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“Where do you want me to take you?” the ranger asked.
“Just stop the car.”
Elisa pressed her forehead against the cool window. Across the six lanes of cement on the other side of the glass, a pasture dotted by mesquite trees and cows with extraordinarily long horns bordered the parking lot of a modern sports stadium with a gigantic hole in the roof. Rural Texas gave way to urban in a dizzying blur.
A big truck sped past, rocking the vehicle. Elisa rested her palm on her churning stomach and looked away. Everything was so different here than in her country. So big. So fast. In her village, two cars couldn’t have passed on the main road without scraping door handles, and the normal flow of traffic was foot speed.
Except when the soldiers came.
The hand on her stomach fisted. “Please stop the car.”
The ranger’s jaw ticked, but his eyes stayed on the road. The ruddy spots on his cheeks darkened. “I told you, I am not dumping a pregnant woman on the side of the highway in this heat. In any weather, damn it.”
“There is no need to curse.”
“Curse? What…? ‘Damn it’?”
She frowned at him.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered, then shot her a look. “I mean heck. Look, just tell me where you want to go and I’ll drop you off.”
“You don’t understand.” She clutched her pack to her side. It was all she’d brought to America. All she’d had. “I—”
Too late.
Elisa’s eyes went wide as the wave began low in her body and rolled upward. One hand flying to cover her mouth, she fumbled at the window control with the other.
“What the—” The ranger stepped on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder.
Elisa was out before the car came to full stop. At the guardrail, she fell to her knees and lost what little she’d eaten that day. When it was over, she hung across the steel barrier, limp as yesterday’s laundry, clammy and shaking. She dragged in a breath of air, tasted exhaust and nearly choked again. Thankfully, the ranger had left her to her peace. The only thing more humiliating than being sick would have been to have him standing over her, watching.
A moment later she realized she’d offered her thanks too soon. Her stomach turned once more at the sound of his boots crunching across gravel. He stopped beside her and a column of shade fell over her where he blocked the sun. Grudgingly she huddled in the cool swath. She should get up, walk away. But she was so hot… “Leave me alone.” Her voice sounded miserable. Pitiful.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, ma’am.” Refusing to look into the eyes again of the man who had killed Eduardo, she focused on the ground until blunt fingers appeared in front of her face, waving a rumpled napkin sporting a fast-food chain logo.
Loath as she was to accept his help, even in the form of a napkin, her suffering would prove nothing. He was the one who should be shamed by what he had done, not her.
She snatched the thin paper and wiped her face. A plastic bottle of spring water appeared next and she took it, too.
What was the difference? Her pride was already in tatters. Had been since she left her own people to come to America.
The water was warm, but blessedly wet. She swished it around in her mouth and spit over the guardrail.
The ranger cleared his throat. “I guess I should consider myself lucky.”
Without meaning to, she raised her head. He had a way of making her forget her intentions, like her vow not to let him see her pain—or her temper—in the chapel.
“Lucky?” she said.
“You have good reason to hate me.” He raised one solemn eyebrows. “And I am within spitting distance.”
The weakness in her body must have weakened her mind, too, because it took her seconds to put together his meaning. By the time she had, her stomach had rolled from her throat to the floor of her abdomen. “Perhaps you will not feel so lucky when you look more closely at your car.”
“Good thing I paid the extra hundred bucks for Scotchgard, then.”
Thanks to more than eight years of foreign language classes, Elisa’s English was good—better than most native speakers, since she’d learned classroom grammar, not street slang. She prided herself on her extensive vocabulary—but she did not know this thing, Scotchgard. An inborn sense of curiosity almost made her ask, but the question was lost in a gasp. She pressed the heel of her hand against her navel, hoping to stem the rising tide of nausea.
This time, she was almost grateful for the distraction the sickness provided. She knew better than to ask questions of him. He was a Texas Ranger.
“Are you all right?” Squatting beside her, the ranger steadied her with a hand under her elbow.
She nodded toward the ground at his feet. “Do you also pay extra to Scotchgard those?”
He followed her gaze down. “My boots? No.”
Ostrich, she guessed. Expensive. “Then perhaps you should get them out of ‘spitting distance.’”
He quickly shuffled behind her—without letting go of her arm. Within seconds another swell of sickness rolled through her. Her back bowed, crested and then went limp. Her head hung over the gritty metal rail. She tried focusing on the ditch below for stability, but the very earth pitched like the sea. A cry escaped her, and a surge of shame followed as the ranger watched the final purging of her stomach.
A moment later the ground went still again. She opened her eyes as the ranger dug a pack of gum from his shirt pocket, pulled a piece from its paper wrapper, folded the silver foil halfway back and extended it out to her, holding it by the still-wrapped end.
How was he continually able to offer her the one thing she couldn’t refuse at the time? Practically snarling, she snapped the gum from his hand. A moment later, with sugar and spearmint sweetening her tongue, she propped her back against the guardrail and drew her knees to her chest. The roiling cauldron in her stomach settled to a slow simmer, but her strength had yet to reappear.
The ranger watched her, muscled thighs straining the seams of his dress slacks as he squatted. “Have you been sick like this much?”
She tipped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. “Every day. They call it morning sickness, no? But for me it comes in the afternoon.”
“How far along are you?”
“Over four months. It should have passed by now.” Her voice wobbled. This weakness left her defenseless against the worry she’d been pushing back since she’d learned of her pregnancy. Worry that she didn’t know how to have a baby.
“You’re not showing much for almost five months. But it’s different for everyone,” he told her, his words gentle, reassuring.
“You have children?” she couldn’t resist asking.
“No. But I lived out in the country as a kid. My grandmother was a midwife for half the babies born in Van Zandt county. I grew up listening to her stories.”
Memories of Oleda, the eccentric old midwife from Elisa’s village, flashed through her mind like a favorite movie. She had not asked Oleda about the sickness before leaving San Ynez; she had not been able to risk it.
She would not risk it when she returned, either. She would bear this baby alone, if she lived to bear it at all. Despite his gentle voice, this ranger was responsible for that.
She looked up at him. His wide shoulders bunched and released under his sports jacket. The light scent of soap and sandalwood wafted to her on a puff of a breeze. The corners of his mouth angled up hopefully, as if he wanted to smile at the newfound peace between them. She had never seen his smile, but could imagine it—warm and beguiling, pulling a matching grin from whomever it fell on. His would be the kind of smile women trusted. The kind they depended on. Wanted to wake up next to.
Suddenly he was too close, too male, too alive. All the things Eduardo had been and was no more.
Once again the ranger had made her forget her intentions. Made her forget who she was, and who he was—policía. Untouchable.
Dredging up the energy from deep inside, she rose on rubbery legs. He rose with her, still steadying her. She held the half-full water bottle out to him. He shook his head. “Keep it. You’re probably dehydrated.”
She dropped the bottle next to his expensive boots, and the smile that had been so close to breaking, died, unborn. His eyes hardened, as did his voice. “Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll drop you off and not bother you anymore.”
“I will go no further with you.”
“I just want to help you.”
“I do not need your help.” She shook free of his grip, took two steps down the road.
In one agile move, he stepped in front of her, blocking her way again. Containing a heavy sigh, she stopped short of plowing into him. Just short. They stood nearly nose to nose, close enough for her to see the beginnings of the stubble that would shadow his jaw in a few hours. Close enough for her to see the shadows in his eyes, too, though their source was less clear to her.
“Bull,” he said.
She tilted her chin up. “You are certainly acting like one.”
“Only because you’re being unreasonable.”
“Because I don’t wish to be helped by a man with my fiancé’s blood on his hands?”
The ranger’s face blanched, and at that moment she knew the source of the shadows in his eyes. Pain. Guilt. Shame. She would not have thought a policía capable of these emotions.
“You don’t want my help?” he said. “Give me the number of someone to call for you. A name. Anything.”
“No.”
“No, you won’t? Or no, you can’t? There isn’t anyone to call, is there? You have no one.”
Her face heated. “That is none of your concern.”
“Lady, right now that is my only concern. Because until I know you have someone to go to, I’m stuck with you. And you’re stuck with me.”
Sensing the turmoil in him, she could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, if the seedling sympathy sprouting inside her had not been quickly trampled by the stronger emotions she felt. Rage. Fear.
Hate.
She held on to the hate. It was the only emotion capable of keeping her on her feet. It gave her the strength to shoulder past him and start again down the blistering blacktop.
Behind her, his footfalls kept pace with her own. “Eduardo’s place has been sealed since the shooting. Where have you been staying?”
She ignored him.
“When was the last time you had a decent meal?” he called to her.
At the mention of food, her knees nearly buckled. The ranger’s hands were on her shoulders, holding her, as she swayed. For a moment the broad male chest behind her was the only solid in a fluid world. The kick of his heart against her spine was a beacon, guiding her from the stormy sea to firm ground.
When the ground stopped rolling beneath her, he turned her gently toward him, the way a parent would nudge a tired child. Instinct screamed at her to resist, flee or fight, but she had the strength for neither. Unable to meet his gaze this time, she stared at his chest. Weakness was so uncharacteristic for her. Pregnancy was doing wild things to her body, her stamina. She hated the feeling of helplessness that consumed her.
“Please let me go,” she said, humiliated by the pleading tone in her voice.
“Go where?” His words, like his hands, held her softly in place. “Back to San Ynez?”
Her gaze jumped to his, but before she could speak, he continued. “How do you plan on doing that with no plane ticket, no money, no credit cards? Nothing but your passport, some clothes, two bananas and a rosary to your name?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “You searched my bag?”
“You left it in my car.”
“And this gives you the right to invade my privacy?”
He scowled. She’d caught him, and she knew it. She had studied American culture enough to know they had laws about these things. Search and seizure. But since when had the policía in any country cared about the law?
“I thought you might have some medicine to settle your stomach,” he said. “Or some crackers to nibble on.”
“Inside my passport?”
He looked chagrined but defiant. “I was curious. It’s not a crime.”
“Is it a crime to force me to go with you when I have said I do not want your help?”
“I’m not going to let you just walk away. Not when you have nowhere to go.”
Exasperation filled her voice. Had there ever before been such a stubborn man? “Where would you take me, Ranger?”
The question seemed to stump him for a moment, then he stammered, “I can help you get home.”
The laugh that welled up inside her felt hysterical. “Do you know much about San Ynez?”
“Just that it’s a small military dictatorship in South America.”
“You are a Texas Ranger. An elite police officer. You must know more than that.”
He drew his brows together. “It’s rumored to be a major drug-producing nation, but it’s still a poor country. All the money goes to the cartels, I suppose.”
“It is a place where men are killed for resisting the military police who force them to manufacture narcotics. Women are given as rewards to the soldiers for their brutality and schools are closed so that the children may work in the coca fields. Yet this is the place you want to help me go back to?” Her hand curved protectively over her abdomen. “The place you would have me raise my child?”
“I just assumed—”
“You assumed wrong! I escaped San Ynez at the risk of my own death to give my child—Eduardo’s child—the life it deserves. I will not go back.” Her vehemence surprised her. Until now, she had assumed she would have to return to San Ynez, with Eduardo gone.
Poor Eduardo, who would never see his child.
Now, even considering going back to her homeland, to the violence, the madness of drugs, the death, made her stomach roll. She’d come to America for her child; she would stay for her child. Somehow.
The ranger’s expression twisted as understanding set in. “You don’t have residency in the U.S.” Statement, not question.
“I am carrying the child of an American. That is all the residency I need.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m no immigration lawyer, but I don’t think so. You’ll be deported.”
“Not if they can’t find me.” She angled her head, feeling superior now that she’d finally found an argument he couldn’t counter. He was the police, bound by his law. He would not help her. She just hoped he wouldn’t arrest her, either. “So, Ranger, do you still want to help me?”
