Excerpt of Second Chances by Diana Palmer

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 unbut-toned 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 Atitlán 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."