-Then suddenly she was free—so suddenly that she fell to her knees in the sand, seeing dimly through a ' red haze that Guillermo was picking ,himself up from the beach an incredible distance away, heard the string of oaths uttered in only too comprehensible Spanish,
looked up and saw the icy fury that had leached the colour from her saviour's skin.
`Diego! ' she sobbed. 'Oh, Diego! '
Through the blur of tears she saw his face turn down to hers, but her swimming eyes obscured his expression. All her shocked mind noted was that he was incongruously dressed for the beach in his business suit, white shirt and red and grey tie. Was it possible that she had conjured up the vision of him because she had needed him so?
She brushed a hand across her eyes and saw that it was indeed a flesh and blood Diego who stood there, and that he had turned away again to glare venomously at Guillermo, who looked down on them from half way up the steps, holding out placating hands.
'It was not my fault, señor,' he whined shakily. 'Your wife asked me to
`Go!' Diego thundered. 'Get back to the boat, I will speak with you later.'
His eyes remained fixed on the cliff until Guillermo had leapt up the remaining steps and disappeared. Only then did he turn back to the frozen Laurel, still kneeling on the sand at his feet, her breath catching at sight of the frightening depth of fury reflected in his eyes.
`Get up!' he told her harshly, making no effort to help raise her, and she stared disbelievingly up at the face carved from granite.
'You don't believe him?' she questioned in a whisper.
'Get up,' he repeated, his eyes flicking contemptuously over the briefness of the bikini as she stumbled to her feet. The bikini that looked as if it was part of her. 'It makes no difference whether or not I believe Guillermo. What do you expect of a young man who
sees an attractive woman lying almost naked on a deserted beach?'
'Not what I got! ' Laurel's reflexes flared to life again. She lifted an arm to push back her tangled hair.
'No?' Diego's eyes narrowed on the raised swell of her breast scantily covered by the bikini and she dropped her arm quickly to her side. She was unsure of him in this mood. Anger at times burned deep inside his volatile nature, but now there was something implacable about him, about the way he tugged his tie loose and discarded it along with his jacket on the sand. His hands went next to the buttons on his shirt.
'Wh-what are you doing?'
'I am preparing to take pleasure with my wife, who gives freely to other men what she denies me.' His shirt followed the other items of clothing, and he bent to pull off his shoes and socks, bronze shoulders rippling with the effort. When he straightened and reached for the belt around his waist, Laurel turned and fled across the sand.
It was no real contest. Diego cut across immediately to the firmer packed shoreline and followed its curve until he was level with Laurel, then cut in towards her. His forward tackle toppled both of them to the powdery sand, his weight pressing the length of her back and legs abrasively against the fine, gritty particles. Pain seared her skin from the trapped heat of a sun that had beaten down on the beach all day long, and she turned agonised eyes up to Diego's menacing face.
'Please—you're hurting me,' she pleaded breathlessly. 'Let me up.'
His eyes flickered to the dazzling surface surrounding them, then he glanced up and back to where her
blanket was spread under the palms.
'Si,' he agreed huskily. 'If we are to come together like peasants, it is better that we have at least the comfort of a blanket.'
Laurel's immediate plan to walk casually beside him, making a break close to the steps so that she could run up them and call, scream, for one of the servants was foiled when Diego lifted her easily into his arms and strode off across the sand with her.
The feel of his hot, hard flesh against hers seared her in a different way than had the sun-baked beach, and panic rippled through her. She had wanted him, had her sleep haunted by dreams of his possession—but not like this, not when he was inspired by a lust to even the score with the men whose intimacies he imagined she had invited. And she had not forgotten Francisca, although it was evident from the set, determined expression on Diego's smooth-planed face that the other woman was far from his thoughts.
Her hand sought the support of his tensed shoulder muscle, feeling its hard smooth texture against her palm. The faint scent of aftershave lotion lingered on his facial skin, overriding the purely male odour of recently acquired sweat.
'Please ... Diego,' she whispered. 'Not like this.'
As if she had said nothing, he dropped her to the blanket and completed his own disrobement, his closed expression revealing nothing of shame or regret at his frankly aroused nudity, only an impatiently significant Sweep of his eyes over the tantalising brevity of her bikini. He dropped to his knees, and even that covering modesty was stripped from her in two brief movements that left her vulnerably exposed to the raking inspec-
tion of eyes that flared and burned with a primitive emotion.
'Diego, don't... ?
Lowering his body until it half lay over hers, and sliding a hand under her head so that her face tilted towards his, he taunted:
'Soon you will be saying "Diego, do" in the manner of all wives who desire their husbands.' His voice grew thick. 'When I kiss you here,' his mouth reached for and found the soft flesh cradling her pelvis and traced a hot line to the gentle hollow of her navel, where his tongue lingered briefly before his head moved upward again over her midriff, 'and here,' his mouth fastened on the rounded swell of her breast, shooting urgent sensations through her sensitised nerve ends and making her hands clutch convulsively at the blue-black head bent to elicit just that response from her. A strand of his hair fell forward over his brow as he raised his head and continued huskily:
'And here.'
Laurel's mouth lifted of its own accord to meet the unhurried descent of his, opening in ardent submission to his male seeking. Logical thought skittered away under the hard persuasion of lips schooled by inheritance to rouse a woman to passionate desire. Then there was nothing except the warm tangle of their bodies, a mutual exploration fanned by the mounting flame of desire that consumed them and sent Laurel's hands with swift sensuous—strokes along the ridged muscles of his back, feeling its moistness under her palms and glorying in the new-found sense of power that made her aware of her woman's ability to match the passion leaping from his veins to hers.
And all the time she was conscious of the gentle yet
relentless swish of the ocean as it rose and fell on the hardpacked shore ... pain was a short, exquisite agony that led to an explosion of uninhibited delight spreading upwards through her....
`Cristo!' Diego's expression as he leaned over her was strained, his eyes reflecting a mixture of triumphantly sated passion and disbelief. 'You were-f--a virgen,' he resorted to his own language as if not trusting English to express the depth of his meaning. 'Yet you told me—'
Laurel rushed in breathlessly when he paused, her eyes a bright glow of iridescent green as they darted from his proudly curved mouth to the heavy lidded darkness of his eyes. 'Oh, Diego, I told you that because I—I didn't know then that I—that—'
As she struggled for words to tell him how she had fought against acknowledging, even to herself, the attraction he had held for her from the beginning, before he had literally blackmailed her into marriage, she heard the sough of wind in the palm tree above them, saw the quick lift of his head, heard the muffled exclamation as his arm lifted in a defensive movement, and felt a moment of panic before utter darkness blotted out consciousness....
CHAPTER TEN
FLAME-COLOURED gladioli, their blossoms like huge orchids studding the stiff stems, filled her line of vision for a long time before she became aware of the white blur hovering outside the perimeter of her immediate vicinity.
'Hello?' she called tentatively, the sound reverberating in her head although the whi
te figure seemed impervious to its loudness. It must be the thirst, she thought dazedly, feeling the dryness coat her mouth and the surface of her throat. Visions of iced drinks floated before her, sharpening her thirst until she groaned with frustrated longing.
This time the plea was heard, and a woman's concerned face, encircled by a halo of white, materialised from the shadowed depths.
'Thanks be to God,' a gentle voice murmured in a language Laurel knew instinctively was not her own, yet its translation came easily to her. 'You have need of something, my child?'
Laurel signalled her craving for a cooling drink, and the white figure dissolved into the background to reappear within minutes with a liquid so cold that she choked on it.
'Your husband will be happy to know that you are again with us,' the gentle voice went on in the same language.
`Mi esposo? Laurel queried, a frown settling between her brows. 'I have a husband?'
'But of course. He has been much worried about you.' The white lady seemed to be having difficulty with the language she had switched to, as if she had just remembered that Spanish was not the mother tongue of the girl who appeared so fragile and slender under the light covering of sheet and blanket. 'I will tell him of your recovery and bring him to you.'
Laurel halted her swift withdrawal. 'Please—wait. Who is he? I—I don't seem to remember....'
'You are the wife of Senor Ramirez,' the answer came edged with respect. 'The Señor is an important man in Mexico.'
Mexico. What was she doing here, evidently married to a man of Mexican origin? Unaware of murmuring the question, she was immediately reprimanded.
'You are the wife of Senor Diego Ramirez,' the soft voice chided. 'There was an accident on the beach below this house, .'
Accident? ? The words meant nothing to Laurel, and she shook her head in bewilderment, feeling its dull ache as a heaviness behind her forehead. Her brows drew down in a painful frown. 'I can't seem to—remember.'
`Do not concern yourself, señora. It is to be expected that there will be some difficulty after such an accident. Rest quietly now, and I will tell the señor that you are conscious once more.'
Laurel's hand groped for and found the starched white sleeve. 'Please,' she whispered, 'tell me about the accident first.' The thought of facing an unknown husband was terrifying in the extreme. Who was he, what was he like? Was he young, or old as his apparent standing indicated? For that matter, who was she?
'You were lying on the beach, señora, foolishly under
the ripened fruits of a coconut palm. Many times skulls have been crushed by a falling fruit.'
'That's—what happened to me?'
'It was fortunate that the Señor was with you at the time,' a faint pink covered the pale cheeks. 'He was able to avert most of the force from the missile. And now, señora, I will bring him to you. It was only this morning that we were able to persuade him to rest, and that only on condition that he was to be awakened at the slightest change in your condition. Perdon, señora.'
Before Laurel could protest more the nurse faded into the background and she was left with a tumult of unanswered questions. How long had she been married to this Mexican man who had gone without rest for—how long? He must love her very much.... She should have asked the nurse for a mirror before she brought her husband to her. Her soft underlip was caught softly between her teeth. She didn't even know what she looked like! Was her hair fair or dark, her eyes blue or brown? She lifted a hand to touch the textured silk beside her face, but there was no way of telling from that whether it was ebony black or mouse brown. Her fingers explored the contours of her face, and she was wincing as they reached the tender spot above her eyes when she suddenly became aware of a man who had come silently to stand beside the bed.
At least she could see that he was dark-haired and eyed, that the skin over his finely planed face was olive in colour, and that he was in his early thirties. A brown short-sleeved shirt was stretched to capacity over a smoothly muscled chest, and beige slacks clung to lean hips and taut thighs. The black eyes were sober as they rested on her, and lines of fatigue radiated from them and slashed in white streaks from high-bridged nose to
firmly held mouth. His eyes darkened still more when they shifted to the area surrounding hers.
'Laurel,' he said huskily, putting forward a long well-shaped hand to cover hers. So her name was Laurel! She was glad; it had a nice ring to it. What had the nurse said his name was?
'Diego,' she murmured, and saw a sudden gleam come into his eyes.
'You know me, querida?'
The light faded when she shook her head slightly. 'The—nurse told me.' Her gaze filtered down to a tightly wound bandage round his wrist, its whiteness stark against the tan of his sinewy arm. 'You've been hurt,' she wondered.
'It is nothing.'
'Did it happen when I got this?' she pointed to her head. 'The nurse said you—averted a worse accident to me.'
His mouth tightened grimly. 'It was my fault such an accident took place at all. I should have known....'
Laurel stared blankly into the expressive darkness of his eyes as he broke off and sat abruptly beside her on the bed, his weight drawing down the mattress under her. There was something of significance underlying his words, but her brain refused to co-operate.
'How—how long have I been unconscious?' she asked, her voice sounding small and far away.
'For three days.' The raven blackness of his head moved sideways, his eyes dropping to the carpeted floor, the lines around his mouth deepening. Laurel turned her palm upward and clasped the hand that still lay over hers.
'You must be so tired,' she said gently. 'The nurse told me you had sat with me all that time.'
For several moments he stared broodingly at the hands clasped together on the coverlet, then as if the touch of her skin repelled him, he rose abruptly, leaving her fingers still curved upward.
'The doctor will be here soon.' His tone had a deadly impersonal quality, and Laurel frowned painfully, wishing her head would stop its aching. She couldn't think clearly with a thousand tiny hammers beating a tattoo on her brain. 'I will return when he has seen you.'
It seemed for a brief moment that he might bend and kiss her; instead, he turned and strode quickly away, leaving her puzzled and with an inexplicable prickle of tears behind her eyes.
If he was her husband, the man who had kept a solitary vigil at her bed for three days, why hadn't he wanted to stay with her now?
Laurel scattered crumbs from her breakfast rolls on the parapet edging the flowered terrace, smiling when the small, prettily coloured birds swooped from the nearby shrubbery and quarrelled noisily over the minute morsels.
'You are spoiling them, nina,' Diego said from the table behind her, a smile in his voice.
'They're so beautiful,' she murmured, turning back to him after brushing the last of the crumbs from her palms. 'I guess,' she reflected, taking her seat opposite him and reaching for the coffee pot, 'it's like having children. It must be so easy to give them everything they ask for. Would you like some?'
'Children?' he asked, his eyes startled and somewhat wary as they met hers across the table.
'No, silly, I'm offering you coffee.'
'Oh. Please.'
'Though come to think of it,' she went on slowly as she poured from the glinting silver pot, 'children wouldn't be such a bad idea either.'
She saw the familiar frown slice down between his brows.
'I thought we had agreed that such discussions could wait until you have recovered.' Diego took a slim cigar from the case and dropped his eyes to its tip as he lit it.
'You proposed that and I went along with it.' Laurel got up and moved restlessly back to the parapet, leaning with both hands on its sunwarmed surface and looking pensively out to the view of azure sky and turquoise ocean—a view that was totally familiar to her because it was the only one she knew. 'Diego?' she asked without turning.
'Yes?'
'S
uppose my memory never does come back?'
The words hung between them brittly in the shimmering, heat-hazed air.
'The doctors have said it is only a matter of time.'
'Time!' she scorned, turning her back on the view to face Diego's lean-featured face. 'It's been almost two months, and all I get is the odd flash of a boat surrounded by a thousand just like it tied up at a pier, or a picture of nuns praying in a chapel somewhere.'
'You were educated in a convent,' Diego said carefully, edging the ash from his cigar into the tray at his hand.
Weary of the long weeks of probing her mind and coming up with only a headache, Laurel snapped : 'Why can't you tell me the things I need to know? Maybe something would ring a bell somewhere.'
Diego tossed the cigar into the ashtray and rose
abruptly, coming across to her, suavely good-looking in pearl grey silk shirt and the mid-blue trousers of the tropical suit he would wear in Mexico City that day. His fingers burned like fire as they came to rest on her upper arms, bare in a sleeveless top of yellow and white stripes.
'You know that the doctors have told me not to explain the past to you,' he said patiently. 'It is best if you remember naturally, without shock to the system.'
`Did they also tell you not to sleep with me?' Laurel demanded, head tipped back challengingly to look into his eyes, hating herself when they dropped darkly to the outline of her mouth before flickering upward again. The line of his jaw tightened to a steel band.
`No. That was my decision.' His hands dropped away from her and he turned to the table to gather up the papers he had been working on there. `I must leave now, Laurel, I have appointments this afternoon.'
She let his long-legged figure stride away but caught up with him at the entrance to the master suite, following him into the smaller bedroom where he slept in the single bed between two narrow windows overlooking the side view of cliffs and curving white beach.
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