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.
“I see you understand,” her father said, his voice very quiet. “You know, I don’t think less of him for what he’s done. But a past like his would be rough for a woman to take. Because of what he’s done, he’s a great deal less vulnerable than an ordinary man. More than likely his feelings are locked in irons. It will take more than an innocent, worshiping girl to unlock them, Melissa. And you aren’t even in the running in his mind. He’ll marry a Guatemalan woman, if he ever marries. He won’t marry you. Our unfortunate connection in the past will assure that, don’t you see?”
Her eyes stung with tears. Of course she did, but hearing it didn’t help. She tried to smile, and the tears overflowed.
“Baby.” Her father got up and pulled her gently into his arms, rocking her. “I’m sorry, but there’s no future for you with Diego Laremos. It will be best if you go away, and the sooner the better.”
Melissa had to agree. “You’re right.” She dabbed at her tears. “I didn’t know. Diego never told me about his past. I suppose he was saving it for a last resort,” she said, trying to bring some lightness to the moment. “Now I understand what he meant about not knowing what love was. I guess Diego couldn’t afford to let himself love anyone, considering the line of work he was in.”
“I don’t imagine he could,” her father agreed. He smoothed her hair back. “I wish your mother was still alive. She’d have known what to say.”
“Oh, you’re not doing too bad,” Melissa told him. She wiped her eyes. “I guess I’ll get over Diego one day.”
“One day,” Edward agreed. “But this is for the best, Melly. Your world and his would never fit together. They’re too different.”
She looked up. “Diego said that, too.”
Edward nodded. “Then Laremos realizes it. That will be just as well. He won’t put any obstacles in the way.”
Melissa tried to forget that afternoon and the way Diego had held her, the way he’d looked at her. Maybe he didn’t know what love was, but something inside him had reacted to her in a new and different way. And now she was going to have to leave before she could find out what he felt or if he could come to care for her.
But perhaps her father was right. If Diego felt anything, it was physical, not emotional. Desire, in its place, might be exquisite, but without love it was just a shadow. Diego’s past had shocked her. A man like that—was he even capable of love?
Melissa kept her thoughts to herself. There was no sense in sharing them with her father and worrying him even more. “How did it go in Guatemala City?” she asked instead, trying to divert him.
He laughed. “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought at first. Let’s eat, and I’ll explain it to you. If you’re old enough to go to college, I suppose you’re old enough to be told about the family finances.”
Melissa smiled at him. It was the first time he’d offered that kind of information. In an odd way, she felt as if her father accepted the fact that she was an adult.
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
