Enamored by Diana Palmer Page B

see her. The past was still between them.

Chapter Four
    M elissa blinked, moving her head jerkily so she could see him. Her gaze focused on his face, and then she shivered and closed her eyes. He pulled himself erect and turned to go and get a nurse. As he left the room, his last thought was that her expression had been that of a woman awakening not from, but into, a nightmare.
    When Melissa’s eyes opened again, there was a shadowy form before her in crisp white, checking her over professionally with something uncomfortably cold and metallic.
    “Good,” a masculine voice murmured. “Very good. She’s coming around. I think we can dispense with some of this paraphernalia, Miss Jackson,” he told a white-clad woman beside him, and proceeded to give unintelligible orders.
    Melissa tried to move her hand. “Pl-please.” Her voice sounded thick and alien. “I have…to go home.”
    “Not just yet, I’m afraid,” he said kindly, smiling.
    She licked her lips. They felt so very dry. “Matthew,” she whispered. “My little boy. At a neighbor’s. They won’t know…”
    The doctor hesitated. “You just rest, Mrs. Laremos. You’ve had a bad night of it—”
    “Don’t…call me that!” she shuddered, closing her eyes. “I’m Melissa Sterling.”
    The doctor wanted to add that her husband was just outside the door, but the look on her face took the words out of his mouth. He said something to the nurse and quickly went back out into the hall.
    Diego was pacing, and smoking like a furnace. He’d shed his jacket on one of the colorful seats in the nearby waiting room. His white silk shirt was open at the throat and his tie was lying neatly on his folded jacket. His rolled-up sleeves were in dramatic contrast to his very olive skin. His black eyes cut around to the doctor.
    “How is she?” he asked without preamble.
    “Still a bit concussed.” The doctor leaned against the wall, his arms folded. He was almost as tall as Diego, but a good ten years younger. “There’s a problem.” He hesitated, because he knew from what Diego had told him that he and Melissa had been apart many years. He didn’t know if the child was her husband’s or someone else’s, and situations like this could get uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “Your wife is worried about her son. He’s apparently staying at a neighbor’s house.”
    Diego felt himself go rigid. A child. His heart seemed to stop beating, and for one wild moment he enjoyed the unbounded thought that it was his child. And then he remembered that Melissa had lost his child and that it was impossible for her to have conceived again before she’d left the
finca.
They had only slept together the one time.
    That meant that Melissa had slept with another man. That she had become pregnant by another man. That the child was not his. He hated her in that instant with all his heart. Perhaps she was justified in her revenge. To be fair, he’d made her life hell during their brief marriage. And now she’d had her revenge. She’d hurt him in the most basic way of all.
    He had to fight not to turn on his heel and walk away. But common sense prevailed. The child wasn’t responsible for its circumstances. It would be alone and probably frightened. He couldn’t ignore it. “If you can find out where he is, I will see about him,” he said stiffly. “Will Melissa be all right?”
    “I think so. She’s through the worst of it. There was a good deal of internal bleeding. We’ve taken care of that. There was a badly torn ligament in her leg that will heal in a month or so. And we had to remove an ovary, but the other one was undamaged. Children are still possible.”
    Diego didn’t look at the doctor. His eyes were on the door to Melissa’s room. “The child. Do you know how old he is?”
    “No. Does it matter?”
    Diego shook himself. What he was thinking wasn’t remotely possible. She’d lost the child he’d given her. She’d been taken to the hospital after