to wait. Or contact Abe Cantrell, her father-in-law.”
Frustration made him want to howl, but he kept the reaction to himself. This woman wouldn’t understand. And frankly, she was looking at him as though he were one of those criminals he often locked behind bars. Which was a strange reaction for Mac, who was used to women sidling up to him with a warm, inviting smile on their faces. He liked to flirt but hadn’t gotten serious in a long time.
Hell, Mac, she’s a professional. She isn’t going to be flashing you a sexy smile or flirting with you.
She was a doctor. And from the looks of her, she’d never heard the words sex or glamour. She was plainer than vanilla yogurt and appeared to be one step away from a convent.
Except for a pair of deep blue eyes and naturally pink lips, her round face was pale and devoid of any color. Dark, reddish-brown hair was brushed tightly back from her forehead and fastened in a long ponytail at her nape. The starched stiff lab coat hid her clothing, along with the shape of her body. Even so, Mac sensed she was as slender as a stick and as fragile as the petal of an orchid.
“I’m not sure I can wait,” he told her. “You see, I was planning on talking to Ms. Cantrell about an—urgent matter.” Besides, Mac wasn’t ready to meet the man who might be his half brother. He’d only arrived in Ruidoso, New Mexico, a few hours ago. He’d driven straight out to the Chaparral Ranch in hopes of finding Frankie and putting the whole matter of her disappearance to rest. Now it looked as though there wasn’t going to be any meeting or answers of any sort.
Dr. Sanders—Ileana, he’d heard the nurse call her—shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I’m only allowing family members to enter Ms. Cantrell’s room and even they are only allowed five minutes with her.”
“Is she in the intensive care unit?”
The woman’s shoulders drew back, as though remembering privacy laws for patients. He wondered just how well this doctor knew the woman. Maybe Frankie had been a patient of hers for a long time, but that didn’t necessarily mean Dr. Sanders knew all that much about Frankie’s personal life.
“Not exactly. She’s in a room where she’s monitored more closely than a regular room. That’s why I made the decision to limit her visitors to relatives only. People can be well meaning, but they don’t realize how exhausting talking can be to someone who’s ill.”
Mac’s visit hadn’t meant to be well meaning or anything close to it. Maybe that made him a hard-nosed bastard, but then in his eyes, Frankie had been more than callous when she’d walked out of Mac’s and Ripp’s lives. She’d promised to come back, but that promise had never been kept. Two little boys, ages eight and ten, had not understood how their mother could leave them behind. And now that they were grown men, ages thirty-seven and thirty-nine, they still couldn’t understand how she could have been so indifferent to her own flesh and blood.
Mac’s gaze settled on the doctor’s face, and Frankie McCleod was suddenly forgotten. Plain or not, there was something about Ileana Sanders’s soft lips, something about the dark blue pools of her eyes that got to him. Like a quiet, stark desert at sunset, she pulled at a soft spot inside him. Before he realized what he was doing, his glance dropped to her left hand.
No ring or any sign of where one had once been. Apparently she was single. But then, he should have known that without looking for a ring. She had an innocent, almost shy demeanor about her, as though no man had ever woken her or touched her in any way.
Hell, Mac, her sex life or lack of one has nothing to do with you. Plain Janes weren’t his style. He liked outgoing, talkative girls who weren’t afraid to show a little leg or cleavage and drink a beer from a barstool.
Yeah. Like Brenna, he thought dourly. She’d showed him all that and more during their brief, volatile marriage. Since then he stuck to women who knew the score.
Sucking in a deep breath, he tried again. “I guess you’d say I’m more than a visitor, Dr. Sanders. I—well—you might consider me…a relative.”
Even if Renae hadn’t told her that the man was from Texas she would have guessed. Not just from the casual arrogance in the way he carried himself, but the faint drawl and drop of the g at the end of his words were a dead giveaway.
“Oh? I didn’t realize Frankie had relatives living in Texas.”
“We haven’t been together—as a family—in a long time. And we just learned that she was living in New Mexico.”
Totally confused now, Ileana gestured to one of the couches. “Let’s have a seat, Mr. McCleod. And then maybe you can better explain why you’re here in Ruidoso.”
Without waiting for his compliance, Ileana walked over and took a seat. Thankfully, he followed and seated himself on the same couch, a polite distance away.
As he stretched out his legs, her gaze caught sight of his hands smoothing the top of his thighs. Like the rest of him, they were big and brown, the fingers long and lean. There was no wedding ring, but then Ileana had already marked the man single in her mind. She doubted any woman had or ever could tame him. He looked like a maverick and then some.
With a sigh she tried to disguise as a cough, she turned toward him and said, “Okay. Maybe you’d better tell me a little about yourself and your connection to Frankie. None of this is making sense to me.”
He glanced over to a wall of plate glass. Snow was piled against the curbs and beneath the shade of the trees and shrubs. It was as cold as hell here in the mountains, and being in this hospital made Mac feel even colder. At the moment, South Texas felt like a world away.
“I imagine right about now you’re thinking I’m some sort of nutcase. But I’m actually a deputy sheriff from Bee County, Texas. And I have a brother, Ripp, who’s a deputy, too, over in Goliad County.”
Ileana inclined her head to let him know that she understood. “So you’re both Texas lawmen who work in different counties.”
“That’s right. So was our father, Owen. But he’s been dead for several years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. And your mother?”
His gaze flickered away from hers. “We’re not certain. You see, my brother and I think Frankie Cantrell is our mother.”
If a tornado had roared through the hospital lobby, Ileana couldn’t have been more shocked, and she struggled to keep her mouth from falling open.
“Your mother! Is this some sort of joke?”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
No, she thought with dismay. He looked torn; he looked as though he’d rather be anywhere but here. And most of all, he appeared to be genuine.
“What makes you think she’s your mother?”
Clearly uncomfortable with her question, he scooted to the edge of the cushion. “It’s too long a story to take up your time. I’d better be going. I’ll—come back later. When you—well, when you think it’ll be okay for me to talk to her.”
For a moment, Ileana forgot that she was a doctor and this man was a complete stranger. Frankie and her family had been friends with the Sanderses for many years. In fact, Ileana’s mother,
