The Last Honorable Man

by Vickie Taylor

  She looked up at him and smiled her approval. This close, there were no secrets between them. When the last refrain faded to silence, they gazed deep into each other’s eyes, still body to body.

  “Do you want me to put some more money in the jukebox?” he asked, surprised he was still able to form a coherent thought with her this close.

  “No.”

  He swallowed hard. “Do you want some dessert?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  She disengaged her hand from his and traced his swollen bottom lip with her thumb. There was no mistaking her meaning, but just to be sure, she added, “I want you to take me home.”

  Del couldn’t pay the bill fast enough. Then he dropped his keys in the parking lot. If he didn’t cool off, they were going to wind up in a ditch off I-35 tonight instead of in his big bed.

  By some miracle they were still in one piece when they turned onto his block. But as he cruised up to the Randolph gate, he knew the night wasn’t going to turn out as he’d hoped.

  A Dallas PD black-and-white sitting dark on the street came to life as he passed and pulled in behind him at the big iron gate.

  “Damn it!” He pounded the steering wheel with his fist.

  Elisa looked out the rear window worriedly. Two uniformed officers were working their way carefully toward the Land Rover, right hands resting on their gun holsters. “What is it? What do they want?”

  “It’s all right. Just sit quiet and do what they tell you.”

  The officer on the driver’s side tapped on the glass. Del lowered the window and shut off the engine.

  “Delgado Cooper?” the officer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Step out of the vehicle please, sir. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Chapter 13

  “Damn.”

  Clint Hayes’s curse reeled Del toward reality from the black depths of the memories of last night playing on a continuous loop in his mind. He’d arrested a lot of men, seen them processed through the legal system.

  He never thought he’d be one of them.

  “Fingertips on the glass one at a time. Roll them left to right.” “Strip.” “Open your mouth.” “Spread your legs.”

  He’d done what he was told without speaking, without looking at any of them. The more he cooperated, the sooner it would be over, or so he’d hoped.

  The nightmare trip from the sally port, where prisoners were admitted, to his jail cell had taken three humiliating hours. Worse, by the time he’d been processed it was too late to go before a magistrate, which meant it had been morning before he could bail himself out of that hell hole.

  He’d spent the night stretched out on a narrow, stainless steel bunk that resembled a slab in the morgue more than any bed. Sleep eluded him, so he passed the hours mentally replaying every excruciating second of his booking over and over until the jailhouse lights had finally gone from dim to bright and the bailiff had come to lead him down the long hall to the judge’s bench.

  When he’d left the courtroom, freed on his own recognizance—the only luxury he’d been afforded for his fourteen years of service to the state of Texas—Kat had been waiting in the hall. She waved him to a side entrance, where Clint sat waiting in a rumbling Dodge Ram truck, strategically out of view of the TV news vans and newspaper reporters crowding the court steps.

  “Elisa?” Del asked, though he was already sure she was the one who had called his friends. For a woman who didn’t like cops, she was getting pretty cozy with his teammates—former teammates.

  Hayes nodded.

  “She called right after they picked you up,” Kat said.

  “Not doing your career any good to be helping me.”

  “Shut up and get in,” Hayes said.

  Del didn’t argue. He would have liked to have told his friends they’d done too much already, insisted on finding his own ride home, but the truth was he wanted to get out of there more than he wanted to be noble and selfless.

  Minutes later the deep-throated diesel pickup had left the jail behind, but the stink of incarceration followed Del like ugly on an armadillo.

  So did the reporters.

  “We were hoping they wouldn’t connect you to Randolph just yet,” Clint said, glaring at the KDAL news van blocking the drive to Gene’s estate. He honked and a flock of microphone-toting, gossipmongering men and women with perfect hair and smiles that loved a camera clustered around the truck, tapping on windows and shouting questions through the glass.

  “Mr. Cooper, is it true that Former Governor Gene Randolph posted your bail?”

  “How does it feel to be on the inside of the same bars you put so many men behind?”

  Del slunk down in his seat. “Like vultures on a carcass,” he mumbled.

  “More like bottom feeders,” Clint said. “Hold on.” He rolled the truck forward slowly, honking again. When the van whose tail blocked the entrance to the driveway still didn’t move, he gave its bumper a little kiss with the cow catcher on the front of his truck. When it still didn’t move, he kissed a little harder.

  Finally the van lurched forward. Bull swung the truck into the drive and lowered the window to punch the security code into the panel at the gate.

  “Did you kill Eduardo Garcia because you wanted his fiancé for yourself?” a reporter shouted, plunging her microphone through the open window.

  “No comment.” So they knew about Elisa, too. Great. Just what she needed—to become the center ring of a three-ring media circus. He should never have gotten involved with her. She’d have been better off without his “help.”

  He couldn’t regret marrying her, though. Not just because he was a stubborn jackass who refused to be pushed around by some nameless government power-broker hiding behind federal anonymity, but because she was the only thing that made his miserable life bearable these days.

  Because he didn’t want to lose her.

  God, when had his whole life started to revolve around her?

  The second he’d seen her, a little voice in the back of his head said.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and turned his face from the camera shoved against the passenger-side window. The wrought iron gate swung open, and the reporters surged forward.

  “Step one foot onto this property,” Kat warned them out the rear window, “and I’ll have you all hauled off for criminal trespass.”

  Without waiting for a reaction, Clint put the truck in gear and drove through the entrance. The press stayed behind the gate, but they didn’t look happy about it.

  The crowd assembled in Del’s carriage house apartment didn’t look too happy, either. Bull Matheson brooded over a steaming mug at the kitchen table. Across from him, Gene Randolph looked up from his own coffee to peer at Del.

  Del cursed himself silently. Gene had been his mentor and his friend. Del hated that he’d returned the favor by bringing trouble to his doorstep.

  “Sorry about the mess out front, Gene.”

  Gene waved his hand in irritation. “Thirty years in politics, and you think I can’t handle a few reporters outside my gate? Come sit down and get some food in your belly. You look lower’n a hog in a mud hole.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Del headed for the bedroom. He appreciated his friend’s sentiment, but he couldn’t stomach either food or company at the moment. All he wanted was a shower.

  “I made biscuits.” Elisa’s quiet voice stopped him halfway across the room. She stood in the kitchen doorway holding a carafe of coffee with a dish towel around the handle. He could see by the circles under her eyes and the tendrils escaping from the French braid she’d woven her hair in that she hadn’t slept much more than he had, yet she dredged up a fleeting smile for him. The pure hope in the quick flash of teeth and curl of lush lips sent a spear of longing straight to his gut.

  He tore his gaze away and glanced down at the table, where peach, apple and blackberry jelly jars surround a half-eaten plate of sourdough biscui
ts. No way could he eat with his stomach bubbling like the La Brea Tar Pits, but he didn’t want her to think her efforts weren’t appreciated.

  “This is the second day in a row you’ve had to cook breakfast for these animals.” He found a degree of warmth deep inside him and tried to focus it on her, to let her know with a look that he was okay. At least he would be once he’d had that shower and maybe a little sleep. “Pretty domestic for a guerrilla leader.”

  She arched one eyebrow. “Resistance leader.”

  “Not resistant enough, apparently, if you let these guys talk you into feeding them again.”

  The smile he won from her was still thin, but it lasted longer.

  “Geez,” Kat said. “Listen to them. They even sound like an old married couple.”

  Clint leaned over and helped himself to a buttery biscuit. “Nope. If they were an old married couple, the only sound you’d be hearing right now is a deafening silence.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Realist.”

  The familiar chatter felt oddly reassuring to Del. He waited for Bull to take a swallow of coffee and set down his mug. “You get anything off the phone records from the bar?”

  The captain’s jaw hardened. “Couldn’t get the warrant signed.”

  “Can you believe that?” Kat piped in. “Even Gene tried. Every one of the judges—”

  “Kat.” Bull scowled at the junior ranger. Seemed to be his perpetual expression when she was around.

  “Pressure’s coming from high up on this,” Gene said. “Even I couldn’t get around it. I’m sorry.”

  Del tried to nod, but his muscles wouldn’t cooperate. He ended up jerking his head to the side as he strode toward the bedroom in uneven steps. “Not your fault.”

  That was that, then. Their last lead—last hope—a dead end. An odd sense of detachment settled over him. He knew he should be disappointed or angry or scared, but all he could think about was a shower.

  Long and wet and hot enough to peel skin.

  The water ran a long time.

  Elisa finished drying the breakfast dishes and paced the hallway between the living room and bedroom, unsure whether or not to go to Del. Uncertain what she would say if she did.

  That same uncertainty eventually drove her to him. Much had changed between them in the past few days. They had become closer. Last night they might have become lovers if the police had not intervened.

  But they had intervened. Del had been arrested, treated like a criminal. She knew law enforcement here was not as barbaric as Colonel Sanchez’s tyranny in San Ynez. Prisoners here had rights.

  But she also knew Del was a proud and honorable man. Being jailed by men he once considered friends, once stood beside to uphold the very laws under which he’d been accused, could not have been easy for him.

  She hurt to think she bore responsibility for his heartache. If he had not married her, he would not be in this trouble.

  Where did that leave their growing relationship?

  Needing to know what he was thinking, she ducked into the tiny bathroom. Steam curled in the air like storm clouds rolling down a mountain valley. Water drummed like distant thunder.

  Elisa sat on the lid to the john. Biting her lip, she twisted the plain gold band around her ring finger. “It will not help,” she finally said.

  The sloshing sounds inside the shower stilled. “Help what?”

  “You can stand under the spray until you drown. Soap and water cannot wash away the humiliation of being treated like a criminal.” She spoke from experience.

  The faucet handles squeaked. The water stopped running and the shower door cracked open. The ranger held out his hand. “Give me a towel, would you?”

  She pulled a thick, navy-blue bath towel from the rack and gave it to him, then turned her gaze away, but caught a flash of bronze skin through the condensation on the mirror.

  A moment later, he stepped out of the shower stall. Water plastered his dark hair to his scalp and ran in rivulets over the bands of muscle bunched in his heavy shoulders. The blue towel clung low over his lean hips.

  “What do you know about humiliation?” he asked.

  When Elisa was able to pull her gaze away from the dark tunnel of navel that drilled into an abdomen as hard as concrete, and the arrow of hair between it and the top edge of the towel, she noticed he was frowning. The stubble on his unshaven jaw cast a fierce shadow on his expression.

  He was spoiling for a fight.

  “I have been called a traitor by my own government.”

  “A government you don’t recognize as legitimate. To your people you’re a hero. You’re legendary.”

  “Not as legendary as the Texas Rangers.”

  “I’m not a ranger anymore, am I? I’m just a careless ex-cop who murdered an innocent man.”

  “Not so innocent, maybe. And you were right to protect your friend. It was not murder.”

  “Try telling that to the press. I’m sure it’ll sound real convincing coming from the woman who married me a week after I killed her fiancé.”

  He turned his back on her, and it was like lighting a match to tinder. She followed him into the bedroom. “The press will not decide your guilt or innocence.”

  He stopped at his bureau and opened his underwear drawer. “If you believe that, darlin’, you’ve got a lot to learn about life in the U.S. of A.”

  “Why wait until the day after tomorrow, then? Why not go to the judge now and plead guilty? Maybe if you beg the court for mercy they will find a hole to throw you in that is deep enough to hold you and all your self-pity.”

  He slammed the wooden drawer shut and wheeled. One step toward her put him close enough for her to smell the fresh, male scent of his soap, feel the moist heat rising from him. “Is that how you think I feel? Sorry for myself?”

  “You walk around like a zombie. You let the police take you last night without even defending yourself. Your friends try to help and you send them away.”

  “I’m tired. Those street cops last night were just following orders. Arguing with them would have been pointless—and could have gotten somebody hurt. And my friends have risked enough already.”

  “So you are giving up?”

  “No. I’m fighting back.”

  “How? I do not understand.”

  “By not letting them send you back. No matter what they do to me.”

  Elisa felt as if the breath had been vacuumed out of her. “You are…protecting me?”

  “I said I would.”

  “You cannot go to jail because of me.”

  “Apparently, I can,” he said dryly.

  “But last night…” Last night he told her everything would be all right, and she had foolishly believed him.

  “Last night I wanted to bring you back here and make love to you more than anything in the world. Of everything that’s happened in the last few days, what I regret most is that I missed that chance.”

  Elisa was stunned into silence. Tears welled up in her eyes. No one had ever made her feel so cherished with one simple confession.

  While she was searching for the words to tell him so, his mouth descended on hers and she forgot everything but the feel of his kiss. With a nibble and a nudge, he coaxed her lips to play, enticed her tongue into the game with a darting probe and retreat. His hands swept into her hair, fisted.

  Guided backward by the force of his hard body, Elisa backed up until the edge of the mattress bumped the creases behind her knees. Then she felt herself falling, being caught. She lost contact with his mouth, reached out for it desperately, bouncing between the bed and the impenetrable wall of his chest when he landed on top of her, cushioned by his elbows from crushing her.

  His weight on her awakened nerve endings from her toes to her ears. Her body hummed, nearly sang when he took her lips again. Elisa arched, lifted herself into him, against his chest and his hips, which she’d become acutely aware were covered only by a thin, damp towel.

  Deepening the kiss,
he moaned deep in his throat. She stroked his back, relishing the feel of every inch of his firm flesh. His stubble scraped her cheek. There was nothing soft about the ranger. Nothing weak. The hard press of his body to hers made her wonder how she had ever imagined him capable of wallowing in self-pity. He knew exactly what he was doing, protecting his friends. Protecting her.

  And she couldn’t let him do it.

  She wrenched her mouth away from his, turned her head to the side. Their harsh breathing filled the gulf of silence between them.

  Slowly she turned her head back. “Last night was not our last. There will be other opportunities.”

  His gray eyes dulled. “But not today.”

  “Not when it feels like I’m trading it for your freedom.”

  He rolled off the bed and to his feet in one smooth move. Before she realized what he was doing, he grabbed the boxers he’d left atop his bureau, and the towel that had been around his hips fluttered to the floor. He stepped into his underwear with his back to her, but not before she caught an eyeful—two eyes full—of smooth, taut, beautiful male body.

  He seemed unconcerned with her appraisal. “If you figure out a way to sleep with me without wrecking your moral code, let me know.” He snatched a T-shirt from the bureau’s second drawer. “Just don’t wait too long. I figure this is going to be a speedy trial.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “A speedy farce, you mean. You know this is not about what happened at the warehouse.”

  “What do you want me to do? Start a rebellion? Build a bunker on some old farm, stockpile guns and declare the land a sovereign nation? It’s been tried before. Doesn’t work.”

  On shaky legs, Elisa walked to the living room and picked up a picture. The photograph depicted a group of weathered cowboys on horseback—late nineteenth-century era rangers—with heavy mustaches and long-barreled rifles.

  She took the picture to Del.

  Glancing down, he raised his eyebrows. “You want me to grow a bad mustache?”