The Last Honorable Man by Vickie Taylor Page B

man’s dedication to a cause, be it chopping wood or plowing fields. She wondered how Ranger Cooper had earned his calluses.
    â€œOkay then, don’t trust the system,” he said, his voice a smooth contrast to his rough hands. “Just trust me.”
    She stared at him, unsure what to say next. She couldn’t trust him. He was policía —the worst of the worst in her country. But something about him tuggedat her, made her want to believe. Perhaps just her emotions, run away again.
    â€œI’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last few hours, and there is one sure way to guarantee you can stay in America.”
    â€œEduardo was the only way.” Her voice sounded faraway, small.
    â€œNo,” he said. He paused. When she brought her eyes back to his, his chest rose and fell with a single deep breath before he spoke. “You can marry me instead.”

Chapter 4
    â€œÂ¿ E stas loco? I cannot marry you!”
    Elisa jerked her hand from the ranger’s. The soft scrape of his callused palm on her fingertips shot a tingle of awareness up her arm. Or maybe that was just shock. A physical reaction to an emotional jolt.
    Marry him? He could not be serious.
    But one look at his pewter eyes, glowing in the dim light, convinced her that he was serious. Deadly so. He did not just stare at her. He focused his entire being on her. He looked at her as though the rest of the world had faded away, as if nothing else existed except him and her and the moonlight and the ridiculously expensive car in which they sat.
    The supple leather seat groaned as she scrambled away. Pulling her feet onto the seat, she jammed her back into the corner between the passenger seat and door and drew her knees to her chest. Even at this distance,the ranger was too close, too sincere and much too intense.
    â€œIt wouldn’t be a real marriage,” he explained as calmly as if he were showing her how to use a blender. “I mean…it would have to be legal. But it would just be a piece of paper between us. It wouldn’t mean anything. Not really.”
    She knew he was talking about…intimate relations, and decided not to respond to that implication. Sex with the ranger was the last of her worries. Too outrageous to ponder. “It would mean a great deal. It would mean I would be bound to you. Dependent on you.”
    â€œOnly for two years. After that the INS considers you a resident regardless of your marital status. You can divorce me and stay in the States. Legally.”
    Elisa gulped in a breath. She could not spend two years with him. She could not spend two minutes with him without her pulse dipping and jumping like a monkey swinging through the trees.
    â€œWhy?” she asked. Her breath came out like a whisper. “Why would you do this?”
    He closed his eyes a moment, and the light played off the broad brush of his eyelashes. When he looked at her again, the metallic glimmer of his irises had dimmed. Tarnished.
    â€œI can’t give back the things I took from you—the husband you deserve and a father for your child. But I can give you a home here, in the United States. A safe place where your baby can get an education. See a doctor. Live.” He swallowed. When he spoke again his voice was deeper. Rougher. “I can’t give you back the love you lost, or happiness. But I can give you security. I can give you peace.”
    Peace. The illusion again. The dream.
    A cold knot of anger hardened inside her. “I’ll take nothing from you. Not even peace.” She fumbled for the door latch, determined to get away.
    Quick as lightning his hand flashed out, captured her wrist. “Because you hate me that much? Or because you’re too proud to admit that you need help?”
    She pulled once, experimentally, on her arm, but found the circle of fingers around her wrist as inescapable as the coil of a hungry boa constrictor around its prey. “It is not pride