The Last Honorable Man
Page 21
Chapter 16
Other than the past two weeks, and a few short educational trips, Elisa had spent her entire life in San Ynez. Yet tonight the sight of the dark mountains charging up to the sky, the pattern of the stars overhead, the scent of the nearby rainforest were all unfamiliar. Foreign.
San Ynez no longer felt like home.
Elisa sat in the darkened doorway of an American military helicopter, watching the hubbub around Sanchez’s mansion incredulously. She still could not believe the Americans had arrested Colonel Sanchez. In his own country.
But she was glad. And proud. For her people, and for theirs.
A man walked toward her in the distance. It was too dark to make out his face, but she recognized Del immediately. His shape. His walk. It was as if she had always known him. Always been a part of him. And him a part of her.
“Hey,” he said, when he reached her.
“Hey.” She should come up with something more articulate, but words for this moment escaped her.
“They said they had a doctor look at you.”
She laid a hand on her belly. “We are fine. Clint?” she asked, suddenly picturing the ranger writhing on the ground as Sanchez’s men had dragged her away.
“He’s okay. Practically had to sedate him to keep him from coming along on this mission. Are you sure you’re all right? And the baby?”
She took his hand, laid the broad palm over her stomach.
He frowned. “Am I supposed to feel something?”
“Not yet.” She smiled and gently pressed her right side with her own hand. The baby kicked like a World Cup soccer star. Del’s eyes widened. “We have learned a new trick since we have been away.”
“So I see. Does it hurt?”
“No. Want me to do it again?”
“No!” He snapped his hand back. “I mean, maybe you’d better not. Let the poor girl rest.”
Elisa laughed, fingered the silver circle and star pinned to his shirt. “Your Texas Ranger badge.”
“A lot’s happened since you disappeared. I got my job back, for one.” She nodded towards the soldier scurrying about. “And started your own army for another?”
“Nope, these are the real deal. U.S. Special Forces.”
“And they’re here because…?”
He chuckled and relayed what Mr. “Bradford” had told him. “Without the gun deal, the State Department had no grounds for the extradition warrant on Sanchez,” he added. But you had applied for your I-9 residency status before you were taken. Gene Randolph came up with the idea. He had State push your application through. We had a witness who saw you forcibly taken from the parking garage and a federal agent undercover in Sanchez’s organization who could place you here in the compound.” He grinned. “Kidnapping a legal American resident is a serious offense. You provided grounds for the extradition.”
She was still sorting through everything he had said, trying to process it all, when he cupped her jaw in his palm, stroked his thumb across her cheek.
“It’s over,” he said.
Elisa’s heart twisted even as she tipped her head back under the pleasure of his touch. “Sanchez’s reign of terror? Or our marriage?”
Del let her go, swung around and sat beside her. He looked at the ground between his feet. “Sanchez is gone, and Herrerra will be reinstated as president—”
Elisa’s head snapped up. “Presidente Herrerra? But he is dead…”
“Not so dead after all. Seems his elite guard got word there might be an attempt on his yacht. They took him off the boat in time. He’s been hiding out in the U.S. with a few of his men.”
“Eduardo,” Elisa said, seeing the truth in her heart.
“Yeah. Eduardo.”
Her eyes burned. “He was not a traitor.”
“He was a hero. He stayed loyal to Herrerra all those years, and eventually worked with the State Department to put him back in power. Herrerra is planning a special award for him, to be presented posthumously.”
Elisa touched her abdomen again. “I am glad. For her sake.”
“Me, too. And for yours.”
The silence stretched uncomfortably between them.
Del cleared his throat. “Guess you can stay in San Ynez now, if you want. It’s safe.”
“Yes.” The possibility should have made her happy. Instead an overwhelming sense of loss engulfed her.
What else had she expected? The ranger had married her out of a sense of duty. To protect her. Now he knew that he had not killed Eduardo, and her safety in San Ynez was not in question. His duty had been fulfilled, and so he was letting her go. Gently, as was his way.
“Of course,” he said. “I don’t know as there’s going to be much need for a resistance leader here anymore.”
“It is a job I will happily relinquish.”
“What will you do?”
She pondered a moment. “Have this baby. Then help get the country back on its feet, I guess. Stabilize the economy. Promote trade agreements.”
“With the U.S.?”
“Yes.”
He shifted restlessly. “Maybe you’ll have some business in the States?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe…” He looked at her sideways, and Elisa didn’t think she’d ever seen more fear on his face. “Maybe you could do what you need to do from the U.S.”
Elisa’s heart ricocheted off her breastbone. “Perhaps.”
The ranger dug in his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to her. “I told you State pushed through your residency application.”
“My green card?” she asked, astonished.
“’Course, you probably don’t want to leave your family, and there’s a lot to do here.”
Before she got too carried away, she had to be clear. “Are you asking me to come back to the United States, or to come back to you?”
His jaw set stubbornly, and she realized just how much she had hurt him that last day. “You said you didn’t want me to come looking for you…”
“I was an idiot. That’s why I went to the courthouse, to tell you I was wrong and I was sorry. But I never got the chance.”
Starlight gleamed off the intensity in his eyes. “Then come back to me, Elisa. And I’m not asking out of duty or obligation or debt. Come back to me because I love you. I love everything about who you are and who you’ve been. Come back because I want to marry you again, in a church this time, and raise this baby and three or four more with you.”
Elisa nearly floated out of her skin. She let him suffer for…about a millisecond. Which was as long as she could hold herself back from throwing her arms around his neck and kissing every square inch of his face.
A few soldiers drifted by, storing gear. Some of them cast lingering, curious glances at them.
“And your family,” she said into his neck, “they will accept this, knowing what they must know about me by now?”
He pulled back so he could see her. “I had a long talk with them before I left for this mission. You know what my Papi said?”
She shook her head.
Del grinned. “Said during World War Two he met a woman who ran a part of the French resistance. I think maybe they had something going, by the way. That was before he met Mami. Anyway, he said she was the bravest, smartest, most principled person he’d ever met. And he said you reminded him of her. He’d be Goddamn proud—”
He paused while Elisa crossed herself and mumbled a short prayer.
“—to have a woman like you in the family. Permanently. So will you marry me again, Elisa?”
She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him perfunctorily. “I’ll marry you again, Delgado Cooper. And again and again and again and—”
He cut her off with another kiss.
And this one was anything but perfunctory.
At the sound of clapping and whistling, Elisa raised her hand. The soldiers had formed a semicircle around them, a respectable distance away. A few shouted encouragement to Del
, and he pulled her close, squeezing her almost painfully.
She thought back over all that had happened in the past two weeks. The people she’d met—Gene Randolph and Bull Matheson, Clint Hayes and even Kat Solomon and the soldiers here she hadn’t met but who had saved her life.
They were all heroes.
But her gaze was inexorably drawn back to Del.
He might not be the last honorable man, she realized. But as far as she was concerned he was the best.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8271-5
THE LAST HONORABLE MAN
Copyright © 2003 by Vickie Spears
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