Enamored (22 page)
Authors: Diana Palmer
“Hello?” she mumbled.
“Melissa? Is Diego awake?” Apollo asked.
She murmured something and put the receiver against Diego’s ear. It fell off and she put it back, shaking his brown shoulder to make him aware of it.
“Hello,” he said drowsily. “Who is it?”
There was a pause. All at once he sat straight up in bed, knocking off the pillow and stripping back the covers. “You what?”
Melissa lifted her head, because the note in Diego’s voice sounded urgent and shocked. “What is it?” she whispered.
“You what?” Diego repeated. He launched into a wild mixture of Spanish and laughter, then reverted to English. “I wouldn’t have believed it. When?”
“What is it?” Melissa demanded, punching Diego.
He put his hand over the receiver. “Apollo and Joyce are being married two days from now. They want us to stand up with them.”
Melissa laughed delightedly and clapped her hands. “We’ll all come,” she said. “There’ll be photographers and we’ll bring the press!”
“Yes, we’ll be delighted,” Diego was telling Apollo. “Melissa sends her love to Joyce. We’ll see you there. Yes. Congratulations!
¡Hasta luego!
”
“Married!” Melissa sighed, sending an amused, joyful glance at her husband. “And he swore he never would.”
“He shouldn’t have,” Diego grinned. He picked up the phone again and dialed. “I have to tell Dutch,” he explained. “I’ll tell you later about how we suggested Apollo should take his vacation in his car on Ferris Street.”
Melissa giggled, because she had a pretty good idea what kind of vacation they’d had in mind….
* * *
Two days later, a smiling justice of the peace married Apollo and Joyce in a simple but beautiful ceremony while Melissa, Diego, the Brettmans and the van Meers, Gabby’s mother and First Shirt, Semson and Drago all stood watching. It was the first time the entire group had been together in three years.
Apollo, in a dark business suit, and Joyce, in a white linen suit, clasped hands and repeated their vows with exquisite joy on their faces. They smiled at each other with wonder and a kind of shyness that touched Melissa’s heart. Clinging to her husband’s hand, she felt as if all of them shared in that marriage ceremony. It was like a rededication of what they all felt for their spouses, a renewal of hope for the future.
Afterward, all of them gathered at a local restaurant for the reception, and Apollo noticed for the first time the number of photographers who were enjoying hors d’oeuvres and coffee and soft drinks.
He frowned. “I don’t mean to sound curious,” he murmured to Diego and Dutch, “but there sure are a lot of cameras here.”
“Evidence,” Dutch said.
“In case you got cold feet,” Diego explained, “we were going to blackmail you by sending photographs to all the news media showing that your courage had deserted you at the altar.”
“You guys,” Apollo muttered.
Joyce leaned against his shoulder and reached up to kiss his lean cheek warmly. “I helped pay for the photographers,” she confessed. “Well, I had to have an ace in the hole, you know.”
He just smiled, too much in love and too happy to argue.
Melissa and Diego left early, holding hands as they wished the happy couple the best, promised to have them over for dinner after the honeymoon and said goodbye to the rest of the gang.
Melissa sighed. “It was a nice wedding.”
“As nice as our own?” he asked.
“Ours was a beautiful affair, but it lacked heart,” she reminded him. “It was a reluctant marriage.”
“Suppose we do it again?” he asked, studying her soft face. “Suppose we have a priest marry us all over again, so that we can repeat our vows and mean them this time?”
“My husband,” she said softly, “each day with you is a rededication of our marriage and a reaffirmation of what we feel for each other. The words are meaningless without the day-to-day proving of them. And we have that.”
His dark eyes smiled at her. “Yes,
querida,”
he agreed quietly. “We have that in abundance.”
She clung to his hand. “Diego, I had a letter yesterday. I didn’t show it to you, but I think you expected it all the same.”
He frowned. “Who was it from?”
“From your grandmother. There was a note from your sister enclosed with it.”
He sighed. “A happy message, I hope?” he asked. He wasn’t certain that his family had relented, even though they’d promised him they had.
She smiled at him, reading his uneasiness in his face. “An apology for the past and a message of friendship in the future. They want us to come and visit them in Barbados and bring Matthew. Your grandmother wants to meet her great-grandson.”
“And do you want to go?” he asked.
She curled her fingers into his. “You said we might go down to the Caribbean for the summer, didn’t you?” she asked. “And combine business with pleasure? I’d like to make my peace with your people. I think you’d like that, too.”
“I would. But there is so much to forgive,
querida,”
he said softly, his dark face quiet and still. “Can you find that generosity in your heart?”
“I love you,” she said, and the words were sweet and heady in his ears. “I’d do anything for you. Forgiveness is a small thing to ask for the happiness you’ve given me.”
“And you have no regrets?” he persisted.
She nuzzled her cheek against his jacket. “Don’t be absurd. I regret all those years we spent apart. But now we have something rare and beautiful. I’m grateful for miracles, because our marriage is certainly one.”
He looked down at her bright head against his arm and felt that miracle right to his toes. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it warmly. “Suppose we get Matthew and take him on a picnic?” he suggested. “He can feed the ducks and we can sit and plan that trip to Barbados.”
Melissa pressed closer against Diego, all the nightmares of the past lost in the sunshine of the present. “I’d like that,” she said. She watched the sky, thinking about how many times in the past she’d looked up and wondered if Diego was watching it as she was and thinking of her. Her eyes lifted to his smiling face. She laughed. The sound startled a small group of pigeons on the sidewalk, and they flew up in a cacophony of feathery music. Like the last of her doubts, they vanished into the trees and left not a trace of themselves in sight.
* * * * *
About the Author
DIANA PALMER
The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi—
New
York Times
bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.
Visit her website at
www.DianaPalmer.com
.
ISBN-13: 9781460335963
Enamored
Copyright © 1988 by Diana Palmer
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