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He cocked his head to the side as he studied her for a long moment with intense eyes, then to her surprise, said seriously, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Del flexed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove west, squinting into a sun so strong that tinted windows and aviator sunglasses both couldn’t stop the glare. Elisa didn’t seem to be bothered, though. She sat upright in the passenger seat, eyes forward and hands folded demurely in her lap. On the surface she looked harmless enough, even a little bit vulnerable, with the slight bulge in her midsection and the crinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes. Underneath, he suspected she was an entirely different woman. He sensed strength in her, more metaphysical than physical, and pride that could make her stubborn as a jackass.
Unfortunately, he also sensed she had good reason to be stubborn. He mentally sorted through the few facts he could recall about San Ynez, and the picture he put together wasn’t pretty. The current government had taken power in a bloody coup and had quickly thrown an immature, but growing, nation into a state of economic infancy. Industry had been abandoned for the cultivation of narcotics; education ground to a halt; tourist attractions were converted into terrorist training facilities. All in the name of profit.
No wonder Elisa didn’t want to go back.
She’d had a chance here, in the U.S.—a chance he’d taken away.
He glanced at her surreptitiously, found her almond complexion paled to alabaster and her expression frozen into a picture of complacency through what he figured had to be sheer willpower, as exhausted as she seemed to be.
Her gaze flicked toward him and he quickly looked away. Every time he caught a glimpse of her he found more to admire—her high, arching cheekbones, the dense brush of lashes over dark, feline eyes, the deep, wine color of her lips.
A horn blared close by. Too close. Looking toward the sound, Del realized his rearview mirror was just about scraping the side window of the pickup truck in the next lane. Adrenaline flooded his system in a hot surge. He jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the Land Rover lurched back to his half of the highway.
He’d been staring, he realized. And not at the road. The fight-or-flight instinct that had heated his blood cooled to lukewarm embarrassment. The driver of the pickup flipped a rude gesture at him, and Del waved pathetically in return.
At least Elisa hadn’t noticed his lapse. She turned to him and blinked slowly, almost dazedly.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Her rs rolled together in a sensual purr that pulled his own vocal chords tight as high wires. When was the last time he noticed anything about a woman other than whether or not her face matched one of the dozens of wanted flyers that crossed his desk each day?
He couldn’t remember.
That bothered him. Maybe he’d gotten a little obsessive about his job. Lost perspective. But it bothered him even more that this woman was the one he chose to finally notice. A woman as out of reach to him as the moon to a howling coyote.
So where was he taking her?
Not to his place. Not when he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And not when he was under investigation for the death of her fiancé, for chrisakes. That kind of complication neither of them needed.
On the other hand, he couldn’t just dump her at some cheap hotel alone. She needed clean clothes, a decent meal and maybe a little help from someone with some influence who would talk to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
He blew out a sigh. She needed Gene Randolph.
Fifteen minutes later Del braked to a stop at the wrought-iron gate in front of the Randolph estate. When he lowered the window to punch the security code into the console, a small sound escaped the woman next to him. He hesitated, frowning at the deepening creases in her forehead. “You okay? You going to be sick again?”
“No,” she said, breathlessly, and he wasn’t sure if she meant no, she was not okay, or no, she was not going to be sick again.
“This is your home?” she asked.
He glanced at the sprawling grounds beyond the gate. An automatic irrigation system kept the lawn emerald green even in the most arid conditions. Grand oaks shaded the path to the house, surrounded by flowering crepe myrtle in red, pink and white, beds of Mexican heather and trellises covered with climbing yellow roses in full bloom. “No.” Not on a ranger’s salary. “It belongs to a friend.”
Her hand trembled on the door handle. He frowned.
“This is the Randolph estate,” he explained. “Gene Randolph, maybe you heard of him? Two-term governor of Texas a while back.”
“Diós,” she muttered. “Un político.”
She clutched her tattered olive bag with her left hand and made the sign of the cross with the right. When she turned to him, all hints of dazedness had vanished from her eyes, replaced by sharp, clear fear. “Please let me go. I cannot stay here.”
Chapter 3
“You got something against politicians?” Del asked. The words sounded casual, but the look that accompanied them made Elisa’s stomach churn. This time the illness had little to do with her pregnancy.
She was defenseless against that sharp, gray gaze of his. It pierced the armor of aloofness in which she’d cloaked herself, like a knife through an overripe mango. The ranger’s eyes cut to the core of her. Bared her very essence. Given enough time, all her secrets would be exposed to him. All her doubts.
She couldn’t let that happen. She’d lived in the jungle long enough to know better than to show weakness to a predator.
“Politicians are all corrupt.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded venomous. Lifting her chin, she turned away. The wrought-iron gate before them clanked and swung open with a mechanical buzz. Past it, park-like grounds rolled over a series of low hills. A red-brick mansion lorded over the estate from the highest knoll. Three stories high and Georgian in style, with thick white pillars supporting wide, shady porches hung with green ferns on all three levels, the house looked big enough to sleep an army. A wing swept back from each side of the stacked porches. Elisa counted seven windows she assumed to be bedrooms on each floor of each wing.
Make that two armies.
Her chest burned with the fire of the oppressed. How many slept in gutters so that one man could sleep in opulence?
“All those who live like this are criminals, or they take kickbacks to let the criminals operate. Like cannibals, they feed off of their own people,” she added.
Despite the danger to her privacy, Elisa turned back to him, ready to meet the sharp point of his gaze. To her surprise, she found him staring out the windshield as if trying to see the landscape through her eyes.
“Not Gene Randolph,” he finally said, shaking his head. Whatever he’d been looking for, he hadn’t found it.
Elisa hadn’t expected him to. He couldn’t possibly see what she saw. He hadn’t lived her hell. Had never been dragged through a place like the house on the hill, as she had. Marched through the dining hall where guests ate off bone china, to the cellar where she ate with the rats.
The memory brought a cold sweat to the back of her neck. She smelled fear and the stink of human excrement, heard the cries of the dying, as if she were back in that hole. Instinctively her hand covered her abdomen protectively.
“He’s a good man,” the ranger said. Behind them the gate clanked shut, sounding to Elisa’s ears like a cell door. “You can trust him.”
A disbelieving laugh bubbled up within her. “You want me to trust a politician?” She rolled her gaze toward him. “Ranger, I do not even trust you.”
He didn’t say anything, but his lips seemed thinner as he put the car in gear and eased it forward. The silver glow in his eyes dimmed. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was…hurt?
Because she didn’t trust him?
He had made a good show so far of playing the repentant warrior, bound by honor to help the woman left behind by the man he had killed in error. But surely he did not expect her to put her faith, her fate and that of her baby, in his hands so easily. He couldn’t possibly. And still her lack of trust bothered him.
His reaction confused her. Where she came from, men like him—policía—didn’t care what people like her thought. She was no one to him. Yet he had not treated her like no one. Another day, another time, she would have liked to ask why. Today, here, she just wanted to get away, to grieve for Eduardo and raise her child alone.
She had found a way to escape a place like this once before. She would find a way again. Soon.
“This Randolph, he is in charge of the Texas Rangers?” she asked, fingering the door handle nervously.
“No, we have a new governor now.” He didn’t look at her.
“Then why have we come here?”
“Because Gene knows how the system works. And he still has a lot of influence.”
Influence. A fancy word for power. Control. The ability to crush lives. People. Elisa’s pulse fluttered in the base of her throat like a fledgling’s wings.
“He doesn’t even know me. Why would he use his…influence to help me?”
“Because he does know me. And Gene stands by his friends.”
The ranger still did not look at her. She thought he was still insulted that she doubted his motivations, and now she had questioned his friend’s honor, too. It occurred to her that provoking him further might not be wise. Antagonizing him would only make escape more difficult.
Carefully she blunted the edge of her uneasiness until she could speak in what she hoped would sound like a conversational tone. “You and this politician are close?”
He nodded, a measure of the tension slipping from his expression. “I guess you could say that. I’ve known Gene since my highway patrol days. I, ah, helped him out of a jam once.”
He rubbed his thigh absently as if it ached. Elisa recognized the gesture. She saw it too often in her country, the soothing of phantom pain from an old wound.
“Gene kind of took me under his wing after that. Helped me get into the Rangers. Even put me up here in town. My family has a farm about ninety miles north of here. It was getting to be a hell of a commute.” He nodded down a lane that cut off the main driveway toward a two-story structure that replicated the architecture, if not the size, of the main house. “Guess I just never got around to moving out. I stay in the apartment above the carriage house there.”
“So he owes you.”
“No,” the ranger said quickly. Too quickly. Then he shrugged. “Maybe he feels like he does. But he shouldn’t. I was just doing my job.”
“Your job required you to take a bullet for him?”
His jaw slanted sideways. “How did you know?”
“Now he provides you a place to live.”
His forehead creased. “It’s not some kind of kickback, if that’s what you mean. I pay rent.”
“Even better.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She’d vowed not to antagonize him, but she couldn’t help herself. Politicians were the same worldwide, it seemed. “He is a rich man. Rich men have enemies, no? People who would hurt them for their money.”
“I suppose.”
“So for nothing more than the use of his garage, your friend takes your money every month, and gets a Texas Ranger guarding his front door.” A smug smile slipped over her lips as she shook her head. “Políticos.”
“Gene isn’t using me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She studied the flowering crepe myrtle lining the driveway. The ranger sighed noisily.
“Maybe having a cop close by makes him more comfortable,” he said. “If so, I’m glad to give him the peace of mind.”
She turned toward him. “Because he was your governor?”
“Because he is my friend.” He enunciated each word quietly, but with vehemence. She looked away. Did he really think she would so easily accept that he was exactly what he seemed, an honorable man, helping her in an effort to right the wrong he had done, and his friend, a politician, would help without a hidden agenda or profit motive?
No, he could not. She could not. Yet as the car came to a stop in the paved circle outside the mansion and the ranger lead her to the front door, she wanted to believe it.
But she had survived eight years of civil war in her country by being cautious, by relying on herself and trusting precious few. The cloak of vigilance she had sheathed herself in was hard to shed. Especially after what had happened to Eduardo.
Coming to America was to have been her chance to escape violence. She had not planned the baby she and Eduardo had created, but once she’d learned of it and accepted his offer of marriage in the United States, she had dreamed of a better life. She had dreamed of a quiet little apartment and nights filled with the sounds of city life—traffic and music and laughing voices on the street—instead of mortar fire and the cries of the dying.
She had dreamed of peace.
When she arrived in America and saw the father of her child gunned down, she had realized the idyllic life she sought did not exist.
Like all dreams, peace was only an illusion.
A trick of the mind.
Del cruised up the winding drive toward the Randolph mansion slower than was necessary to buy time to think. Gene would expect an explanation when Del showed up at his door with Elisa in tow. The problem was, there weren’t any explanations. None that made sense. Del was under investigation for the death of this woman’s fiancé. Every moment he spent in her company further compromised his position. Helping her could cast doubt on his motivations. Raise questions about his character. The cautious thing to do would be to keep as far away from her as possible.
But then, caution had never been high on his list of priorities. He wouldn’t have become a Texas Ranger if it had been. In his world, a person had two choices in every situation: he could do the right thing or the wrong thing. An honorable man always did the right thing, even if it wasn’t the safe choice or the obvious one. Helping Elisa Reyes definitely wasn’t safe. The press would come down on him like a bobcat on a wounded bird if they found out, but leaving her, pregnant and alone, to make her own way wasn’t a decision he could live with. Not when he was responsible for putting her in this situation.
None of that would make explaining her presence to Gene Randolph any easier. With his silvering hair and perpetually paternal expression, Gene might look like everybody’s grandfather, but he was sharp as a straight razor. One look at the edge in his pale-blue eyes when the door opened told Del that introductions wouldn’t be necessary. Gene knew exactly who Elisa was. What he didn’t know was what the hell she was doing on his doorstep with Del.
They made small talk as they crossed the black-and-white marble-tiled foyer, and two minutes later were settled into Gene’s library/office. Bookcases rose from the floor to the ceiling behind Gene’s massive mahogany desk. Law books, mostly, lined the shelves, but the spines of those on the lower racks sported popular fiction titles, mysteries and novelized true war stories. The fact that these were within easiest reach of Gene’s oversize leather chair reflected his friend’s retired status, Del figured.
For a moment he regretted dragging his friend back into the bureaucratic world he’d escaped. If anyone deserved his peace, it was Gene. But twenty years in politics had given the former governor a way with sticky situations, and Del’s predicament was about as sticky as a fresh roll of flypaper.
“What do you know about alien residency requirements?” Del asked, ending the small talk. Propping his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward in his wing chair. In the matching seat next to him, Elisa sat back, her ankles and knees pressed together and her hands in her lap.
“You don’t sit in the governor’s chair in Texas without going around the block a few times with the INS.” Raising his sterling eyebrows gently, Gene studied them both across the desk. “I take it Ms. Reyes is the alien in question?”
Del didn’t consider it was his place to talk about Elisa’s situation, so he waited for her to explain. A heartbeat passed, then another, before she inclined her head stiffly. Silently.
Damn the woman’s pride. It would be her undoing.
“I understand you were engaged to Eduardo Garcia,” Gene said softly.
Again she simply nodded, ending with her chin high. She looked noble, genteel, bearing her fate with the serenity of a Madonna. And beneath it all, despite her best attempts to cover it up, she looked sad.
“I’m sorry,” Gene said, meeting her gaze head-on and holding it. If Del wasn’t mistaken, his simple sincerity earned him a notch of respect from Elisa.
“You are not at fault,” she said.
Del felt the disclaimer like a kick in the gut. They all knew who shouldered the blame for this situation.
“We need to know how to get her green card even now that Eduardo is… Even without Eduardo,” he said, forcing his jaw to release its clench.
Gene’s eyelids drooped sadly as he broke eye contact with Elisa and looked at Del. “If the marriage never took place—”
“There’s got to be some way,” Del said.
Gene thought. “Do you have a marriage license? Any documentation?”
Elisa hesitated only a second before shaking her head.
“Then I’m afraid there’s nothing—”
