A South Texas Christmas

Chapter Two

The moment Neil dropped the receiver back on its hook, Connie asked, “What was that? Or should I ask who was that?”

“Some woman down in south Texas,” Neil said wonderingly.

Connie was enthralled. “So? What do you think?”

With a wry shake of his head, Neil looked at his secretary. “You know, when Nevada first came to me about finding Linc’s mother, I never thought the search would turn into me dealing with people who have more problems than this ole boy knows how to deal with.”

Frowning, Connie said, “You’re making her sound like a mental case—or something worse.”

Neil peeled the phone number from Connie’s notepad, folded the paper, then stowed it away in his shirt pocket.

“How do you know she isn’t? You don’t know what was said on the other end of the line.”

“I don’t have to know the whole conversation,” Connie argued. “The woman is obviously searching for someone she loves. You could show a little more sensitivity, you know. What’s the matter with you, anyway? If people didn’t have problems we’d never have any clients.”

Neil had practiced law for thirteen years. Once he’d passed the bar exam and gotten his license, he’d gone to work in Farmington. Not a huge city by any means, but compared to Aztec it had been like moving from the secluded countryside to downtown Manhattan. The firm had specialized in wrongful lawsuits and he’d hated the experience so much that for a brief time he’d considered giving up law completely. Until he’d come back home to Aztec and decided to open an office of his own where he could help people with an array of needs rather than constantly suing someone.

His clients trickled in sporadically and sometimes not at all. But that was all right with Neil. He didn’t want to be one of those harried men who died before they ever had a hand on a retirement check. Like his father had.

“Yeah, yeah. I need to be a nicer person. This afternoon when I call the woman back, I’ll try to be more sympathetic.” As he hurried to the door, he shot her a wicked grin. “And don’t look at me in that shameful way, honey. You know how I hate to disappoint you.”

Rolling her eyes, Connie motioned for him to leave and chuckling under his breath, Neil shut the door behind him and headed down the sidewalk toward the Wagon Wheel.

For early December, the day was mild. Most often, this time of year brought brutally cold weather to this northern corner of the state. It wasn’t unusual to see snow and even blizzard conditions, so the warmth of the weak, wintry sun shining down on his broad shoulders was an unexpected pleasure.

The Wagon Wheel Café was situated off Main Street and had been in existence for more years than Neil had been alive. It was far from the nicest eating place in Aztec. The vinyl booths were worn and the Formica bar running the length of the room had lost its red and white pattern from all the elbows and dishes sliding over it. But the down-home, friendly atmosphere and good food made up for any shortcomings. Once Thanksgiving had passed, the waitresses had cheered up the place by hanging Christmas bells and glittery tinsel from the ceiling. Poinsettias sat on every table and behind the bar a CD player constantly spun songs of the season.

During the weekdays, Neil always ate lunch here. But he didn’t often get to lunch with the busy county sheriff. And now that Quito and Clementine were married and trying to start a family, he saw his old friend even less.

When Neil entered the café, he immediately spotted Quito sitting in a booth situated by a plate-glass window overlooking the adjacent street. A stranger to Neil was standing at the edge of the table talking amiably to the sheriff, but as soon as he walked up to the booth, the other man politely excused himself.

“Sorry if I interrupted something,” Neil apologized to his friend as he slipped into the seat. “And before you start in—yes, I’m aware that I’m late, but it couldn’t be helped.”

Quito, who had a mixture of Navajo and Mexican blood, was a handsome man of rough features and a body built like a small bull. Neil had often wished he had just half of the sheriff’s charisma. It was no wonder that the man had easily held his office for the past fifteen years.

“I’m not griping,” Quito replied. “But I was beginning to wonder.”

“Have you ordered yet?” Neil asked.

“No. I waited for you.”

Before Neil could reply, a waitress appeared at the side of their table and the two men quickly ordered the blue plate special. Today it was pork roast with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, corn and cherry cobbler. Not a dieter’s dream, but Neil didn’t have to worry about any flab on his six-foot frame. At least, not yet. But he was thirty-nine years old. Who knew what middle-aged maladies might strike him next year?

“So were you flooded with clients this morning?” Quito asked once the waitress filled their coffee cups and left the table.

Neil laughed. “Not hardly. Other than me, I think Connie’s the only one who’s been in and out of the front door this morning.”

Amused by his friend’s response, Quito shook his head. “You don’t appear to be too worried about it.”

Neil reached for his coffee. “No need to worry. Worry can’t change anything. Besides, I never wanted to be rich.”

Which couldn’t be more true, Neil thought. He’d never been a man obsessed with acquiring a fortune. He lived modestly, on a place out of town, where the only neighbors he had were coyotes and sometimes bear. He’d purchased the land with money that his father had left him when he’d died of a sudden heart attack. James Rankin had only been forty-five years old at the time. His father’s premature death was an everyday reminder to Neil that money couldn’t buy happiness or immortality.

“Well, you’ll never be destitute,” Quito remarked fondly. “So if a client didn’t keep you at the office, what did?”

“Connie!”

“Your secretary? What’s the matter with her?”

“Nothing. She answered the phone,” Neil quipped.

Quito chuckled. “Isn’t that what you pay the woman to do?”

“I pay her to do what I tell her to do. And I told her not to answer the phone,” he said with a grimace. “On top of that, she made me talk to the caller.”

“What a hell of a thing for her to do,” Quito said with wry humor.

Seeing that his friend was practically laughing, Neil grinned. “Okay. Call me crazy, but I’ve had a hell of a week. I’m not a private investigator, Quito, but ever since I put that damn picture of Darla Carlton in the San Antonio Express, I’ve had to try to play Mike Hammer.”

Quito chuckled. “You’re showing your age with that reference. And that shouldn’t be so hard for you, Neil. You already have the playboy part down.”

“You’re as sharp as a tack today, old buddy,” Neil retorted, while thinking the sort of experience he’d had with women wasn’t likely to be helpful with Ms. Raine Crockett. She didn’t sound like the type who could be easily charmed by a man. “So why don’t you advise me as to how to deal with nut cases?”

Quito glanced at him. “Is that what this last caller was, too?”

Neil released a weary breath and started to answer, but the waitress appeared with their food. Neil waited until she’d served them and the two men had started to eat before he continued the conversation.

“Actually this one wasn’t a kook. In fact, she sounded pleasant enough, only a little strange. And two things she said did intrigue me.”

“The caller was a woman?”

Neil nodded as the conversation with Raine Crockett played over in his mind. He realized he was eager to talk with her again. And not just because she might accidentally be a lead to Darla Carlton. There had been something innocent and vulnerable in her voice. Her words had touched him in a way that had taken him by complete surprise; a fact that he wasn’t about to share with the sheriff. Quito would think he was crazy and Neil would probably have to agree with him.

“A very young woman,” Neil answered. “Her name is Raine Crockett.”

“And what was so intriguing about this Raine Crockett?” Quito asked, then added, “I might be able to help.”

“I’m probably going to need it,” Neil told him as he picked up his fork and shoveled it into the potatoes and gravy. “First of all, she said she was calling from a ranch north of Goliad, Texas. That’s not all that far from San Antonio.”

Quito nodded with deduction. “That’s where Linc’s stepfather was from.”

“Right,” Neil responded. “Now add that to the notion that this young woman said her mother’s past identity had been lost.”

Quito frowned. “What the hell does that mean? The mother doesn’t know who she is?”

Neil turned a palm upward in a helpless gesture. “Don’t know yet what it means. And this young woman was reluctant to explain anything over the telephone.” Scared was more like it, Neil thought, and he was eager to find out why. “But she had the timing right. Her mother apparently lost her memory twenty-four years ago. That’s when Darla disappeared.”

“Could just be coincidence,” the sheriff told him in a dismissive way.

“Could be,” Neil agreed. “But I’m calling her back this afternoon and I’m going to do my damned best to get some answers from her.”

Quito was silent for a few moments as he ate and thought about Neil’s words. Then he warned, “You’d better be careful, Neil. There’s plenty of con artists out there just waiting to pounce on people searching for missing family members. You might turn around twice and realize she’s taken you for a ride.”

“No chance,” Neil said with a shake of his head. “I’m not that dumb. At least, not where women are concerned.”

His friend grunted with amusement. “Since when?”

Neil chuckled. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ve made a few bad choices in my lifetime. But the lessons have made me wiser. Never believe a pair of pretty blue eyes.”

Quito glanced across the table to Neil. “What about green ones? Or brown? Or gray?”

Laughing, Neil held up a hand. “Whoa, buddy. I can only deal with one color at a time. And I haven’t seen Raine Crockett’s yet.”

A week later, Neil shoved up the cuff of his white shirt to expose the face of his watch. It was past twelve thirty. Far past. And so far he had not seen any sign of Ms. Raine Crockett.

Maybe the young woman was one of the con artists that Quito had been warning him about, Neil thought, as he studied the people milling about him. Maybe she’d lured him down here to San Antonio just for kicks, just to watch him squirm and know that she’d caused him to lose time and money.

Restless now, he rose from the wrought-iron bench and walked over to the river’s edge. At this section of the river walk in downtown San Antonio, the nearby shops were richly decorated with Christmas trees and colorful blinking lights. Shoppers were thick and people carrying parcels were strolling the sidewalks while enjoying the warm afternoon.

This morning in New Mexico he’d left blowing snow and temperatures in the twenties. When he’d stepped off the plane at Stinson Municipal Airport, he’d been hit with sunshine and balmy south winds. If Raine Crockett turned out to be one more kook, he could at least say the weather and the scenery had been an enjoyable break from winter in Aztec.

And speaking of scenery, he thought, as he noticed a slim young woman walking quickly in his direction, he could look at this sort of Texas rose all day long. Honey-brown hair swished and bounced against the tops of her shoulders as her long, shapely legs carried her forward. Black high heels were strapped around her ankles and a sweater type dress of powder blue covered her shapely body.

Black sunglasses shielded her eyes from the bright Texas sun, but even so, he could see that she was beautiful, like a graceful rosebud among a patch of prickly pear.

He was still admiring the woman when he realized she was walking straight up to him. Powder blue. She was wearing powder blue, he thought with sudden dawning. This was Raine Crockett. The woman he’d been waiting to meet!

While he tried to gather his shocked senses, she stopped a few feet from where he stood next to the ragged trunk of a Mexican palm tree. Her smooth forehead was creased with uncertainty as she studied him.

“Pardon me, sir,” she said. “Is your name Neil Rankin?”

The south Texas accent slowed her words and made his name sound more like a melody. He felt his heart jerk with odd reaction.

“That’s me,” he said. “Are you Ms. Crockett?”

Nodding, she slipped the glasses from her face and offered her free hand out to him. “Yes, I am. Hello, Mr. Rankin.”

Her hand was small and warm inside his. He shook it, then held it firmly between the two of his.

Smiling faintly, he met her gaze with a directness he’d acquired in law school. She had green eyes, he noticed instantly, a cool, willow-green that reminded him of early spring when the air still had a nip to it.

“Thank you for meeting with me.” She let out a long breath that told Neil she must be nervous about this rendezvous. Well, he could tell her that he wasn’t exactly calm himself. He hadn’t been expecting to meet with a woman like the one standing before him. He’d expected someone with average looks, not an ingenue in a siren’s clothing.

“No. I should be the one thanking you, Ms. Crockett. I know this whole thing has caused you a lot of inconvenience.”

Hell, Neil, what has come over you? he silently cursed himself. He was the one who’d been sitting around in airport terminals, shuffling luggage and booking a hotel room. He was the one who’d had to leave his law office and put off more important and profitable clients.

His being here was his own fault, though. He was the one who’d allowed Ms. Crockett to persuade him to fly down here to San Antonio when he should have stuck to his guns and told her a big, flat-out no. He should have told her he couldn’t go traipsing off to another state just to check out a woman’s hunch.

“It will all be worth it, Mr. Rankin, if Darla Carlton turns out to be my mother. And I want to thank you. Very much. I realize I was asking too much of you to make this trip. But I didn’t know of any other way.”

She sounded sincere enough and Neil pushed away the annoyance he’d been feeling since early this morning when he’d first boarded the plane to make this trip.

After a quick glance around him, Neil gestured to the empty bench he’d been sitting on earlier. “Why don’t we sit down so we can talk? Or better yet, while I was walking here to meet you, I noticed a restaurant not too far back along the river. Would you like coffee or something to eat?”

“I would love a cup of coffee,” she replied. “I was in such a hurry to get away from the ranch this morning I didn’t have time to drink any.”

“All right,” he said with a smile and reached for her arm.

She stiffened the moment he touched her and Neil wondered if she wasn’t accustomed to having a man escort her or if the reaction was something directed at him personally. In either case, he kept his fingers firmly around her elbow as he guided her down the sidewalk in the direction from which he’d come.

By the time they reached the café, she had relaxed somewhat. He could feel the muscles in her arm losing their rigidness. She even smiled when he asked her if she would like to sit at one of the outside tables near the water’s edge.

“That would be lovely,” she told him.

He guided her to a vacant table, a round, tiny piece of furniture that was made for two people who wanted to sit close. The chairs were made of bent wire with pink padded seats. All around them were more tables that were positioned on terraces of ground that eventually climbed to the café building itself. Willows, palm trees and bougainvillea bursting with peach-gold blossoms shaded the patrons and provided a landing place for graceful mourning doves and chattering mockingbirds.

“It’s like summer down here. You’re very lucky to have this sort of climate,” he told her as he pulled out one of the chairs and helped her into it.

She murmured her thanks, then asked, “Is it cold where you came from?”

She smelled like an angel, Neil thought. Or at least what he imagined the scent of an angel would be: flowery, sweet and warm. As he moved away from her, he forced himself not to breathe in too deeply. He didn’t want the scent of this woman to dally with his head. But something told him it probably would anyway.

He answered, “Snowing. In fact, I was a little worried that the flight would be delayed.”

While he took the seat across from her, she pushed her handbag beneath her chair, then straightened and shook her silky brown hair back from her face.

“I’m glad it wasn’t delayed,” she told him. “I would have had to come up with some sort of excuse to spend the night in San Antonio. And I don’t like fibbing to my mother.”

“Why fib in the first place?” he asked. “You’re both grown women. And if you’ll excuse me for being blunt, it seems a bit ridiculous. This hiding you’re trying to do.”

Her soft pink lips pursed with disapproval. “I tried to explain over the telephone, Mr. Rankin—”

“Please,” he interrupted, “call me, Neil. There’s no need for us to be formal with each other, is there?”

No need, except that this man was shaking her up like a south Texas windstorm, Raine thought. Dear Lord, she hadn’t expected Mr. Neil Rankin to look like a film star. She had imagined him to be around fifty years of age, but he had to be at least ten or fifteen years younger than that. Thick blond hair streaked with threads of light brown and platinum was brushed smoothly to one side of his head. Eyes as blue as the sky were set beneath darker brows and lashes. His white smile was a bit lazy and bracketed by two of the most adorable dimples she’d ever seen on a man. Just looking at him left her a bit tongue-tied.

“Of course not. Call me Raine.”

“And you can call me Neil. Or anything else you’d like,” he added teasingly.

“Neil will be fine,” she said a bit stiffly and then wished she could slap herself for being so awestruck. Neil Rankin was just a lawyer, after all. And as for male hunks, she’d seen a few of those before, too. There wasn’t any need for her to get all slack jawed over this one.

Footsteps sounded behind her and she glanced around to see a waitress approaching their table. Raine couldn’t help but notice how the young woman was eyeing Neil with an appreciative eye. But that shouldn’t surprise her. He cut a dashing figure in his white shirt and green patterned tie.

The two of them ordered coffee and pecan pie. While they waited for the waitress to return with the food, Raine wondered how she could explain anything about her need to find her father when all she could think about was the way this man was making her heart do a complete runaway.

“You told me on the telephone that you’d never traveled on your own,” he said. “How did you manage to drive up here without lifting your mother’s eyebrows?”

Raine’s cheeks burned. It was embarrassing that this man had the ability to make her feel so naive and inexperienced. Even though Esther had kept her on a tight rein, it wasn’t as if she’d been shut away in a convent for the past twenty-four years. She’d spread her wings once and had a brief relationship during her college days. That horrible experience had left her very wary of men in general.

“Uh, when I said that, I meant traveling for a long distance alone. The ranch is only about a fifty-mile drive from here. I do come up to the city on occasion to shop—and other things. And since Christmas is coming I had a good excuse for a shopping trip.”

His brows had lifted on the “other things,” but Raine didn’t bother to elaborate. Suddenly Neil Rankin’s view of her had become all too important and she realized she didn’t relish him getting the idea that she was a stay-at-home-stuck-in-the-mud kind of person. She didn’t want him to know that a wild night on the town for her meant sharing a movie and a box of popcorn with a male friend, who was far more safe than exciting.

From the tiny distance across the table, Raine watched a faint smile touch the corners of his mouth and she found herself studying his lips as though she’d never seen a pair of them on a man before. But then she hadn’t. At least, not a pair of lips that looked like Neil Rankin’s. They were as hard and masculine as his square jaw and she couldn’t help but wonder how many women had touched his face, kissed his lips. Too many, she figured.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m glad this trip won’t cause a problem for you.”

Maybe not a problem with her mother, Raine thought. But she was definitely having one with him. He was wrecking her senses and she couldn’t seem to do one thing about it.

She swallowed as the nervousness in her stomach went from a flutter to an all-out jig. “Look, Mr., uh, Neil,” she began haltingly, “I may have given you the wrong impression about myself.”

“Really?” His brows inched upward as he leaned casually back in the little iron chair. “What sort of impression do you think I have?”

She breathed deeply while asking herself why she hadn’t thought all this through before she’d made the call to Neil Rankin’s law office. Instead she’d made the call and this trip without telling anyone, even Nicolette. And now she was sitting here feeling as though she was about to jump off the edge of a rocky cliff.

“Well, you’re probably thinking I don’t make a move without my mother’s consent.”

Her small fingers were playing nervously with the napkin lying in front of her. Neil wanted to reach across the table and take her hand in his. He didn’t like the idea that she was uneasy with him and he wanted to reassure her that he was on her side and that the two of them were in this thing together.

“Not really,” he said in an easy, teasing manner. “I don’t see any strings attached to that pretty blue dress you’re wearing.”

A tiny smile lifted the corners of her mouth and then as she looked across the table at him, the amused expression on her face deepened. “Believe me, it used to be that bad. Before I finally grew up and moved away to go to college. When that happened, Mother was finally forced to cut some of the strings.”

As Neil’s gaze roamed her lovely face, he suddenly realized there were lots of things he would like to know about this woman. He got the feeling that up until now her life had not been typical. And that would probably be an understatement, what with having a mother that wasn’t aware of who she really was or where she’d come from. Lord, Neil couldn’t imagine how that would be. And even though his father had been a remote figure in his life, the idea of never knowing him was incomprehensible.