang apart—and it was then that Jason saw through the haze of red that had clouded his vision to recognize his mistake.

  It wasn’t Penny in his brother’s embrace, but her twin sister, Paige.

  Of course it wasn’t Penny. Even before he recognized her sister, he should have recognized that Penny wasn’t the type of woman who would move quickly or easily from one man’s bed to another’s. In fact, she hadn’t been in any man’s bed until he’d taken her to his own.

  And then she tossed him out of her life.

  So why should he care if she’d picked up with someone else since then?

  He shouldn’t. But he did. And it was that realization which annoyed him more than anything else.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said now, his fingers slowly uncurling.

  “You’re early,” Travis said, but the admonition was tempered by a smile that assured his brother he didn’t really mind.

  “I can leave and come back later.”

  “No need.” Travis took Paige’s hand and tugged her forward. “You know Paige McCord?”

  Jason inclined his head. “It’s good to see you again, Paige.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” she responded coolly.

  He looked at his brother, his brows lifted in silent inquiry. Travis gave a subtle shake of his head, but Jason wasn’t prepared to let her remark pass without comment.

  “If you’re harboring some kind of grudge on behalf of your sister, you should know that she was the one who ended our relationship,” he pointed out.

  “And you don’t have a clue why, do you?”

  Even three weeks later, he didn’t—a fact which continued to frustrate him.

  “Can we not get into this now?” Travis asked, suggesting to Jason that he knew more than he’d shared with his brother.

  “I’d like nothing more than to not get into this,” Paige assured him. “In fact, I’d like nothing more than to pretend that your brother was never involved with my sister, but that’s not possible now.”

  And with that, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and exited the room.

  “Want to explain that to me?” Jason asked his brother.

  Travis just shook his head again. “I’ll leave that to Penny, if she’s so inclined.”

  Jason’s heart skipped a beat. “Then she is coming?”

  “I told you I’d invited all of the McCords.”

  “But you didn’t tell me Penny would be here.”

  “Would that information have affected your decision to come?”

  “No,” Jason said. “My decision had nothing to do with Penny McCord.”

  But even as he spoke the words, he knew that his brother didn’t believe them any more than he did.

  She shouldn’t have come.

  As Penny McCord sat wedged between Blake and Tate, her two older brothers, at the long table in Travis Foley’s dining room, she won
dered why she’d ever let herself be talked into making an appearance at this “family” dinner. Of course, she’d only accepted the invitation because she’d been certain that Travis’s brother wouldn’t.

  Jason Foley was far too busy to take the time for a long weekend at his brother’s ranch. To his mind, business took precedence over family. In fact, business took precedence over everything else, and he would do anything to ensure the company’s success. Their sham of a relationship was proof enough of that fact.

  When the invitation to share in a Thanksgiving celebration had come through her sister, Penny was anxious to get away from the city, eager to spend some time with her twin, and desperate to cry on the shoulder that had always been there for her. So she’d gratefully said yes, certain that Jason would never take time away from his office to spend the holiday at his brother’s isolated Texas ranch.

  Apparently she’d been wrong.

  Because every single member of the Foley family—Jason included—was in attendance, along with the entire McCord clan. As if the bitterness and animosity that had governed all McCord-Foley interactions of the past century was simply forgotten.

  She knew the story—at least as it had been passed down through the McCord family. According to that history, the McCord and the Foley families of Texas had been feuding ever since Civil War, but the feud really heated up in the late 1890s, when Gavin Foley lost his claim to a West Texas silver mine to Harry McCord in a poker game. Gavin Foley swore the game was fixed and that Harry was a card cheat.

  At the time, no one paid too much attention to the allegations and everyone thought the claim to be worthless. But there were rumors that the deed, which also served as the map to the mine, contained clues to the location of a buried treasure—including the legendary and supposedly cursed Santa Magdalena Diamond.