the revolving door.
Ileana bit back a sigh. “That was trouble. A big dose of it.”
Chapter Two
“Ripp, I must have been crazy when I told you to stay home and let me come out here,” Mac said into the cell phone. “Nothing is going right.”
Two hours had passed since Mac left the hospital, and during that time, he’d continually tried to call his brother back in Texas. But Ripp, and the majority of the sheriff’s department, had been on a manhunt most of the evening for a hit-and-run driver. Subsequently, Ripp had just now found time to return his call.
“What do you mean?” Ripp asked. “Did you find the ranch okay?”
“I did,” Mac answered as he sat on the side of the hotel bed, his elbows resting on his knees. “A maid was the only person I talked to. She informed me that Ms. Cantrell was in the hospital in Ruidoso.”
“Hospital?”
The shock in Ripp’s voice mirrored Mac’s feelings. That Frankie might be in ill health or dead was something that neither brother had really wanted to consider. After all, if this Frankie were really their mother, she would only be about sixty years old. But a relatively young age didn’t always equal good health.
“Yeah. I drove back to Ruidoso and went to the hospital thinking I could talk to her there. No such luck. Her doctor says she’s too ill to see me.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“The doctor wouldn’t tell me much. I was so damned aggravated at the moment that I can’t remember everything she said regarding Frankie’s health.”
“She?”
“Frankie’s doctor. It’s a woman. And from what she told me, her family and the Cantrells have been friends for years. She—uh—told me that Frankie has a son and daughter. Quint and Alexa, I think she called them.”
“Oh.” Several long moments passed as Ripp digested this news, and then he finally asked, “Did this doctor know anything about Frankie’s past?”
Ripp’s question caused the image of Dr. Sanders to parade to the front of Mac’s mind. She’d been as plain as white flour. The type of woman he normally wouldn’t glance at twice. Yet her gentleness had touched him in a way that had been totally unexpected.
Clearing his throat, he said, “I asked. She doesn’t know anything about it. From what she says, Frankie is a respected woman. That ought to tell you the doctor is in the dark.”
Ripp sighed. “We don’t really know what Frankie is, Mac. That’s why you’re there. To find out. So when did this doctor think you might be able to see Frankie?”
“Several days, at least.”
“Oh. Well, you might as well come home, Mac. There’s no use in you hanging around Ruidoso for that long. Or do you think you ought to see her children?”
“And say what?” Mac asked sarcastically. “Hi, y’ all, I’m your half brother?”
Ripp growled back at him. “What the hell is the matter with you, Mac? You’re nearly forty years old! It’s not like you’re that ten-year-old little boy, staring out the window with tears on your cheeks. We’re not going to let the woman keep hurting us, are we?”
Mac shoved out a heavy breath. His brother was right. He had to get a grip on his emotions and view this whole thing as a man, not that little boy who’d had his heart ripped out so long ago.
“I tell you, Ripp. The news that she had a son and daughter knocked my boots out from under me. I just never imagined her having other babies. Did you? I mean, if she didn’t want us, why the heck would she have had more children? Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.”
“We don’t know that she didn’t want us, Mac. Dad told Rye that she wanted us.”
“Hell,” Mac muttered. “Rye was probably just trying to make you feel better. You’d been stabbed with a butcher knife at the time, remember? He probably thought you couldn’t handle any more pain.”
Ripp chuckled under his breath. “I can handle anything you can take and more, big brother.”
In spite of his frustration, a smile tugged at Mac’s lips. If anyone could make him forget his troubles, it was his brother. And even though they were sometimes as different as night and day, there was a bond between them tougher than barbed wire.
“Yeah, you probably can,” he told him as he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. He was getting hungry. Besides that, the small hotel room was beginning to close in on him. “Look, Ripp, I’m gonna go out and find something to eat. It’s been a hell of a day, and I’m beat. I’ll call you tomorrow—after I find out more.”
“So you’re not coming home?”
“No way. I’ve started on this journey and I don’t mean to cut it short. I’m going to camp in the hospital until Dr. Sanders gets her belly full of me. She’ll have to give in sooner or later.”
“Poor woman. She’s not going to know what hit her,” Ripp murmured more to himself than to Mac. “Just try to be your charming self, Mac. We don’t want anyone out there thinking we’re a pair of arrogant Texans.”
Mac chuckled. “Why not—we are, aren’t we?”
“Go eat. I’ve got to go help Lucita. Elizabeth is having a squalling fit about something. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
His brother cut the call, and Mac closed the instrument in his hand. Ripp had a beautiful wife, a twelve-year-old son and a baby daughter. His family adored him. He had something to live for, something to come home to at night. He was blessed. And Mac was happy for him.
Yet there were times that Mac looked at his brother and wondered what it would feel like to have those same things. Oh, yeah, he’d had a wife once. But Brenna hadn’t been a wife in the real sense of the word. She’d been more like a permanent date. Someone to go out with for a night of fun. Someone to have sex with. Giving him children had not been in her plans. And giving him love, the sort that came from deep within a person, was something she’d been incapable of. But then, Mac couldn’t put all the blame on Brenna for their failed marriage. At first he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted—a party girl. And for a while he’d been perfectly content with their life together. Then as time went by, the partying had begun to wear thin, and his life and marriage started to look more and more shallow. He’d begun to yearn for something more lasting and meaningful. Like raising kids in a real home. Brenna hadn’t married him under those terms, and when he’d asked her to change, she’d laughed all the way to the office of a divorce lawyer.
Now, after that humiliating lesson, he felt like a fool for ever thinking a good timin’ guy like him had once dreamed he could be a father to a house full of kids. Now he told himself it was better to simply enjoy women on brief, but frequent, occasions and forget about ever having a family.
Several miles east of Ruidoso, smack in the middle of the Hondo Valley, Ileana shifted down her pickup truck as it rattled across the low wooden bridge that crossed the Hondo River. The truck was
