Enamored

“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.