The Last Honorable Man

by Vickie Taylor

  She didn’t look up, just mumbled, “Yes, you are probably right.”

  Del damn near did run his Rover into a tree. Jerking the vehicle to a stop on the side of the road, he gave her a long look. More than just her lips had lost their color. The flesh beneath her fingernails was white, and the picture she held trembled in her unsteady hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked more gruffly than he’d intended.

  When she finally looked up at him, her eyes as bleak as a picture of a nature preserve after a forest fire. “You were correct the other night. I cannot take your money. It would not be right.”

  “Honey, I think you’re taking this motherhood thing a little too seriously. This is no time for you to develop a conscience.” He laced the words with sarcasm. Meant them as a joke.

  Only, Elisa wasn’t laughing. To Del’s horror her eyes swelled with tears.

  “Aw, God damn it. Don’t cry.”

  She flinched at his expletive, made the sign of the cross, and he cursed himself again silently. He knew she had a thing about using the Lord’s name. Hell, he respected her for it.

  She held her tears in check, though Del didn’t know how, her eyes were so full. “I won’t take your money,” she said, her hands twining in her lap. “It would be wrong.”

  When she looked up, she seemed calmer, but still devastated. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But if your other offer still stands…”

  Del’s jaw fell slack. “You want to marry me?”

  “Yes.” She met his eyes levelly. God, she was incredible. Her pride. Her strength.

  Too bad he knew she was lying. “What the hell happened in the doctor’s office?”

  No way was he buying this change of heart without a reason. A cold knot of fear settled where his heart ought to be while he waited for her answer. An answer he was very much afraid he wouldn’t like.

  Elisa’s shoulders shuddered. She bit her lip until they steadied, then answered. “She said that I am anemic.”

  Del blew out a breath. “Anemic. That’s not so bad. Pretty normal during pregnancy. She gave you vitamins, right? And an iron supplement?”

  Elisa nodded. “Except she said I am very anemic. Probably due to stress and a poor diet. She said it was so bad that it might be affecting the baby.”

  Her tears returned. The knot in Del’s chest expanded into a beach ball, inflated past its capacity and ready to blow.

  “She said my baby is too small for its gestational age.” Elisa’s face hardened, then cracked, and the tears spilled over onto her cheeks. “She said it might not be growing enough to survive.”

  “Aw, ’Lis.” He took her shoulders and pulled her head to his chest, even more deeply disturbed by the fact that she let him.

  She felt cold and stiff in his arms, her emotions all closed off, pent-up inside her, but he knew she couldn’t stave off her emotions forever. No one could.

  The first tremor broke through with an audible rattling of her teeth. Her control splintered rapid-fire from there, releasing her shudders in a series of jagged convulsions that speared Del’s heart.

  He held on to her so tightly he was afraid he might hurt her. “It’s all right. Gonna be okay.”

  She quivered against him, and he planted a kiss in her hair as her shoulders shook. God, she was killing him. She tied his lungs in bow knots. He couldn’t stand to see her hurt so much.

  She gulped down a choking breath, burrowed her nose against his collarbone. “It is my fault the baby is in danger. I…I thought I could take care of myself.”

  “You can. But you don’t have to. Not now.”

  “I do not like being dependent on others.”

  He smiled into her hair. “Yeah, I figured that out.”

  “I would—” Her body shook again. He rubbed her back to warm her. “Would never have come here if Eduardo had not insisted it was the best thing for the baby.”

  “It still is.” He eased back and tipped her head up to where he could see her, framing her face with both hands. “Honey, I’m sorry about Eduardo. I would give anything to bring him back if I could. But I can’t. You’ve got to let me help you now.”

  The last of her tremors fading, she nodded reluctantly. “The doctor said I must rest and eat well.”

  “I have a big bed,” he said, pushing away the image of her lying in it all alone. “And plenty of food.”

  She studied the dome light above his head, then brought her gaze down to his. “If I lose the baby, there is no reason for me to stay in the United States.”

  He knew what she was doing. Letting him off the hook. Giving him an excuse to take back his offer. To say, “Let’s wait and see.”

  Like hell.

  He clamped her head back on his shoulder. “Don’t you worry. You’re going to be in Texas a long, long time.”

  She’d already lost too much because of him, he thought fiercely. She wouldn’t lose her child, too. Not without one hell of a fight.

  Elisa stretched her arms over her head, rolled to her side and pressed her cheek deeper into the pillow. The Ranger’s pillow. As if he instinctively understood that her fledgling trust did not extend yet to his friend, the politician, he had not brought her back to the big house, but to his own small apartment. His bed. She could smell him there, in the sheets. Sandalwood aftershave and cocoa butter soap. The sensation was so real she thought if she reached out—without opening her eyes—she could touch his short brown hair. She could trace the crescent furrows that bracketed his mouth when he smiled.

  A rap on the door roused her from her twilight sleep musings in time to see Del shoulder his way into the room, a tray laden with food and smelling scrumptious balanced in his hands. She sat bolt upright, smoothing the ruffled covers as if afraid he would see what she had been imagining.

  The guilt hit her a second later. Shame raked her cheeks. What was wrong with her, thinking of the ranger in that way? She had come to this country to be with Eduardo. It was to him she owed her loyalty still.

  Even if it was the ranger’s ring she would one day wear.

  Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, she propped herself up on a pillow.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” the ranger said as he set the tray in her lap.

  The single yellow rose in a thin vase in the corner brought a lump to her throat. “This is all for me?”

  “Every bite.”

  She lifted the paper plate turned upside down over the center dish. “Eggs?”

  He removed the cover from a side plate. “And steak. A Texas breakfast tradition.”

  “Breakfast?” Her gaze leaped to the window, where sunlight gleamed off the spotless glass. It seemed only minutes had passed since she’d lain down for a short catnap at dusk. She read the glowing numbers on the digital clock on the nightstand to verify. It was nearly 9:00 a.m. She’d slept twelve straight hours.

  “Time for your iron pill.” He nodded toward a dime-size tablet and handed her the glass of juice from her tray. While she swallowed, he picked up the knife and began cutting the steak.

  “I can do it,” she said, trying to take the knife.

  “Indulge me.”

  She sat back uneasily. She was not accustomed to being pampered, but as she watched him skewer and chop the meat into precise centimeter cubes, she found the experience was not altogether unpleasant.

  He looked up at her and smiled. He seemed at ease with the closeness. The intimacy of preparing another’s food. It made her wonder…

  “Have you been married before, Ranger?”

  “No. And since we’re going to be married soon, do you think you could call me Del?”

  “Del.” It was a nice name. She just wasn’t sure she could bring herself to use it. Referring to him as “Ranger” offered a comfortable measure of distance. Breathing room. “Why have you never married?”

  He shrugged. “Just never found the right person, I guess.”

  She took her time studying him while he was occupied with her meal. He was
n’t unattractive. His broad, square features suited his strength. His character. She didn’t imagine him having trouble finding a woman.

  “That’s not it,” she challenged, and flaked the top layer off her eggs with the tip of her fork. “What is this green stuff.”

  “Spinach. Lots of iron. Eat it.”

  “When you tell me why you never married.”

  Setting the knife on the tray with a clank, he sighed lustily. “So that’s the way it’s going to be? Blackmail?”

  The words were ominous, but his mercurial eyes danced.

  She speared a forkful of eggs and lifted it to her mouth, circling just in front of her curved lips, waiting. Her smile fell when he pulled his face into a worried frown and shrank back to the edge of the mattress.

  “I was hoping to spare you this,” he said, gazing out the window.

  Her stomach lurched. Her hand sagged, and the bite of eggs fell back to the plate.

  “But I guess you would’ve found out, anyway, sooner or later. Might as well get it out in the open from the start.”

  Elisa’a heart hammered. She was both afraid to hear what he had to say and afraid not to.

  “It’s a medical condition,” he said fiercely, as if he dared her to deny it.

  “Oye,” she breathed. “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid I suffer from a chronic case of domestic commitment avoidance.”

  Elisa gaped.

  “Complicated by frequent bouts of foul-temperitis and cursing-habit disease.”

  A laugh broke from Elisa’s chest, followed by another.

  “Sometimes when it’s really bad, I even take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “I noticed,” she said, hiding her giggles behind a fake cough.

  “You see? There’s not a woman in Texas who’ll have me.”

  “Except me.”

  He took the fork from her hand, pinned a bite of steak on the end and raised it to her mouth. His eyes turned serious. “You, I figure, are just stubborn enough to put up with me.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he popped the meat in before she got a word out.

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll even cure me.”

  She chewed slowly, savoring the taste of tender steak and the tender look in the ranger’s eyes equally. Somehow his gaze warmed her from the inside out. Shone light on dark places inside her she had forgotten existed. Gradually the heat rose to an uncomfortable level. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she was forced to look away.

  When he caught her gaze again, he was smiling.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked softly, shyly.

  “Marry you?”

  She nodded, unable to say the word. What he proposed was not really a marriage, after all, but more like a business arrangement. A two-year payment on a debt.

  “As sure as there’s gonna be mosquitoes in Texas after it rains,” he said cockily, then sobered. He put his hand over the bulge that held her baby. She sucked in a breath as the muscles in her abdomen fluttered under his touch and she felt another tiny stirring, deeper.

  “As sure as I am of this healthy, beautiful baby girl you’re going to have.”

  “It is a boy.”

  “Girl.”

  “You do not know.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I can feel it.”

  “I can see it. I told you, my grandmother is a midwife. I’ve seen a lot of women before and after they’ve had their babies. Yours is a girl.”

  “We will see,” she said stiffly. She had never considered that she carried anything other than Eduardo’s son. More so since he was killed.

  Not that the sex of her baby was important. Its health was what was important. But still…a girl…

  She smiled.

  The ranger pulled his hand away abruptly and stood. “Now eat your breakfast so we can hit the road. The car’s already packed.”

  Lost, she followed his back across the room with her gaze. “Where are we going?”

  At the door he stopped and turned. “To get some advice from a lady who knows more about bringing babies into this world than anyone else in the state, doctors included. My grandmother.”

  Del was convinced that the Cooper farm, thirty-five acres nestled in a pecan grove in rural Van Zandt County, Texas, existed in a time warp. Every time he came, the potholes in the gravel drive were a little deeper, the creek was a little dryer, and his mother’s hair a little grayer, but nothing really changed.

  The rope he’d swung on a thousand times as a kid still hung in the hayloft. Grandma and Grandpa Cooper’s rockers still sat facing each other on the narrow wraparound porch surrounding the farmhouse.

  And his mother still didn’t know who he was.

  Or at least when he was.

  Wisps of salt-and-pepper hair trailed from the bun curled atop her head as she waved at him from the front steps. “Del? Oh, Del, where have you been? I’ve been so worried.”

  He opened the door on Elisa’s side of the car and helped her down. His mother peered at them, then started forward.

  Damn. He should have explained to Elisa about his mother. He’d had an hour and a half on the drive out here from Dallas, but somehow he’d never found the words. He’d been too busy trying to figure out how he was going to break the news of his impending marriage to his grandparents.

  “Look,” he said hurriedly. “I should have told you about my mom—”

  “Del, is that Sammy with you?” Ariel Cooper asked, shading her eyes from the sun. “I sent Sammy out looking for you, you were gone so long.”

  “No, Mom. It’s not Sammy.”

  Sammy hadn’t been here for a long time.

  “You know you’re not supposed to wander off without telling me,” his mother chided, then stopped when she reached Elisa.

  “Oh, hello.” She turned to Del with vacant eyes. “Del, are you going to introduce me to your little friend?”

  Elisa looked at him curiously and he only hoped she could read his silent plea for understanding. His mom was easily confused, and he didn’t want her upset.

  “Mom, this is Elisa.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Elisa,” she said in a sing-songy, childlike voice. “Are you in Del’s class at the elementary?”

  “No, I—”

  “She’s new in town, Mom. We don’t know which class she’ll be in yet.”

  “Well, won’t it be fun if they put her in your class?” She gave her attention back to Elisa. “You’re welcome to stay for supper. If it’s all right with your parents, of course.”

  “It’s, uh, all right, Mom,” Del said.

  “Well, good then. We’re having pot roast. I’ll just go set an extra plate.” She started toward the house, and Del and Elisa followed. “You’re sure you didn’t see Sam out there anywhere, Del?”

  Del kicked the dirt as fresh pain exploded along long-abused nerve endings. “No, Ma.”

  “Probably out chasing that old dog again,” she said as she stepped onto the front porch and walked right past an aging border collie—a direct descendant of the dog in question.

  Elisa gave him that raised-eyebrow look again as they followed his mother into the house.

  “Later,” he said, and it seemed to satisfy her.

  His grandparents, Ian and Rosario Cooper were waiting in the kitchen.

  “Del, m’boy,” his pap called in a Scottish brogue as thick as the day he’d left the highlands. Balancing himself with one hand on the countertop, he hopped across the room on his one remaining leg. He’d lost the other to shrapnel in World War II, and he didn’t like to wear the prosthetic limb the VA hospital had given him. Claimed his empty trouser leg was a badge of honor. Wanted people to know what he and men like him had given for their country. “How goes the fight?”

  Del leaned into the offered bear hug, careful not to unbalance the elderly man. “Not much fighting to be done, Pap. I’m still on administrative leave.”

  “Ah, hogwash, that,” Pap said, wa
ving his hand in rude gesture. “What’s a man supposed to do but shoot at the enemy?”

  “Ignore el soldado viejo, Delgado, y venga a ver tu abuela.” Ignore the old soldier, and come to your grandmother.

  Del eased from Pap’s embrace and knelt beside Rosario Cooper’s chair. She was a foot shorter than him, her knuckles were swollen with arthritis, and her once jet-black hair was now riddled with gray, yet he would have no more dared to disobey her than he would have jumped on the back of a Brahma bull for a joyride.

  “Es bueno verle otra vez, abuela.” He rarely spoke Spanish these days, but when he did it never failed to make her smile.

  She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “Eres un muchacho bueno, Delgado.”

  He captured her hand in his and rose, looking back at Elisa. “Pap, Mami, this is my friend Elisa.”

  “Elisa might be in Del’s class when school starts up again,” his mother chimed in, pulling the pot roast from the oven.

  Long used to her eccentricity, Pap and Mami continued on as if there was nothing odd about the remark. They each welcomed Elisa, made small talk while dinner was served and eaten and stayed at the table after Del’s mother excused herself to go upstairs and work on the new curtains she was sewing for the den.

  Del picked up the plates, rinsed them in the sink and measured two scoops of grounds into the coffeemaker.

  This was the family routine. Supper was for pleasant conversation.

  Serious discussions were held over coffee.

  When three cups—plus one glass of milk for Elisa—had been poured and sipped, Del took his seat.

  “Pap, Mami. Elisa and I have something to tell you.”

  “Only one thing I want to know,” Pap said, squinting out of one eye. When he’d been a kid, Del had called that look Pap’s Popeye face, and it meant it was time to come clean with whatever latest prank he and Sammy had cooked up.

  “What’s that, Pap?” he asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.

  Pap put his hand over Elisa’s on the table. “I want to know if that’s your baby your pretty young friend is carrying, and if it is, why there isn’t a ring on her finger?”