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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 wondered 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.

No treasure was ever found, though the disputed claim did turn out to be filled with silver ore, which is how the McCords acquired their family fortune. But rumors about the Santa Magdalena Diamond refused to die, especially after the recent discovery of a sunken ship in the Gulf of Mexico—the last known location of the infamous gem. The diamond wasn't on board, and since then, adventurers, gem collectors and jewel thieves from around the world had been searching for the legendary stone.

Penny wasn't sure she even believed that the Santa Magdalena Diamond existed; though, if it did, it was supposedly the world's largest, most perfect canary diamond, reputed to rival the Hope Diamond in beauty and size. But she was inclined to believe in the curse— the allegation that the gem had caused misfortune to everyone who had ever possessed it, including an Indian pasha, an Italian Renaissance prince, a seventeenth-century duke and an eighteenth-century Mexican governor—because, although she'd never even set eyes on the jewel, it seemed that her scant knowledge of its rumored existence had led directly to her heartache.

It could be argued that it was her own inexperience and na vet that had caused her to fall for Jason Foley's seduction routine, and she knew there was some truth to that; but the fact remained that the COO of Foley Industries would never have looked twice in her direction if he wasn't interested in what she knew—or what he thought she knew—about the McCords' search for the diamond.

She determinedly pushed all thoughts of the gem and the Foley-McCord feud from her mind. She wasn't sure how much was fact and how much was fiction, and she didn't really care. She wasn't thinking of old grudges or ancient grievances now. No, her thoughts were on more recent events, more immediate hurts and personal heartaches. And being in the same room with Jason, so close and somehow so far away, scraped the scab off of a wound that had barely begun to heal.

It was the first time she'd seen him, face-to-face, since she'd learned that their entire relationship was a sham.

And the first time since she'd learned that she was going to have his baby.

A baby she had yet to tell him about, despite her sister's urging.

Paige kept telling Penny that Jason had a right to know that he was going to be a father, and Penny knew it was true. She also knew that Paige didn't just want her to share the news with her baby's father, she wanted to ensure that Jason was held responsible for his actions, which meant paying his share.

But Penny wasn't ready to deal with such practical matters. She was hurting too much to put the heartache aside and calmly discuss things like visitation and child support. Besides, she was doing well enough financially that she was confident she could support herself and her child—though the recent difficulties at McCord Jewelers did worry her enough that she tried not to think about them. Her job was as secure as anyone else's at the company, and not just because of her last name but because of the reputation she'd established for herself in the jewelry-design business.

Still, there was no way she was going to ask Jason Foley for anything. Not ever again.

She jolted when she felt an elbow in her ribs and frowned at her brother.

"Gabby asked you to pass the salad," Tate prompted.

"Oh. Sorry." She looked at the dishes on the table before realizing that she held the bowl of salad in her hand, then offered it to her cousin across the table. Glancing down at her plate, she saw that she hadn't taken any for herself. She had, however, put a lot of parmesan cheese on her pasta—and she didn't even like parmesan. She picked up her fork and pushed the noodles around on her plate.

Gabriella nudged Penny's foot under the table to get her attention. "Are you okay?" she whispered quietly.

Penny nodded, though she couldn't meet her cousin's gaze.

"Is it Jason?"

To her credit, Gabby didn't actually say the words aloud so much as she mouthed them across the table, but Penny cast a quick glance toward the man in question, who was seated immediately beside her cousin, and was relieved to find that he was in conversation with his young niece, seated on his other side. Still, the question obliterated any remaining hope that she and Jason had managed to keep their short-lived relationship a secret from anyone.

She shook her head.

But Gabriella obviously didn't believe her, because she leaned a little closer and said, "If you ever want to talk about—"

Penny shook her head again, more decisively this time. The absolute last thing she wanted was to talk about how Jason Foley had used her and how she'd been fool enough to let him, fool enough to believe that a man like him could ever seriously be interested in her.

She felt the sting of tears at the back of her eyes but furiously blinked them away.

Thankfully, Gabriella didn't have the chance to question her further, as Rafael leaned close to whisper something in his wife's ear, and whatever that something was, it brought a luminous smile to Gabby's face.

Penny looked away. That was the thing about national holidays and family gatherings—she was always surrounded by couples, and she was always alone.

This year seemed even worse, because the new faces around her weren't temporary ones that would be replaced next year, as had frequently happened in the past. Because somehow, in the space of six months, everyone around her had miraculously fallen in love.

Gabby and Rafael eloped after a whirlwind courtship, and though many had wondered about a match between the heiress and her bodyguard, it was obvious that they were madly in love with one another. Both of her older brothers were now affianced—and if her brother Tate's involvement with Tanya Kimbrough— daughter of the McCords' longtime housekeeper—had taken everyone aback, that surprise paled in comparison to Blake's engagement to Katie Whitcomb-Salgar, Tate's ex-girlfriend.

More recently, Penny's twin sister had hooked up with Travis Foley. And even her mother had partnered up— with Jason's father, of all people. Of course, Rex Foley was also the father of Penny's youngest brother, Charlie, which revelation had come as a shock to everyone, Charlie included. Apparently the Foley-McCord feud had come to an end twenty-two years earlier, at least so far as Eleanor and Rex were concerned.

The sound of a fork tapping against a wineglass drew Penny's attention back to the present and to Travis Foley at the end of the table. He waited until the various conversations had halted before addressing the group.

"Paige and I have some news that we wanted to share with you, news of something that we can all be thankful for this Thanksgiving."

Paige smiled, her eyes glowing with excitement as she faced the assembled guests. "We found the Santa Magdalena Diamond."

"The Santa Magdalena Diamond," Eleanor echoed, stunned. "All these years…I was never sure it was even real."

"It's real," Paige assured her. "And it's absolutely stunning."

An assessment that was confirmed by the gasps and sighs that sounded when Travis set the spectacular forty-eight-karat diamond on the table for everyone to see.

"I knew it was real," Blake McCord said. "And that it would be the answer to all of our problems, if only we could find it."

"And you knew that it was probably hidden somewhere in the abandoned mines on this land."

"If that's where you found it—on McCord property— then the diamond is rightfully ours," the McCord CEO asserted.

"But Travis is the rightful lessee of the property," Jason interjected. "So the diamond is his."

"Paige and I found it together, so the diamond is ours," Travis said, in a tone that brooked no argument.