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.”
Chapter 8
Negligent? 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, surrendered 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 su
re 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 automatic 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.
In a moment of pure indulgence, Del wished he had parked farther away. Holding her this way felt good. It soothed an ache.
Soothed, hell. She turned her head up to smile at him, and the glimpse of wet T-shirt stretched over firm, female breasts nearly buckled his knees.
His body tightened. Blood flowed downward, concentrated.
Del cursed himself. Despite a concerted mental effort, he couldn’t stop it. And in a pair of wet Levi’s, it wasn’t going to be easy to hide it.
He needed a distraction.
“Did you see Carter’s arm on the mound?” Elisa asked, still staring up at him, still smiling. Still unaware.
He hoped.
“The Cowboys couldn’t
have hit him tonight if he’d been throwing beach balls,” she finished.
“Rangers,” he said. “Cowboys are football.”
“Cowboys, Rangers, whatever. It is confusing, is it not, calling them the same as the police?” She scrunched her nose. “Why did you name yourselves after a baseball team, anyway?”
“I think it was the other way aroun—” he started before he realized she was baiting him. And had caught him, hook, line and sinker, as the saying went.
“Get in,” he said, shaking his head at her cheeky grin. Who’d have thought the girl could go from noblewoman to royal imp in just one day? At least the banter took his mind off his…discomfort.
Until he climbed into the Rover next to her.
The dome light threw the shadows of a thousand tiny goose bumps down her arms.
“You’re cold,” he accused as if it was a felony.
“Just excited.” She crossed her arms and rubbed, but the motion plumped her breasts together. Her arms weren’t the only parts of her that had pebbled. Two perfect, pert peaks pointed at him from beneath the damp, clingy cotton of her shirt.
“It was a great game, no?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, even though he couldn’t remember who had been playing, with her looking at him like that.
“The Rangers made a good show.”
Now he remembered. Sort of. “They got trounced twelve to two.”
“They…tried hard.”
Hard was not a word he needed to hear right now. “Maybe one of these days we’ll get a pitcher, and you can see a real game,” he grumbled.
She threw her head back against the seat, smile blazing. “I still had a great time.”
He barely acknowledged what she said. Barely heard it.
This was not good. If he didn’t pull himself together, he was going to embarrass them both and ruin a great evening. The first really comfortable evening they’d spent together.
Moving gingerly, guarding against the pinch of tight, wet denim on sensitive flesh, he leaned behind the passenger seat, opened the gym bag he kept there and pulled out a towel.
The Last Honorable Man Page 11