The Last Honorable Man

“You may, ah, kiss the bride now.”

Elisa’s bubble burst. Even the Ranger looked startled when he turned to her, his gray eyes roaming desperately from his grandmother to Elisa. She could have sworn his grandmother was holding her breath, love shining in her eyes as she waited for her grandson’s big moment.

Elisa might have let the moment pass as Del gave her a perfunctory kiss that served as a reminder that theirs was only a partnership, but she couldn’t stand seeing the woman’s confusion.

Without daring to contemplate the consequences, she reached up and pulled him down for a real kiss.

It was as if a door unlocked inside Elisa, the entrance to a place she’d closed off long ago. The place that was feminine and sensual.

Suddenly she wasn’t kissing the Ranger to please his grandmother. This was all for herself. And the sense that finally, finally, she didn’t have to be the strong one any longer.

Dear Reader,

Our exciting month of May begins with another of bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand’s Australian Alpha heroes. In Gabriel West: Still the One, we learn that former agent Gabriel West and his ex-wife have spent their years apart wishing they were back together again. And their wish is about to come true, but only because Tyler needs protection from whoever is trying to kill her—and Gabriel is just the man for the job.

Marie Ferrarella’s crossline continuity, THE MOM SQUAD, continues, and this month it’s Intimate Moments’ turn. In The Baby Mission, a pregnant special agent and her partner develop an interest in each other that extends beyond police matters. Kylie Brant goes on with THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Entrapment, in which wickedly handsome Sam Tremaine needs the heroine to use the less-than-savory parts of her past to help him capture an international criminal. Marilyn Tracy offers another story set on her Rancho Milagro, or Ranch of Miracles, with At Close Range, featuring a man scarred—inside and out—and the lovely rancher who can help heal him. And in Vickie Taylor’s The Last Honorable Man, a mother-to-be seeks protection from the man she’d been taught to view as the enemy—and finds a brand-new life for herself and her child in the process. In addition, Brenda Harlan makes her debut with McIver’s Mission, in which a beautiful attorney who’s spent her life protecting families now finds that she is in danger—and the handsome man who’s designated himself as her guardian poses the greatest threat of all.

Enjoy! And be sure to come back next month for more of the best romantic reading around, right here in Intimate Moments.

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

The Last Honorable Man

Vickie Taylor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICKIE TAYLOR

has always loved books—the way they look, the way they feel and most especially the way the stories inside them bring whole new worlds to life. She views her recent transition from reading to writing books as a natural extension of this longtime love. Vickie lives in Aubrey, Texas, a small town dubbed “The Heart of Horse Country,” where, in addition to writing romance novels, she raises American quarter horses and volunteers her time to help homeless and abandoned animals. Vickie loves to hear from readers. Write to her at: P.O. Box 633, Aubrey, TX 76227.

To Ann Leslie Tuttle, editor extraordinaire, for her

unswerving faith and consummate professionalism.

Thanks for everything!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;

Take honour from me, and my life is done.

—Shakespeare, King Richard II Act 1, sc. 1

Silence gathered in the wake of gunfire.

Sergeant Del Cooper straightened from his shooting crouch, tugged his Stetson low on his forehead to block the glare of the August sun and hitched the stock of his shotgun up tight under his damp armpit.

So much for Sunday being the day of peace.

Squaring his shoulders, he rose from behind the old Buick he’d used as cover. One by one the others appeared from the shadows of shallow doorways and behind the stoops of dull gray industrial buildings, stepping into sunlight so bright their silhouettes blurred in a hazy glow. The four of them met in the middle of the road and strode forward together, their booted heels scuffing the long shadows cast on the blacktop in front of them. A crimson stain slashed across Hayes’s sleeve, but at least they were all on their feet. Del doubted the men in the warehouse at the other end of the road could say the same.

Overhead, an outraged shriek broke the quiet. Del tipped his head back. Squinting against the sun’s brilliance, he watched a blackbird circle between the crisp, blue sky and the pewter clouds of gun smoke hanging low over the street, their sulfurous fumes burning his nose and throat. The bird offered another raucous challenge, swooping to defend his territory.

“Sorry, fella,” Del said. “The fightin’s all over.”

A bead of sweat squeezed past his hatband and rolled toward the corner of his eye. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his duster. The cowboy coat’s long hem swished and swirled around his calves. It was too hot for any kind of jacket this time of year in Dallas, but the long coat covered the shotgun when Del snugged the barrel up against his thigh, and Del hadn’t wanted the weapon to draw attention to himself or his teammates.

Huh. As if anyone with half a mind wouldn’t take one look at them and see trouble coming.

From his position on the end, he glanced down the line at the others. At an imposing six foot four and nearly two hundred lean pounds, Captain “Bull” Matheson set the pace from the right-center spot in the row, his left hand resting on the butt of the Colt holstered at his hip. To the captain’s right, with handgun still drawn, dangling loose but ready at his side, wiry-bodied Clint Hayes kept pace, somber faced and silent. Only Solomon, the diminutive new kid next to Del, with her six-shooter stretched in front of her in a white-knuckled grip, had the wild-eyed look of the untried.

“Some of ’em got away,” she said, breathless.

He spared her a glance. Katherine “Kat” Solomon’s eyes were bright, jumpy. “Some of ’em didn’t.”

“You got one.”

“Yeah.” He shifted the Remington twelve-gauge so that the barrel rested in the crook of his arm and concentrated on keeping his legs steady beneath him. All of a sudden his knees felt as if they had more joints than they ought. “I got one.”

It was days like this—days when the adrenaline rushed through his veins like a swollen river one moment, then dried up like bones in a desert the next, leaving him shaky and perspiring—that he felt the full weight of the badge on his chest. The silver circle and star carried a responsibility. A tradition. A code of honor that demanded he right wrongs, defend the defenseless. And sometimes that he take a life.

But never that he take satisfaction in it.

He knew the kid hadn’t meant anything. She just hadn’t learned yet that they didn’t talk about it afterward. Those demons were to be faced later, in private. It was part of the code. Besides, this wasn’t over yet; they still had to clear that warehouse.

They’d nearly reached the front of the building, and still no sign of life. Del doubted there would be. A loose piece of tin on the roof creaked in the hot breeze. A scrap of litter kicked up from the street, swirled and danced in front of them, then skittered out of their path.

Captain Matheson motioned to Hayes. “Side entrance.” Then he looked at Del. “Back door.”

“I’ll take the back door,” Solomon chirped, her voice tight as a high wire.

She was already moving when Matheson scowled and called her back. “Hold on there, Johnette Wayne. You’re on the front, with me.”

Solomon’s expression soured to downright mutinous, but she didn’t argue. At least not out loud.

Del watched curiously as the two of them measured each other. “Bull” Matheson was always hard on the new kids at first, but Solomon had been with them nearly a month now, and the sparks between her and the Bull showed no signs of letting up. If Del didn’t know better, he’d think it was something personal between them.

Matheson turned to Del. “Take the big gun to the back door,” he said. “We’ll flush, you catch.”

Unlike Solomon, Del didn’t even think about arguing. Hefting the shotgun to his shoulder, he trotted around the building, careful to stay low and out of the line of fire from the windows. He didn’t think anything—anyone—was still alive in there, but it never hurt to be cautious, especially since the angle of the sun on this side of the building cast a glare on the grimy glass, making it more difficult to spot movement inside.

He’d taken position behind a stack of wooden pallets at the rear of the warehouse when he caught a flash of color behind him and to his right. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it shouldn’t be there.

His throat dried up as another shot of adrenaline hit his system. He needed to focus on what might be coming out that back door, but he didn’t like the thought of one of them behind him. He caught another flash of movement among the stacks of pallets. Just a shadow this time, but something nonetheless—and coming his way.

With a glance at the warehouse, seeing nothing moving inside, he made his decision. Matheson might have his hide for leaving his position, but if one of the shooters was out here, Del couldn’t let him get away.

He crept along the concrete walls of the docks, searching. Listening. He was crouching beneath a rusted iron staircase, about to poke his head up and look around when a whirlwind descended on him from above. Caught in a vortex of colors—vibrant red and orange, warm brown and stormy blue—he thrashed. Gauzy fabric snarled around him, hemmed him in, and he rolled, trying to get free and hold onto the shotgun at the same time.

He twisted for better leverage, his body molded around a warm and solid human form, struggling mightily. He turned again until he was on top of the bucking body, and his hands let go of the gauze and twisted in something long and soft before he opened his eyes—

—and found himself staring down at one of the most naturally beautiful women he’d ever seen. Earthy, yet exotic, her complexion was the color of toasted almond, smooth and perfect, except for charcoal smudges under her lashes that said it had been too long since she’d slept. Perfectly pitched eyebrows arched over eyes the color of sweet, dark chocolate and her hair… It was long and smooth and black as coffee—a rich, Colombian roast—and felt like pure silk wrapped in his fists.

He jerked his hands away.

For a moment she lay there, wide-eyed and frozen. The V-neck blouse she wore had come untied at the throat. With each heaving breath she drew, the thrust of her chest pried the slit farther apart and exposed another centimeter of lustrous flesh.

Reining in his galloping pulse—and his imagination—Del reassured her. “It’s all right, ma’am. I’m a—”

She moved fast. Hard. She fought like a hellcat, flailing her fists and kicking. Del had to roll to the side to protect the parts of him that Kevlar couldn’t cover. They both lunged to their feet and she nearly got away, but her full skirt tangled around her legs, slowing her. She dropped a military-style olive green backpack, the drawstring kind women used as a purse sometimes, and Del kicked it away in case there was a weapon inside, then managed to snag her with an arm around her waist.

She squirmed in his grasp and tried to stomp his instep with her heel. Amazon woman just didn’t know when to give up. He dodged blows and held on for all he was worth. Her arms and legs were long and lean—she was fit, no doubt about that. But her middle was solid. Thick, almost bulging in a way it shouldn’t be unless—

Holy Mother.

He let go of her as if he’d reached into a pile of wood for a walking stick and pulled back a rattlesnake instead.

Big mistake.

He knew what was coming when she wrapped the palm of one hand around the fist of the other and raised her elbows, but it happened so fast there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

He had to admire her spirit. The fact that he stood a half foot taller, weighed a good fifty pounds more and was armed—with a shotgun, no less—didn’t seem to faze her. The elbow she buried in his gut doubled him over like a Gumby doll. The heel she stomped on the arch of his foot nearly buckled his knees. If she’d weighed more, she’d have done him some serious damage with the combat boots she wore under her skirt. He supposed he was lucky on that account, at least.

While he stood there gagging and hopping, she took off.

Toward the warehouse.

That was all he needed, Amazon woman running around in there. Even if the shooters who’d survived had cleared out—which wasn’t a certainty—she could run into Solomon. The hair-triggered new kid was wound tight enough to pop anything that moved. And Amazon woman was definitely moving. She’d already cleared half the distance to the warehouse, the leather soles of her boots slapping the ground as she ran.

“Wait,” he called, still gasping for air. “You can’t go in there. It’s danger—” Ah, great. She wasn’t listening. Ignoring the pain in his ribs and his foot, he took off after her.

Del cursed when she disappeared into the back door of the building. This was a disaster in the making. If she jumped one of his teammates the way she’d jumped him, she just might find herself closely acquainted with a few .38 caliber slugs.

He reached the door and pried it open. Going inside would be just about as dangerous for him. The others wouldn’t be expecting him in there. If they mistook him for one of the black-clad bad guys…

Pushing that thought out of his mind, he slipped through the door. The cool interior made his skin, flushed with sweat from the hand-to-hand skirmish, turn clammy. His heart tattooed a rapid pace. He couldn’t see the woman, but he picked up the faint pad of her steps on the floor behind a row of crates ahead.

He crept toward the sound, his gaze flicking side to side, watching for his teammates, and for the shooters. He didn’t dare call out, in case any of them were still around.

The woman’s light footsteps halted, somewhere around the end of the row of crates, Del guessed. Holding his breath, he moved toward her. He’d almost caught up to her when a shadow crawled along the floor to his left—a pair of outstretched arms and a gun. Solomon’s body followed the shadow, swinging around to where the woman stood.

Swallowing his curse, Del stepped between the two women. His forearm shot up, knocking Solomon’s aim toward the ceiling. An explosion roared from the muzzle of the gun. He felt the blast of heat on his cheek, saw the flash of light. The pistol’s report deafened him for a second, then set bells ringing in his head. That had been too close.

Amazon woman recovered before he did, but then, she hadn’t just nearly had her head blown off. She whirled, her eyes huge, then ran.

Del chased her again, this time with Solomon two steps behind. To hell with giving away their position. He shouted, “Hold your fire, we have a civilian in the building!”

As he neared the end of a row of crates and pulled up to round the corner, an anguished wail stopped him in his tracks. Solomon, who’d been running on his heels, crashed into his back, then they both started to run again, pulled forward by the keening.

Del and his teammates converged on the scene at once, weapons ready. Hayes, his revolver trained on the downed form of one of the gunmen in black, yelled, “Clear.”

But Del wasn’t looking at the dead gunman. Or at the open boxes of weapons—a cache like he’d never seen before: automatic rifles, handguns, shotguns, even hand-held air-to-ground missile launchers that could bring down a small plane—surrounding them. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sight a few feet beyond, in the center of a cleared section of the warehouse floor. The mystery woman sat on the cement, her long legs curled beneath her skirt, holding a second lifeless body in her arms, moaning softly and rocking the dead man as if he were a child just nodding off to sleep.

Pressure built in Del’s chest like water behind a dam as he took in the details. This second man wasn’t dressed in dark coveralls like the other gunmen who’d escaped. He wore pressed navy-blue slacks and a white dress shirt, now stained red with blood from a wide wound—the kind of wound only a shotgun blast could cause. A patch on his sleeve identified him as a security guard, working for one of the agencies that protected the warehouse district. This wouldn’t be the first time one of the minimum-wage guards had been dealing dirty from his place of employment.

But Del didn’t see a gun. Where was the man’s gun? There had to be a gun. God, there’d better be one. Had the woman picked it up?

She shifted, rocking herself and the dead man forward again, and the dam in Del’s chest burst, sweeping away everything he believed about who he was, what he was. He was nothing. Nobody. Because the man on the floor couldn’t have had a gun.

His hands were tied behind his back.

My God, he hadn’t been part of the deal going down, but simply a security guard doing his job, taken hostage, maybe, when he walked in on the transaction.

Blood roared in Del’s ears, drowning out everything but the woman’s cries and his pounding heart. He fell to his knees, his legs no longer capable of supporting him. Pure instinct forced him to press two fingers alongside the column of the man’s throat. He tried to recall the prayers he’d learned in childhood, but his brain would only form one word, over and over.

Please, please, please…

He held his fingers over the man’s carotid a moment, with the others looking down on him in silence, then shook his head.

The woman raised her dark chocolate eyes, now glistening, to his, then to each of his companions in turn. To Del’s surprise, they showed no trace of the shock that usually accompanied a person’s first up close exposure to the vulgar reality of violence, but held instead the knowledge of one all too familiar with death. With loss.

“Federales?” she whispered, her voice thick with tears close to the surface, but not shed.

“No, ma’am.” Del let his hand fall away from the body she held. He met the woman’s gaze squarely, somehow holding his head high when everything inside him wanted to collapse. “Texas Rangers.”

They buried Eduardo Garcia in a pleasant enough spot. There weren’t any trees close enough to shade him from the sun in summer, but a flagstone wall screened him from the strip mall next to the cemetery, and it was quiet. At least it was today, with the jets taking off to the south, the opposite direction from the graveyard, out of nearby Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Still, Del couldn’t help but wonder if the man didn’t deserve better.

The answer came to him harshly. Of course he did; he deserved to still be alive.

Del dug his fists into eyes gritty from lack of sleep and the dust blowing in from West Texas on an arid wind. His chest ached as if something was missing inside him.

As if his soul was gone.

Waiting in the negligible shade of a scrub mesquite on a knoll some hundred yards from the gravesite, he scanned the assemblage of mourners again, still not finding what—who—he was looking for.

Vultures, mostly, had turned out for the service. Reporters. The investigation into exactly what happened at the warehouse was still ongoing. But no connection between Garcia and the gunmen or the confiscated weapons had been found. Word that an innocent man had been shot by one of the legendary Texas Rangers—especially word that an innocent Hispanic man had been shot by a Caucasian Texas Ranger—had the press on a witch-hunt.

Unfortunately, Del was the witch.

They were the reason he watched from up here, instead of bowing his head before the preacher. Lay low, Bull had told him. Let this blow over.

At the time he’d thought Captain Matheson meant a day or two, until the inspectors from the Department of Public Safety—the state agency that oversaw the Rangers—finished grilling him about the incident and declared Garcia’s death a tragic but unavoidable accident. But five days had passed since the shooting. The medical examiner had released the body after performing a full autopsy, and still the DPS inspectors hadn’t made any ruling. The furor showed no signs of dying down any time soon.

It didn’t matter. Let the system work its course, he told himself. He could pay his respects to Garcia later, after the press left. It wasn’t as if the man was going anywhere.

What mattered today was that she wasn’t down there, either. Amazon woman. The lady whose cries echoed in his mind a thousand times a night, robbed him of his sleep. The one he’d come to see.

There had been no question who had fired the shot that killed Garcia. Del was the only one carrying a shotgun. Within minutes of finding Garcia, Bull had ordered Del away from the crime scene, and rightly so. The death of a civilian—an innocent man—demanded an unbiased investigation. Del hadn’t had the chance to talk to the mystery woman with the dark chocolate eyes. He needed to know more about her. What Garcia had been to her. What Del had taken from her. He needed to know.

He scanned the crowd huddled around the grave once again, skipping over the media with their tripods and film-at-ten television cameras, looking for her.

Why hadn’t she come?

Disappointed, he supposed the reporters had kept her away, too. So far, the press hadn’t caught on to the fact that Garcia had been involved with a woman. Del hoped it stayed that way. She would be going through enough right now without the press hounding her.

On the plain below, those surrounding the grave, even most of the reporters, lowered their heads in prayer. This far away, Del couldn’t hear the words. He didn’t need to; he knew them all to well.

Yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

He’d been walking through a valley of his own since the shooting. Five days of reliving the same two-second slice of life over and over.

He crouches behind the car. Windows break in the warehouse across from him. Hayes is on the move, sprinting across the road. Inside the warehouse he sees the figure of a man through a window. The man raises a rifle, tracking Hayes.

Del stands. Fires two rounds from the shotgun.

And then hears the woman’s anguished cry, again and again.

Del can’t remember ever seeing the hostage. But the windows were dirty. The sun glared off streaked panes then disappeared into the darkness beyond the jagged edges of glass.

He’d had to fire. Done the only thing he could. If he hadn’t, Hayes would have been killed.

That didn’t make being responsible for an innocent man’s death any easier to bear.

Damn it, why hadn’t he seen Garcia?

That wasn’t the only question that plagued Del. He had others. Like what was Garcia doing there in the first place? Had he been on duty? Who had called in the anonymous tip that had led the rangers to be there at the same time. And who was the woman? Why was she there?