“You make it sound like we really are lovers.”

Neil’s hand slipped upward until he was cupping the side of her neck. Raine felt goose bumps dance along her arms.

“I wouldn’t be averse to making that part of our story true,” he whispered huskily. “What about you?”

Her jaw fell. “Is this what you call behaving like a gentleman?”

“I am being a gentleman, Raine. Otherwise you’d already be in my arms. Like this.” He tugged her forward and Raine was shocked to find herself clamped tightly to the front of his body. She squirmed in an attempt to escape the circle of his arms, but the movement only made things worse. His body was hard as a rock and she could feel the softness of her own curves gladly yielding to every inch of him.

If he kissed her again, she desperately feared she would go up in flames.

Dear Reader,

Several books ago, when I first began spinning tales about the Ketchum family, I was particularly drawn to their lifelong friend and attorney Neil Rankin. Through thick and thin, he’s the kind of guy who remains steadfast and devoted to his friends, and the sort that will tell them the truth of the matter, even when it hurts. His lonely heart cried out for that special woman, and while he travels all the way to a south Texas ranch to find her, he also uncovers a startling secret about the Ketchums that will change his life—and theirs—forever.

Christmas is a gift for love and hope, and Neil is lucky enough to experience both while he’s in south Texas. As for me, my family and I are blessed to enjoy the yuletide season here on the coast with balmy weather, homemade tamales, parades of shrimp boats decked with lights and Santa on a riding lawn mower!

God bless and Merry Christmas, y’all!

Stella

A South Texas Christmas
Stella Bagwell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

STELLA BAGWELL

sold her first book to Silhouette in November 1985. More than fifty novels later, she still loves her job and says she isn’t completely content unless she’s writing. Recently, she and her husband moved from the hills of Oklahoma to Seadrift, Texas, a sleepy little fishing town located on the coastal bend. Stella says the water, the tropical climate and the seabirds make it a lovely place to let her imagination soar and to put the stories in her head down on paper.

She and her husband have one son, Jason, who lives and teaches high school math in nearby Port Lavaca.

To my late mother, Lucille.

Like the Christmas star, you will

always glow in my heart.

Contents

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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

Could this photo be the answer to her prayers?

Only moments before, Raine Crockett had picked up the latest issue of the San Antonio Express with plans to scan the news before she got down to the business of her daily schedule at the Sandbur Ranch. But the paper had slipped from her hand and scattered across the floor, exposing a grainy black-and-white picture wedged among the classifieds. Now, she was still staring at the miracle in her hands, wondering if it might finally lead her to the truth about her mother’s past—and the identity of her father.

“Knock, knock.”

Her friend’s breezy voice had Raine jerking her head up and snapping the paper shut at the same time.

Nicolette Saddler, a member of the family that owned the Sandbur, was like a sister to Raine. This morning she desperately wanted Nicci’s advice.

“Thank God you stopped by! I want you to look at something.”

Nicolette glanced at the small watch on her wrist. “Sorry, Raine. I don’t have time. I have thirty minutes to get to the clinic. I just stopped by to ask you to let Cook know not to set a place for me this evening. I’m going to be working late.”

Not willing to let Nicci get away that easily, Raine jumped to her feet and grabbed Nicolette by the arm.

“Raine! I said I don’t have time! What—” Her exasperated expression turned curious as she watched Raine shut the door behind her. “What in the world is this about—” She paused as her medical training took over. “You look almost green. Are you feeling ill?”

Raine’s hair swished against the tops of her shoulders as she shook her head. Normally she was a quiet, serious-minded young woman, a bookkeeper who kept her nose stuck in the incoming and outgoing invoices of the Sandbur. It wasn’t like her to get emotional. But the photo had filled her with hope and excitement.

“I’m not sick!” Raine’s office was inside the Saddler family’s ranch house where anyone, especially her mother, might be passing by, so she spoke in a hushed voice, “I want you to look at this.” She jerked open the paper and thrust it at Nicolette.

A deep frown marred the woman’s forehead as she scanned the paragraphs beneath the photo.

“What do you think? Could it be my mother?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. This was taken years ago. Lord, look at that big hairdo! And the dangling earrings! Your mother wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that now. Still—” She paused. “I have to admit, it does resemble her.”

Another burst of optimism surged through Raine, in spite of her attempt to stem it. This photo was probably just another of one missing person among thousands. And Raine’s mother wasn’t actually lost. She was living here on the ranch, safe and sound, just as she had been for the past twenty-some years. It was Esther Crockett’s past—and all her memories of Raine’s father—that had been lost.

Nicolette groaned. “Raine, I really don’t want to get into this.”

Raine understood why her friend didn’t want to get involved. Nicci didn’t want to encourage a search that would only cause deeper rifts between Raine and her mother. Well, Raine didn’t want another fight with her mother, either. But she wanted—needed—answers, and as far as she was concerned, this photo was too important to simply toss in the trash.

“Am I crazy for thinking this might be Mother—before she lost her memory?”

Nicolette pointed to the brief information beneath the photo. “The woman went missing back in 1982. Why would anyone start searching now?”

“Maybe they’ve searched before—in other areas of the country. But just think, Nicci, the timing would be right. I was born that year, the year my mother lost her memory. And this woman does resemble Mother. I’m not crazy about that, am I?”

Nicolette’s expression changed to one of concern. “No, honey, you’re not crazy. But you’ve tried this before. By now you ought to realize what a long shot it would be for this—” she tapped the paper with her forefinger “—to be your mother in her younger days. This woman was obviously a glamour girl! Esther always looks like she just stepped out of a Victorian novel!”

Raine grimaced. It was true that Esther Crockett’s appearance was somewhat dowdy. And up until Raine had become an adult, Esther had also insisted that her daughter appear and behave in the same conservative fashion.

Little by little, Raine was doing her best to cut the thick ties her mother had used to restrict her all these years. But the separation wasn’t nearly fast enough to suit Raine. She was going to turn twenty-four next month. She was a grown woman now and she wanted to be her own person and live life her own way without fearing her mother’s disapproval. Most of all, she desperately wanted to find her father, even if her mother was dead set against the search.

“You’re right, Nicci. But Mother could have been different, before,” Raine argued on a hopeful note. “After all, she got pregnant with me. There must have been a man in her life.”

“True.” Nicci’s eyes were full of sympathy. “You really want to find your father, don’t you?”

Raine nodded as a hard lump of emotion collected in her throat. Ever since she’d been old enough to ask about her father, she’d been told there was no way of finding him. Esther didn’t remember that part of her life and, moreover, she refused to allow Raine to search for anything that might lead her to the man.

Blinking at the film of tears in her eyes, Raine said, “More than anything. What if I have brothers or sisters somewhere? I think about that all the time. It drives me crazy that Mother won’t talk about it or help me search.”

Shaking her head, Nicci handed the paper back to Raine. “Well, I guess there’s always a slim chance you could accidentally stumble onto some sort of genuine information here. But you’d be running a big risk in trying! The last time you did something like this—well, everyone on the ranch remembers how furious your mother was when she found out.”

Biting down on her lip, Raine paced around the room.

“You don’t have to warn me about Mother. We’ve had so many fights about this that, frankly, I’m sick of trying to reason with her.”

“What does that mean?” Nicolette questioned warily. “That you are going to call the number in the paper?”

Raine’s casual shrug belied her spinning thoughts. “Maybe—I don’t know yet.”

To hear her mother tell it, Raine should be more than content with her life. She had a nicely furnished office with an antique oak desk, leather chairs and a couch made of beautiful Corriente steer hide raised here on the Sandbur. Potted plants shaded the wide windows and an elaborate stereo system supplied her with music while she worked. She received a very adequate paycheck every week, plus plenty of benefits to go with it.

The accounting degree Raine had obtained two years ago was now paying off. Her job on the Sandbur was one that most any young woman would be envious of. She had a nice apartment in town and a social life, if she wanted it. But no matter how hard she tried, Raine couldn’t dampen the longing she had to find out about her mother’s past and her father, who had to be out there somewhere.

Nicolette nodded at the paper. “Why is an attorney instead of a private investigator taking the calls? Could be the woman in the photo is a criminal.”

Raine refused to consider that idea. “Then it couldn’t be Mother. She’s too straitlaced for that kind of past.”

Nicolette rolled her eyes. “Raine, you can’t know what kind of person Esther was twenty-five years ago! You could open up a nasty can of worms with this thing!”

Raine tightened her lips line. “You’re trying to discourage me.”

Nicolette threw up her hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m only trying to point out the downfalls. Especially if Esther discovers what you’re up to.”

Raine reached out and plucked the paper from her desk. “Maybe I can do this without her knowing about it. At least for a while.” Raine locked it away in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet.

“What are you doing that for?” Nicolette asked. “There are newspapers everywhere on this ranch, including your mother’s house. She’s probably already spotted the picture.”

“I don’t want anyone other than you knowing that I saw it.”

“I’m getting worried now! This isn’t like you! You don’t normally keep things from your mother. At least not something this important.”

Raine swiped the air with her hand. “Those are the key words here, Nicci. Something this important. This is my family we’re talking about—my father!”

Nicolette’s worried expression changed to one of resignation. “I know now how empty I would feel if I didn’t know who my father was. And I’ve always thought it strange that Esther doesn’t want to know who she used to be or where she came from. What woman in their right mind wouldn’t want to find the man that fathered her child?”

Nicolette’s question was one Raine had been asking herself for years now, but a reasonable answer had never come to her.

“I don’t understand it, either,” Raine said with a sigh. “I think she’s afraid. You just talked about opening a nasty can of worms. Well, I think that’s how your mother feels. But in my opinion, no one can truly step into the future if one doesn’t know her past.” Raine was no longer just talking about her mother.

As Nicolette left, Raine returned to her desk chair and dropped her head in her hands.

Oh, Mother, she silently wailed, why can’t you understand that I need to know who my father is before I can ever have a family of my own? It would all be so much easier if you would help me search for him rather than threatening to disown me if I even tried to look.

The shrill noise of the telephone jerked her back to the present and she cleared her throat to put on her best business voice. “Sandbur Ranch, business office.”

“Raine, it’s Matt here. I just wondered if you’d managed to find those vaccination papers on the bull we brought in yesterday? The vet will be here this morning. I need them.”

Raine shoved all thoughts of her mother and the newspaper article from her mind. “Sure thing, Matt. I have them right here. Would you like for one of the maids to bring them to your office?”

“Hell no!” the man barked in her ear. “Every damn time one of them shows up at the barn it takes me an hour to get the boys back to work and their minds on their business. I’ll come after the papers myself.”

“No need for that,” Raine quickly offered. “I can run them over to you.”

“Don’t even think it. You’re worse on the guys than the maids,” he said, then he hung up before Raine could make any sort of reply. Which wasn’t surprising. Matt Sanchez was all business and spent nearly every waking hour of his life making sure the cattle on the Sandbur were the best in Texas.

He was a good man to work for, as were the other family members who ran the Sandbur. For more than forty years, two sisters had made this ranch one of the best and biggest in south Texas. Elizabeth Sanchez and Geraldine Saddler had forged their families and succeeded in keeping the property prosperous by insisting that everyone work together.

Raine couldn’t help but be envious of the close-knit siblings and cousins. In good or bad times they were always there for each other. What must it feel like to be surrounded by loving relatives?

If you had the gumption to stand up to your mother and call that attorney, maybe you would find your own family.

The prodding little voice inside Raine’s head caused her gaze to swing to her file cabinet. Should she? Might the call lead her to her father?

Until she found the courage to pick up the phone, Raine could only wonder.

Later that same day in Aztec, New Mexico, Neil Rankin was about to step out of his law office to head to the Wagon Wheel Café for lunch when his secretary answered the phone.

Pausing at the door, he said, “I’m already gone.”

Scowling at him, Connie grabbed the receiver with one hand and held up the other in a gesture for him to wait.

“What did you say your name was? Miss—” She quickly scribbled on a pad, then pushed it around for Neil to read.

Darla’s photo!

Neil rolled his eyes. This past week he’d had more than a dozen calls pertaining to Darla’s photo and all the callers had been certified nut cases. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with another one. Not when his stomach was growling and the sheriff of San Juan County, who also happened to be a good buddy, was waiting to have lunch with him.

“Quito is already at the Wagon Wheel,” he mouthed to Connie. “Take the caller’s name and I’ll call back.”

Connie shook her head at him. “Of course he’ll speak with you, Ms. Crockett. Just a minute and I’ll transfer you to his personal line.”

With her palm tightly clamped over the receiver, she jabbed the phone in his direction. Neil cursed beneath his breath. He wasn’t a detective. He was a lawyer who normally dealt with simple cases like writing wills or reading abstracts. Dealing with inquiries about an ice cold missing persons’ case was not his style.

But Neil had taken on the task to help his childhood friend, Linc Ketchum. The rancher had gone without a word from his estranged mother for nearly twenty-five years. It had been only recently that Linc’s new bride had encouraged her husband to search for the lost woman.

As for Neil, he didn’t hold a lot of hope for finding Darla Carlton, but he was a man who stood by his promises and he’d assured Linc and Nevada that he wouldn’t stop looking until he’d turned over every stone on the path.

“This one sounds legitimate, Neil,” Connie said with a rush of excitement. “This is what you’ve been waiting for. I can feel it in my bones.”

“You’re going to be feeling something else in your bones if I plant my boot in your backside,” he warned jokingly, while silently hoping that Connie was right. He was getting mighty tired of all the false leads he’d gotten since this search for Linc’s mother had started.

Connie chuckled at her boss’s harmless threat. “You’re too much of a sweetheart to do something so mean, Neil. It’s why I’ve worked for you for the past ten years.”

Groaning, he grabbed the phone from his secretary’s plump hand. “Neil Rankin here.”

“Uh, this is Raine. Raine Crockett. I’m calling about the article you put in the paper—about the woman you’re searching for.”

The voice sounded light and sweet and young, and the thought quickly ran through his mind that a mischievous teenager might be on the other end of the line.

“Okay. Where are you calling from, Ms. Crockett?”

After a short pause she said, “The Sandbur Ranch. It’s located north of Goliad, Texas. Do you know where that is?”

There was an eager note in her question, as though she was hoping she’d found a transplanted Texan on the other end of the phone. The idea put a faint smile on Neil’s face. “Sorry, Ms. Crockett. I’ve only visited Texas twice in my lifetime and both times were to Dallas.”

“Oh. Well, I’m far from Dallas, Mr. Rankin. The ranch is about fifty miles south of San Antonio.”

The mention of the Alamo city caught his attention and he planted his hip on the corner of the desk while he picked up a notepad and motioned for Connie to hand him a pen.

“I see,” he said to the young woman. “So what prompted you to call me, Ms. Crockett? Do you know Darla Carlton or Jaycee?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. I’m calling—well, to be honest, I’m not sure I should have called you at all. I could be wasting your time.”

“Don’t worry about it. No one else does,” he said with false cheeriness.

Connie frowned at him while he doodled on the notepad resting next to his hip.

“Okay,” the sweet voice replied. “I called you because the woman in the picture resembles my mother.”

Neil’s sandy-brown brows pulled together to form a line across his forehead. “Is your mother’s name Darla Carlton?”

“No.”

“Was she ever married to Jaycee Carlton?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of.”

“Is your mother missing?”

There was a long pause in his ear followed by a tiny sigh. The sound told Neil this woman was troubled and he realized he hated the idea. Particularly when she sounded so nice. But, hell, he could hardly help every troubled soul in the world. Even if she had the voice of an angel.

“If your mother isn’t missing, then you obviously know who she is and where she is, right?”

“Well, not exactly…”

Her words trailed away and Neil was surprised at the disappointment flooding through him. Something about this young woman had made him hope for her sake that she had a connection to Darla Carlton. But it didn’t sound as though that were the case.

“Look, Ms. Crockett, I’m sorry to cut you short, but I have a luncheon appointment. And I really don’t see any point in us continuing this conversation.”

He could hear a fierce intake of breath on the other end of the line and the next thing he expected was the sound of the receiver clicking the phone line dead. But that didn’t happen. Instead the young woman’s voice changed from sweet to clipped and cool.

“I’ve been waiting twenty-four years to find my mother’s lost identity, Mr. Rankin. Surely your lunch appointment can wait for five more minutes.”

Her words knocked the air from him and for a moment all he could do was grip the phone and stare at Connie’s curious face.

“You—what do you mean?” he finally asked in a rush.

She hesitated, then said, “It’s too complicated to go into now. Go to your lunch, Mr. Rankin. You can call me back later.”

“No! Wait!” he practically shouted. “Please don’t hang up. I’m—sorry if I seemed short. I really am interested, Ms. Crockett.”

Silence met his apology, but at least the phone line was still connected. Finally she said, “I’m sorry, too, for being so curt, Mr. Rankin. You’ve got to understand that this is difficult for me. My mother would be very upset if she found out I was doing this. And I hate going behind her back.”

“You say her identity was lost?”

“That’s right. Twenty-four years ago. But I don’t really want to go into the whole story over the telephone. Is there any way I could meet with you?”

Neil’s mind was suddenly spinning. He wanted to hear this woman’s story. “Sure we could meet. If you’re willing to travel up here to New Mexico.”

“Oh. That’s—out of the question.”

She sounded disappointed and Neil had to admit he was feeling a bit deflated himself. As a lawyer he had the impression her story needed to be explored. And as a man he would like to see for himself what sort of woman Ms. Raine Crockett was.

“Why? Is there some reason you can’t travel?” he asked.

His questions were met with another long hesitation, then she said, “I can’t leave my job right now, Mr. Rankin. And I don’t have a feasible reason to give my mother for traveling to New Mexico.”

“You’re underage?” He was worried now that his first impression was correct.

“I’m almost twenty-four, Mr. Rankin—not underage. I just happen to love my mother and I don’t want to do anything that might…hurt her.”

How could finding the woman’s past possibly hurt her? Neil wondered with confusion. But he didn’t voice the question to Ms. Crockett. She was obviously a cautious little thing and he didn’t want to put her off.

“Well, surely you could come up with some excuse that wouldn’t raise eyebrows,” he suggested.

“I can’t think of one. You see, I’ve never traveled on my own and—” She paused, then went on in a disgusted way, “Oh, this was a bad idea anyway. Let’s just forget it.”

Neil jumped off the corner of the desk. “Ms. Crockett, why can’t we discuss this over the telephone? It would be much simpler for both of us. Why don’t I go have my lunch and I’ll call you when I get back? You won’t even have to be out the expense of another phone call,” Neil suggested.

“Wait just a moment,” she said in a suddenly hushed tone. “Someone is coming into the room.”

Frowning, Neil started to ask her what that had to do with anything, but she must have partially covered the receiver with her hand. He could hear the muted sound of voices in the background. The conversation went on for less than a minute and then she came back onto the line.

“Mr. Rankin, are you still there?”

“Still here.”

“Great,” she said with a measure of relief, then, “I’m sorry about that. You see, my mother works in the same house as I do. That was her. She’s going out this afternoon. I think—maybe it would be better if you did call me back. At least I could give you a brief rundown.”

Neil had the feeling he was agreeing to some sort of clandestine meeting or something worse. But he was already this far into this strange exchange. He couldn’t drop it all now. He’d be curious for the rest of his life.

“All right, Ms. Crockett. I’ll call you back in about an hour. How’s that?”

“Fine. I’ll give you my extension number. But if someone other than me does happen to answer, just say that you’re calling to—to talk to me about a computer I’m thinking about purchasing.”

Now she was prompting him to make up stories, he thought incredibly. Something smelled very fishy about this whole setup.

“I’m a lawyer, Ms. Crockett. Not a computer salesman.”

“Please! Just do as I ask. If you can’t be covert about this, then there’s no use in us going on.”

He looked at Connie and rolled his eyes. The secretary shook her finger at him.

What the hell, Neil thought. At the very worst, Ms. Raine Crockett was trying to set him up, but for what or why he couldn’t guess. He would have to find out for himself.

“All right. I can be discreet,” he promised.

“Good. Let me give you the number.”

Neil took down the telephone number, then added a last warning, “Ms. Crockett, before you hang up, let me tell you right now that if I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

“I wouldn’t know how to do that,” she said, then clicked the phone dead in his ear.

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.

“You haven’t told me about your job. What do you do?” he asked in hopes she would freely offer information about herself.

The waitress arrived with their pie and coffee. Once the woman moved away and the two of them were eating, she answered, “I have a degree in accounting. I’m the bookkeeper for the Sandbur Ranch.”

So she’d gone through the long, arduous task of college, only to take a job back home. Maybe she hadn’t cut as many of those parental strings as she believed, Neil mused. Or maybe the Sandbur was where she felt most comfortable. If that were the case, he couldn’t blame her. After working those first few months in Farmington, he’d thought he was going to end up on a psychiatrist’s couch

“The Sandbur…it’s a big place?” he asked.

Raine nodded. “The property consists of several thousands of acres. It runs around two thousand mama cows. A hundred head of bulls and two hundred and fifty head of horses.”

Not quite the size of the T Bar K back home, Neil thought, but damn close. “You never wanted to move away?” he asked curiously. “Like up here to San Antonio? A young, beautiful woman like you could have most any job you set your sights on.”

It was an effort for Raine to keep her mouth from falling open. She wasn’t used to men calling her beautiful. Especially not a sinfully handsome lawyer who looked like he probably jetted around the world with any exotic creature he wanted on his arm.

Stop it, Raine scolded herself. This man was here in San Antonio with her because of business and nothing else. Quit thinking about his personal life. Quit thinking about him period.

Struggling to focus her attention on the slice of pie in front of her, she said, “I love the ranch. It’s where I’ve always wanted to work. I’m not a—city-type girl.”

“Oh. Then you must be happy on the Sandbur,” Neil replied, but actually that wasn’t all he wanted to say about the matter. In fact, he wanted to go a step further and ask her why she wasn’t married and if she had a special guy in her life at the moment. But that was none of his business. And what this woman did in her spare time shouldn’t interest him at all. But it did, he realized. Even though she was far, far too young and innocent for the likes of him.

Beware those green eyes, Neil.

Even as Neil looked across the table at Raine Crockett and felt a little part of him melt like a warm candy bar, he could hear Quito’s warning in his head.

Chapter Three

Clearing his throat, Neil sipped his coffee and decided it was past time that he brought their conversation down to the real nitty-gritty of this meeting. He hadn’t flown all the way down here to Texas just to enjoy the charms of a beautiful ingenue. Not that he wouldn’t fly a thousand miles to lunch with an attractive woman. Neil had been known to do plenty of extravagant things to capture the hand of a fair lady. But Raine Crockett was off-limits. He expected she would be the sort that would leave a lasting impression on a man’s heart. And Neil definitely wasn’t in the market for heart problems.

“So tell me,” he ventured, “have you tried to hunt for your mother’s past before?”

A grimace tightened Raine’s lips. Just the memory of that time still had the power to hurt her. She’d been so confused and angry with her mother for not understanding her need to find the identity of her father. And since then, not much had changed with their stilted relationship. That was one of the main reasons Raine had decided to follow up on the photo in the newspaper. If she could discover the truth of Esther’s past and where her father might be, then maybe it would tear down the terrible wall between her and her mother.

With a single nod, she said, “Shortly after I graduated college I hired a private investigator, but Mother eventually found out about the whole thing and put a quick stop to it. She was furious with me. In fact, none of us on the ranch had ever seen her so angry. If I’d been living with her at the time, she would no doubt have thrown me out of the house. But by then I’d moved into an apartment of my own in town.”

“Oh. You don’t live on the ranch, but your mother does?”

She glanced at him and saw that he was surprised. No doubt he’d been thinking her mother tucked her into bed every night, she thought ruefully.

“That’s right. Esther has worked for the Sanchez and Saddler families ever since I was a baby. She lives in one of the smaller houses on the property. If she had her way, I would still be living there with her. But the two of us get crosswise with each other from time to time,” she admitted regretfully. “It’s best we’re not together too much.”

Neil held the same attitude about sharing a house with a woman. Too much togetherness was a bad thing. Tempers flared and cross words were flung until all the pleasure was taken out of having a companion in the first place. All too often he’d watched his mother and father go at it as if they were bitter enemies rather than husband and wife. He didn’t want that for himself. Ever. Just give him a few sweet, intimate hours with a woman and then he wanted to be left on his own, before all the fighting had a chance to start.

Shifting on the small, uncomfortable chair, he tried to push the sad memories of his parents from his mind. “So you still haven’t mentioned any of this to Esther?”

“No. Why borrow trouble?” she asked glumly.

He studied her thoughtfully as one question after another popped into his head. He wasn’t a detective, but, more often than not, a lawyer had to think and act like one. Asking the right questions meant success or failure in the courtroom. With Raine, Neil figured he was going to have to go gently. In more ways than one.

“It doesn’t bother you to go behind your mother’s back like this?”

Her gaze slid from his face but not before he saw a pained expression fill her green eyes.

“Actually it breaks my heart. Mother worked hard and raised me single-handedly. She loves me,” she told him in a quiet, strained voice. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt her. But I…more than anything, I want to find my father. I want him to be a part of my life. She can’t tell me anything about him. And she refuses to help me. So I have no other choice but to search on my own.”

Neil could feel her pain and he realized he wanted to help this young woman as much as he wanted to help his old friend Linc.

“I have to be frank, Raine,” he began in a thoughtful tone. “It strikes me as very odd that your mother doesn’t want to search for her past life. Most any woman would want to know if she still had a husband, a family somewhere. Isn’t she curious? I sure as heck would be.”

Raine turned back to face him and Neil could see the hopelessness etched upon her soft features.

“I realize it’s strange, Neil. That’s why we’ve argued so many times over this thing. The only reason she’ll give me is that she’s afraid there could have been something wrong in her past life and she doesn’t want to uncover it. In other words, fear of the unknown.”

“Hmm. Well, we know one thing. There was a man in her life. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been pregnant with you.”

Raine thoughtfully traced her forefinger around the rim of her coffee cup. In Neil’s newspaper article it had stated that Darla Carlton’s husband, Jaycee, had been found dead in a wrecked car between Progreso, Texas, and the Mexican border. Ever since Raine had read that bit of information she couldn’t help but wonder if the man might have been her father.

“Maybe this Jaycee could have been my father,” she mused aloud. She looked at him, her green eyes full of skepticism. “But how would I ever know? With him buried—” The doubts in her eyes vanished as she stared at him with sudden excitement. “DNA,” she blurted quickly. “If Jaycee Carlton had other children, I could have my DNA tested against theirs!”

Neil looked at her with regret. “I’m sorry, Raine. Jaycee didn’t have any children. As far as I know, Darla was the only woman he was ever married to.”

“Oh.” She tried not to be disappointed, but she knew the emotion was most likely showing on her face. “Then maybe I have wasted your time by having you to come down here.”

Neil grimaced. He wasn’t about to tell her that there was an offspring of Darla’s that could supply genetic testing. But before he suggested such a thing to Raine or Linc, he wanted to gather concrete evidence that this was a case worth following. Besides, a blood test would clear up the matter much too quickly for his liking, Neil suddenly decided. Raine Crockett was one sexy female. Now that he was down here, he wanted to enjoy himself and get to know her much better. And the easiest way for him to do that was to stick around for a few days and pose a few personal questions, he thought with wicked pleasure. As long as he kept things light and playful, there shouldn’t be any harm come to either one of them.

“Don’t be so negative,” he told her. “I’ve only just gotten here. There’s lots of research we need to do before we think about throwing in the towel. Are you up to telling me some of the story right now?”

His question prompted her to straighten her shoulders, as though to tell him that she wasn’t one of those weak-willed women who swoon over the least little stress. Neil wondered if he’d managed to stumble onto one of those rare women who happened to be strong as well as beautiful.

“Of course, I am,” she said with renewed conviction.

“Okay,” he said as he shoveled another bite of pie into his mouth. “Then lay it out to me.”

Raine took a bite of her own pie in hopes it would calm her jumping stomach, but even before she swallowed the sweet concoction, she knew the only thing that was going to ease her nerves was to put miles and miles between herself and Neil Rankin.

“Since we talked on the phone, I’ve tried to think of anything and everything that might be important. But I really don’t know where to start. At the beginning, I suppose. When Mother woke in the hospital.”

Neil nodded. “When was this?”

“The latter part of October, I think, 1982. It was Halloween, she’s said, but with all her injuries she was feeling more tricked than treated.”

“Tell me about her injuries.”

As Raine sliced off another bite of pie, she answered, “I’m not exactly sure what the extent of her injuries were. I do know she suffered some sort of trauma to the head, maybe due to a car accident, but maybe not. One leg was broken and several of her ribs. Obviously the head injury was the reason for her amnesia. At first, the doctors believed whatever caused her injuries would surface in her memory. But it didn’t,” she added regretfully.

“How do you know her memory hasn’t returned?” Neil asked pointedly.

Raine’s brows rose to two high peaks as she stared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” he told her, then reiterated his question. “How do you know that your mother hasn’t remembered and is keeping the fact from you?”

Raine sputtered with disbelief. That idea had never crossed her mind. To even think such a thing about her mother swamped her with guilt.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said stiffly. “Mother would never lie to me!”

His direct gaze didn’t waver from hers and Raine shivered inwardly. This man was not only doing strange things to her body, but he was also turning her thoughts in a frightening direction she didn’t want to go.

“You’re certain about that?” he asked softly.

Anger sparked her green eyes. “I’m very sure,” she answered. “Mother would never lie to me. Unless she—” Raine broke off as an idea struck her. Then she finally said in a choked murmur, “Unless she was trying to protect me from something. Then she might hide the truth.”

Neil stifled a sigh. The last thing he wanted to do was upset this woman. No matter how painful the possibilities, she needed to look at this matter with open eyes.

“I haven’t met Esther yet, but in most instances, it’s the general nature of a mother to protect her young.”

Horror, confusion and finally disbelief traipsed across her face and Neil realized he was giving her a lot to chew on in just a brief short of time. Besides, no child wanted to believe a parent would deliberately lie to them.

Feeling unusually soft, he decided to let that subject rest. “Well, let’s set that notion aside for the moment and go back to her time in the hospital. Have you ever seen the police records on this case? Where did they find her? How?”

“No to the police records. But I did search the newspaper archives in Fredericksburg for a story.” Raine reached for her purse. “I brought a copy just in case it might be helpful to you.” She handed the photocopy to Neil and waited while he read the short article posted in the Fredericksburg Standard:

Two weeks ago, a local rancher, Louis Cantrell, discovered an injured woman lying at the edge of Highway 87 approximately three miles south of Cherry Spring. At first it was believed the woman had been involved in a vehicle crash, but the police verified to the press today that the woman had been beaten with a blunt object and tossed onto a grassy shoulder of the highway.

Presently the woman, whose age and name have yet to be determined, remains in a coma in a Fredericksburg hospital. The Gillespie County sheriff’s department is asking the community for help in solving this case. If anyone thinks they can identify this woman, please contact Sheriff Madison at—

A telephone number ended the piece, and after Neil scanned the whole story one more time, he placed the paper onto the tabletop and tapped it with his forefinger.

“You implied there wasn’t any reason Esther might be afraid to find her past.” He shot her a challenging look. “What do you think this is? If she was beaten and left to die, someone obviously had it out for her.”

Refusing to believe that anyone would want to harm her mother, Raine quickly shook her head. “Wait a minute! You’re jumping to conclusions. The police couldn’t positively determine what caused the injuries to my mother. She could have fallen from a car.”

Neil couldn’t relent, even though it was obvious that the idea of Esther being beaten was torturous to her. “Then why didn’t the driver of the vehicle stop, pick her up and rush her to the hospital?”

The logical questions caused Raine’s shoulders to slump with despair. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Why are you trying to make something sinister out of this?”

Hating the pain on her face, he reached across the table and touched her hand in an effort to reassure her. “I’m not trying to be mean, Raine,” he said gently. “We have to look at all sides of this case. And a beating is definitely sinister.”

Neil’s suggestions about her mother’s accident were shocking to Raine. But not nearly as surprising as the warm touch of his hand upon hers. True, he’d held her arm as the two of them had walked here to the restaurant, but that had been the action of a gentleman. This was far more intimate and inviting and the fact that he was touching her in such a way was enough to make her whole body quiver with awareness.

“But we don’t know if it truly was a beating,” she argued while carefully avoiding his gaze. Neil Rankin didn’t miss anything and she didn’t want to give him the chance to look into her eyes for very long. If he did, he just might see how much upheaval he was causing inside her. “Mother could have been in a car accident.”

“Then where was the car? Did they find any sort of broken-down vehicle near the area where she was found?”

She shot him a brief glance, then fixed her gaze on a bougainvillea bush growing a few feet beyond his left shoulder. “No. The police found nothing. Not any sort of clue.”

Desperate to ease the fire licking up her bare arm, Raine eased her hand from beneath his and cradled it around her coffee cup.

Watching her, Neil wished she hadn’t pulled away from him so quickly. Her hand had been incredibly soft and he’d found that touching her, even in that simple way, had given him a rush of male excitement far above anything he’d felt in years. What could that possibly mean? he wondered wryly. His taste was turning toward young innocents? Lord, help him.

“Okay. Let’s try another angle. Where did she go once she recovered enough to leave the hospital in Fredericksburg?” he asked with more patience than he was actually feeling.

“Down here to San Antonio. She stayed in a Catholic convent until I was born. After that, she found a job clerking in a bank. Eventually she put enough savings together to rent her own apartment and make a home for herself and me. She says the past was gone. She had to focus on the future.”

“Hmm. I can understand that. To a certain point.” Neil swallowed the last of his pie as his gaze slid over Raine Crockett’s lovely face. Her skin was on the pale side, but sun-kissed enough to tell him she didn’t hibernate indoors. He could only wonder what shade she would be beneath her blue dress. “So when do you think I can meet with your mother?”

Raine stared at him as her mind worked furiously. She’d not been expecting him to suggest something like this. She’d thought he would take the information she’d given him and go on about the investigation on his own.

“I—I don’t know…it couldn’t be wise,” she finally managed to get out.

Rolling his eyes with impatience, he said, “Look, Raine, I understand that you don’t want to step on your mother’s toes, but you can’t just tie my hands. If that’s the way you plan on doing things, then I might as well head back home.”

Anger tightened her lips. Who did he think he was? she asked herself, someone who could just barge into her private life whether she wanted him to or not? “Maybe you should do just that,” she said with slow deliberation. “Now that you’re here, I’m not so sure I’ve done the right thing.”

Neil leaned across the tiny table so that their faces were only inches apart. Raine clasped her hands together in her lap to prevent them from trembling.

“I thought you were serious about this. I didn’t travel a thousand miles just to hear you say you’ve changed your mind!”

It was easy to see that she’d angered him, Raine thought. His blue eyes sparked and his voice was as taut as a guitar string. But the idea certainly didn’t distress her. From the moment he’d walked up and introduced himself, he’d been upsetting her.

“I haven’t changed my mind…exactly,” she corrected him. “When you asked to see my mother…well, I didn’t realize that would be necessary. Can’t I show you a photo instead?”

His brows lifted. “You have a recent one with you?”

Nodding, Raine reached for her handbag. “It’s not an extreme close up of her face, but I think you’ll see the resemblance.”

She rummaged around in her small black handbag until she found what she was looking for. Neil watched as she pulled a snapshot from a long white envelope and handed it to him.

Taking the photo from her, he turned it right side up. The woman staring back at him appeared to be in her sixties. Her hair a light color somewhere between blond and gray. She was a tall woman with a figure that he suspected was once a real head turner, but now there were extra pounds around her waist and on her hips. She was dressed casually in slacks and a short-sleeved blouse that could have been purchased off any discount store rack. If this was truly Darla Carlton, then she’d lost her taste for the finer things.

Neil had only been a young teenager when Linc’s mother, Darla, had left the T Bar K, but he still carried memories of the woman. For one thing, she’d been very pretty with a sort of delicate air about her. One day he and Linc had entered the house to grab colas from the fridge when they’d come upon her weeping. She’d been wearing a lavender satin robe edged with Spanish lace. The scent of roses had clouded around her as she dabbed a handkerchief to her eyes and tried to smile at her son and his friend. He’d thought she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

Linc had been embarrassed that they’d caught his mother still dressed in her robe at one o’clock in the afternoon. But Neil had been intrigued and had thought about the woman for days afterward.

“Neil?”

The sound of her voice calling his name caused Neil to push away his old memories and glance up at her. She gave him a wan smile that was full of nerves and in that moment, Neil knew he had to come up with a perfectly viable excuse to follow Raine to the Sandbur.

“I was wondering what you think?” she persisted. “Do you think it might be her?”

Neil placed the photo on the tabletop while promising himself he would never purposely lead this woman on just so he could spend time with her. Hell, he had all sorts of girlfriends back in San Juan County. He wasn’t that desperate for a woman. Only this one, a little voice whispered in his head.

“I can’t be sure,” he answered truthfully. “There are some similarities about the two women. The height and the shape of the face. Your mother is a heavier person than Darla Carlton was when she went missing.”

“Twenty-five years usually adds some pounds to a woman,” Raine replied with a grimace, then added, “You don’t think it’s her, do you?”

Neil gave her his brightest smile. “There’s always a chance it could be her. We need to do more investigating. If I could see your mother and talk to her it would be a big help.”

It was all Raine could do to keep from jumping up from her chair and running as fast and as far as she could from this smooth-talking lawyer. He was going to be trouble. Not only with her mother, but with her. Just looking at him made her feel like a simpleton. How could she possibly keep her senses in check around him?

“She’d chase you out of the house if she had any sort of suspicion that you were an attorney or private investigator.” Raine chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated the situation. “We’ll have to be more subtle than that.”

Neil let loose a wry chuckle. “Subtle. You mean we’ll have to lie to her, don’t you?”

The frown creasing her forehead grew deeper. “Don’t try to make me feel any guiltier than I already do,” she answered. “There’s no other way to handle it. You’ll have to come to the house as—” She broke off as her mind searched for some feasible excuse to invite him into her mother’s home.

“Your love interest,” Neil finished for her.

Raine’s mouth fell open as her heart thumped loudly in her ears. “My…what?” she asked with a gasp.

Neil laughed softly. “You heard me. I’ll be your new sweetheart. Anything wrong with that?”

Chapter Four

“Just about everything is wrong with that!” she blurted out loudly.

Neil glanced around him to see if Raine Crockett’s outburst had garnered any attention. Thankfully there was no one sitting near them, except for an elderly couple, who was grinning at Neil as if to say they understood all about lovers quarrels. Well, at least the two of them had already fooled someone, Neil thought wryly.

Bending his head toward her, he said with hushed sarcasm, “Since you’ve protested so loudly, I suppose you have a better plan. You still want me to be a computer salesman?”

Neil a salesman? Now that Raine had met him in the flesh, the idea was laughable. And how in heck could she ever explain her association with a man who came across as an American version of 007?

She regarded him thoughtfully. “That would never work. Mother doesn’t own a computer. She hates the things. Besides, you don’t look like a computer geek.”

“Thanks,” he said with dry humor. “Then maybe I should rent a spray truck and pretend that I’m a termite exterminator.”

Raine waved a dismissive hand at him. “That wouldn’t work, either. She had the house checked recently for termites.”

Neil had only made the suggestion as a joke, but she’d taken it seriously. She was taking everything about this matter way too seriously and that worried Neil. In spite of his eagerness to spend more time with this beautiful Texas rose, he didn’t want to get himself mixed up in some sort of family squabble. There was nothing more dangerous than standing among fighting relatives.

Sighing, he said, “I don’t like the idea of lying and sneaking.” He added, “That’s not the way I work.”

He was looking at her with a bit of disgust and Raine could feel his disapproval all the way to her bones. She told herself it shouldn’t matter how he viewed her, just as long as they discovered the truth. But as she studied Neil’s perfectly chiseled face, she realized his opinion of her mattered very much.

“Believe me, Neil, I normally don’t go around…fibbing to people. It’s just that I understand how my mother’s mind works. If she has any suspicion that you were a lawyer, P.I., or anything like that, she’ll clam up tight.”

He rubbed a thumb against his chin as he regarded her for long, silent moments. Raine could feel the sweep of his blue gaze and like an idiot she began to wonder what it might feel like if he were looking at her with adoration, as if she were the only woman in the world for him.

Stop it! She silently scolded herself. You’re acting like a ninny. The man was here on the behalf of another client. He didn’t really care if her mother was Darla Carlton. He was simply doing a job. And the very last thing he would be doing was looking at Raine as any sort of love interest. Not when he could probably pick and choose any woman he wanted.

As for Raine, she’d never been overrun with male pursuers. She’d been a shy, skinny teenager, all arms and knees and braces on her teeth. Esther had been a strict mother with very modest ideas. She’d insisted that her daughter dress down to avoid attention from boys her own age. Getting involved in that sort of relationship would only cause her trouble and misery, Esther had often preached to Raine. To say the least, her high-school years had been dull and lonely. She’d felt like a freak on the outside looking in.

Raine had not been the sort to disobey or talk back. Esther was her only parent. Her only family. She’d never wanted to hurt her mother in any way, even when it meant that Raine was miserable herself. Her one defiant streak had been the short fling she’d had in college and its disastrous failure had only proved to Raine that she’d been so overprotected she didn’t know how to have a love affair.

But that had been during her adolescent and ensuing teenage years. Now that she was a grown woman, things were different. She couldn’t dismiss her need to find her roots, in spite of her mother’s encouragement to let the past rest. After the fiasco she’d gone through with the private investigator and her mother’s fury, she’d tried to do a little discreet searching on her own, but she’d gotten nowhere. It wasn’t until last week, when she’d found Darla Carlton’s picture in the paper that she’d felt any sort of real hope again. Working with Neil Rankin might prove to be difficult under her mother’s eagle eye. But, if she ever wanted to find her father, it was a chance she was going to have to take.

“Raine? Did you hear me? Do you want to go on with this or not?”

Neil’s questions broke into her rambling thoughts, and as she looked at him, she nodded haltingly, then with enthusiasm. “I do. I really do. And it if means we have to cozy up to each other in front of Mother, then so be it. I’m a pretty good actress. I won a leading role in a college play. I think I can make her believe that we’re—in love.”

The corners of his mouth turned downward. She made it sound like being close to him was going to be hard work. Neil wasn’t accustomed to that sort of reaction from a woman. Normally they were all more than eager to snuggle up against him. Obviously Raine was going to be a challenge, but Neil had to admit he was looking forward to the task.

“You make it sound like this will be a role for the Oscar.”

Picking up her coffee, she tried to appear casual, but her stomach was fluttering and if her fingers hadn’t been clutched around the cup, her hands would have been shaking.

“Trust me, Neil, the roles will be difficult for both of us,” she told him. “Mother isn’t accustomed to me bringing home boyfriends.”

Neil smiled inwardly at the idea of him being Raine’s boyfriend. He hadn’t been one of those since he’d taken Destiny Granger to the high-school prom.

Reaching for his coffee, he asked in a teasing tone, “Why? Don’t you have any?”

Her green eyes were solemn as she lifted them to his face and just for a moment, for a flash of time, the look on her face reminded Neil of his friend Linc Ketchum. Dear Linc, his longtime buddy, who’d watched his mother walk away and never come back. Could it be that Esther Crockett truly was his long lost mother and Raine his sister?

No! Don’t even go there, Neil. It was much too early to be having such thoughts. And not for anything would he get Linc’s hopes up needlessly. No, if he believed something about Esther Crockett resembled Darla, he was going to keep the notion to himself until something more concrete came along.

“I have dated,” she admitted. “But not very much. And only one guy on a regular basis. But that only lasted a few weeks.”

Surprise crossed his face and she said, “I’ve been busy getting a college degree in accounting. I haven’t had time for men.” Plus she wasn’t ready to get her heart broken all over again, she thought dismally.

“Hmm. You sound like you don’t want to make time, either. Does your mother know about your lack of social life?”

A cynical laugh popped from Raine’s mouth. “Let’s put it this way. If I never married, Mother would be a happy woman.”

Neil rolled his eyes upward toward the banana leaves shading their table. And if Claudia, his own mother, had never married she would have probably been happier. Certainly she wouldn’t have ruined his father’s life with her constant nagging for more, more, more. His mother’s quest for the material “good things” had turned Neil against money and women. The only way he wanted either of them was in small doses.

“Then Esther obviously isn’t going to welcome me into her home,” he stated, then glanced at her with regret. “Raine, she’s obviously going to be suspicious of me. Or at the very least resent my presence in your life. Under those circumstances, I can’t see me getting the woman to open up about her past.”

Raine suddenly forgot that she needed to keep her distance from the man. She reached across the scant space between them and grabbed onto his hand. “Neil, please,” she pleaded. “Don’t give up on this. On me. You’re here. And I have an intuition that something is going to happen. Something will turn up—some sort of information that will help us both.”

She couldn’t have said it better, Neil thought. Something was going to happen. He was going to end up plunging into deep water with this woman and if he wasn’t very careful he just might not be able to swim to a safe shore.

But her soft little hands wrapped tightly around his felt so vulnerable and the pleading light in her green eyes pierced him with a need to protect her and please her. Dear Lord, it wasn’t possible to fall for a woman in the length of time it took to drink a cup of coffee, was it?

Hell, don’t worry about that, Neil argued with himself. He’d wanted the excuse to spend time with this beauty and now she’d handed it to him and more.

Groaning inwardly, he said, “All right, Raine. We’ll give this a try. But the minute a war breaks out between you and your mother, I’m outta here. Got it?”

Nodding, she smiled a slow, shy smile that melted his insides to a bunch of worthless goop.

“Yes. I understand,” she said a little breathlessly.

Neil could see renewed excitement building on her face and the sight made him almost forget he was fifteen years older than her.

“So when do we start?” she asked.

“What about tonight?” he suggested. “I’ve rented a car. I can follow you to the ranch. How far is it?”

“About fifty miles. An hour and a half of driving will get you there. But it’s safer not to make the trip after dark. That’s when all the deer and wild hogs decide to cross the highway.”

His brows met in the middle of his forehead. “Wild hogs?”

Raine suddenly realized she was still holding on to his hand. The fact embarrassed her and she ducked her head as she moved her hands away and pretended to snap her handbag closed.

“Yes, wild hogs,” she replied. “You know. Like a big pig with tusks and tough bristles sticking up on their back.”

“These hogs don’t belong to anybody?”

Raine laughed. “Not hardly. The farmers and ranchers hate them because they eat the crops and forage that would normally go to cows and horses. People hunt wild hogs all the time. And they are good to eat.”

“Then they’re not protected like our bear is in New Mexico,” he said the obvious.

Raine shook her head, then dared to smile at him again. “No. But don’t feel too badly. They manage to keep their population high.”

Chuckling at her implication, Neil motioned for the waitress to bring their check.

Raine attempted to pay for her half of the small snack, but Neil refused her money. After he’d settled the account and tipped the waitress, he rose to his feet.

“Are you leaving?” she asked with a bit of dismay.

“Not without you.”

He reached for her elbow to help her out of the chair and once again Raine felt the skin on her arm burning, her cheeks stinging with wild, unchecked heat. Even if she was accustomed to men touching her, Neil Rankin would still make her blood sizzle like raindrops on hot pavement.

“I—where are we going?” she asked.

Hearing the slight panic in her voice, he asked, “Raine, are you—frightened of me?”

Her eyes darted up to his handsome face. “Why no. Of course I’m not afraid. Why would I be?”

His expression turned grim as he guided her away from the café. “Probably because I’m a strange man that you’ve never met before. I could be an imposter. I could be a killer who lures women from their safe places.”

“Stop it!” she spurted the words back at him while at the same time she jerked her elbow away from his cupped hand. “You’re not being a bit funny.”

Neil’s brows arched. “I wasn’t trying to be.”

She heaved out an unsettled breath that caused the material of her powder-blue dress to move against her small breasts. Neil felt the man in him perk up with far more interest than he should be feeling.

“I know who you are. I’m the one who called your office. You’re a lawyer,” she said, then added, “Albeit, I’m not sure how good of one. And now that we’re on the subject, I’ve been wondering why you’re the one doing this search for Darla. Why didn’t your client hire a detective instead of a lawyer?”

His glance down at her face was totally patronizing. “Because my client happens to be a very close friend. And I’m the only one he’s willing to trust with such a personal matter.”

“Oh. Your client is a he?”

Neil’s smile was a bit wicked. “Yes. Why? Were you going to be jealous if it had been a woman?”

He was teasing of course, Raine thought. There was no way he could suspect the upheaval he was causing inside of her.

“I don’t think we’ve known each other long enough for me to be—feeling that sort of emotion,” she said coolly.

Neil chuckled as it dawned on him just how refreshing her prim attitude was after the willing, experienced women he’d known in the past.

“Well, give it a few days,” he teased. “Maybe I can turn you a little green by then.”

Her eyes flew to his face as he looped his arm with casual ease through hers. “Days?” she sputtered. “Aren’t you going back to New Mexico tomorrow?”

Frowning, he urged her onto the paved walkway that edged the river. Boats of all shapes and sizes decorated with Christmas wreaths and blinking lights were floating by. Many of them were filled with tourists enjoying the warm sunshine and the sights of San Antonio.

“Not hardly. I just arrived.”

She balked in her tracks and he turned to look squarely down at her upturned face. She looked worried. No, Neil decided, she actually appeared frightened.

“You mean this investigation—or whatever you want to call it—is going to take more than one meeting with my mother?” she asked with disbelief.

Careful to keep his expression smooth, he urged her to continue walking forward. “The day is beautiful, Raine. Let’s walk and talk and get acquainted with each other. I don’t want to go into this evening blind. I need to know a little bit about my new lover.”

The last two words were said with a purr that caused a shiver to race down Raine’s spine. Oh, this man was way too smooth for a country girl like her, Raine decided. She was going to have to watch every step she took, every word she said, and even then she wasn’t sure she would be safe from his charms.

“We—we’re not going to pretend to be lovers!” she said in a voice pitched with fear. “That’s carrying things a bit too far, don’t you think?”

With a soft chuckle, he patted the little hand resting on his forearm. “Not really. You’re an attractive young woman and I’m a man. Put the two together and something usually boils up.”

Pursing her lips to a disapproving line, she stared straight ahead. “Maybe in some cases. But I have no intention of doing any boiling. In the kitchen or anywhere else,” she added for good measure.

Her comment only produced a laugh from him and the sound was so light and contagious that Raine couldn’t help but tilt her head around to him and smile.

“Okay,” she conceded. “What do we need to know about each other?”

He shrugged with nonchalance, but deep inside Neil was shocked at how very interested he was in this woman’s life. She was different, very different from the women he’d known in the past. There was something sweetly naive about her. Yet on the other hand there was a sultriness to her green eyes that made him think she wasn’t all soft innocence. She was taking a big risk of ruining her relationship with her mother in order to go after what she wanted—a father. Obviously she was a woman who would hold on tight to her dreams. But was a father the only man she had in her dreams of the future? Neil wondered.

“Oh, just the simple things,” he told her. “Like where you grew up. Your likes and dislikes, education, anything and everything. Remember, we’re supposed to be close.”

Raine released a long, pent-up breath. “Close! Neil, I’ve never introduced a man to my mother before. She’s going to start getting ideas that we truly are serious. She’s going to question me all about you, then start warning me how dangerous you are.”

Neil chuckled. “I’m a lawyer. I’m always dangerous,” he teased.

She rolled her eyes. “And are you always this lighthearted? Aren’t you ever serious?”

“Do you mean with women or my work?”

“Women—uh, work. Both,” she finally added in a fluster.

“I don’t get serious with women,” he said. “But I do with my work.”

Slowly she digested his comment as they strolled along the river’s edge. It didn’t surprise her to hear this man admit to being a confirmed bachelor. Everything about him screamed that he was as free as an eagle. But Raine did wonder why he’d chosen the single life. She couldn’t believe it was simply for sinful pleasures. He was more complex than that. “So you’re not married?” she asked.

“Never considered the idea. What about you?”

Raine suddenly felt loneliness press heavily upon her shoulders. “No. I haven’t yet met a man who’s made me want to take that much of a step. And I’m not sure that I would know how to be a good wife.”

His face was perplexed as he glanced down at her. “That’s an odd thing for a young woman like you to say,” he said.

Raine focused her attention on one of the boats drifting lazily by them. The vessel was filled with a young couple and two children that were obviously their offspring. The little group was the perfect, happy family, she thought. They probably even lived in a two-story house in the suburbs or maybe a hacienda in the country. They had cats and dogs that had the run of the house and the yard, and were treated like family members, too. This coming Christmas would be very special at their home. Lots of relatives would gather. There would be eating, dancing, joking and plenty of laughter.

“Raine? Are you still with me?”

She suddenly noticed a hand waving up and down in front of her face and with a burst of embarrassment she realized she’d been daydreaming about the very thing she’d always wanted.

“Uh—I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was asking why you had doubts about being a wife.”

She kept her gaze carefully away from him and on their surroundings. She didn’t want him to see just how lost and afraid she felt when it came to dealing with men and the idea of having a family.