LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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