The Last Honorable Man by Vickie Taylor

discussion, Elisa could not tell. “We’ll just have to make it look real.”
    Her stomach tumbled, imaging what it would be like even to pretend to be in love with him. She would have to talk to him, share long looks with him, touch him…
    â€œIt won’t be that bad,” he said, as if sensing the direction of her thoughts. “We don’t have to be together around them that much. Just holidays and such.”
    â€œI would like to spend more time here,” she said before she realized she was speaking. In just a few short hours, she had come to respect the ranger’s grandparents. Rosario Cooper reminded her of home, and the elder women she had learned so much from in her village as a girl.
    The ranger grinned over his next move. “They like you, too.”
    â€œThey do?” She hadn’t realized until then how much their acceptance meant to her. She still didn’t understand why. Like the ranger, they would be her family in name only. And only for two years.
    With the weight of that knowledge rumbling through her like thunder down a mountain pass, she studied the checkerboard. The ranger had taken two of her men in a sneak attack. He was good. But she was better.
    She proved it by winning their best three-of-five match in three straight games.
    â€œI think I’ve been conned,” he said, falling backward and staring up at the ceiling.
    His good-natured tone made her smile, just a little, even though she was still mad at him.
    She folded the checkerboard and gathered the pieces. He sat up, opened the coffee table drawer where they were stored. When she slid the game inside, he nudged the drawer closed with his knee, took hold of her with his hand and turned her to him.
    â€œThank you,” he said simply.
    She arched one eyebrow. “For beating you?”
    â€œFor not telling my grandparents the truth.” One corner of his mouth kicked up. “And for letting my mother win at checkers.”
    Elisa pulled her hand away. “I am not without compassion.”
    â€œNo,” he answered quietly. “You’re certainly not.”
    She wondered how he knew that. She certainly hadn’t shown him much of her softer side. Hadn’t seen much of it herself these last eight years.
    Avoiding his gaze, she straightened the magazines on the coffee table, then when she couldn’t find anything else to fidget with, she settled herself on the love seat again. Something in the way he was looking at her evaporated her troubled thoughts like morning mist under the rising sun. But she gathered her wits, kicking off her sandals and pulling her feet up to the couch.
    He’d opened a door, given her space to ask a personalquestion, and she did not intend to let the opportunity pass.
    â€œWhat happened to her?”
    â€œMy mother?”
    She nodded.
    â€œShe lost a lot of people she loved during her life, starting with her parents when she was just sixteen. I guess one day she just lost herself, as well.”
    Dread knotted in Elisa’s chest. “Sammy?”
    A darkness descended over the ranger’s features, like a candle suddenly snuffed. “My brother. Killed by a suicide bomber in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.”
    â€œHe was a soldier?”
    â€œWe both were.”
    Elisa tried to swallow and couldn’t. In San Ynez, the soldiers were even worse than the police. More corrupt. More violent.
    The ranger’s grandfather had been a soldier, as had he and his brother. A legacy of violence.
    And there was more, Elisa suspected from the degree of his mother’s devastation, though the loss of a child should be enough. “Your father?”
    â€œPilot. Drove an A-10—a tank killer—in Vietnam until he was shot down in ’68. Technically he’s still listed as MIA.”
    â€œAnd the not knowing was harder on her than having a body to bury.”
    Elisa was all too familiar with the plight of families