Enamored

Diego Laremos had never forgotten the last night he’d spent with Melissa Sterling five years before. She’d fled their home after a bitter dispute, hoping to escape their unhappy marriage. He hadn’t forgiven her for leaving, though he’d hated himself even more for driving her away. Seeing Melissa again had renewed his hope for a possible future together…

Melissa had felt the same way, but she’d lied to Diego in the past. Now she had to prove to him that she was indeed his love—his ENAMORADA—and that the truth could set them both free…to love again.

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my Alice with love

Author Note

Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Mills & Boon Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Mills & Boon Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Mills & Boon, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Diana Palmer

The Essential Collection

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AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2011

Calhoun Tyler Ethan Connal Harden Evan

AVAILABLE MARCH 2011

Donavan Emmett Regan’s Pride That Burke Man Circle of Gold Cattleman’s Pride

AVAILABLE APRIL 2011

The Princess Bride Coltrain’s Proposal A Man of Means Lionhearted Maggie’s Dad Rage of Passion

AVAILABLE MAY 2011

Lacy Beloved Love with a Long, Tall Texan (containing “Guy,” “Luke” and “Christopher”) Heart of Ice Noelle Fit for a King The Rawhide Man

AVAILABLE JUNE 2011

A Long, Tall Texan Summer (containing “Tom,” “Drew” and “Jobe”) Nora Dream’s End Champagne Girl Friends and Lovers The Wedding in White

AVAILABLE JULY 2011

Heather’s Song Snow Kisses To Love and Cherish Long, Tall and Tempted (containing “Redbird,” “Paper Husband” and “Christmas Cowboy”) The Australian Darling Enemy Trilby

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2011

Sweet Enemy Soldier of Fortune The Tender Stranger Enamored After the Music The Patient Nurse

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2011

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss The Case of the Confirmed Bachelor The Case of the Missing Secretary September Morning Diamond Girl Eye of the Tiger

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Prologue

The gentle face on the starched white pillow was pale and very still. The man looking down at it scowled with unfamiliar concern. For so many years, his emotions had been caged. Tender feelings were a luxury no mercenary could afford, least of all a man with the reputation of Diego Laremos.

But this woman was no stranger, and the emotions he felt when he looked at her were still confused. It had been five years since he’d seen her, yet she seemed not to have aged a day. She would be twenty-five now, he thought absently. He was forty.

He hadn’t expected her to be unconscious. When the hospital had contacted him, he almost hadn’t come. Melissa Sterling had betrayed him years before. He wasn’t anxious to renew their painful acquaintance, but out of curiosity and a sense of duty, he’d made the trip to southern Arizona. Now he was here, and it was not a subterfuge, a trap, as it had been before. She was injured and helpless; she was alive, though he’d given her up for dead all those long years ago. The cold emptiness inside him was giving way to memories, and that he couldn’t allow.

He turned, tall and dark and immaculate in his charcoal-gray suit, to stare out the window at the well-kept grounds beyond the second-floor room Melissa Sterling occupied. He had a mustache now that he hadn’t sported during the turbulent days she’d shared with him. He was a little more muscular, older. But age had only emphasized his elegant good looks, made him more mature. His dark eyes slid to the bed, to the slender body of this woman, this stranger, who had trapped him into marriage and then deserted him.

Melissa was tall for a woman, although he towered above her. She had long, wavy blond hair that had once curled below her waist. That had been cut, so that now it curved around her wan oval face. Her eyes were blue-shadowed, closed, her perfect mouth almost as white as her face, her straight nose barely wrinkling now and again as it protested the air tubes taped to it. She seemed surrounded by electronic equipment, by wires that led to various monitors.

An accident, the attending physician had said over a worse-than-poor telephone conversation the day before. An airplane crash that, by some miracle, she and the pilot and several other passengers on the commuter flight from Phoenix had survived. The plane had gone down in the desert outside Tucson, and she’d been brought here to the general hospital, unconscious. The emergency room staff had found a worn, carefully folded paper in her wallet that contained the only evidence of her marital status. A marriage license, written in Spanish; the fading ink stated that she was the esposa of one Diego Alejandro Rodriguez Ruiz Laremos of Dos Rios, Guatemala. Was Diego her husband, the physician had persisted, and if so, would he authorize emergency surgery to save her life?

He vaguely recalled asking if she had no other relatives, but the doctor had told him that her pitifully few belongings gave no evidence of any. So Diego had left his Guatemalan farm in the hands of his hired militia and flown himself all the way from Guatemala City to Tucson.

He’d had no sleep in the past twenty-four hours. He’d been smoking himself to death and reliving a tormenting past.

The woman in the bed stirred suddenly, moaning. He turned just as her eyes opened and then closed quickly again. They were gray. Big and soft, a delicate contrast to her blond fairness; her gray eyes were the only visible evidence of Melissa’s Guatemalan mother, whose betrayal had brought anguish and dishonor to the Laremos family.

His black eyes ran slowly over her pale, still features and he wondered as he watched how he and Melissa had ever come to this….

Chapter One

It was a misty rain, but Melissa Sterling didn’t mind. Getting soaked was a small price to pay for a few precious minutes with Diego Laremos.

Diego’s family had owned the finca, the giant Guatemalan farm that bordered her father’s land, for four generations. And despite the fact that Melissa’s late mother had been the cause of a bitter feud between the Laremos family and the Sterlings, that hadn’t stopped Melissa from worshiping the son and heir to the Laremos name. Diego seemed not to mind her youthful adoration, or if he did, he was kind enough not to mock her for it.

There had been a storm the night before, and Melissa had ridden down to Mama Chavez’s small house to make sure the old woman was all right, only to find that Diego, too, had been worried about his old nurse and had come to check on her. Melissa liked to visit her and listen to tales of Diego’s youth and hear secret legends about the Maya.

Diego had brought some melons and fish for the old woman, whose family tree dated back to the very beginning of the Mayan empire, and now he was escorting Melissa back to her father’s house.

Her dark eyes kept running over his lean, fit body, admiring the way he sat on his horse, the thick darkness of his hair under his panama hat. He wasn’t an arrogant man, but he had a cold, quiet authority about him that bordered on it. He never had to raise his voice to his servants, and Melissa had only seen him in one fight. He was a dignified, self-contained man without an apparent weakness. But he was mysterious. He often disappeared for weeks at a time, and once he’d come home with scars on his cheek and a limp. Melissa had been curious, but she hadn’t questioned him. Even at twenty, she was still shy with men, and especially with Diego. He’d rescued her once when she’d gotten lost in the rain forest searching for some old Mayan ruins, and she’d loved him secretly ever since.

“I suppose your grandmother and sister would die if they knew I was within a mile of you,” she sighed, brushing back her long, wavy blond hair as she glanced at him with a hesitant smile that was echoed in the soft gray of her eyes.

“They bear your family no great love, that is true,” he agreed. The distant mountains were a blue haze in front of them as they rode. “It is difficult for my family to forget that Edward Sterling stole my father’s novia on the eve of their wedding and eloped with her. My father spoke of her often, with grief. My grandmother never stopped blaming your family for his grief.”

“My father loved her, and she loved him,” Melissa defended. “It was only an arranged marriage that your father would have had with her, anyway, not a love match. Your father was much older than my mother, and he’d been a widower for years.”

“Your father is British,” he said coldly. “He has never understood our way of life. Here, honor is life itself. When he stole away my father’s betrothed, he dishonored my family.” Diego glanced at Melissa, not adding that his father had also been counting on her late mother’s inheritance to restore the family fortunes. Diego had considered his father’s attitude rather mercenary, but the old man had cared about Sheila Sterling in his cool way.

Diego reined in his mount and stared at Melissa, taking in her slender body in jeans and a pink shirt unbuttoned to the swell of her breasts. She attracted him far more than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t allow himself to become involved with the daughter of the woman who’d disgraced his family.

“Your father should not let you wander around in this manner,” he said unexpectedly, although he softened the words with a faint smile. “You know there has been increased guerrilla activity here. It is not safe.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” she replied.

“You never do, chica,” he sighed, cocking his hat over one eye. “Your daydreaming will be your downfall one day. These are dangerous times.”

“All 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 worlds apart, do you know that? Despite your Guatemalan upbringing and your excellent Spanish, you still think like an Anglo.”

“Perhaps I’ve got more of my mother in me than you think,” she confessed sheepishly. “She was Spanish, but she eloped with the best man at her own wedding.”

“It is nothing to joke about.”

She brushed back her long hair. “Don’t go cold on me, Diego,” she chided softly. “I didn’t mean it. I’m really very traditional.”

His dark eyes ran over her, and the expression in them made her heart race. “Yes. Of that I am quite certain,” he said. His eyes slid up to hers again, holding them until she colored. He smiled at her expression. He liked her reactions, so virginal and flattering. “Even my grandmother approves of the very firm hand your father keeps on you. Twenty, and not one evening alone with a young man out of the sight of your father.”

She avoided his piercing glance. “Not that many young men come calling. I’m not an heiress and I’m not pretty.”

“Beauty is transient; character endures. You suit me as you are, pequeña,” he said gently. “And in time the young men will come with flowers and proposals of marriage. There is no rush.”

She shifted in the saddle. “That’s what you think,” she said miserably. “I spend my whole life alone.”

“Loneliness is a fire which tempers steel,” he counseled. “Benefit from it. In days to come it will give you a serenity which you will value.”

She gave him a searching look. “I’ll bet you haven’t spent your life alone,” she said.

He shrugged. “Not totally, perhaps,” he said, giving away nothing. “But I like my own company from time to time. I like, too, the smell of the coffee trees, the graceful sweep of the leaves on banana trees, the sultry wind in my face, the proud Maya ruins and the towering volcanoes. These things are my heritage. Your heritage,” he added with a tender smile. “One day you will look back on this as the happiest time of your life. Don’t waste it.”

That was possible, she mused. She almost shivered with the delight of having Diego so close beside her and the solitude of the open country around them. Yes, this was the good time, full of the richness of life and love. Never would she wish herself anywhere else.

He left her at the gate that led past the small kitchen garden to the white stucco house with its red roof. He got down from his horse and lifted her from the saddle, his lean hands firm and sure at her small waist. For one small second he held her so that her gaze was level with his, and something touched his black eyes. But it was gone abruptly, and he put her down and stepped back.

She forced herself to move away from the tangy scent of leather and tobacco that clung to his white shirt. She forced herself not to look where it was unbuttoned over a tanned olive chest feathered with black hair. She wanted so desperately to reach up and kiss his hard mouth, to hold him to her, to experience all the wonder of her first passion. But Diego saw only a young girl, not a woman.

“I will leave your mare at the stable,” he promised as he mounted gracefully. “Keep close to home from now on,” he added firmly. “Your father will tell you, as I already have, that it is not safe to ride alone.”

“If you say so, Señor Laremos,” she murmured, and curtsied impudently.

Once he would have laughed at that impish gesture. But her teasing had a sudden and unexpected effect. His blood surged in his veins, his body tautened. His black eyes went to her soft breasts and lingered there before he dragged them back to her face. “¡Hasta luego!” he said tersely, and wheeled his mount without another word.