'There's such a thing as a special dispensation,' she shrugged, unprepared for his noiseless progress over the thick carpet on the fierce jab of his fingers as he spun her round to face him.
'Why?' he rasped savagely. 'Why do you torture me
so, when we could be happy together?' His fingers raked painfully through her hair, dragging her face up to the demand in his. Hoarsely, he questioned: 'Were we not happy that day on the beach, querida? You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Admit it, Laurel, admit it!'
She stared half scared into the animal glare in his eyes, then her lids fell to obscure the answering leap in the darkened green of her eyes. How could she deny remembrance of that afternoon when passion had leapt between them, urged on by the restless rise and fall of the ocean behind them?
'You know it is so,' he muttered hotly, and pulled her face to a position just under his own, his mouth coming down hard suddenly on hers, brushing abrasively over her lips until they parted with a sigh of resignation.
Her senses drowned in the sheer physical impact of him, her palms stroking the smooth muscled chest under the silk fibres of his sweater. How experienced he was —and not only with her. There must have been so many women in his life, not least of whom was Francisca.... Did he kiss her this way at their meetings in Mexico City? Lift her yielding body in strong arms and carry her lightly to the bed, nuzzling his lips at that vulnerable spot beneath her ear and—
She pushed against his chest with all her strength and the suddenness of her attack slackened his possessive hold on her. In another second she had rolled to the far side of the bed and bounced to her feet, shaking as she turned to rake him contemptuously with her eyes.
'Don't you dare touch me ever again Save your
Latin lover act for Francisca, I'm sure she appreciates it!'
Her brain refused the assessment of her eyes, which told her that Diego was genuinely bewildered by her accusation. Shaking his head, he got slowly to his feet and stepped round the bed to meet her.
'I don't understand. What has Francisca to do with you and me?'
Laurel laughed, her voice brittle. 'She has nothing to do with me. With you? Plenty! Have you forgotten, Diego? I remember it all clearly now, everything that happened, from your spending the night with Francisca after I'd found you kissing her, to the time you made love to me on the beach knowing my father was lying dead a few miles away! You're the most despicable man I've—'
'No! That is not true! ' He caught her by the wrist and swung her round to face him again. The glow had leached from under his tan, leaving his skin a faint yellow colour. 'I admit that I forced myself on you that day at the beach, but—' he shook his head again, his eyes bleakly sincere, 'I swear to you I had no knowledge of your father's death that afternoon.'
'You must have!' she cried, pulling free and going to sink with trembling legs on the dressing table stool. 'The police chief called me here on the day you saw the Justice Minister. When he said that my father had —gone, I thought he meant that—that....' She drew a deep breath. 'I thought he meant that Dad had been moved closer to Mexico City, and that he wanted to let you know that he'd set things going for an early trial. I—I gave him numbers where he could reach you in Mexico City.'
Diego moved to stand behind her, his hands searing her shoulder skin with their dry warmth. 'I received no call from the Acapulco police chief. I was already on my way down here to tell you that the Justice Minister had been in touch with me to tell me that the two men who chartered your father's boat had been found, and that they had cleared him completely of any complicity in their scheme to export drugs from Mexico.'
Feeling as if the tendons on her neck might snap, Laurel raised her eyes to meet his in the wide mirror above the dressing table.
'You mean,' she whispered, 'that—Dad would have been free anyway?'
'Yes,' he said simply. 'It was only later, after the accident to your head, that I knew of his death.' His hands slid tentatively over her back. 'How could you have believed that I made love to you knowing that my good friend Dan lay dead not far away?' he asked emotionally.
'I—I thought you wanted the best of two worlds,' she admitted wanly. 'Francisca in Mexico City, and me here. That you wanted to—make sure of me before I found out about my father.'
'Cristo!' he swore softly, and moved away from her, lifting one hand to rub angrily the taut tendons at the back of his neck, then made a confession she had never thought to hear from him. 'I will never understand the working of a woman's mind if I live for a thousand years ! Could you not tell that I loved you too much to be denied that day on the beach? How could I love you that way if I had another woman in Mexico City? I am no gigolo, like Guillermo, to pretend love with a woman. It is you I loved, from the instant I saw you. How could you think that Francisca or any other
woman could ever compare with you in my heart?'
'It wasn't hard!' Laurel retorted hotly. 'Didn't I see you kiss her with my own eyes, and—and later know that you had spent the night with her?'
`You were jealous, niña?' Far from being dismayed at her accusation, he seemed delighted.
'Yes, damn you, I was jealous I It was that night that I—I knew that I loved you, and I waited for you to come as you'd promised, then I—I saw you leave with Francisca and knew you'd forgotten all about me.'
'Oh, querida!' Two steps brought him back to her, his arms reaching down to bring her to her feet and enfold her within their circle. 'I spent part of that night with Francisca, true. And I had just kissed her cheek when you came into the study with your demands that I do something immediately for your father.' His hand slid down to hers and he led her to the bed. 'Come here, cariña, and let me explain about Francisca.' When they were seated side by side on the bed, his warm hand at her waist conveying his feeling as much as his huskily emotional voice did, he went on:
'When we were very young, Francisca and I were betrothed to each other. We were children at the time, but our respective parents thought it would be a good match. As it would have been,' his eyes twinkled suddenly into hers, `if Anton had not come into her life, and if I had not had a dream of the girl who would one day be my wife.' He sighed.
'Then Anton died, and Francisca returned to Mexico. Anton's business affairs were in a bad state, and Francisca asked my help in sorting them out. That night when you saw her in my arms was as innocent as if I had held my grandmother to comfort her. I went to Francisca's apartment with her, but stayed only a
short time. The rest of the night I spent trying not to come to you.'
`Not --?'
'If I had come, querida, I would have made you my wife that night,' he declared solemnly, though there was a mocking gleam far back in his eyes. 'And you hated me for forcing you into marriage with me in order to help your father. How could I risk it?'
Laurel straightened away from him to stare into the dark depths of his eyes where yellow motes danced. 'But you really didn't want a wife you thought was—impure, did you? You walked out on me on our wedding night because you thought I had been with Brent before you.'
Diego shook his head negatively. 'I did not leave you because of the posssiblity that you had been with another man. Though I will not pretend that the thought did not hurt my—what do you call it? —Latin temperament. No, it was because you called his name at a time when mine should have been on your lips, if you loved me. For the same reason I promised you freedom from our marriage when your father was released from prison. And then —'
`Then?' she prompted when he paused, and he smiled slightly down into her eyes.
'Then when your memory was gone you told me that you loved me, that you wanted me as much as I desired you.' She felt the taut stiffening of his backbone. 'But how could I take you when you knew nothing of what had gone before? When I had forced you to —?'
Laurel laid her fingers over his lips. 'If memory serves me now, I don't recall you having to use too much force that day on the beach.' She lifted a hand to stroke the t
hick hair at the temple. 'Are you telling me that you've really loved me all along?'
'More than the moon loves the stars, or the sea loves the rocks it comes back to time after time,' he said solemnly with a romantic overtone that brought tingles to her spine. But there was one more problem teasing at the back of her mind.
'Even if I don't come up to your mother's high standards?' she said half teasingly, swaying towards him but pulling back when a frown sliced down between his eyes.
'My mother? What does she have to do with us?'
Awkwardly, Laurel said: 'It's just that—well, Consuelo seems to think that you have a mother fixation, and that you—married me because I resemble her.'
Diego smiled bitterly. 'If I had a mother fixation, it would only be to remind me of which wife I should not choose.' Looking down into Laurel's shocked eyes, he went on brusquely: 'My mother was what the psychiatrists call a nymphomaniac. She could never have her fill of men—young men, old ones, married ones, single ones. My father was bringing her back from her married lover when they were killed in the plane crash.'
'Oh, Diego, I'm sorry,' she breathed, covering his hand in an instinctive gesture of comfort. 'I didn't know.'
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. 'Not many people do, apart from my grandmother. She hated my mother for what she did to my father.'
'I don't blame her,' Laurel shuddered, accepting the arm he slid round her and feeling the smooth silk of his sweater beneath her cheek. 'Diego?' she said tremulously.
'Yes?'
'Could we start again, do you think? I mean—' 'Where would you suggest we start, mi esposa ?' he
interrupted in a deep tone, his hand running familiarly over the sharply outlined contours of her body, making her insides feel like candle wax melting under a flame. 'Here?'
'Everywhere,' she commanded huskily, and forgot everything in her pleasure at being wooed by Diego in his expert way until a shocked Spanish voice said from the doorway:
'Señor! Señora! Perdon! The meal is ready.'
Diego's head lifted from Laurel's and he stared in abstracted amusement at the embarrassed housekeeper. 'Keep it warm,' he instructed drily, and returned his attention to Laurel's parted lips. 'As we are keeping our marriage warm,' he muttered under his breath, and Laurel smiled at him from the bed pillows with sudden happiness.
'Let's raise the temperature to hot,' she murmured provocatively against his lips.
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