“Mac.”
She repeated his name in childlike wonder, as though she’d just stepped into a dream world.
“Yes.”
Her mouth fell open, and one hand clutched her throat. For a moment he feared the shock was going to give her a heart attack, but then she seemed to gather herself, and he was relieved to see a bit of color flood back into her cheeks.
“How did you find me?” she finally asked.
“Betty Jo Andrews. She died. Or did you know?”
Her expression sober, she nodded. “Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I keep up with Goliad County obits.”
Then obviously she knew that her first husband had died nearly seven years ago. Yet she’d not shown her face to her sons. Not bothered to acknowledge their father’s death. What had happened to this woman? he wondered incredulously. How could she have gone from a loving, devoted mother, to denying her own sons?
“Oscar, her son, gave the correspondence you’d exchanged with Betty Jo to Ripp.”
“Ripp. How is he?”
“He’s fine. He’s married now. With a family.”
“That’s good.” A faint light flickered in her eyes. “Then you two have read my letters?”
Mac felt as cold as the snow piled outside the window. “No. We’ve not read them. But Oscar told us that our names were mentioned. That’s how I came to be here. We figured it had to be you.”
Her head bent forward, and as Mac watched her bring her hand up to her eyes, he told himself if she cried he wouldn’t allow her tears to get to him. No. As a child he’d cried plenty of his own, but she’d never been around to console him or his little brother.
“I can’t imagine what you must be thinking now. I—”
The remainder of her words was cut off with a racking cough, reminding Mac of her fragile health. He didn’t want the woman to be ill. Nor did he want to cause her emotional pain. He honestly didn’t know what he wanted. He felt dead inside.
After the coughing stopped, she regained her breath, then looked up at him. Clearly, this time there was anguish in her eyes, but Mac could only guess what was causing it. If she’d suddenly developed a conscience it had taken her a hell of a time to do it.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Mac, I never stopped loving you and Ripp. I never stopped wishing that you were in my life.”
The cold indifference that had settled over him was scaring Mac. He had finally found his mother! She was saying a tiny portion of what he needed to hear her say. Yet it all seemed so insignificant now. Words couldn’t replace years of desertion.
Not bothering to reply, he walked away from her and stood staring out the window. He should have let Ripp come here, he thought miserably. He should have let his brother try to come up with the right words to say to a mother who’d chosen to quit being their mother a long time ago.
But then, he couldn’t wish that entirely, Mac realized. Otherwise he would have never met Ileana. Never had the chance to hold her in his arms.
“I honestly don’t know what to say to that,” he finally spoke.
His words were met with silence, and he glanced over his shoulder to see that she’d closed her eyes and her hand was pressed to her bosom.
Concerned now, he walked back over to her. “Are you all right?”
“No,” she answered faintly. “I—I’m very, very tired. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back in bed.”
He needed answers. Answers that had haunted him and his brother for years. But those were apparently going to have to wait until another time.
“I’ll get a nurse to come help you,” he told her, then quickly left the room.
Moments later, at the nurse’s station, he was relaying Frankie’s need to one of the nurses, when he spotted Ileana hurrying toward him. The sight of her was like a ray of sunshine after a violent storm.
He walked to meet her, and she took him by the arm and led him toward the waiting area.
“You’ve already seen Frankie, haven’t you?” she asked as her eyes continued to scan his strained features.
He nodded. “She’s my mother, Ileana. That—that part of it wasn’t much of a surprise, I guess. The evidence had already pretty much told us that. But I—” Pausing, he shook his head with dismay. “Seeing her was a surprise. I didn’t expect her to still resemble the mother I remembered. I thought she’d be different somehow.”
Aching to comfort him, Ileana clasped her hands around his. “How did she react?”
He shook his head again, and Ileana could see he was dazed.
“She was—Let me put it this way—she wasn’t ever expecting to see me in her lifetime,” he said bitterly.
“Oh, Mac,” she said gently. “Did she explain anything?”
“We didn’t get to that. I’d only been in the room for a few short minutes when she said she was tired and needed to go back to bed.”
Ileana nodded. “I’m sure she wasn’t lying about that. She’s in a very weak condition, and the shock of seeing you probably drained her rather quickly.”
Jerking off his hat, he raked a hand roughly through his hair. “I’m sorry about that, Ileana. I’m sorry about a lot of things!” He slapped the hat back on his head. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he muttered. “Maybe you’d better go check on her.”
Frankie was her patient, but her first concern was Mac. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going back to the Bar M. And I’m going to talk with my brother.”
Ileana was greatly relieved to hear he was planning on going home to the ranch, but she was worried about his state of mind. For the first time in her life, she wished it wasn’t imperative that she returned to the clinic this afternoon. But her patients’ welfare had to be considered, and they were all counting on her.
“I won’t be home until late this evening,” she said with a troubled frown. “Why don’t you stop by the ranch house and visit with my parents or the hands in the barn? You shouldn’t be alone, Mac.”
His expression grave, he bent his head and brushed a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be okay, Ileana. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you later.”
He pulled away from her and walked briskly toward the exit. As Ileana watched him disappear beyond the revolving door, she realized that his happiness had become very important to her, even more important than her own.
Once Mac pulled onto the main highway and headed his truck toward the Bar M, he punched in Ripp’s cell number and hoped his brother was available to take his call.After three rings without an answer, Mac was about to hang up when he heard Ripp’s voice.
“Hey, brother! You finally decided to call me and let me know you’re still alive?”
Mac squinted at the curving highway ahead. “You have my number. You could have called.”
“Yeah. Sorry, brother. I was only teasing. It’s been heck around here. We’ve had several car accidents to work. Not to mention a rash of robberies. Plus Marti got sick with the flu, and I’ve been taking care of Elizabeth as much as I can while Luci tends to him.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me. We’re brothers, remember.” He swallowed as the image of their mother’s frail image swam before his eyes. “Are you sitting down?”
“No. Why?”
“Maybe you ought to,” he said grimly. “I just saw Frankie a few minutes ago.”
There was a long pregnant pause, then Ripp asked, “And?”
“She didn’t recognize me. Not until I told her my name. Guess it had been too long for her to know her own kid.”
He could hear Ripp blow out a heavy breath.
“God, I can’t believe you’ve found our mother! What did she say? Did she have any sort of explanation?”
“She knew Betty Jo had passed away. Apparently she keeps up with Goliad County news. But as for anything about her leaving the family—we didn’t get to that. She’s still very weak. I’ve had to save all that for another time.”
“Oh,” Ripp said with obvious disappointment. “S
o what are your plans now? To see her again?”
“I have to, Ripp. We can’t just leave things dangling like this. I’ve come all this way to find her. Now we need to know why, don’t we?”
“Yeah. The why is the thing that’s always tormented me,” Ripp huskily replied.
“Me, too.” Mac let out a heavy breath. “Seeing her wasn’t easy, Ripp.”
“No. I don’t expect it was. How did she look?”
The dead feeling that had come over him in the hospital room was now evaporating, leaving pain in its wake. “You remember that one picture we have of her? Well, she looked just like that. Beautiful—only older.”
There was another long pause, and then Ripp said, “I think that’s why Dad destroyed every picture he could find of her. He didn’t want them around, reminding him of the beauty he’d lost.”
“We lost her, too, Ripp.”
“Yeah, but we kept her picture,” he pointed out. “Don’t forget that, Mac.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything, little brother.”
Later that evening, long after dark, Ileana found Mac at her mother’s horse barn, helping the grooms blanket the horses that had been worked earlier in the day. Once he and the other men finished the chore, Mac climbed in his truck and followed Ileana up the mountain to her house.In the kitchen, he helped her lay out plates and utensils so they could eat the take-out meal she’d brought home with her.
“Why don’t you sit and let me do this, Ileana,” he said as she pulled out a container of fried chicken. “You’ve had a long day.”
“It couldn’t have been as nearly as long as yours,” she said, then turning away from the cabinet, she walked over to him and placed her palms against his chest. “I’ve hardly been able to work due to worrying about you.”
When had any woman ever worried about him or expressed their concern about him in any way? He couldn’t remember a one and the fact that Ileana’s thoughts were on him rather than herself totally amazed him.
Lifting his hand, he stroked his fingers through the hair at her temple. “Sweet girl, I’m not anything to worry over.”
Her palms moved up and down against his chest. “That’s not the way I see it.”
The tenderness in her eyes, the warmth of her hands caused desire to flicker low in his belly. Groaning at the unbidden yearning, he bent his head and nuzzled a kiss against the side of her neck. The honey taste of her was more than a balm to his aching heart. It blanked his mind to everything, but her. “Do you think we could forget about eating for right now?” he murmured.
Her soft sigh skittered against his cheek as she slipped her arms up and around his neck. “We have all night,” she whispered.
Chapter Eleven
T he next morning Mac was still sound asleep when Ileana slipped from the bed and quickly readied herself for work. Rather than wake him, she left him a note on her pillow with a promise to call him later in the day, then quietly exited the house.
Throughout the dark drive to Ruidoso, their lovemaking of the night before rolled over and over in Ileana’s mind like a sweet, but haunting, refrain. In spite of all the tenderness he’d shown her, she’d felt desperation behind his kisses, a hunger in his hands that she’d not felt before. The change in him had left her heart heavy because she knew, in his own subtle way, he was saying goodbye.You knew that time would come, Ileana. You can’t be sorry about it now. You can only be glad that you’ve had this much time with the man.
Ileana realized the voice inside her head was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept the idea that he would soon be gone. Through all her lonely years, she’d never dreamed or imagined that a man as handsome, exciting and loving would ever come into her life. She didn’t want to let him go. Yet she didn’t have any right to ask him to stay. Their coming together had been without strings, without promises. To try to drag more from him now would be humiliating and meaningless.
A few minutes later Ileana found the halls of the hospital busy as shifts changed, medicine was dispersed and breakfasts served. She slowly made her way from patient to patient, carefully monitoring their condition and making a point to address their questions and concerns.
Purposely, Ileana saved Frankie’s visit for her last stop, and as she knocked lightly, then entered the woman’s room, she wondered what, if anything, the woman might bring up about Mac.
“Good morning, Frankie.” Her patient’s breakfast tray had already been pushed aside with two-thirds of the food gone uneaten. She looked pointedly at the tray, then to Frankie. “Aren’t you hungry this morning?”
“No. I’ve been counting the minutes until you got here.”
Ileana’s brows lifted as she pulled a stethoscope from her white lab coat and reached for the blood pressure cuff hanging over the headboard of the bed. “Oh? Are you feeling worse? Coughing more?”
“My cough is better and I feel stronger.” Frankie closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m just in turmoil.” Groaning with anguish, she opened her eyes and looked up at Ileana. “Did you know about Mac? About his being here?”
Feeling a bit duplicitous, Ileana felt her cheeks fill with color. “Yes, I did, Frankie. He came to me several days ago and—well, he explained the situation and asked to see you. At the time I had to refuse. You were too ill for such a meeting. But now you’re better.”
Rising up to sitting position in the bed, Frankie looked at her, and Ileana could see haunting shadows in the woman’s eyes. Fears and doubts etched every line of her face.
“I have to see him again, Ileana. Yesterday I was so shocked—but there was so much I needed to say. Wanted to say. Is he still here? Can you ask him to come see me this morning?”
With each word that passed her mouth, Frankie was growing more anxious and agitated. Ileana realized it would only cause her more stress if she tried to put the meeting off until a later date.
“Yes, he’s still here. And, yes, I’ll ask him to come. But first you must calm down, Frankie, or your heart is going to give you even bigger problems.”
Shaking her head, Frankie bit down on her lip and turned her watery gaze toward the window. “I don’t care about that. My heart’s been broken for a long, long time,” she said in a stricken voice.
Nearly thirty miles away, Mac was bundled in his coat, sipping coffee on Ileana’s deck as he stared out at the surrounding mountains. But the beautiful scenery was not the thing on his mind.He’d come here to Ruidoso for one thing and one thing only. To see if Frankie Cantrell was his lost mother. He’d done that. Frankie Cantrell had once been Frankie McCleod, the woman who’d given birth to him and Ripp. So now what? There were lots of answers he still didn’t have from the woman, but did he really want to stick around and try to pry them from her? What good would that do him or Ripp? All these years she’d clearly known where to find her two sons, yet she’d chosen not to. Wasn’t that enough to tell him that she didn’t care? That she’d never cared?
Sighing, he rose from the lawn chair and walked over to the railing that bordered the wide deck. Much of the snow had melted yesterday, and now patches of green juniper and sage dotted the slope of land running away from Ileana’s house. The landscape and the climate were nothing like South Texas, and he’d not expected to like it. He’d expected to want to get his business done and get back home as quickly as possible, but Ileana had changed all of that. Now when he looked at the desert and mountains, he thought of her, and realized how hard it was going to be to leave them both.
He’d tossed the coffee dregs and was about to head back into the house when his cell phone rang. Seeing Ileana’s number filled him with pleasure and concern.
“Ileana, you snuck off without waking me,” he gently scolded.
“I didn’t see any need to disturb you,” she said in a rather hushed voice.
Picking up the cue that she couldn’t talk freely, he quickly questioned, “Is anything wrong?”
“Yes and no. Can you come to the hospital righ
t now? I’ll explain everything when you get here.”
His brows furrowed together. “Does this have anything to do with Frankie?”
“Everything. She’s asking for you.”
After nearly thirty years, she was asking for him. Bitterness, amazement and curiosity swirled and tangled inside him. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he muttered.
“You can catch me at the nurse’s station,” she told him, then quickly ended the call.
Thirty minutes later, his mind spinning with all sorts of questions, Mac sprinted across the hospital parking lot and into the building.Nurse Renae Walker was on duty, and she picked up the phone to page Ileana even before Mac came to a stop at the long desk.
“Dr. Sanders is on her way,” she told Mac.
After thanking the nurse, he started toward the waiting area, but in a matter of moments Ileana caught up to him and, taking him by the hand, she pulled him over to one side of the wide corridor.
“I’m so glad that you’ve come,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. After seeing her yesterday you seemed so disturbed.”
Disturbed was a polite way for Ileana to describe his feelings about Frankie. Just looking at the woman and hearing her voice had caused him to ache in a way he’d never ached before. “Ripp and I deserve answers. That’s the only reason I’m doing this.”
Ileana nodded grimly. “I understand, Mac. But she was so worked up this morning when I went in to see her that her blood pressure was sky-high. Whatever you’ve thought about her for all these years—well, I think you at least need to hear her out.”
As Mac looked down at her, it struck him that just over a week had passed since he’d first come to Sierra General and met Ileana in this corridor. He’d summed her up as intelligent and qualified in her profession but plain and practical. He’d never expected, or even dreamed, he’d feel sexual attraction for the doctor, much less affection. Now he could only think how blind he’d been, how much he would have missed if he’d not bothered to look at the woman beneath the surface.
A Texan on Her Doorstep Page 15