The Last Honorable Man (14 page)

Del felt a pang of regret when she set the hairbrush down and turned. He could happily pass a whole day watching her brush her hair.

Annoyed with himself for admitting it, even to himself, he shoved his shoulder off the door frame and stood straight. What he needed now was to focus on the conversation at hand, not personal hygiene.

But as she stepped toward him, sunlight streamed in the window beside them, gilding her almond complexion in a healthy glow. Her sleek body was ripening with pregnancy, he realized. Both her abdomen and her breasts were fuller, heavier.

A longing to touch those breasts, to measure their new weight in his palms, test their sensitivity with his thumbs, struck him like a blow. The impact sang along the nerves in his arms to make his fingers tingle and ran down his spine to settle as an ache between his legs.

Damn, he'd been so close last night. He'd had her in his arms. If he hadn't been so drunk…

She stopped in front of him. The familiar scent of vanilla and almond surrounded him. Del inhaled deeply.

Then jolted himself out of his lecherous fantasy before he did something stupid, like pulled her against him and let her feel the reaction she stirred in him.

“I am not proud of all I've done. But I had no proof that Eduardo was not what he claimed, no evidence other than the ramblings of delirium. And I was being hunted
in San Ynez,” she said, her coffee eyes serious. “Sanchez's captains promised him they would crush the resistance—starting with its leader. The soldiers were everywhere. It was difficult to escape them at times before I was pregnant. Carrying a baby, I could not have survived. My
child
could not have survived.”

Del tried to concentrate on her words, and not the tom-tom beat of blood in his groin. “So you just left. Left your people to fend for themselves in the middle of the hornet's nest you stirred up.”

“No. I have twin brothers, Miguel and Raul. They were only sixteen when the resistance began. Too young for the responsibilities of leadership. But they have grown. They are twenty-four now, and seasoned. They have been—how do you say in Texas?—‘chomping at the bit' to take control for a long time. Now El Puma can be in two places at once. They will not let my people down.”

She raised her hand toward him, as if she could make him feel the truth in her words, if only she could touch him. Her fingers hovered inches from his bruised cheek.

His breath caught. His heart stuttered. He pulled his head back. He didn't want her fingers on his face. He wanted to draw them into his mouth and suckle each perfect pink fingertip.

He restrained himself from following through on that desire. Barely.

A sweat broke between his shoulder blades. This was crazy. She represented everything he loathed. People turning against their own flag. Civil unrest.

Vulnerable women, widowed by war, left to raise their babies alone, as his mother had been.

Del blinked back a wave of emotion. Vulnerable, hell. Elisa might have some uncertainties about her pregnancy
and her future in the U.S., but she was the strongest woman he knew. He'd always seen the noble pride in her. The determination. Now when he looked at her, he saw the courage, too. He couldn't imagine the kind of heart it took for a twenty-year-old girl to escape from prison, organize her people and stand up against an entire government.

He didn't want to imagine it. Because imagining Elisa with that kind of courage meant admitting that everything he had done had been for nothing. Getting married, loosing his job—none of it mattered. A woman who could lead an entire freedom movement would have found a way to protect her baby, with or without his help.

Maybe she hadn't come to the U.S. for the baby's sake at all.

Del used the heat from his unwanted lust to fuel his anger. “Tell me. What would you have done if you'd married Garcia and then found out he was supplying Sanchez with guns?”

Her confidence wavered, along with her voice. “I do not know.”

“You must have thought about it.”

“I…I hoped I would find it was not true.”

“Would you have killed him?”

Elisa's eyes opened wide. She stepped back. Knowing he was being irrational, that he'd gone too far, didn't stop Del. This whole thing had gone too far. The investigation. The threats…

He stepped forward, closing the gap she'd opened between them, allowing her no room. No escape, this time.

“Was that your mission all along?”

“My
mission?
”

“Is that why you slept with him in the first place? To get him to talk? Find out if he was working for San
chez?” He raked a hand across his forehead. “Hell of a strategy. Screw him. Have his baby. Kill him. Anything for the cause, right?”

She wanted to slap him. He could see it in her eyes. To her credit she squeezed her hand into a fist at her side instead. “How lucky for me, then, that you came along,” she said as quietly as a serpent's sibilant warning. “I did not have to murder him. You did it for me.”

If she'd swung a baseball bat between his legs, she couldn't have taken the breath from him faster. Or more completely.

She tried to slide past him, out of the bedroom. Recovering just in time, he reached back, slapped his palm flat against the door panel and slammed it shut. His arm blocked her passage.

“I did what I had to and you damn well know it,” he gritted out.

She surprised him by nodding. “You were protecting your friend. I have accepted that. It is you who cannot accept that I also have done what I had to do, to protect my people and my child.”

Just like that, her quiet righteousness robbed him of his fury. She was right. Who was he to judge her?

A fool, that's who. He'd tried to contain his anger at himself over the mistake he'd made at the warehouse, but it kept spilling out. Mostly onto her. She'd borne the brunt of his frustration since the day he'd found her at the cemetery chapel, and put up with it virtually without complaint. Even pretended their relationship might be growing beyond a mere marriage of necessity.

She'd let him kiss her. Hold her.

Because she needed him to keep her baby safe.

She'd done what she had to do.

Was that really all there was between them? Damn it,
why did it matter so much to him? He wasn't supposed to care about her. She was a duty to him, nothing more. A way to right a wrong, clear his conscience.

At least, he'd thought that's all she was.

His stomach turned sickly. With his right hand still flat against the door, he swung his body around hers, planting his left palm on the door, too, and trapping her between his arms. “If I said I accepted all of it—you being La Puma, the resistance, Garcia—what then?”

He leaned so close to her that he could feel his breath reflected from her face, but she didn't budge. She didn't push him away, didn't tell him to go to hell. No, she kept too much inside to show that kind of emotion, just like he did.

Instead she dabbed her lips with the tip of her tongue, and sent his body temperature soaring.

“It would be a start, I guess,” she said.

A start to what?
Two years of anorexic marriage leading up to a divorce on the day she met her permanent residency requirements? Friendship? Pop-your-eyeballs-out, total-body-workout sex?

He had no doubt sex would be great between them. When two people who kept so much bottled up inside themselves finally let go, the results were bound to be explosive.

Maybe that's exactly what both of them needed. A little release.

A lot of releases.

Now that he knew she not only hadn't been in love with Garcia, but had suspected him, however faintly of being a traitor to her people, there was no reason to hold back. She wouldn't be betraying Garcia, and Del didn't have to feel guilty about taking another man's woman.

There was a great big bed behind him, and he had time to kill.

He lowered his head until their noses bumped, nudged to find the right fit. He angled his head and shared her next breath, taking it deep inside himself. He gazed into her rich, dark eyes.

And then he stopped.

He couldn't do this now. Not when this storm of desire he was caught in had been whipped into existence by anger. And not with her looking at him like a yearling heifer cornered by a full-grown Brahma bull.

He hadn't exactly given her a chance to catch up to him, going from accusing her of plotting murder to wanting to commit acts with her that might still be illegal in several states in about six and a half seconds.

Besides, he didn't want to mate with her in a frenzy of pent-up frustration channeled into lust. He wanted to take his time with her. Savor her. He wanted her to be as desperate for him as he was for her.

He leaned his forehead against hers. On the door his hands curled into fists, but he didn't pull them away. If he did, he might touch her. And if he touched her, he wouldn't stop until he'd touched every inch of her.

“I guess a start is better than an end,” he said, his mouth against her temple. He couldn't resist lowering his head to nibble at her cheek with his lips. “Especially since we haven't even gotten to the good part yet.”

“The good part?” For someone who had been standing still the past five minutes, she sounded remarkably out of breath.

He smiled into her hair, liking the effect he had on her. “The part where I tell you what an amazing, courageous, indomitable-spirited woman I think you are.”

“Mmm.” She tipped her head back to give him access
to her throat. Against his better judgment, he coursed his mouth over the creamy column.

“And you tell me what a strong, hot hunk of man I am, and how much you want me.”

“Ah,” she said.

He raised his head in time to see her eyes open, focus. He hadn't felt her move, but her hands were fisted in his shirt.

“That would be the part where you're dreaming,” she said, and gave him a little shove back as she ducked under his arm to freedom.

He probably should have taken offense, or at least felt mildly rejected, but before he could round up enough brain cells to think about anything other than the clean taste of her and the intoxicating scent of her skin, he caught her grinning. She tried to press her lips back into a straight line, failed and let a laugh burst through her smile.

He shifted position, propping one shoulder against the door and trying to look casual despite evidence to the contrary pushing at the fly of his jeans. “Dreaming, huh?”

She shrugged, half apologetic, half wickedly encouraging. The little flirt. She was teasing him.

Torturing him, actually.

He narrowed his eyes at her seriously. Turnabout was fair play. “That's all right. Go ahead and laugh. Guess your mother never told you.”

“Told me what?”

“If you work hard enough for what you want, dreams do come true.” Her smile sobered while his grew. “And I've always been a very hard worker.”

Very hard.

E
lisa clutched the door handle as Del swung into the parking space next to Captain Matheson's forest-green pickup. It was only one o'clock in the afternoon, but already a half dozen cars, along with at least as many Harley-Davidson motorcycles, littered the lot outside The Last Buck Saloon, their owners presumably inside. Above the door, a neon cowboy tipped his hat with each kick of his mount's hind legs and bold green letters flashed
Open.

“You are sure Eduardo came here?” she asked, climbing out of the Rover doubtfully. Broken glass crunched beneath the sole of her shoe. A woman with sunken eyes studied them from the street corner, tugging her pink tube top up and her silver miniskirt down. Despite Elisa's suspicions about Eduardo, she could not picture him choosing this place to spend his free time.

“According to one of the other security guards at the warehouse,” Del said. “He and Eduardo stopped by for
some beers after work, and the people here seemed to know Eduardo.”

The other rangers had already started for the bar. Del hung back. “You don't have to go inside.”

“I wish I did not.” She wished she did not have to face the truth about the man she had planned to marry, the father of her child, but she was part of what was happening to Del now. She belonged at his side. “But I knew Eduardo. You did not. I might be able to make sense of something he said, or did, when you could not.”

He gave her a second to change her mind, then nodded and guided her toward the door with his hand resting casually in the small of her back. It was a comfortable, reassuring gesture. Nothing remotely sexual about it. And yet Elisa's spine tingled beneath his fingertips as they walked into the seedy bar full of men who had little left to lose. His touch felt thoroughly male, primitively possessive, a silent warning to the beer-bellied bikers tucked into a booth in the corner and the wiry winos at the bar that she belonged to him.

Del nudged Elisa toward the table Kat and Clint had taken in the middle of the room. The captain was already at the bar, showing a picture of Eduardo to a bearded man who was wiping shot glasses down with a stained towel.

“You know this man?” Matheson asked.

“No.” The bartender never looked up from his drying.

“Maybe you want to try that again,” the captain said, leaning close to the bartender. “This time actually look at the picture before you answer.”

“Don't gotta look. I make it a point not to know no one here. No faces. No names.
Nada.
Especially when it's a cop doing the asking.”

Del held Elisa's chair until she sat, then joined the captain at the bar. “Well, would you look at that? A psychic bartender. He knew you were a Texas Ranger before you even showed him your badge, Bull.”

“Texas Ranger?” The man set down the last shot glass and ambled a few feet down the bar. Del followed. “Don't care if you're freaking Canadian Mounties. I don't talk to cops.”

He slung his towel down on the bar and began wiping. Quick as a snake, Del grabbed it, whipped it around the man's neck and used it to pull him down. “Then you won't have any problem talking to me. I'm not a cop. Not anymore.”

The bartender tried to rear back. Del held him down.

The bikers in back got to their feet. Clint reached beneath his jacket, pulled out a shiny pistol and laid it on the table, all without turning to look at the approaching gang. “Take a powder, boys. We don't have any beef with you. Yet.”

The bikers shuffled back to their booth.

The bartender rolled his bulging gaze up to Matheson. “You crazy? You're cops. You can't let him do this!”

Matheson looked over to the table. “You hear somebody say something, Hayes?”

“Nah. Nobody in here talks to cops.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” The captain leaned across the bar, filled a glass with tap water and carried it to the table, leaving the photograph behind.

Del wound his towel noose in one fist and reached for the picture. He had such a ferocious look on his face that Elisa might have thought she had been right about
policía
after all—they were all bad—if she hadn't seen him let a half an inch of cloth slide through his hand when
the bartender gasped. Del had no intention of hurting anyone. Elisa just hoped the bartender did not know that.

He held Eduardo's picture in front of the barkeep's eyes. “Try again. You know this man?”

“Geez! You're the crazy cop who shot him, aren't you?”

Del tightened his grip. “You figure it out.” Del tightened his grip. “Might want to be quick about it, though. Before you run out of air.”

The bearded man swore. “So he came in here to drown his troubles. So what?”

Elisa shifted nervously in her seat. Now they were getting somewhere.

A woman wearing a white half apron with a frayed hem and carrying a round serving tray stepped out of the kitchen into the barroom. She was short, maybe five foot four and rail thin. Bleached blond hair spilled out of the clip that held a brittle ponytail off the back of her neck. She walked by Del without a second look, as if men strangled the bartender in here every day.

“Get you some drinks?” Her pen poised over a blank pad, she looked down at the table through eyes as worn as a set of bald tires.

“I'd like a cherry cola,” Kat chirped.

At the bar Del narrowed his eyes at his unwilling informant. “Who did Garcia come in with?”

“Nobody. He sat alone, most nights.”

“What about when he didn't? You got names?” Del gave the towel a little yank.

The barkeep snarled. “No. You got more pictures?”

“Nothing for me,” Clint told the waitress, watching the show with amusement. Her gaze caught on the pistol sitting in plain view. He just smiled at her.

Bull Matheson tipped his water glass at her. “I'm fine, thanks.”

“He say anything?” Del asked the bartender. “Talk about his work? Women? Politics? Religion?”

“No, man. He was real quiet. Now get the hell off me!”

“Give me reason.”

A string of curses sizzled in the air. “He used the phone sometimes, man. The pay phone in the hall. That's all I know.”

Del let go of the towel so suddenly the man's head almost hit the bar. He started toward the table. The bartender glared at his back a moment, then went back to work wiping down the bar. Or at least spreading the filth more evenly.

Del pulled a chair next to the captain. “What do you think our chances are of getting the records on that phone?”

Matheson frowned. A lock of black hair fell over his forehead. “I can try. It'll take a warrant.”

Clint holstered his weapon and leaned forward. “Gene might be able to help. Surely there's a judge or two that owes him a favor. And he sure owes you one.”

Del rubbed his left thigh. “That was a long time ago.”

“Man doesn't forget when someone saves his life.”

“It's the only lead we've got,” Kat said.

Del took a deep, considering breath. “All right. Ask him.”

The waitress brought out Kat's cherry cola and then walked to the bar. As she passed, she stopped to look at the picture of Eduardo Del had left there. Was it Elisa's imagination, or did the woman's shoulders tighten?

A moment later she tossed the picture down with her
serving tray and hurried down the hall toward the bathroom.

Leaving the rangers to their strategizing, Elisa followed.

She found the woman bent over a sink, splashing water on her face. “Are you okay?”

The waitress started as if she had not heard Elisa come in. “I…I'm fine.”

“Did you recognize the man in that picture?”

Subtle tension gathered again in the woman's body. “Lalo? Sure. He is—was—a regular here.”

Elisa frowned, not sure how to proceed. Interrogation was not a skill she had practiced. She was not sure if the woman lied or was sincere. But something bothered her….

“Did you know him well?” she tried.

The woman shrugged, grabbed a paper towel and patted her face dry. “I served him drinks and sympathy, just like every other guy in here.”

“Sympathy for what?”

“Look, I gotta get back to work.” She threw her rumpled towel in an overflowing can.

Elisa opened her mouth to ask another question, but the bathroom door popped open. Kat came in, and the waitress left.

“Elisa, are you okay?” Kat asked. “Del was worried about you. He thought you might be…you know…sick.”

Still thinking about the waitress, she said, “I am not sick.”

“Well, that's good. I told him you were probably fine, but he insisted I come in here and check.” Kat squeezed her shoulders up toward her ears. “It was kind of cute, actually. Seeing the tough guy all worried about you.”

To Elisa, thoughts of Del and “cute” were incongruous. He could be primitively male, intense, dangerous, even seductive. But not cute.

“Look, I never got to tell you how neat I think it is that the two of you—”

Suddenly Elisa was tired of the lies. The pretense. “You know he only married me because he thought it was his duty.”

“Duty-schmooty,” Kat said. “I think it's all about ego. Men just can't stand to admit they might be slightly less than perfect.”

“You sound as if you speak from experience.”

“Boy, how.”

Elisa wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but she took it as a yes. “So who is this not-so-perfect man in your life?”

Her gaze on the floor, Kat toed the tile. “Let's just say he's someone whose sense of duty would be much happier if I was a sheep herder in Nova Scotia instead of a Texas Ranger.”

Interesting. But before she could ask another question to narrow down the possibilities for Kat's love interest, a knock sounded on the bathroom door.

Del poked his head in. With a look, he sent Kat on her way. “You okay?” he asked when they were alone.

She nodded.

“Good. Then let's roll. We've got all we're going to get here.”

 

“Maybe we'll get lucky, and the pay phone records will show Eduardo rang right through to Sanchez's private number.”

It was the first thing she'd said in fifteen miles. Del took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her,
and cursed himself. She was pale. She hadn't eaten all day. She probably needed a nap.

And yet she was making jokes for his benefit. Only, there was nothing funny about this situation, and they both knew it.

“And maybe Santa Claus will bring me a new life for Christmas this year.” He hated that he sounded so pathetic.

She rested her head on the back of the seat. “Make it two. One for each of us.”

“Only if I still get to know you,” he said softly.

She rolled her head toward him. “Not everything about this life is so bad.”

“No. Not everything.”

“If you can find Eduardo's accomplices, will it be enough?”

“If Eduardo was involved.” It galled him to know that the evidence that might clear him would also prove Elisa had been betrayed by someone she cared about. The father of her child. “It might. But there are no guarantees.”

They'd made a good run at clearing his name, but what chance did a handful of rangers and one Amazon princess really have at cracking an international arms conspiracy in less than twenty-four hours?

Knowing he might not have much time with her created a poignant ache in him. He studied her, trying to memorize the elegant shape of her nose, the proud angles of her cheeks. The twenty-four hours Mr. Baseball had given him were almost gone. If Del was going to jail tomorrow, his last night of freedom ought to be one worth remembering.

She caught him watching her. “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing. You're perfect.” He knew how he
wanted to spend the evening. The question was, did she want the same thing?

She smiled self-consciously. “Where are we going?”

“Depends. You feeling tired, or are you up for a little fun and entertainment?”

“I am fine. The fatigue is not so bad as it used to be.”

On impulse, he turned south on MacArthur Boulevard. “Then I think it's high time I introduced you to an old Texas tradition. Barbecue.”

The Spit-n-Hole looked like a condemned barn on the outside. The inside was even worse. Dusty portraits of famous breeding horses decorated the plank walls. Patrons sat on rough-hewn benches tucked up under the sheets of plywood spanning sawhorses that served as tables. No two plates matched, half the silverware was plastic and the sauce was served in recycled ketchup bottles, but the barbecue was the best in the state. Even on a week night they waited twenty minutes for a table.

“Are you sure about this place?” Elisa asked dubiously as she took her seat in a wobbly chair.

“Positive.”

A waitress in a red-and-white-checked blouse, white shorts and white cowboy boots, appeared beside them, menus in hand. Before Elisa could take one, Del said, “We'll have the large meat-eater's platter, corn on the cob and baked beans. A root beer for me, and milk for the lady.”

The waitress scuffed away, and Elisa raised an eyebrow at his presumptuousness. “Eat here often?”

“Every chance I get. You mind?”

“I'll let you know after I taste it.”

Del didn't sweat that. One bite, and he figured the Spit-n-Hole would have another convert.

He was right. Bliss on her face and barbecue sauce on
all ten fingers, Elisa ate half the sliced beef and more than her share of the pork ribs.

As they gorged themselves, they talked about her twin brothers, Miguel and Raul, and his brother, Sam, though that topic was too sad to linger on for long. Del told her about riding horses on his grandparents' farm as a kid. Elisa regaled him with the story of the time she'd tried to ride a pack burro. With every anecdote, she enchanted him more. By the end of the evening, he couldn't take his eyes off her.