A South Texas Christmas

“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.