Renegade with a Badge

by Claire King

  Olivia shook her head in warning. “I will never forgive you if you say this, Rafael. Please be very careful.”

  “You and I met under intense circumstances. They taught us about this kind of relationship in the Academy.”

  They’d never told him how he would feel, however. Or he’d never have joined up at all. “We have nothing in common. You are a Galpas from San Diego. I’m a barefoot nobody from Lakeside.”

  Olivia slowly uncurled her fist from his shirt, let it drop into her lap. “And I’m too good for you,” she said, aghast.

  Rafe smiled sadly. “You’re too good for anyone, Olivia,” he said.

  “I could hate you for saying this to me.”

  Rafe swallowed thickly. “You’d hate me even more after you realized I didn’t know anything about the art world or which fork is for fish. Or how to make more than a drug agent’s salary to support my wife and children.”

  “Which fork is for fish?” She bit down hard on her bottom lip. “God, I do hate you for this,” she whispered.

  “I know. But it’ll be easier for both of us to end this now.”

  “Well, by all means make this easy on me, Rafael. After all, I am a princesa. Shallow and weak and greedy.”

  “No.”

  Olivia nodded her head. “Oh, yes. That’s what you mean. You Neanderthal.”

  “I don’t mean that!”

  She shoved him as hard as she could away from the vehicle. “Get away from me.”

  “Olivia. You have to understand. It’s romantic to think we can live happily ever after. But women like you live happily ever after with men who have condos in La Jolla, not with greasers from the barrio.”

  “That’s what you are? A greaser from the barrio?” She swung her arms to indicate the beach, empty now except for Bobby and two of the Mexican federal agents, who were arranging transport of the cocaine to La Paz as evidence. “You did all this? You planned this operation for twenty years and despite every monkey wrench thrown into the works, pulled it off and saved my life at the same time?”

  “That’s my job,” he said tightly. “I never said I didn’t know how to work.”

  She jumped from the seat of the cruiser and stalked him. “Well, oceanography is my job. If I had to get a PhD after my name in order to do my job, and those three little initials make you feel like less than the man I know you are, them’s the breaks. Too bad for me.” She poked him in the chest. “Too bad for you.

  “You’re a snob,” she continued furiously. “You will stand there and break my heart and your own rather than face a world that scares you. You stomp on scorpions without a blink, you rescue women and shoot at bad guys and do all kinds of things that make me want to throw up—but you’re afraid of me. You’re a coward, Rafael Camayo, and I was wrong about being in love with you.”

  He grabbed her wrists, pulled her up short. “Olivia,” he snapped. “Stop it.” If she said it out loud, if she said she loved him, he couldn’t bear it.

  “I was wrong,” she said, her voice catching on the lie. She was suddenly grateful for the dehydration she was suffering. This was going to be much more believable if she didn’t start weeping all over him. She met his dark eyes with her own. “Because I could never love a coward.”

  He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he could barely work.

  Bobby looked him over as they rode across the border from El Centro into Mexicali.

  “You do understand you’re going to kill yourself acting like such a tonto,” he said sharply.

  Rafe grunted absently. “Look at that map again. Where the hell are we supposed to meet this informant guy?”

  “Tonto,” Bobby said disgustedly, and yanked out a map from under the passenger seat.

  “I’m not a fool,” Rafe muttered.

  “Really? You act like you’re perpetually chewing on broken glass and you’ve lost ten pounds you can’t afford to lose. For God’s sake, it’s been almost a month since you packed her off with me to Loreto, looking like she could barely keep from curling into a little ball and throwing herself out the window.”

  “Will you stop saying stuff like that!”

  “Will you stop acting like such a tonto?”

  “Call me that again, primo,” Rafe said through his teeth, “and you’ll be sorry.”

  “I’m already sorry. I’m sorry I’m even related to you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, if we were just partners, I could go home at the end of the day and forget your pitiful face and your miserable disposition. But as it is, I have your sisters calling me every other night, asking me if I know what the hell’s wrong with you. And your mother called my mother last week to see if she knew why you’ve been skipping Sunday dinners at the house.”

  “Why would your mother know?” Rafe muttered. He felt a little guilty. He’d known they’d all been worried about him; he’d just been too miserable—and pitiful, evidently—to care.

  “Because of me. They both are under the impression I tell her everything.”

  “You do tell her everything,” Rafe said crossly. “You told her about that time we helped those McNulty sisters ditch St. Elizabeth’s Catholic High School and went down to the racetrack—”

  “We were sixteen!” Bobby objected.

  “Still. You tell your mother everything.”

  “Listen, vato, let’s not get off the subject.”

  “Which is?”

  “When you’re going to go find Olivia and beg forgiveness.”

  Rafe moved his shoulders. “She’s better off without me.” He’d never be able to admit that to anyone but Bobby. Bobby knew her. Knew how wonderful she was.

  Bobby heaved a heavy sigh. “Tonto.”

  “I’m going to beat the hell out of you right after we talk to this informant. Remind me later, will you?”

  Bobby ignored the threat. “Better off without you, even though you guys are crazy about each other? Even though you had some sort of love-at-first-sight, fairy-tale thing going on?”

  “Fairy tale? What the hell kinds of fairy tales do you read? Besides, it was four days, Bobby.”

  “I was there, Rafe. Four days doesn’t have anything to do with it.” He sucked on his teeth. “And even if it did, it’s been a month since, and you’re still not over her.”

  “I’m getting over her.”

  “Yeah? Well, if this is you getting over her, I’m going to have to request a new partner and find a new family.”

  Rafe shrugged.

  Bobby waited a minute. “What did you say to her when you dumped her, again?”

  “I didn’t dump her,” Rafe muttered tersely. “We came to a mutual agreement.”

  “Oh, because she was crying a lot for a woman who came to a mutual agreement.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  Bobby sniffed and looked out his window. A master of timing, he waited another minute before he pulled out the big guns. “You know,” he said, looking forlornly out the passenger window at the passing barrio, “I hear your state of mind can really affect the baby if you’re pregnant.”

  There was long, terrible silence from the driver’s side. “What?”

  “I’m not saying she is pregnant. I hope she’s not, if it’s true about the state-of-mind thing.”

  “She’s not.”

  Bobby shrugged. “I hope not.” He indicated the street where Rafe needed to turn. “Of course, you used protection.”

  He hadn’t, mostly because it had come as a delirious sort of shock every time she’d let him touch her. “She’s not pregnant,” Rafe said tightly.

  Bobby shook his head. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He waited a beat. “And even if she is, her family has plenty of money. They’ll be able to take care of a baby.”

  Rafe’s jaw worked furiously as he stared, unseeing, out the front windshield.

  “She’ll probably name it after you. That would be nice.” Bobby turned his head away from Rafe, for safety. An
d grinned. “Rafael Galpas.”

  “Camayo.”

  “Sorry?”

  Rafe swung the car into the next side street he passed. He knew he was being manipulated. He was grateful for it. He’d spent twenty-six long nights trying to think of an excuse to see her before the trial in Mexico in June.

  “Camayo,” he said, his jaw so tight he could barely open his mouth to speak. He headed back to the border. “Rafael Camayo.”

  The house was everything he’d feared it would be. Huge, elegant, with views of the Pacific and of the treetops of Balboa Park. It was also, he noted in horror, staffed with a gardener outside and a housekeeper in uniform who answered the front door.

  He was nauseated with fear, ringing that bell and facing that maid. But it was better than facing a lifetime without Olivia. He knew that now without a doubt. He’d been arrogant to think he was stronger than his love for her.

  “I’d like to speak to Olivia Galpas,” he said politely, in English. He supposed they all spoke English at home. If he’d had a hat, it would have been in his hands. As it was, his knees were quaking. “Is she home?”

  “May I tell her who is calling?” the maid asked in Spanish.

  “Rafael Camayo.”

  “Please come in,” she said, waving him across the threshold. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

  He’d never had a glass of iced tea in his life. “No, thank you,” he said.

  The maid smiled at him and disappeared through a door at his left. A big door. With marble-topped tables at either side and huge bird-of-paradise fronds in giant crystal vases on top.

  Good God, he’d have to get promoted to captain to be able to afford even one of those vases. He took a deep breath. Fine. He’d be a good captain. He was a natural leader and the men looked up to him. He could be a captain.

  The maid came back. “I’m sorry. Dr. Galpas is indisposed.”

  Rafe turned white. “Is she sick?” He’d heard how many women had trouble with morning sickness. His own sisters never had a hint of it, but then Olivia was probably much more delicate. He’d forgotten, in his panic, the days she’d spent on the lam through the unforgiving Baja desert.

  The maid twisted her hands nervously. “No. I mean, yes, she’s a little bit sick.”

  “Olivia!” he shouted in the direction of the stairs.

  “Señor!” the housekeeper scolded him, scandalized.

  His first breach of etiquette, Rafe thought. Screaming down the mansion was probably a huge one. He didn’t care. “Olivia!”

  “Señor, stop yelling!”

  He started up the stairs at a jog. He’d open every door in the house until he found her, and judging from the monstrous size of the place it might take him a while.

  He was halfway to the first landing when he was met by three handsome young men coming down. Olivia’s brothers, he surmised by their aristocratic noses, their dark eyes, their casual but expensive clothes. The gods. Rafe sized them up. He thought there was an outlet store in Chula Vista where he could buy clothes like that on his salary. If that’s what she wanted, that’s what he’d wear.

  “Olivia!”

  The brothers pounded down the stairs. “Get out,” one of them said bravely. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  Rafe estimated it would take him about twenty seconds to beat the crap out of all three of these whelps. But he didn’t think Olivia or her parents would appreciate him whumping on the Galpas princes, so he howled instead. “Olivia!”

  “Shut up,” another brother ordered him.

  “Your brothers are going to beat me up,” he shouted. “Olivia! Help me!”

  He was grinning up at her when she came racing to the top of the stairs. She took one look at Rafael’s smiling face and glared down at him. “You’re an idiot!”

  Rafe laughed. “Are you pregnant, Olivia?”

  Her eyes went the size of saucers. “No!” she said, mortified. Her brothers were looking from her to Rafe with undisguised curiosity. “Now get out of here.”

  “Do you want to be?”

  “Oh, my Lord. Is that all you came here for? To see if I was—” She glanced testily at her brothers. “To see if I was that?”

  “It was the only excuse I thought you’d buy,” he admitted. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about what you might buy.”

  “Well, you were wrong. Now go away.” She turned and went back down the hall.

  “Olivia!” he bawled, his head thrown back.

  She reappeared, looking frantic. “What?”

  “Look how brave I’m being.”

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  He looked up at her. She was so beautiful, he thought, dazzled. She’d obviously come from work, because she had a lab coat on over a pair of slacks and a sedate silk blouse. He’d have to ask her to pay for her own work clothes after they got married, he thought, frowning slightly. He didn’t think he could afford a work wardrobe like that, even on a captain’s salary.

  It seemed so simple now. He loved her, adored her. Could not live without her. Why he’d ever thought anything else mattered was beyond him.

  “I’m not a coward, Olivia,” he said, more quietly. He stared at her over the wide shoulders of her younger brothers.

  Olivia put a trembling hand to her mouth. “Don’t do this, Rafael. I’m just now getting over you.”

  “Well, I’m not even close to getting over you,” he said. “And I’m very courageously facing your three stout-hearted brothers here, and your housekeeper and this freaking mansion on the hill to tell you that.”

  Olivia laughed in spite of herself. “I see that.”

  “And do you want to know why I’m not getting over you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because I love you, Olivia Galpas. I love you so much. I can’t stop loving you even long enough to think straight.”

  Olivia put both her hands to her mouth. She laughed behind them.

  “I love you, too,” she said, sounding slightly surprised at herself.

  The smile that bloomed on his sharp and handsome face started all the way down at his toes. “Still? Or are you just now getting around to it?”

  “Still,” she said, laughing, crying. She came down the stairs, pushed past her astonished brothers as though they weren’t even there. She threw herself into his arms. “From the start, I think.”

  He hugged her so tightly, she thought her ribs might crack. “Because I’m brave?”

  “No,” she mumbled against his chest. His wide, wonderful chest. “Because you’re a naturally happy person.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Olivia.” He took her shoulders and leaned away from her so he could look into her face. He smiled gently, wiping the tears from her face with his thumbs. “Did I make you cry, mi’ja?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Did I make you cry?”

  “Yes.” He kissed her firmly. “I don’t want to do that again, Olivia. It’s unmanly.”

  “Okay,” she said, smiling. “Do you want to get married, then?”

  He felt relief hit him like a bat to the head. Now he wouldn’t have to ask her, risk her looking at him in confusion and dismay, which is how he’d imagined it for twenty-six and one half days in a row. “Yes. We’ll have to live in my apartment in Lemon Grove until we can afford something better.”

  She wanted to tell him they could afford anything they wanted, but decided that would be an argument better postponed until after their fifth or sixth wedding anniversary.

  “All right,” she conceded. “And we’ll have a big Mexican wedding which my father will pay for, and you won’t fight with me over the cost of my dress.”

  He swallowed nervously. “I won’t even ask you the cost of your dress.”

  She kissed him, deliriously in love. “How long do you want to wait until we start a family?”

  Rafe glanced up at her brothers. “About five minutes,” he whispered in her ear.

  She hugged him hard, giggling foolishl
y. “You make me laugh, Rafael Camayo.”

  He closed his eyes, the better to let the feeling of her seep into his lonely body. “You make me laugh, too, princesa.” He kissed the top of her shiny hair. “And that’s much harder to do.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0499-7

  RENEGADE WITH A BADGE

  Copyright © 2001 by Claire King

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