The Last Honorable Man (10 page)

A quick smile, too quick, razed her mouth. “No.”

Seven decades of wisdom were etched in the canyons carving Mami's round face. “You are a strong one,
híja.
You had to be to survive on your own in such a harsh land. After all you've been through, it can't be easy to open your life to another. To put your future and your baby's in a stranger's hands.”

“My future and that of my baby is in my own hands.” Her fingers closed to a fist around her fork. “The marriage is only a formality.”

Mami fell against the back of her chair. Sunlight burnished her cheeks golden brown, like rolls fresh from the oven. “Daughter, there is nothing formal about marriage. Living with a man—the same man—day after day is like standing naked in front of a mirror. At best, you are comfortable with what you see. It's always intensely personal. There are no secrets between a woman and her mirror.”

Elisa bit her lip to keep from laughing. “And at its worst?”

Mami thought a moment, then nodded to herself. “At its worst, it's like standing naked in front of one of those funhouse mirrors that make you look two feet tall and four feet wide.”

A chuckle started low in Elisa's belly, near the womb where her baby slept, and climbed up. She had seen such a mirror as a child when a traveling circus had passed through the mountains. “Remind me never to go to another funhouse.”

Both women laughed until their eyes watered, then gradually fell silent. Mami's hand still clasped Elisa's on the tabletop. “Whatever their reasons for entering it, a marriage is what two people make of it,” she said.

Elisa steadied her quivering chin by frowning. She wasn't sure there was enough substance in her marriage to make anything. “And if only one person wants to make something?”

“My grandson is stubborn and prideful and sometimes he gets so caught up in duty that he forgets he has a responsibility to himself, his own happiness, as well. But he has a good heart. He would not have married you if he didn't think he could make some kind of life with you.”

“Then why did he leave?”

“To give you a choice.”

Elisa set her fork on the edge of her plate. “A choice?”

What kind of choice? Despite being twenty-eight years old, she was relatively inexperienced with men. Totally inexperienced with husbands. She had been too busy living a nightmare the past eight years to develop more than superficial relationships. Even with Eduardo.

“Maybe it's his way of finding out whether or not you want to make some kind of life with him,” Mami coached gently.

Elisa looked up, frustration eking out of her. “A test? This is some sort of stupid male test of my commitment?”

“Why don't you ask him?”

“How am I supposed to do that, with him in Dallas?”

Mami arched one eyebrow in a look Elisa could only call a devilish challenge. “Do you not know the way to Dallas?”

 

Del had just popped the top on his second diet cola of the day—and it wasn't even noon yet—when his front door burst open. Clint, Kat and Bull, the rangers of Company G, who sat around his kitchen table slurping colas of their own, all turned their heads as Elisa marched past them, Wal-Mart suitcase in hand and chin in the air.

For a moment, Del wondered if he was hallucinating.

The look she shot him as she passed proved he wasn't. It was as if the Abominable Snowman had frozen him with an icy breath. He couldn't remember a hallucination ever lowering the room temperature.

He pushed back from the table. “Elisa, what are you doing?”

He knew the moment Bull recognized her. His blue eyes turned to steel. Clint and Kat weren't far behind in catching on. Their mouths gaped.

Del's throat went dry. This was bad. Very, very bad.

Elisa dropped the suitcase. It landed beside her with a thud. “I'm looking for my husband. Who, it seems, would rather spend time with his ranger buddies than his wife on our honeymoon,” she added sweetly.

“Wife!” Bull boomed. Del flinched.

Kat's gaze darted between him and Elisa. She pursed her lips. “Honeymoon?”

Del fired a look at Clint. “Well, do you want to get in a shot, too?”

Clint sipped his cola and clunked the can down on the table, implacable as ever. “Nope.”

They didn't call him Cool-Hand Clint for nothing.

“What the hell's going on, Cooper?” Bull's voice was tight now, controlled, but his left hand crumpled his aluminum can as if it was paper. The last bit of suds dribbled over his fist unnoticed.

Del pulled in a deep breath, let it gust out. “Guys, there's something you should know.”

They stared up at him expectantly, Clint with his look of practiced indifference, Kat, her eyes alight with anticipation like a kid at Christmas. And Bull. A lock of black hair had fallen over the captain's forehead, shadowing his eyes and lending an air of dangerous authority.

The silence crackled like a cheap radio.

With her typical lack of patience, Kat jumped up. “Oh, my God. It's true, isn't it? You two got married!”

Del didn't have to say yes. The fact that he didn't deny it was damning enough.

“Down, junior,” Bull silenced Kat before she chattered on. Then he turned to Del. When he spoke, his lips hardly seemed to move. “We need to talk.” His gaze skidded over to Elisa, then back.
“Outside.”

Del turned to follow his captain to the door, but pulled up short. He couldn't bring himself to walk past Elisa.

She stood before him in full Amazon princess mode. Her chin was high, her shoulders square. Her dark eyes glittered like the polished stones he'd called tiger's eye as a kid.

She looked noble and magnificent and yet somehow…exposed. He'd hurt her by leaving her last night, he realized, and the knowledge stung.

Bull glowered at him with his hand on the doorknob. “Are you coming?”

Del managed a small smile for Elisa. “No, sir,” he said softly. “I believe my wife is the one I need to talk to right now.”

Even Clint showed a moment's surprise at that. He shoved to his feet, motioned toward Kat. “Come on, kid. Let's make some space.”

Bull pulled the door open for them.

“I'd appreciate it,” Del said before the rangers made a hasty escape, “if this didn't make it into any official reports. At least for a while.”

Clint acknowledged with a mock salute. Kat's blond curls bobbed when she stopped and, practically dancing on tiptoe, said, “You don't have to worry about me. And congratulations.”

Clint nudged her out the door. “Get a clue, kid.”

Del lost the rest of the lecture as Clint and Kat
tromped down the wooden stairs outside his door. Only Bull stayed. His eyes locked on Del's as if no one else existed. Del had seen that intensity make hardened criminals wet their pants.

He managed to limit his reaction to a mere shuffling of his feet.

The Bull loosened his grip on the doorknob. “Always were a hard case when you had something stuck in your craw.”

“Some people would call that standing by my principles.”

“Some people would call it foolish.” Fatigue—or concern?—stretched the skin tight across the captain's cheeks. “You're risking everything. Your job. Your reputation.”

Del held his back upright through sheer will. The Cooper name had been held in honor by three generations—his grandfather, who'd landed at Normandy and lost a leg; his father, who'd given his life in a nameless jungle; and his brother, Sam, who had died for no reason other than sitting on the wrong side of the table at a sidewalk café.

Sam hadn't died in battle, but he'd been in uniform at the time, and in a foreign land. That made him a hero.

But some things were more important than a name. Paying a debt was one of them.

“Small price for a man's life, don't you think?” he said, looking at Elisa, the barely perceptible bulge of her pregnancy beneath her loose blouse.

“You followed procedure to the letter,” the captain countered. “You can't blame yourself.”

“Apparently the shooting board does.” The rangers
hadn't just happened by today. They'd come to commiserate about the bad news.

Bull growled an oath. “Pinheaded pencil pushers have never been in a firefight in their lives.” He stepped over the threshold. Before he closed the door behind himself, he squared his jaw determinedly. “It isn't over with the shooting board yet, Del. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Del shoved his hands in his pockets and rattled change. “It won't be easy now.”

They both knew why. She was standing between them.

“That's okay.” Bull trailed a lingering look over Elisa, then beamed a blinding smile at them both. “Ain't no challenge in easy.”

The moment they were alone, Elisa spun toward Del. Sometime during the previous five minutes, her outrage had faded. Now worry rumpled her soft face like a mussed blanket. “What did you mean, ‘Apparently the shooting board does'?”

Del dropped into his easy chair and bunched his fists in eyes, then squinted up at Elisa. “How did you get here?”

“Your grandmother loaned me her pickup truck. What did you mean about the shooting board?”

Del lurched to his feet. His grandmother's pickup? There was a frightening thought. Elisa trying to navigate Central Expressway traffic. He paced passed her, trying not to notice how smooth her skin felt when he brushed her shoulder. “Do you even have a driver's license?”

She followed him. “I know how to drive.”

“That's not what I asked.” When he stopped suddenly, she bumped into his back. He turned and found her close enough to count each individual eyelash as they
swept to her cheek and back up, robbing him of the argument he was about to make.

A blink. That's all it took from her to turn his brain into spaghetti.

Guilt. That had to be it. He looked at her and saw a woman in need. A woman alone because of him.

He saw his mother raising two boys while grieving over her dead husband, and slowly losing her mind in the process.

And he couldn't let that happen to Elisa.

She was strong, but she wasn't invincible. Looking at her was like looking at one of those hologram postcards. Most of the time, he saw his Amazon princess, stalwart and sturdy. But sometimes, when the light was just right, the way it had been when he'd found her in the cemetery chapel, and again after her sonogram, he saw a different Elisa.

In those rare moments, he saw the woman within the warrior. He saw her uncertainty in herself as a mother. He saw her worry over her baby's future and her own. He saw her loneliness, no one to share her burdens with.

He saw her vulnerability.

Looking up at him, she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Guilt. It was definitely guilt that made him want to drench them with his own.

Guilt, and a healthy dollop of lust.

“What happened with the shooting board?” she asked. Her breasts brushed his chest as she spoke.

He answered her as if through a haze, never consciously thinking about the words. His thoughts were all about her. The delicate shell of her ear parting the glossy
curtain of hair on one side of her head. The tiny flecks of black inside her deep-brown irises. The scent of vanilla and almonds hovering around her like a karmic aura.

He inhaled, let her aroma fill him. It made his head light. He was floating, drifting up. The Rangers, the shooting board, everything he'd once considered important shrank to insignificant specs on a patchwork countryside far below him.

Everything except Elisa, that is.

She was with him. All around him. Inside him. Nothing else mattered. And because it didn't matter, he was able to say the words.

“The investigators filed a preliminary report finding me negligent in firing into the warehouse. I've been suspended from the Rangers without pay until the investigation is complete.”

N
egligent? Suspended?

“This is not possible!” Elisa said, disbelieving what she'd heard. “You are
policía.
They cannot touch you.”

“This is America, not San Ynez.” The ranger's words seemed to come from a great distance. But the rest of him was close. Too close.

At this distance, she could feel the thump of his heart vibrating the air around them. Smell the soap he had washed with that morning.

See the smoke in his eyes.

He lifted a hand to her head, rubbed a lock of her hair between this thumb and fingers, testing its texture. “They can do a lot more than touch me,” he said absently. His knuckles brushed her neck, setting off a string of microscopic explosions beneath her skin. “They can shove me right into the unemployment line.”

“No.” Even dogs did not turn on a member of their own pack.

“Yes.” His gaze traveled down her body and back, and she felt his perusal like a brushstroke. The blood in her veins felt sparkly, as if it was filled with glitter. “At least if they fire me you won't have to worry about being married to a
policía
anymore.”

The sweet warmth spreading inside her curdled. She knew what being a ranger meant to him. It was more than a job. It was a way to carry on a family tradition of service. It was a matter of honor.

Did he really believe she would be happy to see him lose what meant so much to him? Did she seem so callous to him?

She stepped back, put breathing room between them. “Is that what you think I'm worried about?”

The ranger angled himself away from her, spoke to her in profile. “You don't have to worry about anything at all. Whatever happens to me, my grandmother will make sure you're—”

The dismissive wave he aimed at her stirred up a gale of rage. “I did not marry your grandmother. I married
you.
”

She stepped in front of him, and once again they stood breath to breath. The air between them roiled with the mix of her hot rage and his cold indifference.

This time when he touched her hair, he wasn't testing its texture. He twisted it around his fist. Elisa wasn't sure if he tugged or if she leaned into him willingly. She only knew their hearts beat one after the other, like links in a chain. “Is that why you came back here? To make sure I don't neglect my husbandly duties?”

Her lips mere inches from his, she bit off every word in warning. “Not unless you have another wife with whom to perform them.”

Surprise winged across his face like a startled dove.

She had recognized his attempt to close himself off from her. To drive her away, leaving only his pain to keep him company. Too well she knew the anger that burned under the whip of injustice. Too often she had felt its sting.

The ranger believed he had done the only thing he could, firing into the warehouse where Eduardo stood, unseen. Over the past week, she had come to believe it, too. He was not a careless man or one who took lightly the loss of life.

A breath shuddered out of him. Calm settled in his gray eyes. The storm had passed. For now.

“I make it a point never to have more than one wife around at a time.” Gently he unwound his hand from her hair.

“But then, I am not a real wife, am I?”

“Felt pretty damn real yesterday.”

The kiss. The sudden memory of it drew her gaze to his mouth. The sultry slant of his lips taunted her. So close, and yet so out of reach.

“Is that why you ran away?” she asked.

“Is that why you followed me?”

“No.” The ranger was not the man she had planned to marry when she came to America. He was not the father of her child. He was simply a man, caught up by life just as she was, and struggling to maintain his honor in the face of a cruel circumstance. She could not, would not, think of him as more.

As a lover.

Eight years ago, Elisa had sworn to hold freedom above all else, relinquishing her independence neither for man nor state. She broke that vow when she married the ranger. For her baby's sake she sacrificed her pride, sur
rendered her dignity and consigned her future to the hands of a stranger.

She would not give him her heart, too.

Yet still she needed him—not just the name he had given her, but
him.
Their lives were bound together by a single, shattering moment that flung them both in a new direction. He was her rudder on this uncharted course.

She was alone except for him.

“Why, then?” he prodded. “Why did you come back?”

Elisa's reasons were clear to her. The words to explain them were not. Mami had been right. Marriage was intensely personal. But Elisa wasn't accustomed to exposing her innermost self. To trusting.

She lowered her eyes. “I have a doctor's appointment.”

“Day after tomorrow. I haven't forgotten. I would have come for you.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” His gaze flicked aside like a child kicking a stone in frustration. “I just want to know why you're here. God damn it—”

She frowned fiercely.

“Sorry.” He pulled in a deep breath and stared at her so intensely she thought she might melt. “I just want to know where we stand.”

He was giving her a chance, she recognized. A portal through which she could pull him closer or shut him off from her entirely. She wished she had the courage to choose one side or the other, but she did not. The best she could manage was to straddle the line.

Shoulders trembling ever so slightly, she lifted her chin. “We have an agreement. We stand on either side of it.”

 

“My baby has grown?”

Turning away from the computer screen displaying Elisa's sonogram, Dr. Marsala's large nose bobbed. She smiled. “Right through the minimum range and edging up on the median size for her gestational age.”

A cool wash of tears flooded Elisa's eyes. She made the sign of the cross over herself and said a quick prayer of thanks before she realized what the doctor had said.

“Her?”

The doctor's smile broadened. “You said you wanted to know if I was sure, and I'm sure. This little one doesn't have the right plumbing to be a boy. You're having a little girl.”

“A girl!” Elisa's heart swelled. She had been so sure it would be a boy, with dark hair and eyes, and sharp features like his father. But this time when she closed her eyes, it was a girl child she saw, with the Ranger's gray eyes.

She nearly started off the table.

“Something wrong?” Dr. Marsala asked, switching off the computer.

“No.” She sat up, still distracted by the image of Del Cooper's daughter. A daughter she would never bear him. “I am fine. I just…was sure it was a boy.”

The doctor bent over a file folder, making notes. “Well, after she's born, you can trade her in if you don't like her.”

Shock tied Elisa's tongue for a full second before she realized the doctor was joking.

Ten minutes later Elisa burst through the door. The Ranger sat in a corner, his long body crammed into a
too-small chair in the empty waiting room. He was reading a magazine on parenting.

When he raised his head, the hollow look in his eyes stopped Elisa cold. She had never seen him afraid before.

For her? Of the news?

Swallowing a lump of gratitude for his concern, she hurried toward him. He stood, and she was on him before she thought her actions through and stopped herself.

Her arms closed around his neck and she buried her face in his shoulder, chattering in Spanish one long, run-on sentence that probably made no sense.

Apparently he understood at least two words:
baby
and
okay.

His arms around the small of her back, he gathered her up, awkwardly at first. Tentatively. Then with gusto. “I told you everything would be all right.”

“You didn't know.”

“Did so.”

“Did not.”

Gently, he lifted her off her feet, balancing her on his chest. “Did—”

Grinning, she punched him in the arm.

“If this is how you two celebrate, I'd hate to see you fight.” Hands in the pockets, the doctor swished the hem of her lab coat around her thighs.

The Ranger set Elisa on her feet and extended his hand. “Thanks for everything, doc.”

“You're quite welcome,” she said, then handed Elisa a prescription. “This is for your new prenates. Everything is looking great, but I'd like to see you again in ten days or so, just to check your progress.”

With one arm around her waist, the Ranger pulled Elisa against his hip. “We'll be here.”

“Good. And one more thing.” The doctor smiled at each of them. “You can consider this your green light.”

“Green light?” Elisa crinkled her nose and looked at the Ranger for explanation. Her vocabulary was extensive, but idioms—which she assumed this was, since there were no traffic control signals in the doctor's waiting room—sometimes escaped her.

Was he blushing? Something certainly had his cheeks abloom.

“I think the doctor means it's okay to, ah…”

Understanding unfurled in her, warm and deep. “Oh. We're not—”

He silenced her with a squeeze and made a hasty goodbye.

Outside she pulled out of his grasp. Nonplussed, he strode on to the Land Rover.

“What was that about?” she asked, two steps behind him. “You didn't have to let her think—”

“We're supposed to be married.”

“We
are
married.”

“Married people have sex.”

She almost bumped into his back when they reached the car. “We're not that married,” she said dryly, though she knew he was right. If she was to stay in the United States, they needed their marriage to look real. That meant keeping the fact that they were not intimate to themselves.

He unlocked the passenger door, opened it for her. On the seat inside, a package waited like a found penny.

“For me?” she guessed, touched.

He nodded. “A little celebration.”

“How did you know…? Wh-what if the news—”

He lifted a finger to her lips. “Sshh. Not a chance.” He shrugged guiltily. “Besides, I checked with the nurse
before I ran down here and put it in. Barely got back upstairs before you were done.”

A well of fear she had carried so deep inside her that she hadn't realized it was there opened up. Hope rushed in, and tears of joy and relief rose inside her.

She lifted the rectangular package as if it were fragile as a baby bird, turned it over in her hands. “You wrapped it in pink,” she said in awe.

“I knew it was a girl.”

“Did not.”

“Did so.”

“Not.” She sniffed and punched him in the shoulder before she ripped open the pastel wrapping paper.

Frowning, he shuffled his feet while speechless, she stared at her present.

“It's a book,” he said, sounding anxious over reaction.

“A book of baby names.” Her voice wobbled. It just might be the most thoughtful gift she had ever received.

“I put sticky notes by my favorites.” He leaned over her and thumbed through the pages. “Here. Elena. Marianna. What about Xoria?”

He smiled. “Okay. Maybe not Xoria.”

“Maybe not,” she said, and impulsively kissed him on the cheek before she slid past him and into the Land Rover.

One corner of his mouth hitched up. “Well, if that's the reward for a book.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two stubs of heavy paper. “What're a couple of tickets behind home plate worth?”

Rolling her eyes at him, Elisa tipped the ranger back with one finger and closed the car door. Then, thinking better of herself, she pressed the button to lower the au
tomatic window, reached out and snatched the tickets from his hand.

A little harmless flirtation was no reason to miss out on a baseball game.

 

The Rangers got slaughtered—the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team, that is. After a three-up, three-down inning in the bottom of the sixth, the crowd at The Ballpark in Arlington began to thin.

By the time the ninth inning rolled around, clouds covered the moon and a warm mist perfumed the air with the scent of summer rain. Only the most die-hard fans remained, Elisa among them.

Del had never seen her so animated. While she'd followed every pitch enthusiastically, he'd been more interested in watching her.

Her eyes were alight with laughter. Her voice rang clear and true with her cheers and jeers. Excitement flushed her cheeks each time a runner slid to his base or a fly ball soared toward the outfield wall. And no matter which team scored or struck out, a California brownout couldn't have dimmed her smile.

He supposed she had a lot to be happy about today.

That made one of them, at least.

He just wished the news he'd gotten from a call to Captain Matheson had been as reassuring as her doctor's visit. The Bull had spoken again to the investigators on his case but wasn't convinced it had done any good.

Like the Texas Ranger at the plate now, Del's career was down, no balls, two strikes, with two out in the bottom of the ninth.

Elisa jumped to her feet, bobbed like a pogo stick, clapping, when the Texas batter took his final swing and met nothing but air. “We won! We won!”

“You could be a little less enthusiastic about it,” Del grumbled, suppressing a smile. Even her insistence on rooting for the Minnesota Twins charmed him.

A light rain began to fall as they left the stadium. Fat, warm droplets splattered on concrete only to be slurped away by the thirsty landscape. Del laced his fingers with Elisa's and pulled her to him, sheltering her as much as he could with his body. She didn't seem to mind, so he nudged her closer to his side and an inch or two in front of him so that the outer slope of her breast rested on his rib cage and the curve of her backside brushed his thigh with each step they took.