Enamored

by Diana Palmer

  “Papa!”

  Diego lifted his head reluctantly. “In a moment, mi hijo,” he called back. “Your mother and I are discussing plans,” he murmured, brushing another kiss against Melissa’s eager mouth.

  “What kind of plans, Papa, for a trip to the zoo?” Matthew persisted.

  “Not exactly. I will be back in a moment, all right?”

  There was a long sigh. “All right.”

  Diego shifted his hips and smiled at Melissa’s helpless response. “I think an early night is in order,” he breathed. “To make up for our lack of sleep last night,” he added.

  “I couldn’t possibly agree more,” she murmured as his mouth came down again. It grew harder and more insistent by the second, but the sound of Mrs. Albright’s voice calling them into the dining room broke the spell.

  “I long for that ancient Mayan ruin where we first knew each other,” Diego whispered as he stood up and let her go.

  “With armed guerrillas hunting us, spiders crawling around, snakes slithering by and lightning striking all around,” she recalled. She shook her head. “I’ll take Chicago any day, Diego!”

  He chuckled. “I can hardly argue with that. Let us eat, then we will discuss this trip to the zoo that our son seems determined to make.”

  * * *

  There was a new temporary secretary at work for the rest of the week, but Apollo didn’t give her a hard time. In fact, he looked haggard and weary and miserable.

  “Perhaps you need a vacation, amigo,” Diego said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt,” Dutch nodded, propped gracefully against Apollo’s desk with a lighted cigarette in one lean hand.

  Apollo glowered at them. “Where would I go?”

  Diego studied his fingernails. “You could go to Ferris Street,” he remarked. “I understand the weather there is quite nice.”

  Ferris Street was where Joyce’s apartment was, and Apollo glowered furiously at the older man.

  “You could park your car there and just relax,” Dutch seconded, pursing his lips. His blond hair looked almost silver in the light. “You could read a book or take along one of those little television sets and watch soap operas with nobody to bother you.”

  “Ferris Street is the end of the world,” Apollo said. “You don’t take a vacation sitting in your damned car on a side street in Chicago! What’s the matter with you people?”

  “You could entice women to sit in your car with you,” Dutch said. “Ferris Street could be romantic with the right companion. You were a counterterrorist. You know how to appropriate people.”

  “This is true,” Diego agreed. “He appropriated us for several missions, at times when we preferred not to go.”

  “Right on,” Dutch said. He studied Apollo curiously. “I was like you once. I hated women with a hell of lot more reason than you’ve got. But in the end I discovered that living with a woman is a hell of a lot more interesting than being shot at.”

  “I asked her to live with me, for your information, Mr. Social Adviser,” Apollo muttered. “She kicked me in the gut!”

  “What about marriage?” Dutch persisted.

  “I don’t want to get married,” Apollo said.

  “Then it is as well that she resigned,” Diego said easily. “She can find another man to marry and give her children—”

  “Shut up, damn you!” Apollo looked shaken. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Oh, God, I’ve got to get out of here. You guys have things to do, don’t you? I’m going for a walk!”

  He started out the door.

  “You might walk along Ferris Street,” Dutch called after him. “I hear flowers are blooming all over the place.”

  “You might even see a familiar face,” Diego added with a grin.

  Apollo threw them a fiercely angry gesture and slammed the door behind him.

  Dutch got off the desk and moved toward the door with Diego. “He’ll come around,” the blond man mused. “I did.”

  “We all come to it,” Diego said. He smiled at the younger man. “Bring Dani to supper Saturday. And bring the children. Matthew would enjoy playing with your eldest.”

  Dutch eyed him. “Everything’s okay now, I gather?”

  Diego sighed. “My friend, if happiness came in grains of sand, I would be living on a vast desert. I have the world.”

  “I figured Matthew was yours,” Dutch said unexpectedly. “Melissa didn’t strike me as the philandering kind.”

  “As in the old days, you see deeply,” Diego replied. He smiled at his friend. “And your Dani, she is content to stay with the children instead of working?”

  “Until they’re in school, yes. After that, I keep hearing these plans for a really unique used bookstore.” Dutch grinned. “Whatever she wants. I come first, you know. I always have and I always will. It’s enough to make a man downright flexible.”

  Diego thought about that all the way home. Yes, it did. So if Melissa wanted to work when Matthew started school, why not? He told her so that night as she lay contentedly in his arms watching the city lights play on the ceiling of the darkened room. She smiled and rolled over and kissed him. And very soon afterward, he was glad he’d made the remark.

  Chapter Eleven

  There were bells ringing. Melissa put her head under the pillow, but still they kept on. She groaned, reaching out toward the telephone and fumbled it under the pillow and against her ear.

  “Hello?” she mumbled.

  “Melissa? Is Diego awake?” Apollo asked.

  She murmured something and put the receiver against Diego’s ear. It fell off and she put it back, shaking his brown shoulder to make him aware of it.

  “Hello,” he said drowsily. “Who is it?”

  There was a pause. All at once he sat straight up in bed, knocking off the pillow and stripping back the covers. “You what?”

  Melissa lifted her head, because the note in Diego’s voice sounded urgent and shocked. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “You what?” Diego repeated. He launched into a wild mixture of Spanish and laughter, then reverted to English. “I wouldn’t have believed it. When?”

  “What is it?” Melissa demanded, punching Diego.

  He put his hand over the receiver. “Apollo and Joyce are being married two days from now. They want us to stand up with them.”

  Melissa laughed delightedly and clapped her hands. “We’ll all come,” she said. “There’ll be photographers and we’ll bring the press!”

  “Yes, we’ll be delighted,” Diego was telling Apollo. “Melissa sends her love to Joyce. We’ll see you there. Yes. Congratulations! ¡Hasta luego!”

  “Married!” Melissa sighed, sending an amused, joyful glance at her husband. “And he swore he never would.”

  “He shouldn’t have,” Diego grinned. He picked up the phone again and dialed. “I have to tell Dutch,” he explained. “I’ll tell you later about how we suggested Apollo should take his vacation in his car on Ferris Street.”

  Melissa giggled, because she had a pretty good idea what kind of vacation they’d had in mind….

  * * *

  Two days later, a smiling justice of the peace married Apollo and Joyce in a simple but beautiful ceremony while Melissa, Diego, the Brettmans and the van Meers, Gabby’s mother and First Shirt, Semson and Drago all stood watching. It was the first time the entire group had been together in three years.

  Apollo, in a dark business suit, and Joyce, in a white linen suit, clasped hands and repeated their vows with exquisite joy on their faces. They smiled at each other with wonder and a kind of shyness that touched Melissa’s heart. Clinging to her husband’s hand, she felt as if all of them shared in that marriage ceremony. It was like a rededication of what they all felt for their spouses, a renewal of hope for the future.

  Afterward, all of them gathered at a local restaurant for the reception, and Apollo noticed for the first time the number of photographers who were enjoying hors d’oeuvres and coffee and soft drinks.


  He frowned. “I don’t mean to sound curious,” he murmured to Diego and Dutch, “but there sure are a lot of cameras here.”

  “Evidence,” Dutch said.

  “In case you got cold feet,” Diego explained, “we were going to blackmail you by sending photographs to all the news media showing that your courage had deserted you at the altar.”

  “You guys,” Apollo muttered.

  Joyce leaned against his shoulder and reached up to kiss his lean cheek warmly. “I helped pay for the photographers,” she confessed. “Well, I had to have an ace in the hole, you know.”

  He just smiled, too much in love and too happy to argue.

  Melissa and Diego left early, holding hands as they wished the happy couple the best, promised to have them over for dinner after the honeymoon and said goodbye to the rest of the gang.

  Melissa sighed. “It was a nice wedding.”

  “As nice as our own?” he asked.

  “Ours was a beautiful affair, but it lacked heart,” she reminded him. “It was a reluctant marriage.”

  “Suppose we do it again?” he asked, studying her soft face. “Suppose we have a priest marry us all over again, so that we can repeat our vows and mean them this time?”

  “My husband,” she said softly, “each day with you is a rededication of our marriage and a reaffirmation of what we feel for each other. The words are meaningless without the day-to-day proving of them. And we have that.”

  His dark eyes smiled at her. “Yes, querida,” he agreed quietly. “We have that in abundance.”

  She clung to his hand. “Diego, I had a letter yesterday. I didn’t show it to you, but I think you expected it all the same.”

  He frowned. “Who was it from?”

  “From your grandmother. There was a note from your sister enclosed with it.”

  He sighed. “A happy message, I hope?” he asked. He wasn’t certain that his family had relented, even though they’d promised him they had.

  She smiled at him, reading his uneasiness in his face. “An apology for the past and a message of friendship in the future. They want us to come and visit them in Barbados and bring Matthew. Your grandmother wants to meet her great-grandson.”

  “And do you want to go?” he asked.

  She curled her fingers into his. “You said we might go down to the Caribbean for the summer, didn’t you?” she asked. “And combine business with pleasure? I’d like to make my peace with your people. I think you’d like that, too.”

  “I would. But there is so much to forgive, querida,” he said softly, his dark face quiet and still. “Can you find that generosity in your heart?”

  “I love you,” she said, and the words were sweet and heady in his ears. “I’d do anything for you. Forgiveness is a small thing to ask for the happiness you’ve given me.”

  “And you have no regrets?” he persisted.

  She nuzzled her cheek against his jacket. “Don’t be absurd. I regret all those years we spent apart. But now we have something rare and beautiful. I’m grateful for miracles, because our marriage is certainly one.”

  He looked down at her bright head against his arm and felt that miracle right to his toes. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it warmly. “Suppose we get Matthew and take him on a picnic?” he suggested. “He can feed the ducks and we can sit and plan that trip to Barbados.”

  Melissa pressed closer against Diego, all the nightmares of the past lost in the sunshine of the present. “I’d like that,” she said. She watched the sky, thinking about how many times in the past she’d looked up and wondered if Diego was watching it as she was and thinking of her. Her eyes lifted to his smiling face. She laughed. The sound startled a small group of pigeons on the sidewalk, and they flew up in a cacophony of feathery music. Like the last of her doubts, they vanished into the trees and left not a trace of themselves in sight.

  * * * * *

  About the Author

  DIANA PALMER

  The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi—New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

  Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

  ISBN-13: 9781460335963

  Enamored

  Copyright © 1988 by Diana Palmer

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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