LITMIR.BIZ

       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

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