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Enamored
Diana Palmer
Diego Laremos had never forgotten the last night he'd spent with Melissa Sterling five years before. She'd fled their home after a bitter dispute, hoping to escape their unhappy marriage.He hadn't forgiven her for leaving, though he'd hated himself even more for driving her away. Seeing Melissa again had renewed his hope for a possible future together…Melissa had felt the same way, but she'd lied to Diego in the past. Now she had to prove to him that she was indeed his love–his ENAMORADA–and that the truth could set them both free…to love again.


Diego Laremos had never forgotten the last night he’d spent with Melissa Sterling five years before. She’d fled their home after a bitter dispute, hoping to escape their unhappy marriage. He hadn’t forgiven her for leaving, though he’d hated himself even more for driving her away. Seeing Melissa again had renewed his hope for a possible future together…
Melissa had felt the same way, but she’d lied to Diego in the past. Now she had to prove to him that she was indeed his love—his ENAMORADA—and that the truth could set them both free…to love again.

Enamored



New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Diana Palmer


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my Alice with love
Author Note
Dear Reader,
I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Mills & Boon Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.
But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.
I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Mills & Boon Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.
Thank you for this tribute, Mills & Boon, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.
Diana Palmer
New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Diana Palmer
The Essential Collection
Long, Tall Texans…and More!
AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2011
CalhounTylerEthanConnalHardenEvan
AVAILABLE MARCH 2011
DonavanEmmettRegan’s PrideThat Burke ManCircle of GoldCattleman’s Pride
AVAILABLE APRIL 2011
The Princess BrideColtrain’s ProposalA Man of MeansLionheartedMaggie’s DadRage of Passion
AVAILABLE MAY 2011
LacyBelovedLove with a Long, Tall Texan (containing “Guy,” “Luke” and “Christopher”) Heart of IceNoelleFit for a KingThe Rawhide Man
AVAILABLE JUNE 2011
A Long, Tall Texan Summer (containing “Tom,” “Drew” and “Jobe”) NoraDream’s EndChampagne GirlFriends and LoversThe Wedding in White
AVAILABLE JULY 2011
Heather’s SongSnow KissesTo Love and CherishLong, Tall and Tempted (containing “Redbird,” “Paper Husband” and “Christmas Cowboy”) The AustralianDarling EnemyTrilby
AVAILABLE AUGUST 2011
Sweet EnemySoldier of FortuneThe Tender StrangerEnamoredAfter the MusicThe Patient Nurse
AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2011
The Case of the Mesmerizing BossThe Case of the Confirmed BachelorThe Case of the Missing SecretarySeptember MorningDiamond GirlEye of the Tiger
Table of Contents
Prologue (#u3d41717c-5080-53c2-9854-8b30d2e67c52)
Chapter One (#u08ae18c4-c300-50fd-abff-d3810e2795ba)
Chapter Two (#u80cd53c8-51de-5e40-88ad-a3772514f43a)
Chapter Three (#ub4d16e12-02e7-52dd-bf7f-6b7a832e6944)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
The gentle face on the starched white pillow was pale and very still. The man looking down at it scowled with unfamiliar concern. For so many years, his emotions had been caged. Tender feelings were a luxury no mercenary could afford, least of all a man with the reputation of Diego Laremos.
But this woman was no stranger, and the emotions he felt when he looked at her were still confused. It had been five years since he’d seen her, yet she seemed not to have aged a day. She would be twenty-five now, he thought absently. He was forty.
He hadn’t expected her to be unconscious. When the hospital had contacted him, he almost hadn’t come. Melissa Sterling had betrayed him years before. He wasn’t anxious to renew their painful acquaintance, but out of curiosity and a sense of duty, he’d made the trip to southern Arizona. Now he was here, and it was not a subterfuge, a trap, as it had been before. She was injured and helpless; she was alive, though he’d given her up for dead all those long years ago. The cold emptiness inside him was giving way to memories, and that he couldn’t allow.
He turned, tall and dark and immaculate in his charcoal-gray suit, to stare out the window at the well-kept grounds beyond the second-floor room Melissa Sterling occupied. He had a mustache now that he hadn’t sported during the turbulent days she’d shared with him. He was a little more muscular, older. But age had only emphasized his elegant good looks, made him more mature. His dark eyes slid to the bed, to the slender body of this woman, this stranger, who had trapped him into marriage and then deserted him.
Melissa was tall for a woman, although he towered above her. She had long, wavy blond hair that had once curled below her waist. That had been cut, so that now it curved around her wan oval face. Her eyes were blue-shadowed, closed, her perfect mouth almost as white as her face, her straight nose barely wrinkling now and again as it protested the air tubes taped to it. She seemed surrounded by electronic equipment, by wires that led to various monitors.
An accident, the attending physician had said over a worse-than-poor telephone conversation the day before. An airplane crash that, by some miracle, she and the pilot and several other passengers on the commuter flight from Phoenix had survived. The plane had gone down in the desert outside Tucson, and she’d been brought here to the general hospital, unconscious. The emergency room staff had found a worn, carefully folded paper in her wallet that contained the only evidence of her marital status. A marriage license, written in Spanish; the fading ink stated that she was the esposa of one Diego Alejandro Rodriguez Ruiz Laremos of Dos Rios, Guatemala. Was Diego her husband, the physician had persisted, and if so, would he authorize emergency surgery to save her life?
He vaguely recalled asking if she had no other relatives, but the doctor had told him that her pitifully few belongings gave no evidence of any. So Diego had left his Guatemalan farm in the hands of his hired militia and flown himself all the way from Guatemala City to Tucson.
He’d had no sleep in the past twenty-four hours. He’d been smoking himself to death and reliving a tormenting past.
The woman in the bed stirred suddenly, moaning. He turned just as her eyes opened and then closed quickly again. They were gray. Big and soft, a delicate contrast to her blond fairness; her gray eyes were the only visible evidence of Melissa’s Guatemalan mother, whose betrayal had brought anguish and dishonor to the Laremos family.
His black eyes ran slowly over her pale, still features and he wondered as he watched how he and Melissa had ever come to this….
Chapter One
It was a misty rain, but Melissa Sterling didn’t mind. Getting soaked was a small price to pay for a few precious minutes with Diego Laremos.
Diego’s family had owned the finca, the giant Guatemalan farm that bordered her father’s land, for four generations. And despite the fact that Melissa’s late mother had been the cause of a bitter feud between the Laremos family and the Sterlings, that hadn’t stopped Melissa from worshiping the son and heir to the Laremos name. Diego seemed not to mind her youthful adoration, or if he did, he was kind enough not to mock her for it.
There had been a storm the night before, and Melissa had ridden down to Mama Chavez’s small house to make sure the old woman was all right, only to find that Diego, too, had been worried about his old nurse and had come to check on her. Melissa liked to visit her and listen to tales of Diego’s youth and hear secret legends about the Maya.
Diego had brought some melons and fish for the old woman, whose family tree dated back to the very beginning of the Mayan empire, and now he was escorting Melissa back to her father’s house.
Her dark eyes kept running over his lean, fit body, admiring the way he sat on his horse, the thick darkness of his hair under his panama hat. He wasn’t an arrogant man, but he had a cold, quiet authority about him that bordered on it. He never had to raise his voice to his servants, and Melissa had only seen him in one fight. He was a dignified, self-contained man without an apparent weakness. But he was mysterious. He often disappeared for weeks at a time, and once he’d come home with scars on his cheek and a limp. Melissa had been curious, but she hadn’t questioned him. Even at twenty, she was still shy with men, and especially with Diego. He’d rescued her once when she’d gotten lost in the rain forest searching for some old Mayan ruins, and she’d loved him secretly ever since.
“I suppose your grandmother and sister would die if they knew I was within a mile of you,” she sighed, brushing back her long, wavy blond hair as she glanced at him with a hesitant smile that was echoed in the soft gray of her eyes.
“They bear your family no great love, that is true,” he agreed. The distant mountains were a blue haze in front of them as they rode. “It is difficult for my family to forget that Edward Sterling stole my father’s novia on the eve of their wedding and eloped with her. My father spoke of her often, with grief. My grandmother never stopped blaming your family for his grief.”
“My father loved her, and she loved him,” Melissa defended. “It was only an arranged marriage that your father would have had with her, anyway, not a love match. Your father was much older than my mother, and he’d been a widower for years.”
“Your father is British,” he said coldly. “He has never understood our way of life. Here, honor is life itself. When he stole away my father’s betrothed, he dishonored my family.” Diego glanced at Melissa, not adding that his father had also been counting on her late mother’s inheritance to restore the family fortunes. Diego had considered his father’s attitude rather mercenary, but the old man had cared about Sheila Sterling in his cool way.
Diego reined in his mount and stared at Melissa, taking in her slender body in jeans and a pink shirt unbuttoned to the swell of her breasts. She attracted him far more than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t allow himself to become involved with the daughter of the woman who’d disgraced his family.
“Your father should not let you wander around in this manner,” he said unexpectedly, although he softened the words with a faint smile. “You know there has been increased guerrilla activity here. It is not safe.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” she replied.
“You never do, chica,” he sighed, cocking his hat over one eye. “Your daydreaming will be your downfall one day. These are dangerous times.”
“All times are dangerous,” she said with a shy smile. “But I feel safe with you.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “And that is the most dangerous daydream of all,” he mused. “But no doubt you have not yet realized it. Come; we must move on.”
“In just a minute.” She drew a camera from her pocket and pointed it toward him, smiling at his grimace. “I know, not again, you’re thinking. Can I help it if I can’t get the right perspective on the painting of you I’m working on? I need another shot. Just one, I promise.” She clicked the shutter before he could protest.
“This famous painting is taking one long time, niña,” he commented. “You have been hard at it for eight months, and not one glimpse have I had of it.”
“I work slow,” she prevaricated. In actual fact, she couldn’t draw a straight line without a ruler. The photo was to add to her collection of pictures of him, to sit and sigh over in the privacy of her room. To build dreams around. Because dreams were all she was ever likely to have of Diego, and she knew it. His family would oppose any mention of having Melissa under their roof, just as they opposed Diego’s friendship with her.
“When do you go off to college?” he asked unexpectedly.
She sighed as she pocketed the camera. “Pretty soon, I guess. I begged off for a year after school, just to be with Dad, but this unrest is making him more stubborn about sending me away. I don’t want to go to the States. I want to stay here.”
“Your father may be wise to insist,” Diego murmured, although he didn’t like to think about riding around his estate with no chance of being waylaid by Melissa. He’d grown used to her. To a man as worldly and experienced and cynical as Diego had become over the years, Melissa was a breath of spring air. He loved her innocence, her shy adoration. Given the chance, he was all too afraid he might be tempted to appreciate her exquisite young body, as well. She was slender, tall, with long, tanned legs, breasts that had just the right shape and a waist that was tiny, flaring to full, gently curving hips. She wasn’t beautiful, but her fair complexion was exquisite in its frame of long, tangled blond hair, and her gray eyes held a kind of serenity far beyond her years. Her nose was straight, her mouth soft and pretty. In the right clothes and with the right training, she would be a unique hostess, a wife of whom a man could be justifiably proud….
That thought startled Diego. He had had no intention of thinking of Melissa in those terms. If he ever married, it would be to a Guatemalan woman of good family, not to a woman whose father had already once disgraced the name of Laremos.
“You’re always at home these days,” Melissa said as they rode along the valley, with the huge Atitl´n volcano in the distance against the green jungle. She loved Guatemala, she loved the volcanos and the lakes and rivers, the tropical jungle, the banana and coffee plantations and the spreading valleys. She especially loved the mysterious Mayan ruins that one found so unexpectedly. She loved the markets in the small villages and the friendly warmth of the Guatemalan people whose Mayan ancestors had once ruled here.
“The finca demands much of my time since my father’s death,” he replied. “Besides, niña, I was getting too old for the work I used to do.”
She glanced at him. “You never talked about it. What did you do?”
He smiled faintly. “Ah, that would be telling. How did your father fare with the fruit company? Were they able to recompense him for his losses during the storm?”
A tropical storm had damaged the banana plantation in which her father had a substantial interest. This year’s crop had been a tremendous loss. Like Diego, though, her father had other investments—such as the cattle he and Diego raised on their adjoining properties. But as a rule, fruit was the biggest money-maker.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He doesn’t share business with me. I guess he thinks I’m too dumb to understand.” She smiled, her mind far away on the small book she’d found recently in her mother’s trunk. “You know, Dad is so different from the way he was when my mother knew him. He’s so sedate and quiet these days. Mama wrote that he was always in the thick of things when they were first married, very daring and adventurous.”
“I imagine her death changed him, little one,” he said absently.
“Maybe it did,” she murmured. She looked at him curiously. “Apollo said that you were the best there was at your job,” she added quickly. “And that someday you might tell me about it.”
He said something under his breath, glaring at her. “My past is something I never expect to share with anyone. Apollo had no right to say such a thing to you.”
His voice chilled her when it had that icily formal note in it. She shifted restlessly. “He’s a nice man. He helped Dad round up some of the stray cattle one day when there was a storm. He must be good at his job, or you wouldn’t keep him on.”
“He is good at his job,” he said, making a mental note to have a long talk with the black American ex-military policeman who worked for him and had been part of the band of mercenaries Diego had once belonged to. “But it does not include discussing me with you.”
“Don’t be mad at him, please,” she asked gently. “It was my fault, not his. I’m sorry I asked. I know you’re very close about your private life, but it bothered me that you came home that time so badly hurt.” She lowered her eyes. “I was worried.”
He bit back a sharp reply. He couldn’t tell her about his past. He couldn’t tell her that he’d been a professional mercenary, that his job had been the destruction of places and sometimes people, that it had paid exceedingly well, or that the only thing he had put at risk was his life. He kept his clandestine operations very quiet at home; only the government officials for whom he sometimes did favors knew about him. As for friends and acquaintances, it wouldn’t do for them to know how he earned the money that kept the finca solvent.
He shrugged indifferently. “No importa.” He was silent for a moment, his black eyes narrow as he glanced at her. “You should marry,” he said unexpectedly. “It is time your father arranged for a novio for you, niña.”
She wanted to suggest Diego, but that would be courting disaster. She studied her slender hands on the reins. “I can arrange my own marriage. I don’t want to be promised to some wealthy old man just for the sake of my family fortunes.”
Diego smiled at her innocence. “Oh, niña, the idealism of youth. By the time you reach my age, you will have lost every trace of it. Infatuation does not last. It is the poorest foundation for a lasting relationship, because it can exist where there are no common interests whatsoever.”
“You sound so cold,” she murmured. “Don’t you believe in love?”
“Love is not a word I know,” he replied carelessly. “I have no interest in it.”
Melissa felt sick and shaky and frightened. She’d always assumed that Diego was a romantic like herself. But he certainly didn’t sound like one. And with that attitude he probably wouldn’t be prejudiced against an arranged, financially beneficial marriage. His grandmother was very traditional, and she lived with him. Melissa didn’t like the thought of Diego marrying anyone else, but he was thirty-five and soon he had to think of an heir. She stared at the pommel on her saddle, idly moving the reins against it. “That’s a very cynical attitude.”
He looked at her with raised black eyebrows. “You and I are worlds apart, do you know that? Despite your Guatemalan upbringing and your excellent Spanish, you still think like an Anglo.”
“Perhaps I’ve got more of my mother in me than you think,” she confessed sheepishly. “She was Spanish, but she eloped with the best man at her own wedding.”
“It is nothing to joke about.”
She brushed back her long hair. “Don’t go cold on me, Diego,” she chided softly. “I didn’t mean it. I’m really very traditional.”
His dark eyes ran over her, and the expression in them made her heart race. “Yes. Of that I am quite certain,” he said. His eyes slid up to hers again, holding them until she colored. He smiled at her expression. He liked her reactions, so virginal and flattering. “Even my grandmother approves of the very firm hand your father keeps on you. Twenty, and not one evening alone with a young man out of the sight of your father.”
She avoided his piercing glance. “Not that many young men come calling. I’m not an heiress and I’m not pretty.”
“Beauty is transient; character endures. You suit me as you are, pequeña,” he said gently. “And in time the young men will come with flowers and proposals of marriage. There is no rush.”
She shifted in the saddle. “That’s what you think,” she said miserably. “I spend my whole life alone.”
“Loneliness is a fire which tempers steel,” he counseled. “Benefit from it. In days to come it will give you a serenity which you will value.”
She gave him a searching look. “I’ll bet you haven’t spent your life alone,” she said.
He shrugged. “Not totally, perhaps,” he said, giving away nothing. “But I like my own company from time to time. I like, too, the smell of the coffee trees, the graceful sweep of the leaves on banana trees, the sultry wind in my face, the proud Maya ruins and the towering volcanoes. These things are my heritage. Your heritage,” he added with a tender smile. “One day you will look back on this as the happiest time of your life. Don’t waste it.”
That was possible, she mused. She almost shivered with the delight of having Diego so close beside her and the solitude of the open country around them. Yes, this was the good time, full of the richness of life and love. Never would she wish herself anywhere else.
He left her at the gate that led past the small kitchen garden to the white stucco house with its red roof. He got down from his horse and lifted her from the saddle, his lean hands firm and sure at her small waist. For one small second he held her so that her gaze was level with his, and something touched his black eyes. But it was gone abruptly, and he put her down and stepped back.
She forced herself to move away from the tangy scent of leather and tobacco that clung to his white shirt. She forced herself not to look where it was unbuttoned over a tanned olive chest feathered with black hair. She wanted so desperately to reach up and kiss his hard mouth, to hold him to her, to experience all the wonder of her first passion. But Diego saw only a young girl, not a woman.
“I will leave your mare at the stable,” he promised as he mounted gracefully. “Keep close to home from now on,” he added firmly. “Your father will tell you, as I already have, that it is not safe to ride alone.”
“If you say so, Señor Laremos,” she murmured, and curtsied impudently.
Once he would have laughed at that impish gesture. But her teasing had a sudden and unexpected effect. His blood surged in his veins, his body tautened. His black eyes went to her soft breasts and lingered there before he dragged them back to her face. “¡Hasta luego!” he said tersely, and wheeled his mount without another word.
Melissa stared after him with her heart in her throat. Even in her innocence, she’d recognized the hot, quick flash of desire in his eyes. She felt the look all the way to her toes and burned with an urge to run after him, to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood his reaction. To have Diego look at her in that way was the culmination of every dream she’d ever had about him.
She went into the house, tingling with banked-down excitement. From now on, every day was going to be even more like a surprise package.
Estrella had outdone herself with supper. The small, plump Ladina woman had made steak with peppers and cheese and salsa, with seasoned rice to go with it, and cool melon for a side dish. Melissa hugged her as she sniffed the delicious aroma of the meal.
“Delicioso,” she said with a grin.
“Steak is to put on a bruised eye,” Estrella sniffed. “The best meat is iguana.”
Melissa made a face. “I’d eat snake first,” she promised.
Estrella grinned wickedly. “You did. Last night.”
The younger woman’s eyes widened. “That was chicken.”
Estrella shook her head. “Snake.” She laughed when Melissa made a threatening gesture. “No, no, no, you cannot hit me. It was your father’s idea!”
“My father wouldn’t do such a thing,” she said.
“You do not know your father,” the Ladina woman said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Get out now, let me work. Go and practice your piano or Señora Lopez will be incensed when she comes to hear you on Friday.”
Melissa sighed. “I suppose she will, that patient soul. She never gives up on me, even when I know I’ll never be able to run my cadences without slipping up on the minor keys.”
“Practice!”
She nodded, then changed the subject. “Dad didn’t phone, I suppose?” she asked.
“No.” Estrella glanced at Melissa with one of her black eyes narrowed. “He will not like you riding with Señor Laremos.”
“How did you know I was?” Melissa exclaimed. These flashes of instant knowledge still puzzled her as they had from childhood. Estrella always seemed to know things before she actually heard about them formally.
“That,” the Ladina woman said smugly, “is my secret. Out with you. Let me cook.”
Melissa went, hoping Estrella wasn’t planning to share her knowledge with her father.
And apparently the Ladina woman didn’t, but Edward Sterling knew anyway. He came back from his business trip looking preoccupied, his graying blond hair damp with rain, his elegant white suit faintly wrinkled.
“Luis Martinez saw you out riding with Diego Laremos,” he said abruptly, without greeting her. Melissa sat with her hands poised over the piano in the spacious living room. “I thought we’d had this conversation already.”
Melissa drew a steadying breath and put her hands in her lap. “I can’t help it,” she said, giving up all attempts at subterfuge. “I suppose you don’t believe that.”
“I believe it,” he said, to her surprise. “I even understand it. But what I don’t understand is why Laremos encourages you. He isn’t a marrying man, Melissa, and he knows what it would do to me to see you compromised.” His face hardened. “Which is what disturbs me the most. The whole Laremos family would love to see us humbled. Don’t cut your leg and invite a shark to kiss it better,” he added with a faint attempt at humor.
She threw up her hands. “You won’t believe that Diego has no ulterior motives, will you? That he genuinely likes me?”
“I think he likes the adulation,” he said sharply. He poured brandy into a snifter and sat down, crossing his long legs. “Listen, sweet, it’s time you knew the truth about your hero. It’s a long story, and it isn’t pretty. I had hoped that you’d go away to college, and no harm done. But this hero worship has to stop. Do you have any idea what Diego Laremos did for a living until about two years ago?”
She blinked. “He traveled on business, I suppose. The Laremoses have money—”
“The Laremoses have nothing, or had nothing,” he interrupted curtly. “The old man was hoping to marry Sheila and get his hands on her father’s supposed millions. What Laremos didn’t know was that Sheila’s father had lost everything and was hoping to get his hands on the Laremoses’ banana plantations. It was a comedy of errors, and then I found your mother and that was the end of the plotting. To this day, none of your mother’s people will speak to me, and the Laremoses only do out of politeness. And the great irony of it is that none of them know the truth about each other’s families. There never was any money—only pipe dreams about mergers.”
“Then, if the Laremoses had nothing,” Melissa ventured, “why do they have so much these days?”
“Because your precious Diego had a lot of guts and few equals with an automatic weapon,” Edward Sterling said bluntly. “He was a professional soldier.”
Melissa didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She stared blankly at her father. “Diego isn’t hard enough to go around killing people.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” came the reply. “Haven’t you even realized that the men he surrounds himself with at the Casa de Luz are his old confederates? That man they call First Shirt, and the black ex-soldier, Apollo Blain, and Semson and Drago…all of them are ex-mercenaries with no country to call their own. They have no future except here, working for their old comrade.”
Melissa felt her hands trembling. She sat on them. It was beginning to come together. The bits and pieces of Diego’s life that she’d seen and wondered about were making sense now—a terrible kind of sense.
“I see you understand,” her father said, his voice very quiet. “You know, I don’t think less of him for what he’s done. But a past like his would be rough for a woman to take. Because of what he’s done, he’s a great deal less vulnerable than an ordinary man. More than likely his feelings are locked in irons. It will take more than an innocent, worshiping girl to unlock them, Melissa. And you aren’t even in the running in his mind. He’ll marry a Guatemalan woman, if he ever marries. He won’t marry you. Our unfortunate connection in the past will assure that, don’t you see?”
Her eyes stung with tears. Of course she did, but hearing it didn’t help. She tried to smile, and the tears overflowed.
“Baby.” Her father got up and pulled her gently into his arms, rocking her. “I’m sorry, but there’s no future for you with Diego Laremos. It will be best if you go away, and the sooner the better.”
Melissa had to agree. “You’re right.” She dabbed at her tears. “I didn’t know. Diego never told me about his past. I suppose he was saving it for a last resort,” she said, trying to bring some lightness to the moment. “Now I understand what he meant about not knowing what love was. I guess Diego couldn’t afford to let himself love anyone, considering the line of work he was in.”
“I don’t imagine he could,” her father agreed. He smoothed her hair back. “I wish your mother was still alive. She’d have known what to say.”
“Oh, you’re not doing too bad,” Melissa told him. She wiped her eyes. “I guess I’ll get over Diego one day.”
“One day,” Edward agreed. “But this is for the best, Melly. Your world and his would never fit together. They’re too different.”
She looked up. “Diego said that, too.”
Edward nodded. “Then Laremos realizes it. That will be just as well. He won’t put any obstacles in the way.”
Melissa tried to forget that afternoon and the way Diego had held her, the way he’d looked at her. Maybe he didn’t know what love was, but something inside him had reacted to her in a new and different way. And now she was going to have to leave before she could find out what he felt or if he could come to care for her.
But perhaps her father was right. If Diego felt anything, it was physical, not emotional. Desire, in its place, might be exquisite, but without love it was just a shadow. Diego’s past had shocked her. A man like that—was he even capable of love?
Melissa kept her thoughts to herself. There was no sense in sharing them with her father and worrying him even more. “How did it go in Guatemala City?” she asked instead, trying to divert him.
He laughed. “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought at first. Let’s eat, and I’ll explain it to you. If you’re old enough to go to college, I suppose you’re old enough to be told about the family finances.”
Melissa smiled at him. It was the first time he’d offered that kind of information. In an odd way, she felt as if her father accepted the fact that she was an adult.
Chapter Two
Melissa hardly slept. She dreamed of Diego in a confusion of gunfire and harsh words, and she woke up feeling that she’d hardly closed her eyes.
She ate breakfast with her father, who announced that he had to go back into the city to finalize a contract with the fruit company.
“See that you stay home,” he cautioned her as he left. “No more tête-à-têtes with Diego Laremos.”
“I’ve got to practice piano,” she said absently, and kissed his cheek as he went out the door. “You be careful, too.”
He drove away, and she went into the living room where the small console piano sat, opening her practice book to the cadences. She grimaced as she began to fumble through the notes, all thumbs.
Her heart just wasn’t in it, so instead she practiced a much-simplified bit of Sibelius, letting herself go in the expression of its sweet, sad message. She was going to have to leave Guatemala, and Diego. There was no hope at all. She knew in her heart that she was never going to get over him, but it was only beginning to dawn on her that the future would be pretty bleak if she stayed. She’d wear herself out fighting his indifference, bruise her heart attempting to change his will. Why had she ever imagined that a man like Diego might come to love her? And now, knowing his background as she did, she realized that it would take a much more experienced, sophisticated woman than herself to reach such a man.
She got up from the piano, closing the lid, and sat down at her father’s desk. There were sheets of white bond paper still scattered on it, along with the pencil he’d been using for his calculations. Melissa picked up the pencil and wrote several lines of breathless prose about unrequited love. Then, impulsively, she wrote a note to Diego asking him to meet her that night in the jungle so that she could show him how much she loved him until dawn came to find them….
Reading it over, she laughed at the very idea of sending such a message to the very correct, very formal Señor Diego Laremos. She crumpled it on the desk and got up, pacing restlessly. She read and went back to the piano, ate a lunch that she didn’t really taste and finally decided that she’d go mad if she had to spend the rest of the afternoon just sitting around. Her father had said not to leave the house, but she couldn’t bear sitting still.
She saddled her mare and, after waving to an exasperated, irritated Estrella, rode away from the house and down toward the valley. She wondered at the agitated way Estrella, with one of the vaqueros at her side, was waving, but she soon lost interest and quickened her pace. She didn’t want to be called back like a delinquent child. She had to ride off some of her nervous energy.
She was galloping down the hill and across the valley when a popping sound caught her attention. Startled, her mare reared up and threw Melissa onto the hard ground.
Her shoulder and collarbone connected with some sharp rocks, and she grimaced and moaned as she tried to sit up. The mare kept going, her mane flying in the breeze, and that was when Melissa saw the approaching horseman, three armed men hot on his heels. Diego!
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was unreal, on this warm summer afternoon, to see such violence in the grassy meadow. So the reports about the guerrillas and the political unrest were true. Sometimes, so far away from Guatemala City, she felt out of touch with the world. But now, with armed men flying across the grassy plain, danger was alarmingly real. Her heart ran wild as she sat there, and the first touch of fear brushed along her spine. She was alone and unarmed, and the thought of what those men might do to her if Diego fell curled her hair. Why hadn’t she listened to the warnings?
The popping sound came again, and she realized that the men were shooting at Diego. But he didn’t look back. His attention was riveted now on Melissa, and he kept coming, his mount moving in a weaving pattern to make less of a target for the pistols of the men behind him. He circled Melissa and vaulted out of the saddle, some kind of small, chubby-looking weapon in his hands.
“Por Dios—” He dropped to his knees and fired off a volley at the approaching horsemen. The sound deafened her, bringing the taste of nausea into her throat as she realized how desperate the situation really was. “Are you wounded?”
“No, I fell. Diego—”
“Silencio!” He fired another burst at the guerrillas, who had stopped suddenly in the middle of the valley to fire back at him. He pushed Melissa to the ground with gentle violence and aimed again, deliberately this time. He didn’t want her to see it, but her life depended on whether or not he could stop his pursuers. He couldn’t bear the thought of those brutal hands on her soft skin.
The firing from the other side stopped abruptly. Melissa peeked up at Diego. He didn’t look like the man she knew so well. His deeply tanned face was steely, rigid, his hands incredibly steady on the small weapon.
He cursed steadily in Spanish as he surveyed his handiwork, terrible curses that shocked Melissa. She tried not to cry out in fear. The smell of gunsmoke was acrid in her nostrils, her ears were deafened by the sound of the small machine gun.
Diego turned then to sweep Melissa up in his arms, holding the automatic weapon in the hand under her knees. He got her out of the meadow with quick, long strides, his powerful body absorbing her weight as if he didn’t even feel it. He darted with her into the thick jungle at the edge of the meadow and kept going. Over his shoulder she saw the horses scatter, two of the riders bent over their saddles as if in pain, the third one lying still on the ground. Diego’s horse was long gone, like Melissa’s.
Now that they were temporarily out of danger, relief made her body limp. She’d been shot at. She’d actually been shot at! It seemed like some impossible nightmare. Thank God Diego had seen her. She shuddered to think what might have happened if those men had come upon her and she’d been alone.
“Were you hit?” Diego asked curtly as he laid her down against a tree a good way into the undergrowth. “You’re bleeding.”
“I fell off,” she faltered, her eyes helpless on his angry face as he bent over her. “I hit…something. Diego, those men, are we far enough away…?”
“For the moment, yes,” he said shortly. “Until they get reinforcements, at least. Melissa, I told you not to go riding alone, did I not?” he demanded.
His eyes were black, and she thought she’d never really seen him before. Not the real man under the lazy good humor, the patient indulgence. This man was a stranger. The mercenary her father had told her about. The unmasked man.
“Where are your men?” she asked huskily, her body becoming rigid as his lean fingers went to the front of her blouse and started to unbutton it. “Diego, no!” she burst out in embarrassment.
He glowered at her. “The bleeding has to be stopped,” he said curtly. “This is no time for outraged modesty. Lie still.”
While the wind whispered through the tall trees, she fought silently, but he moved her hands aside with growing impatience and peeled the blouse away from the flimsy bra she was wearing. His black eyes made one soft foray over the transparent material covering her firm, young breasts, and then glanced at her shoulder, which was scratched and bleeding.
“We are cut off,” he muttered. “I made the mistake of assuming a few rounds would frighten off a guerrilla who was scouting the area around my cattle pens. He left, but only to come back with a dozen or so of his amigos. Apollo and the rest of my men are at the casa, trying to hold them off until Semson can get the government troops to assist them. Like a fool, I allowed myself to be cut off from the others and pursued.”
“I suppose you’d have made it back except for me,” she murmured quietly, her pale gray eyes apologetic as she looked up at him.
“Will you never learn to listen?” he asked coldly. He had his handkerchief at the scraped places now and was soothing away the blood. He grimaced. “This will need attention. It’s a miracle that your breast escaped severe damage, niña, although it is badly bruised.”
She flushed, averting her eyes from his scrutiny. Very likely, a woman’s naked body held no mysteries for Diego, but Melissa had never been seen unclad by a man.
Diego ignored her embarrassment, spreading the handkerchief over the abrasions and refastening her blouse to hold it in place. Nothing of what he was feeling showed in his expression, but the sight of her untouched, perfect young body was making him ache unpleasantly. Until now it had been possible to think of Melissa as a child. But after tonight, he’d never be able to think of her that way again. It was going to complicate his life, he was certain of it. “We must get to higher ground, and quickly. I scattered them, but depend on it, they will be back.” He helped her up. “Can you walk?”
“Of course,” she said unsteadily, her eyes wide and curious as she looked at the small, bulky weapon he scooped up from the ground. He had a cartridge belt around his shoulder, over his white shirt.
“An Uzi,” he told her, ignoring her fascination. “An automatic weapon of Israeli design. Thank God I listened to my old instincts and carried it with me this afternoon, or I would already be dead. I am deeply sorry that you had to see what happened, little one, but if I had not fired back at them…”
“I know that,” she said. She glanced at him, then away, as he led her deeper into the jungle. “Diego, my father told me what you used to do for a living.”
He stopped and turned around, his black eyes intent on hers because he needed to know her reaction to the discovery. He searched her expression, but there was no contempt, no horror, no shock. “To discourage you, I presume, from any deeper relationship with me?” he asked unexpectedly.
She blushed and lowered her gaze. “I guess I’ve been pretty transparent all the way around,” she said bitterly. “I didn’t realize everybody knew what a fool I was making of myself.”
“I am thirty-five years old,” he said quietly. “And women have been, forgive me, a permissible vice. Your face is expressive, Melissa, and your innocence makes you all the more vulnerable. But I would hardly call you a fool for feeling an—” he hesitated over the word “—attraction. But this is not the time to discuss it. Come, pequeña, we must find cover. We have little time.”
It was hard going. The jungle growth of vines and underbrush was thick, and Diego had only his knife, not a machete. He was careful to leave no visible trace of the path they made, but the men following them were likely to be experienced trackers. Melissa knew she should be afraid, but being with Diego made fear impossible. She knew that he’d protect her, no matter what. And despite the danger, just being with him was sheer delight.
She watched the muscles in his lean, fit body ripple as he moved aside the clinging vines for her. Once, his dark eyes caught hers as she was going under his arm, and they fell on her mouth with an expression that made her blood run wild through her veins. It was only a moment in time, but the flare of awareness made her clumsy and self-conscious. She remembered all too well the feel of his hard fingers on her soft skin as he’d removed the blood and bandaged the scrapes. She thought of the time ahead, because darkness would come soon. Would they stay in the jungle overnight? And would he hold her in the night, safe in his arms, against his warm body? She trembled at the delicious image, already feeling the muscles of his arms closing around her.
He paused to look at the compass in the handle of his knife, checking his bearings.
“There are ruins very near here,” he murmured. “With luck, we should be able to get to them before dark.” He looked up at the skies, which were darkening with the threat of a storm. “Rain clouds,” he mused. “We shall more than likely be drenched before we reach cover. Your father is not at home, I assume?”
“No,” she said miserably. “He’ll be worried sick. And furious.”
“Murderously so, I imagine,” he said with an irritated sigh. “Oh, Melissa, what a situation your impulsive nature has created for us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “Really I am.”
He lifted his head and stared down into her face with something like arrogance. “Are you? To be alone with me like this? Are you really sorry, querida?” he asked, and his voice was like velvet, deep and soft and tender.
Her lips parted as she tried to answer him, but she was trembling with nervous pleasure. Her gray eyes slid over his face like loving hands.
“An unfair question,” he murmured. “When I can see the answer. Come.”
He turned away from her, his body rippling with desire for her. He was too hot-blooded not to feel it when he looked at her slender body, her sweet innocence like a seductive garment around her. He wanted her as he’d never wanted another woman, but to give in to his feelings would be to place himself at the mercy of her father’s retribution. He was already concerned about how it would look if they were forced to bed down in the ruins. Apollo and the others would come looking for him, but the rain would wash away the tracks and slow them down, and the guerrillas would be in hot pursuit, as well. He sighed. It was going to be difficult, whichever way they went.
The rain came before they got much farther, drenching them in wet warmth. Melissa felt her hair plastered against her scalp, her clothing sticking to her like glue. Her jeans and boots were soaked, her shirt literally transparent as it dripped in the pounding rain.
Diego’s black hair was like a skullcap, and his very Spanish features were more prominent now, his olive complexion and black eyes making him look faintly pagan. He had Mayan blood as well as Spanish because of the intermarriage of his Madrid-born grandparents with native Guatemalans. His high cheekbones hinted at his Indian ancestry, just as his straight nose and thin, sensual lips denoted his Spanish heritage. Watching him, Melissa wondered where he had inherited his height, because he was as tall as her British father.
“There,” he said suddenly, and they came to a clearing where a Mayan temple sat like a gray sentinel in the green jungle. It was only partially standing, but at least one part of it seemed to have a roof.
Diego led her through the vined entrance, frightening away a huge snake. She shuddered, thinking of the coming darkness, but Diego was with her. He’d keep her safe.
Inside, it was musty and smelled of stone and dust, but the walls in one side of the ruin were almost intact, and there were a few timbers overhead that time hadn’t completely rotted.
Melissa shivered. “We’ll catch pneumonia,” she whispered.
“Not in this heat, niña,” he said with a faint smile. He moved over to a vine-covered opening in the stone wall. At least he’d be able to see the jungle from which they’d just departed. With a sigh, he stripped off his shirt and hung it over a jutting timber, stretching wearily.
Melissa watched him, her gaze caressing the darkly tanned muscles and the faint wedge of black hair that arrowed down to the belt around his lean waist. Just looking at him made her tingle, and she couldn’t hide her helpless longing to touch him.
He saw her reaction, and all his good intentions melted. She looked lovely with her clothing plastered to her exquisite body, and through the wet blouse he could see the very texture of her breasts, their mauve tips firm and beautifully formed. His jaw tautened as he stared at her.
She started to lift her arms, to fold them over herself, because the way he was looking at her frightened her a little. But he turned abruptly and started out.
“I’ll get some branches,” he said tersely. “We’ll need something to keep us from getting filthy if we have to stay here very long.”
While he was gone, Melissa stripped off her blouse and wrung it out. It didn’t help much, but it did remove some of the moisture. She dabbed at her hair and pushed the strands away from her face, knowing that she must look terrible.
Diego came back minutes later with some wild-banana leaves and palm branches that he spread on the ground to make a place to sit. He was wetter than ever, because the rain was still coming down in torrents.
“Our pursuers are going to find this weather difficult to track us through,” he mused as he pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and managed to light a small cheroot. He eased back on one elbow to smoke it, studying Melissa with intent appreciation. She’d put the blouse back on, but even though it was a little drier, her breasts were still blatantly visible through it.
“I guess they will,” she murmured, answering him.
“It embarrasses you, niña, for me to look at you so openly?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t have much experience…” She faltered, blushing.
He blew out a thick cloud of smoke while his eyes made a meal of her. It was madness to allow himself that liberty, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. She was untouched, and her eyes were shyly worshipful as she looked at his body. He wanted more than anything to touch her, to undress her slowly and carefully, to show her the delight of making love. His heart began to throb as he saw images of them together on the makeshift bedding, her body receptive to his, open to his possession.
Melissa was puzzled by his behavior. He’d always been so correct when they’d been together, but he wasn’t bothering to disguise his interest in her body, and the look on his face was readable even to a novice.
“Why did you become a mercenary?” she asked, hoping to divert him.
He shrugged. “It was a question of finances. We were desperate, and my father was unable to face the degradation of seeking work after having had money all his life. I had a reckless nature, and I enjoyed the danger of combat. After I served in the army, I heard of a group that needed a small-arms expert for some ‘interesting work.’ I applied.” He smiled in reminiscence. “It was an exciting time, but once or twice I had a close call. The others slowly drifted away to other occupations, other callings, but I continued. And then I began to slow down, and there was a mistake that almost cost me my life.” He lifted the cheroot to his lips. “I had enough wealth by then not to mind settling down to a less demanding lifestyle. I came home.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked softly, studying his handsome face.
“On occasion. There were good times. A special feeling of camaraderie with men who faced death with me.”
“And women, I guess,” she said hesitantly, her face more expressive than she realized.
His black eyes ran over her body like hands, slow and steady and frankly possessive. “And women,” he said quietly. “Are you shocked?”
She swallowed, lowering her eyes. “I never imagined that you were a monk, Diego.”
He felt himself tautening as he watched her, longed for her. The rain came harder, and she jumped as a streak of lightning burst near the temple and a shuddering thunderclap followed it.
“The lightning comes before the noise,” he reminded her. “One never hears the fatal flash.”
“How encouraging,” she said through her teeth. “Do you have any more comforting thoughts to share?”
He smiled faintly as he put out the cheroot and laid it to one side. “Not for the moment.”
He took her by the shoulders and laid her down against the palms and banana leaves, his lean hands on the buttons of her shirt once more. This time she didn’t fight and she didn’t protest, she simply watched him with eyes as big as saucers.
“I want to make sure the bleeding has stopped,” he said softly. He pulled the edges of the blouse open and lifted the handkerchief that he’d placed over the cut. His black eyes narrowed, and he grimaced. “This may leave a scar,” he said, tracing the wound with his forefinger. “A pity, on such exquisite skin.”
Her breath rattled in her throat. The touch of his hand made her feel reckless. All her buried longings were coming to the surface during this unexpected interlude with him, his body above her, his chest as bare and brawny as she’d dreamed it would be.
“I have no healing balm,” he said softly, searching her eyes. “But perhaps, pequeña, I could kiss it better….”
Even as he spoke, he bent, and Melissa moaned sharply as she felt the moist warmth of his mouth on her skin. Her hands clenched beside her, her back arched helplessly.
Startled by such a passionate reaction from a girl so virginal, he lifted his head to look at her. He was surprised, proud, when he saw the pleasure that made her cheeks burn, her eyes grow drowsy and bright, her lips part hungrily. It made him forget everything but the need to make her moan like that yet again, to see her eyes as she felt the first stirrings of passion in her untried body. The thought of her innocence and his resolve not to touch her vanished like the threat of danger.
He slid one hand under the nape of her neck to support it, his fingers spreading against her scalp as he bent again. His lips touched her tenderly, his tongue lacing against the abrasions, trailing over her silky skin. She smelled of flowers, and the scent of her went to his head. His free hand went under her back and found the catch of her bra, releasing it. He pulled the straps away from her shoulder and lifted her gently to ease the wispy material down her arms along with her blouse, leaving her bare and shivering under his quiet, experienced eyes. He hadn’t meant to let it happen, but his hunger for her had burst its bonds. He couldn’t hold back. He didn’t want to. She was his. She belonged to him.
He stopped her impulsive movement to cover herself by shaking his head. “This between us will be a secret, something for the two of us alone to share,” he whispered. His dark eyes went to her breasts, adoring them. “Such lovely young breasts,” he breathed, bending toward them. “So sweet, so tempting, so exquisitely formed…”
His lips touched the hard tip of her breast, and she went rigid. His arm went under her to support her back, and his free hand edged between them, raising sweet fires as it traced over her rib cage and belly before it went up to tease at the bottom swell of her breasts and make her ache for him to touch her completely. His mouth eased down onto her breast, taking it inside, savoring its warm softness as the rain pelted down overhead and the thunder drowned out the threat of the world around them. Their drenched clothing was hardly a barrier, their bodies sliding damply against each other in the dusty semidarkness of the dry ruin.
He felt her begin to move against him with helpless longing. She wasn’t experienced enough to hide her desire for him or to curb her headlong response. He delighted in the shy touch of her hands on his chest, his back, in her soft cries and moans as he moved his mouth up to hers finally and covered her soft lips, pressing them open in a kiss that defied restraint.
She arched against him, glorying in the feel of skin against wet skin, her bareness under his, the hardness of his muscles gently crushing her breasts. Her nails dug helplessly into his back while she felt the hunger in the smoke-scented warmth of his open mouth on hers, and she moaned tenderly when she felt the probing of his tongue.
He was whispering something in husky Spanish, his mouth insistent, his hands suddenly equally insistent with other fastenings, hard and swift and sure.
She started to protest, but he brushed his mouth over hers. His body was shuddering with desire, and he sat up, his eyes fiercely possessive as he began to remove the rest of her clothing.
“Shhh,” he whispered when she started to speak. “Let me tell you how it will be. My body and yours,” he breathed, “with the rain around us, the jungle beneath us. The sweet fusion of male and female here, in the Mayan memory. Like the first man and woman on earth, with only the jungle to hear your cries and the aching pleasure of my skin against yours, my hands holding you to me as we drown in the fulfillment of our desire for each other.”
The soft deepness of his voice drugged her. Yes, she wanted that. She wanted him. She arched as his hands slid down her yielding body, his lips softly touching her in ways she’d never dreamed of. The scent of the palm leaves and the musty, damp smell of the ruins in the rain combined with the excitement of Diego’s feverish lovemaking.
She watched him undress, her shyness buried in the fierce need for fulfillment, her eyes worshiping his lean, fit body as he lay down beside her. He let her look at him, taking quiet pride in his maleness. He coaxed her to touch him, to explore the hard warmth of his body while he whispered to her and kissed her and traced her skin with exquisite expertise, all restraint, all reason burned away in the fires of passion.
She gave everything he asked, yielded to him completely. At the final moment, when there was no turning back, she looked up at him with absolute trust, absorbing the sudden intrusion of his powerful body with only a small gasp of pain, lost in the tender smile of pride he gave at her courage.
“Virgin,” he whispered, his eyes bright and black as they held hers. He began to move, very slowly, his body trembling with his enforced restraint. “And so we join, and you are wholly mine. Mi mujer. My woman.”
She caught her breath at the sensations he was causing, her eyes moving and then darting away, her face surprised and loving and hungry all at the same time, her eyes full of wonder as they lifted back to his.
“Hold me,” he whispered. “Hold tight, because soon you will begin to feel the whip of passion and you will need my strength. Hold fast, querida, hold fast to me, give me all that you are, all that you have…adorada,” he gasped as his movements increased with shocking effect. “Melissa mía!”
She couldn’t even look at him. Her body was climbing to incredible heights, tautening until the muscles seemed in danger of snapping. She cried out something, but he groaned and clasped her, and all too soon she was reaching for something that had disappeared even as she sought to touch it.
She wept, frustrated and aching and not even able to explain why.
He kissed her face tenderly, his hands framing it, his eyes soft, wondering. “You did not feel it?” he whispered, making her look at him.
“It was so close,” she whispered back, her eyes frantic. “I almost…oh!”
He smiled with aching tenderness, his body moving slowly, his head lifting to watch her face. “Ah, yes,” he whispered. “Here. And here…gently, querida. Come up and kiss me, and let your body match my rhythm. Yes, querida, yes, like that, like—” His jaw clenched. He shouldn’t be able to feel it again so quickly. He watched her face, felt her body spiraling toward fulfillment. Even as she cried out with it and whispered to him he was in his own hot, black oblivion, and this time it took forever to fall back to earth in her arms.
They lay together in the soft darkness with the rain pelting around them, sated, exquisitely fatigued, her shirt and his pulled over them for a damp blanket. He bent to kiss her lazily from time to time, his lips soft and slow, his smile gentle. For just a few minutes there was no past, no future, no threat of retribution, no piper to pay.
Melissa was shocked by what had happened, so in love with him that it had seemed the most natural thing on earth at the time to let him love her. But as her reason came back, she became afraid and apprehensive. What was he thinking, lying so quietly beside her? Was he sorry or glad, did he blame her? She started to ask him.
And then reality burst in on them in the cruelest way of all. Horses’ hooves and loud voices had been drowned out by the thunder and the rain, but suddenly a small group of men was inside the ruin, and at the head of them was Melissa’s father.
He stopped dead, staring at the trail of clothing and the two people, obviously lovers, so scantily covered by two shirts.
“Damn you, Laremos!” Edward Sterling burst out. “Damn you, what have you done?”
Chapter Three
Melissa knew that as long as she lived there would be the humiliation of that afternoon in her memory. Her father’s outrage, Diego’s taut shouldering of the blame, her own tearful shame. The men quickly left the ruins at Edward Sterling’s terse insistence, but Melissa knew they’d seen enough in those brief seconds to know what had happened.
Edward Sterling followed them, giving Melissa and Diego time to get decently covered. Diego didn’t speak at all. He turned his back while she dressed, and then he gestured with characteristic courtesy for her to precede him out of the entrance. He wanted to speak, to say something, but his pride was lacerated at having so far forgotten himself as to seduce the daughter of his family’s worst enemy. He was appalled at his own lack of control.
Melissa went out after one hopeful glance at his rigid, set features. She didn’t look at him again.
Her father was waiting outside. The rain had stopped and his men were at a respectful distance.
“It wasn’t all Diego’s fault,” Melissa began.
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” her father said coldly. “I found the poems you wrote and the note asking Laremos to meet you so that you could—how did you put it?—‘prove your love’ for him.”
Diego turned, his eyes suddenly icy, hellishly accusing. “You planned this,” he said contemptuously. “Dios mío, and like a fool I walked into the trap…”
“How could I possibly plan a raid by guerrillas?” she asked, trying to reason with him.
“She certainly used it to her advantage,” Edward Sterling said stiffly. “She was warned before she left the house that there was trouble at your estate, Estrella told her as she rode out of the yard, and she went in that general direction.”
Melissa defended herself weakly. “I didn’t hear Estrella. And the poems and the note were just daydreaming….”
“Costly daydreaming,” her father replied. He stared at Diego. “No man with any sense of honor could refuse marriage in the circumstances.”
“What would you know of honor?” Diego asked icily. “You, who seduced my father’s woman away days before their wedding?”
Edward Sterling seemed to vibrate with bad temper. “That has nothing to do with the present situation. I won’t defend my daughter’s actions, but you must admit, Señor Laremos, that she couldn’t have found herself in this predicament without some cooperation from you!”
It was a statement that turned Diego’s blood molten, because it was an accusation that was undeniable. He was as much to blame as Melissa. He was trapped, and he himself had sprung the lock. He couldn’t even look at her. The sweet interlude that had been the culmination of all his dreams of perfection had turned to ashes. He didn’t know if he could bear to go through with it, but what choice was there? Another dishonor on the family name would be too devastating to consider, especially to his grandmother and his sister.
“I will not shirk my responsibility, señor,” Diego said with arrogant disdain. “You may rest assured that Melissa will be taken care of.”
Melissa started to speak, to refuse, but her father and Diego gave her such venomous looks that she turned away and didn’t say another word.
The guerrillas had been dealt with. Apollo Blain, tall and armed to the teeth at the head of a column led by the small, wiry man Laremos called First Shirt, was waiting in the valley as the small party approached.
“The government troops are at the house, boss,” Shirt said with a grin.
Apollo chuckled, his muscular arms crossed over the pommel of his saddle. “Cleaning house, if you’ll forgive the pun. Glad to see you’re okay, boss man. You, too, Miss Sterling.”
“Thanks,” Melissa said wanly.
“With your permission, I will rejoin my men,” Diego said with cool formality, directing the words to Edward. “I will make the necessary arrangements for the service to take place with all due haste.”
“We’ll wait to hear from you, señor,” Edward said tersely. He motioned to his men and urged his mount into step beside Melissa’s.
“I don’t suppose there’s any use in trying to explain?” she asked miserably, too sick to even look back toward Diego and his retreating security force.
“None at all,” her father said. “I hope you love Laremos. You’ll need to, now that he’s well and truly hamstrung. He’ll hate both of us, but I won’t let you be publicly disgraced, even if it is your own damned fault.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. She stared toward the distant house with a sick feeling that her life was never going to be the same again. Her hero-worshiping and daydreaming had led to the end she’d hoped for, but she hadn’t wanted to trap Diego. She’d wanted him to love her, to want to marry her. She had what she thought she desired, but now it seemed that the Fates were laughing at her. She remembered a very old saying that had never made sense before: be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.
* * *
Weeks went by while Melissa was feted and given party after party with a stiff-necked Señora Laremos and Juana, Diego’s sister, at her side. Their disapproval and frank dislike had been made known from the very beginning, but like Diego, they were making the most of a bad situation.
Diego himself hardly spoke to Melissa unless it was necessary, and when he looked at her she felt chilled to the bone. That he hated her was all too apparent. As the wedding approached, she wished with all her heart that she’d listened to her father and had never left the house that rainy day.
Her wedding gown was chosen, the Catholic church in Guatemala City was filled to capacity with friends and distant kin of both the bride’s and groom’s families. Melissa was all nerves, even though Diego seemed to be as nonchalant as if he were going to a sporting event, and even less enthusiastic.
Diego spoke his vows under Father Santiago’s quiet gaze with thinly veiled sarcasm and placed the ring upon Melissa’s finger. He pushed back the veil and looked at her with something less than contempt, and when he kissed her it was strictly for the sake of appearances. His lips were ice-cold. Then he bowed and led her back down the aisle, his eyes as unfeeling as the carpet under their feet.
The reception was an ordeal, and there was music and dancing that seemed to go on forever before Diego announced that he and his bride must be on their way home. He’d already told Melissa there would be no honeymoon because he had too much work and not enough free time to travel. He drove her back to the casa, where he deposited her with his cold-eyed grandmother and sister. And then he packed a bag and left for an extended business trip to Europe.
Melissa missed her father and Estrella. She missed the warmth of her home. But most of all, she missed the man she’d once loved, the Diego who’d teased her and laughed with her and seemed to enjoy having her with him for company when he’d ridden around the estate. The angry, unapproachable man she’d married was a stranger.
It was almost six weeks from the day she and Diego had been together when Melissa began to feel a stirring inside, a frightening certainty that she was pregnant. She was nauseated, not just at breakfast but all the time. She hid it from Diego’s grandmother and sister, although it grew more difficult all the time.
She spent her days wandering miserably around the house, wishing she had something to occupy her. She wasn’t allowed to take part in any of the housework or to sit with the rest of the family, who made this apparent by simply leaving a room the moment she entered it. She ate alone, because the señora and the señorita managed to change the times of meals from day to day. She was avoided, barely tolerated, actively disliked by both women, and she didn’t have the worldliness or the sophistication or the maturity to cope with the situation. She spent a great deal of time crying. And still Diego stayed away.
“Is it so impossible for you to accept me?” she asked Señora Laremos one evening as Juana left the sitting room and a stiff-backed señora prepared to follow her.
Señora Laremos gave her a cold, black glare from eyes so much like Diego’s that Melissa shivered. “You are not welcome here. Surely you realize it?” the older woman asked. “My grandson does not want you, and neither do we. You have dishonored us yet again, like your mother before you!”
Melissa averted her face. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said through trembling lips. “Not completely.”
“Had it not been for your father’s insistence, you would have been treated like any other woman whose favors my son had enjoyed. You would have been adequately provided for—”
“How?” Melissa demanded, her illusions gone at the thought of Diego’s other women, her heart broken. “With an allowance for life, a car, a mink coat?” Her chin lifted proudly. “Go ahead, señora. Ignore me. Nothing will change the fact that I am Diego’s wife.”
The older woman seemed actually to vibrate with anger. “You impudent young cat,” she snarled. “Has your family not been the cause of enough grief for mine already, without this? I despise you!”
Melissa didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. “Yes, I realize that,” she said with quiet pride. “God forbid that in your place I would ever be so cruel to a guest in my home. But then,” she added with soft venom, “I was raised properly.”
The Señora actually flushed. She went out of the room without another word, but afterward her avoidance of Melissa was total.
Melissa gave up trying to make them accept her now that she realized the futility of it. She wanted to go home to see her father, but even that was difficult to arrange in the hostile environment where she lived. She settled for the occasional phone call and had to pretend, for his sake, that everything was all right. Perhaps when Diego had time to get used to the situation, everything would be all right. That was the last hope she had—that Diego might relent. That she might be able to persuade him to give her a chance to be the wife she knew she was capable of being.
Meanwhile, the sickness went on and on, and she knew that soon she was going to have to see a doctor. She grew paler by the day. So pale, in fact, that Juana risked her grandmother’s wrath to sneak into Melissa’s room one night and ask how she was.
Melissa gaped at her. “I beg your pardon?” she asked tautly.
Juana grimaced, her hands folded neatly at her waist, her dark eyes oddly kind in her thin face. “You seem so pale, Melissa. I wish it were different. Diego is—” she spread her hands “Diego. And my grandmother nurses old wounds that have been reopened by your presence here. I cannot defy her. It would break her heart if I sided with you against her.”
“I understand that,” Melissa said quietly, and managed a smile. “I don’t blame you for being loyal to your grandmother, Juana.”
Juana sighed. “Is there something, anything, I can do?”
Melissa shook her head. “But thank you.”
Juana opened the door, hesitating. “My grandmother will not say so, but Diego has called. He will be home tomorrow. I thought you might like to know.”
She was gone then, as quickly as she’d come. Melissa looked around the neat room she’d been given, with its dark antique furnishings. It wasn’t by any means the master bedroom, and she wondered if Diego would even keep up the pretense of being married to her by sleeping in the same room. Somehow she doubted it. It would be just as well that way, because she didn’t want him to know about the baby. Not until she could tell how well he was adapting to married life.
She barely slept, wondering how it would be to see him again. She overslept the next morning and for once was untroubled by nausea. She went down the hall and there he was, sitting at the head of the table. The whole family was together for breakfast for once.

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