Enamored (16 page)

“Me? Pretty?” Melissa was honestly astounded.

Joyce glowered at her. “Do you love Diego?”

It was a hard question to answer honestly, but in the end she had to. “I always have,” she confessed. “I suppose I always will.”

“Then why don’t you stop running away from him and start running toward him?” Joyce suggested. “Running hasn’t made you very happy, has it?”

“It’s made me pretty miserable. But how can I stay with a man who doesn’t want me?”

“You could make him want you.” She reached out and touched Melissa’s hand. “Is he worth fighting for?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Then do it. Stop letting the past create barriers.”

Melissa frowned slightly. “I don’t know very much about how to vamp a man.”

Joyce shrugged. “Neither do I. So what? We can learn together.”

This was sounding more delightful by the minute. Melissa was nervous, but she knew that Diego wanted her, and the knowledge gave her hope. “I suppose we could give it a try. If things don’t work out—”

“Trust me. They’ll work out.”

“Then if I have to do it, so do you.” Melissa pursed her lips. “Did you know that I was an assistant buyer for a clothing store? I have a passable eye for fashion, and I know what looks good on people. Suppose we go shopping together. I’ll show you what to buy to make you stand out.”

Joyce raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Because with very little work you could be a knockout. Think of it, Apollo on his knees at your desk, sighing with adoration,” she coaxed.

Joyce grimaced. “The only way he’d be on his knees at my desk would be if I kicked him in the stomach.”

“Pessimist! You’re the one giving the pep talk. Suppose we both listen to you and try to practice what you preach?”

The other woman sighed. “Well, what have we got to lose, after all?”

“Not much, from where I’m sitting. How about Saturday morning? You can take me to the right department stores, and I’ll make suggestions.”

“I do have a little in my savings account,” Joyce murmured. She smiled. “All right. We’ll do it.”

“Great!” Melissa started on her dessert. “Amazing how good this food tastes all of a sudden. I think I feel better already.”

“So do I. But if Apollo throws me out the window, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“He won’t. Eat up.”

Melissa’s head was full of ideas. Joyce had inspired her. She hadn’t really tried to catch Diego’s eye since they’d been back together. Even in the old days she’d never quite lived up to her potential. She wasn’t any more experienced now, but she was well-traveled and she’d learned a lot from listening to other women talk and watching them in action as they attracted men. She was going to turn the tables on her reluctant husband and see if she couldn’t make him like captivity. Whether or not the attempt failed, she had to try. Joyce was right. Running away had only complicated things. This time, she had to stand and fight.

While she was out, she’d bought a memory card game for Matthew, and when Diego came home that night she was sprawled on the carpet with her son. She made a pretty picture in a clinging beige sleeveless blouse and tight jeans. Diego paused in the doorway, and when she saw him she rolled onto her side, striking a frankly seductive pose.

“Good evening, Señor Laremos,” she murmured. “Matthew has a new game.”

“I can remember where the apple is,” Matthew enthused, jumping up to hug his father and babble excitedly about the game and how he’d already beaten Mama once.

“He has a quick mind,” Diego remarked as he studied the large pile of matched cards on Matthew’s side of the playing area and the small one on Melissa’s.

“Very quick,” she agreed, laughing at Matthew’s smug little face. “And he’s modest, too.”

“I know everything,” Matthew said with innocent certainty. “Will you play with us, Papa?”

“After dinner,
niño,”
the tall man agreed. “I must change, and there is a phone call I have to make.”

“Okay!” Matthew went back to turning over cards.

“Only two,” Melissa cautioned. “It’s cheating if you keep peeking under all of them.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She took her turn, aware that Diego’s eyes were on the deep V of her blouse, under which she was wearing nothing at all.

She sat up again, glancing at him. “Is something wrong,
señor?
”

“Of course not. Excuse me.” He turned, frowning, and went off toward his bedroom. Melissa smiled secretively as she watched Matthew match two oranges.

Dinner was noisy because Mrs. Albright had taken Matthew down to the lobby to meet her daughter and grandson, who were just back from a Mexican trip, and the daughter had given Matt a small wooden toy, a ball on a string that had to be bounced into the cup it was attached to. Matt was overjoyed with both his new friend and his toy.

“Ah,” Diego smiled. “Yes, these are very common in my part of the world, and your mother’s,” he added with a smile at Melissa. “Are they not,
querida?
I can remember playing with one as a child myself.”

“Where we lived there were no toy stores,” she told Matthew. “We lived far back in the country, near a volcano, and there were ancient Mayan ruins all around.” She colored a little, remembering one particular ruin. She looked at Diego and found the same memory in his dark eyes as they searched hers.

“Sí,”
he said gently. “The ruins were…potent.”

Her lips parted. “Five years,” she said, her eyes more eloquent than she knew. “And sometimes it seems like days.”

“Not for me,” he said abruptly, drawing his eyes back to his coffee cup. “It has not been easy, living through the black time that came afterward.”

Matthew was trying to play with his toy, but Melissa took it and put it firmly beside his plate, indicating that he should eat his food first. He grimaced and picked up his fork.

“Did you never think of contacting me?” he asked unexpectedly, and his eyes narrowed. It disturbed him more and more, thinking about all he’d missed. Understanding the reason for Melissa’s actions didn’t make the lack of contact with his child any easier to bear. He’d missed so much of the boy’s life, all the things that most fathers experienced and cherished in memory. Matt’s first word, his first step, the early days when parents and children became bonded. He’d had none of that.

Melissa sighed sadly, remembering when Matthew had been born and how desperately she’d wanted Diego. But he hadn’t wanted her. He’d made it so plain after their marriage, and even after her fall down the steps he’d been unapproachable. “I thought about it once,” she said quietly, wondering if he was going to accuse her of denying him his rights. She wouldn’t have had a reply. “But you’d made it clear that I had no place in your life, Diego, that you only married me to spare your family more disgrace.”

He studied his cup. “You never considered that I might have had a change of heart, Melissa? That I might have regretted, bitterly, my treatment of you?”

“No,” she said honestly. Her pale eyes searched his dark ones. “I didn’t want to play on your guilt. It was better that I took care of myself.” She dropped her gaze to the table. “And Matt.”

“It must have been difficult when he was born,” he probed, trying to draw her out.

She smiled faintly, remembering. “Something went wrong,” she murmured. “They had to do a cesarean section.”

He caught his breath. “My God. And you had no one to turn to.”

She looked at Matthew warmly. “I managed very well. I had neighbors who were kind, and the company I worked for was very understanding. My boss made sure my insurance paid all my bills, and he even gave me an advance on my salary so that we had enough to eat.”

His fingers contracted around the cup almost hard enough to break it. It didn’t bear thinking about. Melissa must have been in severe pain, alone and with an infant to be responsible for. His eyes closed. It hurt him terribly to think that if he’d been kinder to her he could have shared that difficulty with her. He could have been there when she’d needed someone, been there to take care of her. His anguish at being denied all those years with Matt seemed a small thing by comparison.

“It wasn’t so bad, Diego,” she said softly, because there was pain in his face. “Really it wasn’t. And he was the sweetest baby—”

Diego got up abruptly. “I have phone calls to make. Please excuse me.”

Melissa watched him, aching for him. His stiff back said it all. She realized then that it wasn’t so much her predicament as missing the birth of his son that had hurt him. She felt guilty about that, too, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

Diego went into the study and closed the door, leaning heavily back against it. He couldn’t stand the anguish of knowing what she’d suffered because of him. If only he could talk to her. Bare his heart. Tell her what he really felt, how much she and the boy meant to him. He wondered sometimes if he was still capable of real emotion. His past had been so violent, and tenderness had no place in it. He was only now learning that he was capable of it, with his child and even with Melissa, who more and more was becoming the one beautiful thing in his life. The longer they stayed together, the harder it became for him to hide his increasing hunger for her. Not that it was completely physical now, as it had been in the very beginning in Guatemala. No. It was becoming so much more. But he was uncertain of her. She changed before his eyes, first resentful, then shy and remote, and now she seemed oddly affectionate and teasing.

That, of course, could be simply a kind of repayment, for his having taken care of her and Matt and given them a home when she’d needed time to heal. Was that it? Was it gratitude, or was it something more? He couldn’t tell.

But perhaps it was too soon. She didn’t trust him enough to tell him about Matthew. When she did, there might be time for such confessions.

Melissa went back into the living room with Matthew and spread the memory cards out on the floor. They were into the second round before Diego came in again. He’d taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. It was unbuttoned in front, and Melissa’s eyes went helplessly to the hair-covered expanse of brown muscle.

He noticed her glance and delighted in her response to him. No woman had ever made him feel as masculine and proud as Melissa. Her soft eyes had a light in them when she looked at him that made his body sing with pleasure. Desire was the one thing he was certain of. She couldn’t begin to hide it from his experienced eyes.

“Play with us, Papa!” Matthew called, inviting the tall man down onto the carpet with them.

“We’ll make room for you,” Melissa said, smiling softly. She moved toward Matthew, making a space beside her where she was lying on her stomach and lifting cards.

“Perhaps for a moment or two,” Diego agreed. He took off his shoes and slid alongside Melissa, the warm, cologne-scented length of his body almost touching hers. “How does one play this game?”

They explained it to him and watched him turn over two cards that matched. Matthew laughed and Melissa groaned as he pulled them near him and made a neat stack.

He smiled at Melissa with a wicked twinkle in his black eyes. “I was watching from the doorway,” he confessed. “Although not so much the cards as—” his gaze went to her derriere, so nicely outlined in the tight jeans “—other things.”

She flushed, but her gaze didn’t falter. “Lecher,” she accused in a whisper, teasing.

That surprised and delighted him. His gaze dropped to her smiling mouth, and he bent suddenly and brushed his lips over hers in a whisper of pressure.

Matthew laughed joyfully. “Bobby’s mama and daddy used to kiss like that, only Bobby said his mama used to kiss his daddy all the time.”

Diego chuckled. “Your mama is not up to kissing me,
niño.
She is weak from her accident.”

Melissa glanced at him mischievously. “Matt, will you go to the kitchen and bring me a cold soft drink, please? And be careful not to open it, okay?”

“Okay!” He jumped up and ran from the room.

Melissa smiled at Diego wickedly. “So I’m too weak to kiss you, am I,
señor?
” she murmured with soft bravado, enjoying the dark, glittering pleasure she read in his faintly shocked eyes.

She rolled over, pushing him gently onto the carpet. He chuckled with open delight as she bent over him and kissed him with a fervor that dragged a reluctant groan from his lips before his arms reached up and gathered her against him.

“Too weak, am I?” Melissa breathed into his hard mouth.

His hand contracted in her soft, wavy blond hair, and the bristly pressure of his mouth grew rough as he turned her gently and eased her down onto the carpet. She could feel the fierce thunder of his heartbeat against her breasts as her arms curled around his neck and she sighed into his hungry mouth. Her blood sang at the sweet contact. He lifted his head abruptly, and she saw the savage desire in the black eyes that stared unblinking into hers.

“¡Cuidado,”
he murmured. “You tempt fate.”

“Not fate,” she whispered unsteadily. “Only you,
señor.”
Her hand slid under his shirt, against his body, her fingers spearing into the dark hair that covered his warm muscles. He stiffened, and she sighed contentedly. “Well, if you don’t want to be assaulted, keep your shirt buttoned.”

He laughed, thrown completely off balance by the way she was acting with him.
“Dios,
what has become of my shy little jungle orchid?”

“She grew up.” Her soft eyes searched his. “You don’t mind…?”

He pressed her hand against his chest. “No,” he said quietly. “Do what you please, little one. So long as you do not mind the inevitable consequence of such actions as this. You understand?”

“I understand,” she whispered, her eyes warm with secrets.

As she spoke, she drew one of Diego’s hands to her body and sat up gracefully. Holding his eyes, she pressed his palm against her blouse where there was no fabric to conceal the hard thrust of her body.

His breath sighed out as his hand caressed her. “Is this premeditated?” he asked roughly.

“Oh, yes,” she confessed, leaning her head against his shoulder because his touch was so sweet. “Diego—”