Jacintha Point

by Elizabeth Graham

  He had liked Diego, almost before he had come to know him as the provider of all human comforts apart from freedom. Freedom he had loved, with the salt spray on his face and eyes narrowed to the limitless stretch of blue before him. He had wanted her to marry Diego, sure of the Mexican's love for her in a way she herself had never been sure. Until that afternoon on the beach....

  Her arm came up to cover her eyes, resisting yet helpless against the moment by moment reel unfolding before her eyes. Diego's nakedness, vibrantly sensual, as he leaned over her on the beach blanket ... the warm seeking of his mouth over every hidden crevice of her body ... the feel of his passionately contoured mouth over hers, searching for and finding the response she was unable to deny.

  She had loved him before that, before the sudden swamping of her senses by the purely physical appeal of him. Relentless memory, as aggressive now as it had been elusive before, ravaged her innermost being and left her weak, drained. The realisation of her love had come too late to mend a marriage born in hatred on her part. Francisca had made her untimely appearance on the scene—but Diego hadn't regarded her re-entry into his life as untimely. What could be more natural than that the embers of an old love should be fanned into flames again when he had promised an annulment to the wife he had called a shrew on several occasions? A wife his Latin pride could not accept because of his adherence to that double standard of sexual freedom for men and rigid purity for the women they married.

  Until that afternoon on the beach when he had taken her and known that she had lied....

  Her arm lifted from her eyes suddenly and her pupils dilated as they focused sightlessly on the ceiling. Diego had known that afternoon that her father was dead! Why else would he have rushed down from Mexico City after receiving the phone call from the Acapulco police chief? He had made love to her with that knowledge in his mind! But why? With her father dead, the reason for their marriage was also dead. He was free to marry Francisca when the annulment went

  through. Had it only been lust inspired by Guillermo's youthful attack?

  She bit on the knuckles of one hand. Whatever the reason, he had acted despicably, knowing as he had that Dan lay dead a few miles away.

  A sudden sense of purpose sent her limbs into action, and she sprang from the bed to half-run to the walk-in closet beside the dressing table, taking down her own familiar red hide suitcase from the rack at the rear. While she stuffed clothes into its capacious interior, her mind worked as busily as her hands.

  Where could she go in Acapulco without Diego finding her and bringing her back? That he would do just that she was sure of. Guilt must have generated the patient care he had lavished on her since the accident. No wonder he had been content to wait until her memory returned naturally!—maybe he had hoped it never would return in entirety. That way, he would have the best of two worlds —a submissive wife safely tucked away in Acapulco, and an ardent mistress awaiting him in Mexico City, his time neatly divided between the two.

  Her mouth twisted in bitterness. He had discovered in his arrogance that she was as pure as the snow that never touched this tropical climate, so she was fit to be the mother of his children. Why go to the trouble of an annulment when he had the benefits many men would envy?

  She snapped the locks on the suitcase and searched in her purse. There was sufficient money to support her for a week or so in a cheap hotel, apart from her air fare to Los Angeles. But she couldn't leave Acapulco yet. First she had to make sure where Dan had been buried. She could then make arrangements for his

  transferral to the plot beside her mother's in Los Angeles. He would have wanted that.

  Was Brent still in Acapulco? As soon as the question arose in her mind she dismissed it. He was certain to be staying in one of the plush hotels lining the beach, and they would be the first places Diego would search. No. She would go up into the hills beyond the Bay to one of the cheap hotels where no questions would be asked. She could hide out there for weeks without being discovered.

  It was only too easy to park the Ford at the airport and mingle with the newly disembarked passengers from the Mexico City flight. Easy until she glimpsed Diego's commanding figure in light grey tropical suit, his hand raised imperiously to summon a cab, which came to him immediately. _

  As it passed close to where she was standing she ducked back behind a trolley laden high with suitcases, but not before she had seen the tautly set expression on Diego's dear-cut features. It was almost as if he had glimpsed hell, she thought, frozen into immobility until a porter came and wheeled away the baggage. A hell of his own making, she reminded herself grimly as she lined up for a taxi, her suitcase dragging at her arm. His nicely set up world must have come tumbling down around his ears when he had heard the news of her sudden recovery. Had he told Francisca? He had been with her when he received Juanita's message. As she remembered the long weeks when he had held himself apart from her, Laurel's mouth twisted in wry reflection. His physical needs must have been well satisfied by the hot-blooded Mexican woman.

  'Señora?' the taxi driver interrupted her thoughts.

  'Where would you like to go?'

  'Oh.' Laurel thought quickly, then indicated the road to their right leading up into the maze of narrow streets high above the glittering main avenue of Acapulco. 'A small hotel with reasonable rates,' she told him crisply, ignoring his surprised lift of dark brows. A lady of such quality, his expression clearly stated, would be more at home in one of the luxury hotels lining the Bay. Nevertheless, he drove on up the hill and finally stopped before an unprepossessing grey-white building of four stories, a hand-scrolled sign beside the entrance door proclaiming it as the Hotel Rosario.

  'I will ask if they have a room for you, señora,' the driver turned to say. 'You wish for a single room?'

  'Yes. For just a few days.'

  Laurel watched his squat and far from neatly dressed figure saunter into the building and reflected sourly on the certainty that a room would be found for her at a highly inflated rate, and that the driver would casually pocket a percentage on the deal. But she was past caring about anything except the necessity for finding a hiding place from Diego. As far as that went, she eyed the depressing structure, this was the last place he would search for his runaway wife. The forlorn thought struck her then that her ploy of pretending to take a flight out of Acapulco had probably worked. Diego wouldn't be looking for her in the resort playground.

  The driver emerged from the hotel and spoke through the side window. 'There is a room, senora,' he told her blandly, 'but it is the only one and the price is high.' He named a figure that made Laurel's mouth tighten in anger. Her suite at the Panorama had cost very little more. But she needed shelter away from

  Acapulco's main thoroughfares, so she nodded tightly and got out of the cab, waiting until the driver had extracted her luggage from the trunk before going into the small hotel that smelled of stale tacos and chili beans. The proprietor greeted her with a bow shortened in deference to his ample waistline, and looked on smirking while she signed the register under her mother's maiden name, Olivia Forbes.

  The room he showed her to was on the second floor and primitive in the extreme. A huge ceiling fan moved turgidly above a rickety washstand and two-high-backed chairs in sagging basket weave, while a small curtained closet evidently served the dual purpose of wardrobe and chest of drawers. In one corner an uncomfortable-looking iron double bed was wedged against the wall, its spread a dingy cream shade.

  'The price is high for such a room, señor,' Laurel said stiffly, her nose wrinkling in distaste.

  'It is the season, señora,' he shrugged, his eyes bright with speculation on her well-cut skirt suit of coffee-coloured dacron, the smooth leather of her beige heeled shoes. His gaze was openly curious with an underlay of sly determination. 'You came to Acapulco without a reservation?'

  'Yes,' she admitted shortly, then added: 'But in a few days I will be moving down closer to the beach.'

  'Of course, senora,'
he agreed smoothly. 'But now I will bring up your luggage.'

  By the time he had panted upstairs with her heavy suitcase, Laurel had discovered that the bed creaked alarmingly at the slightest touch, and that the overhead fan did little more than stir the air in its immediate vicinity, and nothing at all to relieve the clammy humidity that made her hair cling damply to her nape

  and beaded her skin with perspiration.

  When she was at last alone, she stretched out on the protesting bed springs and watched the blades of the fan go slowly round. Maybe she should have tried to find Brent. She could have borrowed the money from him to cover the expense of a better room somewhere. But he would have asked questions, questions to which she had no answers. He would tell her with his lawyer's logic that Diego had no claim on her, that their marriage had been contracted out of blackmail and had no meaning now that her father was dead.

  She closed her eyes to shut out the room that was in stark contrast to the opulence she had become used to at . Diego might have no claim on her in a court of law, but he possessed the most important part of her ... the part that would never love again in that all-consuming way.

  A distant sound of thunder penetrated the covering of sleep and Laurel started up, panicking when her eyes swept round the strange room lit only by an eerie glow from the grilled window. The hammering came again, and she slid from the creaking bed and felt her way to the door, groping for the light switch beside it.

  'Who—who is it?' she quavered at the same time as she found the switch and flicked it on.

  'Diego,' came the low reply, and she instinctively turned from the door, glancing round the shabby room as if seeking escape.

  It was then that she saw them—tiny evil-looking creatures, scurrying across the ceiling and down the

  – walls, fleeing to the dark crevices hidden in the plaster and woodwork.

  Her ear-splitting scream brought an immediate re-

  action from the outside passage. There was a thump, then the sound of wood splintering as Diego kicked the door open.

  'Laurel! Querida, what is it?'

  He was beside her then, his eyes distraught as they raked her face. Wordlessly, she pointed to the disappearing scorpions and he pulled her roughly into his arms and sheltered her face against his chest.

  'It is all right, cariña; he soothed huskily, his hand stroking lightly over her hair. 'They will not harm you.'

  He held her shuddering body until it had quietened, then put her gently from him, holding her at arm's length. She regretted the movement. She had wanted to stay pressed close to his warm chest forever.

  'Are you all right now?' At her nod, he moved his own head to indicate her unpacked suitcase. 'Is that all your luggage?'

  'Yes, I—I didn't want to have to carry too much.'

  His hands tightened on her shoulders as if he was about to say something, but then they dropped and he bent to pick up the suitcase.

  'Come,' was all he said, and she followed him dejectedly from the room after picking up her bag and giving a cursory look around the room she hoped never to see again, trembling when she thought of the tiny creatures cavorting on the ceiling above the bed while she slept.

  The proprietor met them at the bottom of the stairs and apologised ingratiatingly to Diego while casting reproachful looks in Laurel's direction.

  'I am sorry, Señor Ramirez, I did not know that the Señora was your wife. She told me she was in need of a room only until her reservation became available closer to the beach.'

  'And you supplied a room—at a price?' Diego queried caustically, turning with raised eyebrows to Laurel so that she told him immediately how much had been charged for the sleazy upper floor room. His eyes narrowed on the embarrassed hotel keeper.

  'You will return all but one quarter of the money my wife paid you. That will be more than enough to supply a new lock for the door. Your behaviour disgraces all the respectable hotel keepers in this district.'

  To the man's further obsequious apologies, Diego turned pointedly away from him after he had produced the money and ushered Laurel out into the street where the Mercedes gleamed silver at the curb. After seating her at the passenger side, he opened the rear door to thrust her suitcase in, then came to slide under the wheel. He said nothing as the sleek car slid away from the curb and headed downhill for the bright lights of Acapulco proper.

  'How did you know where to find me?' Laurel asked in a low voice as they turned on to the avenue bordering the illuminated beach areas. Her eyes met the calm regard of his until he returned his attention to the road.

  His tone held a shrug when he spoke. 'It wasn't too hard to work out. You had left the car at the airport, but I knew you would not have left Acapulco without ascertaining if your father was buried here or in Los Angeles. I made enquiries at the more exclusive hotels before starting on the lesser ones up on the hill, where I recognised your mother's name as the one you had given.'

  Laurel's head turned sharply towards him. 'My mother's name? How could you possibly know my mother's name? I've never told you that.'

  'I knew it because I stood beside her gravestone while your father was laid to rest at her side,' he said quietly, and when she drew in her breath on a painful sigh he cast her a brief sideways look. 'You remember—everything?'

  `Yes.' She averted her head so that the tears shimmering in her eyes would be invisible to him. `So they're together again. I'm glad,' she said simply, a catch in her voice. 'Thank you—for that at least.'

  'At least? Why do you say that?' he was quick to ask, hardness edging his tone. 'Have I not done my best to make you happy, with pleasant surroundings and expert care, since the accident that took your memory?'

  She laughed joylessly. `I've never really believed, until now, that old saying that ignorance is bliss. And that's how you kept me, isn't it, Diego? Blissfully ignorant! You didn't even see fit to let me in on the basic fact that my father had died in your damnable jail! Oh, yes, that's bliss all right. What she doesn't know can't hurt her, including—'

  'That is enough, Laurel,' he broke in sharply on her hysterically-rising voice. 'We will talk at home.'

  Home! Where was home for her? Not , where she was Diego's name-only wife, sharing him with the woman in Mexico City who had resumed her status in his life. Not the city home of Diego Cesar Ramirez, where formal beauty abounded but no real warmth existed. The only place she had felt at home in the years since her mother's death had been Dan's boat, Dainty.

  What had happened to Dainty? she wondered as Diego's foot went down on the accelerator and they sped past the impressive Aztec-styled Princess Hotel, studded with lights outlining its pyramidal shape of

  broad based bottom tapering to narrow top floor. It was in the penthouse of that top floor that Howard Hughes, the multi-millionaire industrialist, had spent the last hours of his life. Just as her father had spent his last hours in the glittering southernmost point of the Mexican Riviera. The only difference being, she told herself acidly, that the jail's amenities were far removed from those provided by the luxurious hotel.

  The electronically controlled gates at swung open to admit the car, and as it swept along the drive Laurel wondered for the first time what Juanita and Carlos had thought of her sudden disappearance. Had they known about that scene with Guillermo on the beach that fatal afternoon? She supposed they must, for she hadn't seen Guillermo since. Was it true that if Guillermo hadn't made advances to her, Diego wouldn't have either that day?

  Or would he? Had he simply wanted to claim his marital rights before telling her that the reason for their marriage no longer existed? His pride ran deep, and it would be painfully scarred by the annulment of his weeks-old marriage. He hadn't known, then, that force wasn't necessary. She had loved him, so the giving of herself had been free and complete.

  The bustle had gone out of Juanita's rounded figure when she came to them across the lower hall, her face wrinkled in worried lines. Her voice was subdued as she greeted them, instinctive
ly seeking Diego's instructions regarding an evening meal.

  'Whatever can be prepared within an hour,' he told her brusquely. 'We will eat in the small sala.'

  Laurel felt drained when he left her in the master bedroom, the one she had thought never to see again. Its quiet luxury spread balm on her frayed nerves, and

  she was already shedding her clothes as she walked into the bathroom, envisioning a soothing massage from the jet swirl in the sunken green marble tub.

  She was sitting before the wide dressing table mirror brushing through her loosened hair with long strokes when Diego came in, his skin startlingly dark against the silky white of a high-necked casual sweater. His lean hips were encased in taut off-white denim, his thick blue-black hair brushed damply back, tamed from the shower. Flames lit briefly at the back of his eyes when they flickered over the swirled green and blue of the caftan that enveloped yet emphasised all that was feminine about her.

  'When you are ready, we will talk in the sala,' he stated calmly, belying the tense set of his shoulders. 'We have much to say to each other.'

  'Have we?' she countered, gazing intently into the mirror as she clipped two huge turquoise-coloured rings to her ears before standing up. 'I'd have thought it was pretty clear cut. My father is dead, so there is no longer any reason for our marriage.'

  Anger struggled with control in his mobile features, and at last he said flatly: 'Our marriage is a fact, querida. We cannot alter that now.'

  She moved restlessly away and moved aside the delicate lace curtains covering the full-length windows. The moon, still not risen high in the sky, sent a silver arrow across the ocean and bathed the outer scene with an eerie radiance.