Enamored (21 page)

“It is I who am sorry. But our pain is behind us, and now our pleasure begins. This is only the start, this sweet sharing of our bodies. We will share our lives, Melissa. Our sorrow and our joy. Laughter and tears. For this is what makes a marriage.”

She reached up and kissed his dark cheek. “I love you so much.”

“As I love you.” He twined a strand of her long blond hair around his forefinger. His eyes searched hers. He bent, and his mouth opened hers. Seconds later she pulled him down to her again, and he groaned as the flare of passion burned brightly again, sending them down into a fiery oblivion that surpassed even the last one.

Mrs. Albright was putting supper on the table when they reappeared, freshly showered and rested and sharing glances that held a new depth of belonging.

Matthew was still in his room. They ate supper alone and then went to see him, delighting in the strength of their attachment to each other, delighting in their son.

“Tomorrow I will bring you a surprise when I come home from work. What would you like?” Diego asked his son.

“Only you, Papa,” the little boy laughed, reaching up to be held and hugged fiercely.

“In that case, I shall bring you a battleship, complete with crew,” his Papa chuckled with a delighted glance toward Melissa, who smiled and leaned against him adoringly.

Diego went to work reluctantly the next morning to find Apollo like a cat with a bad leg and Joyce as cold as if she’d spent two days in a refrigerator.

“How’s Matthew?” Apollo asked when Diego entered the office.

“He’s much better, thanks, but his mama and I are still trying to catch up on our sleep,” Diego laughed, and told him about Matthew’s attempt to make breakfast.

Joyce laughed. “I hope your fire insurance is paid up.”

Apollo stared at her with unconcealed hunger. “Don’t you have something to do?” he asked curtly.

“Of course, but I have to work for you instead,” she said with a sweet smile. She was wearing another one of the new outfits, and she looked very pretty in a red-and-orange print that showed off her figure to its best advantage. Apollo could hardly keep his eyes off her, which made for a long and confusing workday.

When Diego went home that afternoon, Apollo was at the end of his rope. He glared at Joyce and she glared back until they both had to look away or die from the electricity in their joined gaze.

“You look nice,” he said irritably.

“Thank you,” she said with equal curtness.

He drew in an angry breath. “Oh, hell, we can’t go on like this,” he muttered, going around the desk after her. He caught her by the arms and pulled her against him, his mind registering that she barely came up to his shoulder and that she made him feel violently masculine. “Look, it’s impossible to treat each other this way after what happened at the Laremoses two nights ago. I’m going crazy. Just looking at you makes my body ache.”

She drew in a steadying breath, because he was affecting her, too. “What do you want to do about it?” she asked, certain that he was thinking along serious lines and wondering how she was going to bear it if he wasn’t.

He tilted her mouth up to his and kissed her, long and hard and hungrily. She moaned, stepping closer, pushing against him. His arms swallowed her and he groaned.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised huskily, his black eyes holding hers. “I swear to God, I won’t. I’ll take a long time…”

She could barely make her mind work. “What?”

“I’ll get you a better apartment, in the same building as mine,” he went on. “We’ll spend almost every night together, and if things work out, maybe you can move in with me eventually.”

She blinked. “You…want me to be your mistress?”

He scowled. “What’s this mistress business? This is America. People live together all the time—”

“I come from a good home and
we
don’t live together,” she said proudly. “We get married and have babies and behave like a family! My mother would shoot you stone-cold dead if she thought you were trying to seduce me!”

“Who is your mama, the Lone Ranger?” he chided. “Listen, honey, I can have any woman I want. I don’t have to go hungry just because my little virgin secretary has too many hang-ups to—oof!”

Joyce surveyed her handiwork detachedly, registering the extremely odd look on Apollo’s face as he bent over the stomach she’d put her knee into. He was an interesting shade of purple, and it served him right.

“I quit, by the way,” Joyce said with a smile he couldn’t see. She turned, cleaned out her desk drawer efficiently and picked up her purse. There wasn’t much to get together. She felt a twinge of regret because she loved the stupid man. But perhaps this was best, because she wasn’t going to be any man’s kept woman, modern social fad or not.

“Goodbye, boss,” she said as she headed for the door. “I hope you have better luck with your next secretary.”

“She can’t…be worse…than you!” he bit off, still doubled over.

“You sweet man,” she said pleasantly as she paused in the doorway. “It’s been a joy working for you. I do hope you’ll give me a good reference.”

“I wouldn’t refer you to hell!”

“Good, because I don’t want to go anyplace where I’d be likely to run into you!” She slammed the door and walked away. By the time she was in the elevator going down, the numbness had worn off and she realized that she’d burned her bridges. There were tears welling up in her eyes before she got out of the building.

She wound up at Melissa’s apartment, crying in great gulps. Diego took one look at her and poured her a drink, then left the women alone in the living room and went off to play the memory game with his son.

“Tell me all about it,” Melissa said gently when Joyce managed to stop crying.

“He wants me to be his mistress,” she wailed, and buried her face in the tissue Melissa had given her.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Melissa curled her feet under her on the sofa. “What did you tell him, as if I didn’t know?”

“It wasn’t so much what I told him as what I did,” Joyce confessed. She grinned sheepishly. “I kicked him in the stomach.”

“Oops.”

“Well, he deserved it. Bragging about how many women he could get if he wanted them, laughing at me for being chaste.” Joyce lifted her chin pugnaciously. “My mother would die if she heard him say such a thing. She has a very religious background, and I was raised strictly and in the church.”

“So was I, so don’t apologize,” Melissa said softly. “Let me tell you, I learned the hard way that it’s best to save intimacy for marriage. I’m a dinosaur, I suppose. Where I grew up, the family had its own special place. No member of the family ever did anything to besmirch the family name. Now honor is just a word, but at what cost?”

“You really are a dinosaur,” Joyce sighed.

“Purely prehistoric,” Melissa agreed. “What are you going to do, my friend?”

“What most dinosaurs do, I guess. I’m going to become extinct, at least as far as Apollo Blain is concerned. I resigned before I left.” Her eyes misted again. “I’ll never see him again.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Stay for supper and then we’ll see what we can do about helping you get another job.”

“You’re very kind,” Joyce said, “but I think it might be best if I go back to Miami. Or even home to my mother.” She shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fit into this sophisticated world. I might as well go back where I belong.”

“I’ll have no one to talk to or shop with,” Melissa moaned. “You can’t! Listen, we’ll dig a Burmese tiger trap outside Apollo’s office door…”

“You’re a nice friend,” Joyce said, smiling. “But it really won’t do. We’ll have to think of something he can’t gnaw through.”

“Let’s have supper. Then we’ll talk.”

Joyce shook her head. “I can’t eat. I want to go home and have a good cry and call my mother. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, all right? Meanwhile, thank you for being my friend.”

“Thank you for being mine. If you get too depressed, call me. Okay?”

Joyce got up, smiling. “Okay.”

Melissa walked her to the door and let her out. Then she leaned back against it, sighing.

Diego came into the hall with his eyebrows raised. “Trouble?”

“She quit. After she kicked your boss in the stomach,” she explained. “I think he’s probably going to be in a very bad mood for the rest of the week, although I’m only guessing,” she added, grinning.

He moved toward her, propping his arms at either side of her head. He smiled. “Things are heating up,” he remarked.

“And not only for Joyce and Apollo,” she whispered, tempting him until he bent to her mouth and kissed her softly.

She nibbled his lower lip, smiling. “Come here,” she breathed, reaching around his waist to draw his weight down on hers.

He obliged her, and she could tell by his breathing as well as by the tautness of his body and his fierce heartbeat that he felt as great a need for her as she felt for him. She opened her mouth to the fierce pressure of his.

“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

T
here 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.