times are dangerous,” she said with a shy smile. “But I feel safe with you.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “And that is the most dangerous daydream of all,” he mused. “But no doubt you have not yet realized it. Come; we must move on.”
“In just a minute.” She drew a camera from her pocket and pointed it toward him, smiling at his grimace. “I know, not again, you’re thinking. Can I help it if I can’t get the right perspective on the painting of you I’m working on? I need another shot. Just one, I promise.” She clicked the shutter before he could protest.
“This famous painting is taking one long time, niña,” he commented. “You have been hard at it for eight months, and not one glimpse have I had of it.”
“I work slow,” she prevaricated. In actual fact, she couldn’t draw a straight line without a ruler. The photo was to add to her collection of pictures of him, to sit and sigh over in the privacy of her room. To build dreams around. Because dreams were all she was ever likely to have of Diego, and she knew it. His family would oppose any mention of having Melissa under their roof, just as they opposed Diego’s friendship with her.
“When do you go off to college?” he asked unexpectedly.
She sighed as she pocketed the camera. “Pretty soon, I guess. I begged off for a year after school, just to be with Dad, but this unrest is making him more stubborn about sending me away. I don’t want to go to the States. I want to stay here.”
“Your father may be wise to insist,” Diego murmured, although he didn’t like to think about riding around his estate with no chance of being waylaid by Melissa. He’d grown used to her. To a man as worldly and experienced and cynical as Diego had become over the years, Melissa was a breath of spring air. He loved her innocence, her shy adoration. Given the chance, he was all too afraid he might be tempted to appreciate her exquisite young body, as well. She was slender, tall, with long, tanned legs, breasts that had just the right shape and a waist that was tiny, flaring to full, gently curving hips. She wasn’t beautiful, but her fair complexion was exquisite in its frame of long, tangled blond hair, and her gray eyes held a kind of serenity far beyond her years. Her nose was straight, her mouth soft and pretty. In the right clothes and with the right training, she would be a unique hostess, a wife of whom a man could be justifiably proud….
That thought startled Diego. He had had no intention of thinking of Melissa in those terms. If he ever married, it would be to a Guatemalan woman of good family, not to a woman whose father had already once disgraced the name of Laremos.
“You’re always at home these days,” Melissa said as they rode along the valley, with the huge Atitl´n volcano in the distance against the green jungle. She loved Guatemala, she loved the volcanos and the lakes and rivers, the tropical jungle, the banana and coffee plantations and the spreading valleys. She especially loved the mysterious Mayan ruins that one found so unexpectedly. She loved the markets in the small villages and the friendly warmth of the Guatemalan people whose Mayan ancestors had once ruled here.
“The finca demands much of my time since my father’s death,” he replied. “Besides, niña, I was getting too old for the work I used to do.”
She glanced at him. “You never talked about it. What did you do?”
He smiled faintly. “Ah, that would be telling. How did your father fare with the fruit company? Were they able to recompense him for his losses during the storm?”
A tropical storm had damaged the banana plantation in which her father had a substantial interest. This year’s crop had been a tremendous loss. Like Diego, though, her father had other investments—such as the cattle he and Diego raised on their adjoining properties. But as a rule, fruit was the biggest money-maker.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He doesn’t share business with me. I guess he thinks I’m too dumb to understand.” She smiled, her mind far away on the small book she’d found recently in her mother’s trunk. “You know, Dad is so different from the way he was when my mother knew him. He’s so sedate and quiet these days. Mama wrote that he was always in the thick of things when they were first married, very daring and adventurous.”
“I imagine her death changed him, little one,” he said absently.
“Maybe it did,” she murmured. She looked at him curiously. “Apollo said that you were the best there was at your job,” she added quickly. “And that someday you might tell me about it.”
He said something under his breath, glaring at her. “My past is something I never expect to share with anyone. Apollo had no right to say such a thing to you.”
His voice chilled her when it had that icily formal note in it. She shifted restlessly. “He’s a nice man. He helped Dad round up some of the stray cattle one day when there was a storm. He must be good at his job, or you wouldn’t keep him on.”
“He is good at his job,” he said, making a mental note to have a long talk with the black American ex-military policeman who worked for him and had been part of the band of mercenaries Diego had once belonged to. “But it does not include discussing me with you.”
“Don’t be mad at him, please,” she asked gently. “It was my fault, not his. I’m sorry I asked. I know you’re very close about your private life, but it bothered me that you came home that time so badly hurt.” She lowered her eyes. “I was worried.”
He bit back a sharp reply. He couldn’t tell her about his past. He couldn’t tell her that he’d been a professional mercenary, that his job had been the destruction of places and sometimes people, that it had paid exceedingly well, or that the only thing he had put at risk was his life. He kept his clandestine operations very quiet at home; only the government officials for whom he sometimes did favors knew about him. As for friends and acquaintances, it wouldn’t do for them to know how he earned the money that kept the finca solvent.
He shrugged indifferently. “No importa.” He was silent for a moment, his black eyes narrow as he glanced at her. “You should marry,” he said unexpectedly. “It is time your father arranged for a novio for you, niña.”
She wanted to suggest Diego, but that would be courting disaster. She studied her slender hands on the reins. “I can arrange my own marriage. I don’t want to be promised to some wealthy old man just for the sake of my family fortunes.”
Diego smiled at her innocence. “Oh, niña, the idealism of youth. By the time you reach my age, you will have lost every trace of it. Infatuation does not last. It is the poorest foundation for a lasting relationship, because it can exist where there are no common interests whatsoever.”
“You sound so cold,” she murmured. “Don’t you believe in love?”
“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
