The Last Honorable Man

by Vickie Taylor

  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.

  “May 10, 1967

  Dear Ari,

  Thanks for the oatmeal cookies you sent. They were mostly crumbs after the way they’d been bounced around half the globe, but they were the finest crumbs I’ve ever tasted. Made me think of all of us eating crackers in bed on a Saturday morning. Sure did make me homesick for you and Sam and Del…”

  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.”

  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 t
he 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.