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“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.”
