The Last Honorable Man (9 page)

And Del Cooper was no saint.

He wasn't much of a comedy fan, either. But he doubted Elisa would have come looking for him without reason. She had something on her mind.

He stood, brushed the dirt from his knees. “Come on, then. Let's go someplace cool and you can try to make me laugh.”

Murphy trailed them to the barn. Del stretched out on some old bales of straw. Elisa settled on the wooden grain bin in her typical perfect posture, her fine ankles and knees together, back straight and hands folded in her lap. Dust motes sailed aimlessly by and a dozen starlings swooped and chattered in the rafters while Del waited for her to speak her mind.

“What I have to say is not funny,” she finally admitted.

“I didn't think it would be.” He plucked a piece of straw and popped the end in his mouth.

“Perhaps we should not get married this afternoon.”

“Why not?”

She studied one thumbnail intensely. “We still do not know about the baby. If it will…be all right. If there is no baby, there is no need to be married.”

He stopped chewing the ragged end of his straw and sat up. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

She raised her gaze to his. He felt the churn in her coffee eyes deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Why?” she asked tentatively, as if afraid to hear the answer. Afraid something else was wrong, and she hadn't noticed.

“You look like the picture of perfect health.” And of the perfect woman. “The dark circles are gone from your eyes, and the color is back in your face. It looks to me like you've put on a few pounds—all right where that baby is growing. You are both going to be fine.”

She shook her heard slowly. “You cannot be sure.”

“I am.” The intensity in his voice—and the certainty in his heart—surprised him. He refused to acknowledge any other possibility. “Bank on it.”

Her chest rose and fell in a deep but silent breath. “You do not have to do this.”

“Are you trying to convince me of that, or yourself?”

“You did not mean to harm Eduardo. It was an accident. You owe me nothing.”

“I owe you everything.” The self-recrimination that had lain quiet inside him these last few days, soothed by the peace of the farm, seethed in the pit of his stomach like a nest of water moccasins. “Look, I know you loved Garcia, and I'm no replacement for him, but—”

“I did not.”

He stopped, his mouth open, waiting for his brain to catch up. Surely he'd mistaken her meaning.

“I did not love Eduardo.”

There wasn't much to mistake about that.

“I did not know him well enough to love him,” she explained, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“But you knew him well enough to have his baby.”

She jolted lightly at his words, and with good cause. The accusation in them had been clear, if unintentional.

“It is Garcia's baby, isn't it?”

Her head snapped up. Her eyes blazed black fire. “I am many things. But I am not a whore.”

Del was many things, as well. One of them was a foul-tempered jerk.

He stood, shoved his fingers into the waistband of his jeans and paced. On the other side of the aisle, he scratched Lulu the milk cow's forelock as she chewed her cud. The animal looked at him through placid, trusting brown eyes. The world was the same to Lulu now as it had been thirty seconds ago. Nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed for Del, either, he gradually realized.

It didn't matter whether she'd loved Garcia or not. She'd planned to marry him, to raise her baby here. Del had spoiled those plans. He had to make up for it.

Love, or the lack of it, was not important.

Slowly, the pounding of his heart subsided to a few off-kilter knocks. He sat next to Elisa on the tack box. Her body tensed, as if to ward off a blow—or a man with no right to judge, passing judgment on her.

“How the hell did you get into this mess?”

Murphy got up from his spot in the sun, padded over to Elisa and put his chin in her lap. She stroked the dog's head.

“Eduardo came to San Ynez with the World Aid Organization. The villages in the San Torna mountains are poor, and they had been ravaged by floods in the spring. Many people lost their homes, their farms, their livestock, everything they had. Eduardo brought food and medical supplies.”

“Is that where you're from? The San Torna mountains?”

She shifted her eyes from the dog to the bird nest over the doorway to the cow stall, where Lulu was banging
the feeder for more hay. Del wondered what made her nervous about a simple question like where she was from.

“I was there when the WAO dropped in supplies by helicopter. The villagers were frightened at first, but Eduardo earned their trust.”

“And yours?” Del swallowed, turning away to hide his sour expression. Despite the fact that theirs would be a marriage of convenience, the thought of Elisa with another man left a sour taste on his tongue.

“No.” She stared over his shoulder intently, as if seeing lush green mountains instead of gray plank walls. “Not then.” Then she pulled her gaze down to Del's. “Not until the soldiers came.”

“What did they want?” Based on Elisa's expression, he didn't think they'd come to feed the refugees.

“They were recruiting workers for the cocaine growers in the valley.” Her forehead furrowed. “Anyone over the age of ten would do, and they weren't particular whether you wanted to go or not. They took old women, children. If not for
la resistáncia,
they might have taken the whole village.”

A black memory crept up on Del. He couldn't see it—wouldn't let himself see it—but he felt it in the way the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. “The resistance. You mean the rebel army?”

Elisa looked a prickly herself. “They are not rebels. They are freedom fighters—when they must fight. In San Torna they freed the prisoners without violence and hid them in the hills. It is the soldiers who would rather shed blood than live in peace. In retribution the army attacked one of the villages, the one where I was, and Eduardo. They fired mortars into the streets, burned the building
where schoolchildren had done their lessons only hours before.”

Her hands clenched on her thighs. The newly regained color in her cheeks faded.

“Eduardo and I were trapped in the medical clinic,” she continued. “The
soldados
were coming. I ran across the street, toward the forest. The muzzle of a big gun mounted on a truck flashed. There was a roar. Then screaming. Crying. I fell. I remember the feel of mud beneath my cheek and blood on my hands.”

Those hands were shaking now, and Del figured his probably were, too. His memories ran parallel to hers. He felt the heat of the blast. Heard the shouts, the wails. Smelled the blood.

Only he wasn't in a mountain village in San Ynez. He was at a street café table in Saudi Arabia, drinking what passed for coffee over there with Sam.

God, Sam…

The ache in his chest exploded like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July. Sparks sizzled toward his extremities. His breath whistled.

Armies didn't make war on their own people, for Christ's sake. He'd spent most of his four years in the U.S. military stationed in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Invariably it was the political malcontents, the so-called resistance, freedom fighters, people's movements or revolutionaries who mired their countries in cycles of violence rather than working with their governments toward peace. Rebels, no matter what name or cause they went by, thrived on unrest. On destruction and death.

They didn't care whose.

Del resisted the urge to wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans as if still trying to rid himself of the blood—his brother's blood—fourteen years later. With an effort that
started a headache throbbing at the base of his skull, he turned his attention back to Elisa.

Her eyes were dry and clear, but her lips trembled as she finished her story. “The next thing I knew, I was in Eduardo's arms. He carried me across the street and lay on top of me while the soldiers shelled the clinic into rubble. Then he took me farther into the woods to join the others.”

“He saved your life.” As Sam had saved Del's.

She nodded. “I didn't know until the next day that he had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his back. He developed a fever. The infection almost killed him.”

It wasn't hard to see where this was leading. “And you nursed him back to health.”

“We stayed eleven days in the resistance encampment, until he was well enough to travel. Then we said goodbye.”

“Until you found out you were pregnant.”

She nodded again. “I wrote to him in the United States.” Her eyes shimmered desperately. “I asked him only to take the baby, to raise the child where it would be safe. But he would not take our baby without its mother. He said he would keep us both safe. It was his duty.”

“I wish…” Del struggled for words to describe the hollow place her story left inside him. Knowing what kind of man Eduardo had been only made Del feel his loss more keenly. There were far too few honorable men left in the world. Because of his mistake, there was now one less. “I wish I had known Eduardo. I think I would have liked him.”

“Because you are much like him,” she said softly, and she covered his hand with hers. “But it was a mistake, coming here to marry Eduardo when I hardly knew
him. Perhaps all that has happened is fate's way of righting that wrong.”

“Nothing that's happened is your fault,” he snapped.

“Marrying you would be an even bigger mistake.”

“Bigger than being deported back to San Ynez?”

“Our marriage would be a lie.” A sad smile toyed with the corners of her mouth. “And I am not a liar.”

“It doesn't have to be a lie.” He reversed her grip on his hand so that it was he who held her. His heart bounced like a Mexican jumping bean, and he felt the pulse in her wrist leap in answer.

She'd said she thought she could learn to love Eduardo. His first thought had been that she could learn to love him, too, then. But that was crazy. He had killed her fiancé. Virtually kidnapped her, wrenched a promise of marriage from her and forced her into seclusion on his family farm.

When the two years were up, and her permanent residency was guaranteed, he'd be lucky if she didn't murder him in his sleep.

He decided on a safer approach than love.

“What's a marriage but a partnership? Two people who make a commitment to a common goal?” He dared to move his hand to her belly, felt her muscles ripple under his touch and an answering contraction in his chest. Awe settled over him, and a little bit of fear. There was a life in there. A child that would be his responsibility, legally and morally, if not biologically.

In his wildest daydreams, Del had never imagined this moment. Sitting with a woman, his hand over a baby, asking—hell, practically begging—her to marry him. To change all his plans for life. Flip his priorities upside down.

He liked women well enough. Recreationally. But
he'd never planned on getting permanent with one. Never considered having a family.

Del was a soldier, as surely as he'd been when he'd worn the insignia of the Third Cavalry, United States Army. Only, now he fought the war raging on the streets of America. His life, his heart, belonged to service of his country.

And every time he looked into his mother's empty eyes he saw what it meant for a man to divide his loyalties between country and family. He never wanted to hurt a woman that way. Never wanted to leave her with nothing but a box of old letters to hold on to.

Yet here he was, feeling like one of the sheep that Murphy loved to herd. Inexorably pushed toward a destination he couldn't foresee, regret constantly circling, and guilt nipping at his heels.

The more he learned about Elisa, the more he respected her, and Eduardo. The more she tried to release him from his responsibility, the more he felt honor-bound to uphold it.

Working up what he hoped was a reassuring smile, he moved his hand away from her belly. “We have a common goal. We both want to see this baby grow up happy and safe without having to worry about mortars killing innocent people in the streets. Where is the lie in that?”

Even as he asked the question and watched her pride rise in her eyes and her concern for her child conquer it, the answer taunted him from the back of his mind.

The lie was in the wanting.

After he'd killed Eduardo, Del had told himself he only wanted to see her again so he could pay his respects to her.

Then he'd told himself he wanted to be her friend.

Today, he told them both he wanted to be her partner.

The truth was, since the moment he'd seen her, he'd just
wanted.

Wanted her.

“B
y the power vested in me by the state of Texas, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Justice of the Peace Clayton Billings, a rotund man with a handlebar mustache and ruddy cheeks closed the book he'd held during the ceremony.

Elisa wasn't sure if it was a Bible or an instruction manual. The J.P. had admitted this was only his second wedding in eighteen years in office.

Elisa was just happy it was over. Calm surrounded her like soap bubbles. It was done.

She had married the ranger.

At least there would be no more worrying about whether or not she should go through with it. For better or worse, she had made her decision, sealed her fate—or two years' worth, anyway.

She glanced at her new husband, wondering if he was as unsettled by the prospect as she was, but as usual he stood steady as a mountain.

The J.P. cleared his throat and grinned at Del, rocking toe to heel with the book clasped to his chest. “You may, ah, kiss the bride now.”

Elisa's bubble burst. Even the ranger looked startled when he turned to her, his gray eyes roaming desperately from his grandmother, who stood with moist cheeks and a lace hanky clasped in both hands, to Elisa. She could have sworn his
abuela
was holding her breath, love shining in her eyes as she waited for her grandson's big moment.

Or what should have been the big moment.

Awkwardly Del leaned over Elisa. His breath brushed her cheek for an instant before his lips swept across hers. It was a fly-by kiss, slightly off center and totally devoid of feeling, a blunt reminder that theirs was a partnership, not a marriage.

Disappointment sank like a kite without wind in her chest. As a child, how many times had she dreamed of her wedding day? She had long ago given up the notion of white gloves, a frothy dress with a train that reached back to the third row in an historic cathedral, her new husband lifting a pearl-studded veil that made the whole ceremony look as if it was taking place in a cloud.

Life in San Ynez did not accommodate that kind of luxury.

But she had never given up the notion of love. Love did not need the trappings of a formal wedding.

It only needed passion.

Partnerships, apparently, did not. Not if that kiss was any indication.

She might have let the moment pass, keeping the loss of her childhood dreams to herself, if she hadn't seen the same feelings on his grandmother's face.

This woman had raised the Ranger as her son. She had poured her love, her life, into him. She had accepted Elisa and offered her that same love, fussing over her diet and answering endless questions about the changes her body was going through.

Mami had used her years of midwife experience to supplement the doctor's vitamin prescriptions with herbal concoctions that put weight on Elisa's bones and a glow on her face.

She had saved Elisa's baby.

Elisa loved her. She couldn't stand seeing the woman's confusion over her grandson's perfunctory display of affection.

Without daring to contemplate the consequences, she reached up, wrapped her palm around the back of his neck and pulled him down for a real kiss.

The skin at his nape was surprisingly soft for such a hard man. So was the hair that tickled her knuckles and the startled breath that puffed across her cheek in the instant before their mouths met.

None of it compared to the softness of his lips.

Tentative at first, reluctant, he played the passive role while she found the angle that fit them best. He stood unyielding while she moved her mouth against his.

Getting no response, she coaxed with a nibble. Teased with a glide of her tongue over moist, velvety male flesh. His lips were sweet and ripe as the fruit from the finest vineyard.

A door unlocked inside Elisa, the entrance to a place she had closed off long ago. The place that was feminine and sensual. That ached from too many years spent alone or with men who were her compatriots, her brothers in arms, even her friends.

But not her lovers.

With the door open, the yearning she'd locked inside rushed out. Into her veins. Through her lips. Into his.

Suddenly she wasn't kissing the ranger to please his grandmother. This was all for herself. For the woman inside her that the war in her country so rarely allowed her to set free.

Elisa raised to her tiptoes, pressing her body against the ranger, seeking the hard muscles of his chest, his hips, his thighs to balance the softness of his lips, the flutter of his eyelashes on her brow as she turned her head, smoothed her cheek against his. Her fingers banded around the iron core of his biceps as she raised up to meet him again. She mewled, probing the dark crevasse between his lips with the tip of her tongue, suckling his upper lip, then the lower one, reveling in the tremor that passed through him.

Sensing victory was close, she took his lower lip between her teeth and bore down gently.

A groan rumbled up from deep inside him. He tore his mouth away from hers. For a moment she thought he might push her away, but instead he wrapped his arms around her and jerked her closer, squeezing out every stray molecule of air between them.

His gray eyes speared her with heat, and then he took over the kiss, his lips no longer soft, but crushing. His teeth clashed with hers. His jaw worked. His tongue ravaged. Even if she had wanted to retreat, she could not have. He gave her not so much as a breath. A thought. A will of her own.

There was only need, and the sense that finally,
finally,
she didn't have to be the strong one any longer.

And then it was over.

The justice of the peace punched a button on a portable tape player, and scratchy organ music swept away the haze fogging Elisa's mind. The ranger eased her back from him, and Elisa realized he was the only thing keeping her on her feet. Her knees felt like warmed wax.

She looked up at the man who was now her husband. He had already donned an unaffected expression, but she was close enough to know better. Heat emanated from him like steam from a kettle. She felt his pulse throbbing in the grip he had on her arm.

He wasn't unaffected, she thought as he marched her out of the J.P.'s office. Not nearly.

The question was, what was he going to do about it?

 

Del Cooper was getting the hell out of Dodge.

He stuffed a pair of socks and a white T-shirt into his army duffel.

What had gotten into him back at the J.P.'s office? What had gotten into
her?

Christ, who was he kidding? It wasn't her fault.

She had probably just been trying to put on a good show, in case the INS questioned the justice of the peace later.

Del was the one who had turned a simple kiss into hand-to-hand combat. Without the hands.

Just remembering the wild-berry taste of her lips, the way her breasts felt, crushed to his chest, the way her hips fit perfectly in the cradle of his was enough to make his body tighten.

He'd had no right to react the way he had. No excuse for letting his hormones run amok. Elisa Reyes—Elisa Cooper now—might be his wife. But she would never,
ever,
be his woman.

And if he really, really concentrated, maybe he could pretend he didn't regret it.

Muttering to himself about just rewards, Del cinched the drawstring on his duffel, heaved his belongings over his shoulder and turned to leave.

His mother stood in the doorway wearing a vacuous smile and looking right through him. “Did you bring your bicycle in, Del? It looks like rain.”

The heat of the bright, cloudless afternoon shining through the window warmed his back. “Sure, Ma.” He dropped his duffel and sat on the corner of the twin bed. “I was just coming to look for you, though.”

“For me?” A spark of life lit her eyes, but quickly flickered out.

He patted the mattress next to him. She sat.

“I have to go, Ma.”

He covered her hand with his where she picked at the quilted bedspread. Her bones were fine as a bird's and her pulse felt thin and watery. “I have to go back to work. Back to Dallas.”

“You and Sammy.” Her laugh tittered, clinked like shards of broken glass. “Always dreaming of going off places. Seeing the world.”

Del propped his elbows on his knees. His head sagged between his shoulders. He wondered if she worried about him when he left like this. If she looked out into the dark, afraid her little boy was lost, or if she simply…forgot him. Out of sight, out of mind.

He hoped it was the latter.

Except, this time, forgetting wouldn't be as easy. He wasn't just leaving; he was leaving something—someone—behind as a reminder.

He scrubbed his face with his hands. His skin felt
worn, the angles of his cheeks harsher, the furrows beside his eyes deeper. “Elisa is going to stay here with you. I need you and Mami to take care of her.”

His mother spun toward him, her relief evident now that the topic of conversation fit neatly into her fantasy world. “Yes, poor dear.” She clasped her hands and sat next to him, leaning close and nearly whispering. “She told me she's all alone here. Of course we'll take care of her.”

“Good.” He wondered how his mother would integrate Elisa's baby into her alternate reality when it was born.

Undoubtedly she'd manage.

He stood, stretched down for his duffel, then remembered the envelope in his pocket. Easing himself back onto the bed, he worked up a smile. “I almost forgot. This came for you.”

He didn't say when.

She drew in a sharp breath. “A letter? From your father?”

He nodded. Wanting to see her smile before he left, he'd taken it from the box upstairs before he'd started packing.

“Read it to me. Please.” She tugged on his sleeve.

Del hesitated only a second, then sat down next to her. He'd read the letter so many times he could recite the words from memory, but he unfolded the note, anyway. His mom beamed at him with such love and anticipation that he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and snugged her up close as he unfolded the letter and let the familiar shaky handwriting on the page flood him with memories.

It was the only thing he really remembered about his dad:—jagged handwriting on rumpled, stained stationery.

She had been deserted on her wedding night.

Elisa pushed a cold helping of scrambled eggs, peppered with finely diced spinach leaves and other herbs she couldn't identify, around the blue-and-white china plate in front of her.

Not that she had expected an evening of intimacy. There would never be that between her and the ranger. But she had hoped they might share a meal in private. Talk.

She hadn't expected to be abandoned on his grandmother's doorstep with hardly more than wave goodbye and a muttered promise to call.

Humiliation dragged her shoulders down. He had not even been able to meet her eyes before he left.

She had shamed herself, and him, with that kiss. He wanted nothing to do with her other than to bind his hemorrhaged honor, soothe his wounded conscience. Her brief wanton wishfulness for more appalled him.

Repulsed him.

And no wonder.

It appalled her, too.

In San Ynez, she had been the caretaker of her family and others. The villagers looked to her for direction.

Here she was as lost as a newborn lamb without its ewe.

In San Ynez, people needed her; here she was the needy one.

She did not like to admit it, but she needed the ranger—as more than a substitute husband. She needed his strength when the morning sickness swamped her. His optimism when fear for her baby's safety alarmed her.

She needed his certainty that honor still existed in the world, even if she suspected he was the last man alive who believed in it.

If he was the last honorable man, she needed him all the more for it.

Living in America, having a baby, marrying a ranger—she had no experience in these things. She did not know what to do.

Shame lumped in her throat. The blue-and-white plate before her blurred. Through the curtain of her hair, Elisa tracked the ranger's grandmother as the elderly woman crossed the kitchen. Knuckles grown bulbous with age lit on Elisa's shoulders.

“Pobrecito. ¿Qué te molesta?”
What is bothering you?

Elisa raised her head and wrenched a smile onto her face for Mami's sake. “Nada, Mami. Todo está bien.” Everything is fine.

Mami eased herself into the chair next to Elisa. “Never lie to an old liar, little one. Or to a woman who's
put up with more than her share of trouble with men. You are here and your new husband is in Dallas. Everything cannot be fine.” Mami patted Elisa's hand. “So tell me what my mule-headed grandson has done.”

Elisa felt the ranger's strength in the clasp of the old woman's hand and so began, haltingly at first, to tell her story. At first she hardly dared look at Rosario Cooper, afraid of what the woman would think of her for trapping her grandson in a loveless marriage, but as the minutes passed and the understanding in Mami's eyes grew, deepened like the cool shade of the forest, the words came easier. When Elisa was done, relief lifted her like a leaf in a summer breeze.

“Can you live with him two years?” Mami asked.

“I have lived eight years with much worse in San Ynez.”

“But you're afraid of him.”

Caution warred with the comfort that came from confiding in another woman. She hadn't told Del's grandmother everything about her life before she came to the United States. “He is
policía.
I—”

“Not of what he represents as a Ranger. You're afraid of what he represents as a
man.
”