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
