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“I imagine right about now you’re thinking I’m some sort of nutcase. But I’m actually a deputy sheriff from Bee County, Texas. And I have a brother, Ripp, who’s a deputy, too, over in Goliad County.”
Ileana inclined her head to let him know that she understood. “So you’re both Texas lawmen who work in different counties.”
“That’s right. So was our father, Owen. But he’s been dead for several years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. And your mother?”
His gaze flickered away from hers. “We’re not certain. You see, my brother and I think Frankie Cantrell is our mother.”
If a tornado had roared through the hospital lobby, Ileana couldn’t have been more shocked, and she struggled to keep her mouth from falling open.
“Your mother! Is this some sort of joke?”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
No, she thought with dismay. He looked torn; he looked as though he’d rather be anywhere but here. And most of all, he appeared to be genuine.
“What makes you think she’s your mother?”
Clearly uncomfortable with her question, he scooted to the edge of the cushion. “It’s too long a story to take up your time. I’d better be going. I’ll—come back later. When you—well, when you think it’ll be okay for me to talk to her.”
For a moment, Ileana forgot that she was a doctor and this man was a complete stranger. Frankie and her family had been friends with the Sanderses for many years. In fact, Ileana’s mother, Chloe, was worried sick praying that her dear friend would pull through. If this man had something to do with Frankie, Ileana wanted to know about it. She needed to know about it, in order to keep her patient safe and cocooned from any stress.
Grabbing his arm, she prevented him from rising to his feet. “I’ve finished my rounds, Mr. McCleod. I have time for a story.”
He glanced toward the plate glass windows surrounding the quiet waiting area. “There’s not a whole lot of daylight left. I’m sure it’s time for you to go home.”
“I can find my way in the dark,” she assured him.
Her response must have surprised him, because he looked at her with arched brows.
“All right,” he said bluntly. “I’ll try to make it short. When I was ten and my brother eight, Frankie McCleod, our mother, left the family.” Reaching to his pocket, he pulled out a leather wallet and extracted a photo. As he handed the small square to Ileana, he said, “That was twenty-nine years ago, and we never heard from her again. At least us boys never heard from her. We can’t be certain about our father. He never spoke of her. But a few days ago, we found out that Frankie Cantrell had been corresponding through the years with an old friend of hers in the town where we lived. She has to be Frankie McCleod Cantrell.”
Dropping her hand away from his arm, Ileana took the photo from him and closely examined the grainy black and white image. Two young boys, almost the same height and both with dark hair, stood next to a young woman wearing an A-line dress and chunky sandals. Her long hair was also dark and parted down the middle. If this was Frankie Cantrell, she’d changed dramatically. But then, nearly thirty years could do that to a person.
“Oh, dear, this is—well, my family and I have been friends with the Cantrells for years. We never heard she had another family. At least, I didn’t. I can’t say the same for Mother, though.” She handed the photo back to him, while wondering if it was something he always carried with him. “The woman in the picture—she’s very beautiful. I can’t be sure that it’s Frankie. I was only a small child when she first came here. I don’t recall how she looked at that time.”
He lifted his hat from his head and pushed a hand through his hair. It was thick, the color of a dark coffee bean and waved loosely against his head. The shine of it spoke of good health, but Ileana wasn’t looking at him as a doctor. No, for the first time in years she was looking at a man as a woman, and the realization shook her even more than his strange story.
He released a heavy breath, then said, “I wasn’t expecting to run into this sort of roadblock—I mean, with Frankie being ill. I’m sure you’re thinking I should have called first. But this…well, it’s not something you can just blurt out over the phone. Besides, if I’d alerted her I was coming, she might have been…conveniently away.”
Ileana didn’t bother to hide her frown. “Not for a minute. Frankie isn’t that sort of woman.”
He looked at her. “Do you know what kind of woman she was thirty years ago?”
The question wasn’t sharp, but there was an intensity to his voice that caused her cheeks to warm. Or was it just the husky note in his drawl that was making her feel all hot and shivery at the same time? Either way, she had to get a grip on herself and figure out how best to handle this man. If that was possible.
“No. But I hardly think a person’s moral values could change that much.”
Mac McCleod rose to his feet. “A person can change overnight, Doctor. You know that as well as I.”
Not the human heart, she wanted to tell him. But singing Frankie’s praises to this man wouldn’t help matters at the moment. She wasn’t sure what would help this cowboy or how to provide it—other than to let him see Frankie, which at this point was out of the question. If this man was Frankie’s son, the shock of seeing him might send her patient into cardiac arrest.
Rising to her feet, she said, “What are your plans? Do you have a place to stay?”
As soon as the questions slipped past her lips, she realized they were probably too personal. Yet she was moved by his plight.
“I have a room rented at a hotel here in town.” His dark gaze landed smack on her face. “The rest depends on you.”
The man would be leaving the hospital in a few minutes. Her heartbeat should have been returning to its normal pace; instead it was laboring as though she was climbing nearby Sierra Blanca.
“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. McCleod.”
A grin suddenly dimpled his cheeks, and she felt like an idiot as her breath caught in her throat.
“I have a feeling we’re going to get to know one another very well, Doc. You might as well start calling me Mac.”
Ileana cleared her throat. “All right—Mac. Why do your plans depend on me?”
He folded his arms against his chest as his gaze lazily inspected her. For the first time in years, Ileana was horribly aware of her bare face, the homeliness of her plain appearance.
“I can’t leave town until I see Ms. Cantrell, and right now it looks as though you’re calling the shots as to when that might be,” he said.
Ileana not only felt like an idiot but she needed to add imbecile to the self-description. Normally, her mind was sharp, but this man seemed to be turning her brain to useless gray pudding.
“Oh—uh—yes.” Hating herself for getting so flustered, she threw her attention into digging a prescription pad and pen from her lab coat pocket. “Do you have a phone number you can give me? Just in case Ms. Cantrell’s condition changes.”
He gave his cell phone number to her, then asked, “Are you expecting her to improve in the next day or two—at least, enough for visitors?”
As Ileana folded the piece of paper with the phone number, she carefully chose her words. “Honestly, no. And that’s if no complications pop up.”
“You do expect her to survive, don’t you?”
There was a real look of concern on his face, and Ileana tried to imagine what he must be going through at this moment. He’d traveled hundreds of miles to search for a woman who might be his mother, only to find her desperately ill.
She reached across the small space separating them and folded her hand around his. “I’m doing all I can to make sure she does.”
Was it surprise or confusion she saw flickering in his brown eyes before he glanced away? Either way she could see he wasn’t nearly as cool as he wanted her to believe. The idea drew him to her just that much more. She knew what it was like to try to hide her emotions, to not allow people to see that she was hurting or troubled.
“Thank you for giving me your time,” he murmured. “I’ll be checking back with you.”
Dropping her hand, she stepped back. “You’re very welcome.”
“Goodbye, Ms. Sanders.”
He cast her one last look, then turned and strode quickly toward an exit that would take him to the parking lot.
As Ileana watched him walk away, she wondered why he’d called her Ms. Sanders. Everyone, even those who had known her for years, didn’t think of her as a woman. She was Doc or Doctor. A physician and nothing more.
“Who was that?”
At the sound of Renae’s voice, Ileana turned her head to see the nurse had walked up beside her. Both women continued to watch Mac McCleod as he disappeared through the revolving door.
Ileana bit back a sigh. “That was trouble. A big dose of it.”
Chapter Two
“Ripp, I must have been crazy when I told you to stay home and let me come out here,” Mac said into the cell phone. “Nothing is going right.”
Two hours had passed since Mac left the hospital, and during that time, he’d continually tried to call his brother back in Texas. But Ripp, and the majority of the sheriff’s department, had been on a manhunt most of the evening for a hit-and-run driver. Subsequently, Ripp had just now found time to return his call.
“What do you mean?” Ripp asked. “Did you find the ranch okay?”
“I did,” Mac answered as he sat on the side of the hotel bed, his elbows resting on his knees. “A maid was the only person I talked to. She informed me that Ms. Cantrell was in the hospital in Ruidoso.”
“Hospital?”
The shock in Ripp’s voice mirrored Mac’s feelings. That Frankie might be in ill health or dead was something that neither brother had really wanted to consider. After all, if this Frankie were really their mother, she would only be about sixty years old. But a relatively young age didn’t always equal good health.
“Yeah. I drove back to Ruidoso and went to the hospital thinking I could talk to her there. No such luck. Her doctor says she’s too ill to see me.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“The doctor wouldn’t tell me much. I was so damned aggravated at the moment that I can’t remember everything she said regarding Frankie’s health.”
“She?”
“Frankie’s doctor. It’s a woman. And from what she told me, her family and the Cantrells have been friends for years. She—uh—told me that Frankie has a son and daughter. Quint and Alexa, I think she called them.”
“Oh.” Several long moments passed as Ripp digested this news, and then he finally asked, “Did this doctor know anything about Frankie’s past?”
Ripp’s question caused the image of Dr. Sanders to parade to the front of Mac’s mind. She’d been as plain as white flour. The type of woman he normally wouldn’t glance at twice. Yet her gentleness had touched him in a way that had been totally unexpected.
Clearing his throat, he said, “I asked. She doesn’t know anything about it. From what she says, Frankie is a respected woman. That ought to tell you the doctor is in the dark.”
Ripp sighed. “We don’t really know what Frankie is, Mac. That’s why you’re there. To find out. So when did this doctor think you might be able to see Frankie?”
“Several days, at least.”
“Oh. Well, you might as well come home, Mac. There’s no use in you hanging around Ruidoso for that long. Or do you think you ought to see her children?”
“And say what?” Mac asked sarcastically. “Hi, y’ all, I’m your half brother?”
Ripp growled back at him. “What the hell is the matter with you, Mac? You’re nearly forty years old! It’s not like you’re that ten-year-old little boy, staring out the window with tears on your cheeks. We’re not going to let the woman keep hurting us, are we?”
Mac shoved out a heavy breath. His brother was right. He had to get a grip on his emotions and view this whole thing as a man, not that little boy who’d had his heart ripped out so long ago.
“I tell you, Ripp. The news that she had a son and daughter knocked my boots out from under me. I just never imagined her having other babies. Did you? I mean, if she didn’t want us, why the heck would she have had more children? Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.”
“We don’t know that she didn’t want us, Mac. Dad told Rye that she wanted us.”
“Hell,” Mac muttered. “Rye was probably just trying to make you feel better. You’d been stabbed with a butcher knife at the time, remember? He probably thought you couldn’t handle any more pain.”
Ripp chuckled under his breath. “I can handle anything you can take and more, big brother.”
In spite of his frustration, a smile tugged at Mac’s lips. If anyone could make him forget his troubles, it was his brother. And even though they were sometimes as different as night and day, there was a bond between them tougher than barbed wire.
“Yeah, you probably can,” he told him as he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. He was getting hungry. Besides that, the small hotel room was beginning to close in on him. “Look, Ripp, I’m gonna go out and find something to eat. It’s been a hell of a day, and I’m beat. I’ll call you tomorrow—after I find out more.”
“So you’re not coming home?”
“No way. I’ve started on this journey and I don’t mean to cut it short. I’m going to camp in the hospital until Dr. Sanders gets her belly full of me. She’ll have to give in sooner or later.”
“Poor woman. She’s not going to know what hit her,” Ripp murmured more to himself than to Mac. “Just try to be your charming self, Mac. We don’t want anyone out there thinking we’re a pair of arrogant Texans.”
Mac chuckled. “Why not—we are, aren’t we?”
“Go eat. I’ve got to go help Lucita. Elizabeth is having a squalling fit about something. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
His brother cut the call, and Mac closed the instrument in his hand. Ripp had a beautiful wife, a twelve-year-old son and a baby daughter. His family adored him. He had something to live for, something to come home to at night. He was blessed. And Mac was happy for him.
Yet there were times that Mac looked at his brother and wondered what it would feel like to have those same things. Oh, yeah, he’d had a wife once. But Brenna hadn’t been a wife in the real sense of the word. She’d been more like a permanent date. Someone to go out with for a night of fun. Someone to have sex with. Giving him children had not been in her plans. And giving him love, the sort that came from deep within a person, was something she’d been incapable of. But then, Mac couldn’t put all the blame on Brenna for their failed marriage. At first he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted—a party girl. And for a while he’d been perfectly content with their life together. Then as time went by, the partying had begun to wear thin, and his life and marriage started to look more and more shallow. He’d begun to yearn for something more lasting and meaningful. Like raising kids in a real home. Brenna hadn’t married him under those terms, and when he’d asked her to change, she’d laughed all the way to the office of a divorce lawyer.
Now, after that humiliating lesson, he felt like a fool for ever thinking a good timin’ guy like him had once dreamed he could be a father to a house full of kids. Now he told himself it was better to simply enjoy women on brief, but frequent, occasions and forget about ever having a family.
Several miles east of Ruidoso, smack in the middle of the Hondo Valley, Ileana shifted down her pickup truck as it rattled across the low wooden bridge that crossed the Hondo River. The truck was old, and the speedometer had rolled over so many times that she’d lost count. For the past two years her father, Wyatt, had pestered her to buy a new one. After all, she had heaps of money and not a lot to do with it.
But Ileana didn’t want a new truck. What would be the use of shaking it over a dirt road every day? she’d argued. Besides, why did she need a new vehicle when the only place she ever went was to work and back home? She was a practical person, and when something worked as it should, she didn’t see any point in changing it.
Across the river, the dirt road made a gradual climb into open meadows dotted with ponderosa and piñon pine. On either side of the road, cattle and horses stood at hay mangers, chomping alfalfa in the falling twilight of a late February day.
The Bar M Ranch had been Ileana’s home for all her life and her mother’s before that. Her grandfather, Tomas Murdock, had built the place from the ground up and turned it into one of the most profitable ranches in southern New Mexico.
But the Bar M hadn’t been her grandfather’s only interest. He’d been a gambler and a bit of a womanizer, the result of which had produced illegitimate twins. The babies had been left on the doorstep of the Bar M Ranch house, and for weeks no one had known who’d parented them. It had been a shocking event that had rocked all of Lincoln County.
So Ileana wasn’t a stranger to odd stories, and the one that Mac McCleod had told her this evening—well, it sounded like more than an odd circumstance to her. Could he possibly be a son from Frankie’s past life? And if he hung around like he’d promised, how would the woman react to seeing him again?
The questions had been stewing in Ileana’s head ever since Mac had left the hospital, and now she decided she couldn’t go home to her little place on the mountain until she stopped by the main ranch house and had a talk with her mother. If anyone might know about Frankie’s past, it would be Chloe.
Five minutes later, she parked the truck behind the pink stucco hacienda and entered a gate that opened to a center courtyard. In the summer months, her parents were always having barbecues and other parties. Her brother, Adam, and his wife, Maureen, often brought their family to join in the fun. So did her sister, Anna, and her husband, Miguel. Even Ileana’s aunts, Justine and Rose, made frequent trips to the Bar M with their grand-children. The crowd of family and friends made the oval swimming pool and courtyard a lively place. But this evening, a cold wind was whipping through the bare garden and ruffling the plastic cover over the pool. The lawn chairs were stacked beneath the covered ground-level porch that followed the square shape of the house.
When Ileana stepped inside the kitchen, she found Cesar, her mother’s longtime cook, laying out plates and silverware on a round pine table.
The old cowboy looked up and smiled as he spotted Ileana. “Good evenin’, Doc. You stayin’ for supper?”
Ileana walked over to the tall, wiry man and kissed his leathery cheek. From the time Cesar had been fifteen years old, he’d worked on the Bar M. After forty years of dealing with fractious horses and several broken bones to show for it, Chloe had relegated him to the kitchen. Now after twenty years of stirring up ranch grub, he could safely be called a hell of a good cook.
“I hadn’t planned on it, Cesar, but if you have plenty, I will. Where’s Mother? Is she in from the barn yet?”
