Harvest Moon (3 page)

Sitting up straighter, Regina leaned forward. “Is there something Oscar should’ve told me about why he did not want me to contact you until after his death?”

“What you’re asking me is something you should’ve questioned your late husband about.”

“I did.” The two words exploded from her mouth.

His eyes widened when he registered her rising temper. A rush of color suffused her clear, gold-brown skin, and her breasts rose and fell heavily under the lightweight fabric of her suit jacket.

Spreading his hand out, palms upward, he drawled, “And?”

“And he wouldn’t tell me.”

Placing his hands on the table, Aaron leaned forward, a feral grin curving his strong, attractive mouth. “And neither will I.”

Regina recoiled as if he had slapped her and slumped back against the cushioned softness of her chair. Whatever it was that kept father and son alienated would remain untold. Oscar had carried the secret to his grave, and no doubt Aaron would do the same.

It no longer mattered to her. She planned to begin her life anew, and her future would not include either of the Spencer men. She would always love Oscar and carry his memory within her heart, but that was what he would be become—a memory—while Dr. Aaron Spencer would return to Brazil and his research projects, which had become his lifelong obsession.

She would return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, reconnect with her family, then put into motion what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

Picking up her cup, she flashed Aaron a dazzling dimpled smile. Surprisingly, he returned it with a bright one of his own.

He took a sip of coffee, rolling it around on his tongue before letting it slide down the back of his throat. It was excellent. In fact, the quality was far superior to the beans grown on his coffee plantation.

“Did you learn Spanish after you moved here?” he queried, still wanting to know more about his enticing dining partner.

“No. My grandmother taught me.”

“Cuban?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.” What he didn’t say was that the largest concentration of Spanish-speaking people in Florida were of Cuban ancestry.

“How about you, Aaron? Why do you prefer to call Brazil home?”

He hesitated, savoring the soft, husky sound of his name rolling off her tongue. It was the first time she had said his name without his prompting her. Whenever she addressed him as Dr. Spencer he felt her sarcasm.

“My research.”

“Is that the only reason? Couldn’t you do your research in the States?”

“I could, but there’s no way I could manage my coffee plantation from thousands of miles away.”

What he did not say was that living in Brazil was far enough away from the States so that he wouldn’t have to hear or read about Oscar Spencer, though the news of his winning the coveted Academy Award for his last film had reached him when he sat down to view the evening news ten years ago. The moment he’d
heard his father’s name mentioned, he turned off the television. The pain of Oscar and Sharon’s deception still had not faded, after two years.

“Why don’t you hire an overseer to manage your plantation?”

“I have one.”

A slight frown wrinkled her smooth forehead. “I don’t see the correlation.” Her family’s business conglomerate, ColeDiz International Ltd., owned coffee plantations in Belize, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, yet her father or uncles were never directly responsible for planting or harvesting the crop.

Aaron smiled a full smile, the gesture transforming his face and causing Regina to catch her breath. His eyes tilted higher in an upward slant, and his full upper lip flattened against the ridge of his teeth, offering her a glimpse of their perfection. Her gaze moved slowly from his mouth to his eyes as they appeared to wink at her. She found his smile so infectious that she returned it with a dimpled one of her own.

“At the risk of sounding like an elitist, do you actually think I went to medical school to labor in the fields?”

Her smiled faded. He was laughing at her. Did he think she was totally ignorant? She struggled to control her quick temper.

“Save your sarcasm, Dr. Spencer, because I’m not in the mood for it right now.”

He sobered quickly. “I wasn’t laughing at you, nor did I mean to insult your intelligence.”

“Tell me, Aaron, what exactly do you mean?”

He now understood why Oscar had been drawn to the young woman sitting opposite him. Beneath her overt beauty it was apparent that Regina Spencer’s mien was that of entitlement. She was spoiled, as well as demanding. She’d met Oscar, wanted him for whatever her personal reasons, then claimed him as her husband.

And he knew he had to be careful—very, very careful—not to fall into the same trap. He’d been in Mexico less than twenty-four hours, and in that time all of his thoughts were filled with the image of the woman with whom he was sharing breakfast. He usually did not explain his work or himself to any woman, yet he found himself wanting to with Regina.

“Hospitals in South America were recruiting American-trained doctors, and I signed up to do my pediatric internship and residency in Brazil.”

Regina paused, a spoon filled with fruit poised in midair. “Why Brazil, and not one of the other countries?”

“I had lived half my life in Brazil. After my mother died in childbirth, my father agreed to share responsibility for my upbringing with her twin sister. My very proper schoolteacher aunt had declared openly that she would never marry. She quickly changed her mind after going to Brazil on vacation, where she fell in love with a man who was a coffee grower. She married him after a whirlwind courtship, then worked out an arrangement with Oscar in which I would spend the school year in Brazil and the remaining time in the States.

“Her husband died during my second year in medical school, leaving my aunt heir to a small but very profitable plantation in Bahia. She was a woman who never wanted to learn anything about coffee except how to brew it, but when she found herself totally ignorant about the product which afforded her her income she quickly changed her mind. Within a year she became an authority on every phase, from growing the plant to harvesting it. So when I was offered the chance to return to Brazil to be close to her, I accepted it.”

Regina was fascinated by his story. “Does she still run the plantation?”

Aaron wagged his head slowly. “No. She died three years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Aaron.” The three words came out of their own
volition, those words she had heard people offer her so often since she had become a widow.

He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, staring directly at her. “I miss her, Regina. I miss her more than I can verbalize. She may have been my aunt, but she became more than that. She was my mother.”

Reaching across the table, Regina covered his larger hand with her slender fingers. For the first time she noticed the difference in their coloring. Both were brown—hers a gold, his a rich, warm sienna. His fingers were long, his hand well-formed—the hands of a healer whose touch made her aware of her dormant sexuality for the first time in her life. And what she did not want to admit was that his touch was also that of a seducer.

His free hand closed over hers. “I decided to live in Bahia after I completed my residency. I became interested in microbiology, and joined a research institute that relies solely on the government and private donors for funding. I now head that institute. I’m also its largest benefactor. Every penny of profit I squeeze from the plantation I put into the institute.”

His fingers tightened on hers. “I will not leave my research, nor will I ever leave my plantation. Not for anyone or for anything.”

But you have left it, Aaron
, she wanted to remind him. He’d left it so he could pay his last respects to his father.

“Now I understand,” she replied quietly.

He released her fingers, then picked up his coffee cup. He took a sip, savoring its rich taste on his tongue. His gaze met his stepmother’s over the rim, and he registered a curiosity that hadn’t been there before. It was apparent she was as intrigued about him as he was about her, but he knew whatever he felt or was beginning to feel for his father’s widow would never manifest itself. As soon as Oscar was buried, he would take his leave. Oscar was his past, and Regina Spencer was certain to become his past, too.

They finished their breakfast in silence. Half an hour later both were seated on the rear seat of a late model BMW sedan as the driver maneuvered expertly down the winding narrow roads toward the bustling, smog-filled, overcrowded streets of Mexico City.

A
aron stared out the side window rather than glance down at the length of Regina’s long, shapely legs in the sheer black hose. He realized she was tall, and the black patent leather pumps added another three inches to her already impressive height, putting her over the six-foot mark. It was apparent she was secure with herself—quite secure, very beautiful, and now no doubt an extremely wealthy young widow.

“The funeral service will be private,” Regina stated, her low, husky voice breaking the comfortable silence. Not turning his head, he nodded. “Oscar wanted it that way,” she continued. “He made all of the arrangements a month ago. He wrote his obituary, eulogy, and updated his will.”

Shaking his head, Aaron mumbled a colorful expletive under his breath. “I thought he would’ve changed, but it’s obvious he was controlling up until the end.”

Regina bristled at his sarcasm. “It was his life, and he had every right to control it.”

This time he turned and glared at her. “And everyone else’s around him.”

“He wasn’t that way with me,” she said in defense of her dead husband, but the instant the words were out of her mouth she knew it was only a half-truth. Oscar’s decision to marry her had come with a stipulation: that she attend college after she completed her second and final film. She agreed, and when they relocated to Mexico she enrolled in the
Universidad
with a major in landscape architecture.

His grim expressions fading, Aaron gave her a tentative smile. “Then he was
very
different with you.”

There was no mistaking the softer quality of his voice. Oscar had agreed to share custody of his son with his sister-in-law, but had issued his demands once she decided to move to Brazil: Aaron would live in Brazil during the school year, but return to the States for every school recess; he would attend an American college and—when he considered a career in medicine—an American medical school.

It wasn’t until he returned to the United States to attend college and medical school that he came to know the man he called Dad. He wasn’t a man to whom he felt close enough to confide his secrets. He was Oscar Spencer, the brilliant movie director; the man whose word was the final one on a movie set; the man whose acting techniques were followed and executed by actors earning millions of dollars a film; the man whose methods were taught in many drama schools all over the world.

Shifting his expressive eyebrows, he offered Regina a warm, open smile for the first time since their meeting. It was apparent she had not known her husband
that
well.

“How did you meet Oscar?”

It was her turn to gaze out the window. “I met him on a movie set.”

His body stiffened in shock. “You worked in film?”

She nodded. “Yes. I was an actress. Oscar directed me in my
first film. His genius secured me an Academy Award nomination, and of course his own award.”

Slumping back against the leather seat, Aaron felt as if someone had put their fingers around his throat, closing, squeezing, and not permitting him to draw a normal breath.
She was also an actress!
Like the first two women Oscar Spencer had married, Regina had also been an actress. What was it about these women that his father had not been able to resist?

He also had to ask himself why he, too, was drawn to actresses. His own mother had been one. Then he had fallen in love with Sharon, who had been a drama major. And now there was Regina Spencer—his father’s widow, and now his stepmother.

What he was forced to admit to himself was that he
was
attracted to Regina. It just wasn’t her beauty. Only a blind man would not see her most obvious appealing characteristic—her face—but it was the total package: her voice, body, and most of all the controlled sensuality she probably wasn’t aware she possessed. It was apparent her youth and her sensuality had prompted Oscar to offer marriage, while it was evident that greed and cunning made Regina accept his proposal.

Like father, like son?
No, he prayed silently. He had wanted a lot of things in his life, but he never wanted to be Oscar Clayborne Spencer.

Aaron sat on a straight-back chair beside Regina, listening to the funeral director. His father had delineated every phase of his funeral, including specific instructions for a graveside, closed-casket service only. There was not to be a wake.

He waited for the conclusion of the arrangements, then asked, “May I see my father’s body?”

The solemn-looking director glanced at Regina. She lowered her lashes, signaling her approval. “
Sí
, Dr. Spencer,” he replied, rising to his feet. “Excuse me, Señora.”

She nodded, acknowledging their departure. She did not know
why, but Aaron’s request to see his father’s body surprised her. Not once since his arrival had he exhibited any emotion which had indicated sorrow or grief. She thought perhaps because he was a doctor—who was familiar with death and dying—that he had become an expert in concealing his feelings. It was either that, or his and Oscar’s alienation had vanquished any or all love between father and son.

She could not imagine not having her father in her life, even though she had spent the first nine years not knowing who he was. Closing her eyes tightly, she mentally dismissed the repugnant family secrets that had forced her twenty-two-year-old pregnant mother to flee Florida and hide from Martin Cole for a decade. If Martin hadn’t gotten his half brother to find her mother, her existence would have mirrored Aaron’s—not knowing where her father resided or whether he was dead or alive.

She shook her head, not opening her eyes. That was not what she wanted for herself, and, if she ever remarried, for her children.

“Are you all right, Señora Spencer? Perhaps you would like me to get you something to drink?”

Regina opened her eyes, realizing the funeral director had returned. His expression mirrored his concern. Offering him a gentle smile, she said, “No,
gracias
, Señor Padilla. I’m fine.”

And she was. She and Aaron had finalized the arrangements for the graveside service, and within another three days the earth would claim Oscar’s body as it had every existing organism since the beginning of creation.

Aaron walked into the small, air-cooled antechamber and stared at his father’s cadaver. The sight of the emaciated form numbed him as he stood motionless, holding his breath. The man lying on a table bore no resemblance to the one he remembered. The Oscar Spencer he knew was tall, proud, elegant, not withered with age and disease. The angular face—which had
been a collage of African and Native-American features that had afforded him a refined handsomeness both men and women had found attractive—was now a shrunken death mask.

Scathing, acerbic words he had rehearsed for years died on his tongue, and the longer his gaze lingered on his father’s body the more he knew he had made the most grievous mistake of his life. He should not have permitted a woman to come between them. It should not have mattered that he loved Sharon enough to offer marriage. She should have become the recipient of his venomous fury, not Oscar.

They had been father and son—bound by blood. And there had been no doubt that his father had loved him, loved him more than he deserved to be loved.

Turning on his heel, he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He delayed returning to the director’s office, pressed his back to a wall, and struggled for control of his fragile emotions. Covering his face with both hands, he mumbled a prayer of forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I am so sorry, Father.” His voice seemed to rumble in his chest, the very sound of it knifing his heart and leaving him to hemorrhage unchecked. Why hadn’t he followed through after the telephone call? Why hadn’t he hired someone to find his father? The whys attacked him relentlessly as he stood in the shadows, wanting to bellow out his pain and frustration.

His mother had given up her life giving birth to him, and his father had wasted away slowly in a foreign country without the flesh of his flesh at his side. Pushing himself away from the wall, he retraced his steps and made his way back to the director’s office.

His tortured gaze impaled Regina as she rose to her feet at his return. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to blame her—blame her for not contacting him sooner. What had she been trying to prove by playing the dutiful little wife and
obeying
her husband’s demands? As he moved closer to her something
unknown communicated that Regina was anything but a docile or submissive woman.

He stood over her, his eyes conveying the fury warring within him. “I’m finished here.”

She tilted her chin and shifted an arching eyebrow. “So am I.” Taking purposeful steps, she walked out of the office, her head held high and her back ramrod straight.

Aaron found himself doing what he had done the night of his arrival—following her lead. He wondered whether she had been the one doing the leading in her marriage. Had she talked Oscar into not contacting him until after his death? Had she feared that his reconciling with his father would leave her with a smaller portion of her husband’s estate?

Quickening his stride, he caught up with her as she pushed open the door and walked out onto the sidewalk, his fingers tightening around her upper arm. She lost her footing, falling back against his chest. His free arm curved around her waist, pressing her hips to his middle until she regained her balance.

Turning in his embrace, she stared up at him, her breasts heaving in a measured rising and falling rhythm. The restless energy of Mexico City’s populace crowding the wide avenues, the raucous sounds of honking car horns, and the incessant babble of spoken Spanish along with native Indian dialects faded as Aaron lost himself in the fragrant softness of Regina’s curving body.

He noted the obsidian darkness of her large eyes for the first time, eyes so black no light would ever penetrate their midnight depths. His gaze lingered leisurely on her lush, succulent mouth—a mouth that begged to be kissed.

The conflicting emotions of anguish and defeat that had assailed him when he saw Oscar’s body hadn’t faded, and he wanted to ravage Regina’s mouth until she pleaded with him to stop. He wanted to punish her, make her feel pain, and in doing so hopefully eradicate his own. Her eyes filled with tears, turning
them into gems of polished onyx as she struggled valiantly to keep them from overflowing and embarrassing her.

Aaron held her to his heart, feeling her warmth, the fragility of her slender body, the sweetness clinging to her flesh, and registering the shudders she was helpless to control. Tightening his hold on her waist, he molded her length to his, burying his face against her silken neck.

“I just want it over, Aaron,” she sobbed softly.

Inhaling deeply, he enjoyed all that made Regina Spencer who she was. Holding her and reveling in her sensual femininity made him realize that he did not think of her as the woman who had married his father, or as his stepmother.

She was a temptress who managed to lure him into her web of seduction without saying a word, and he was more like Oscar Spencer than he wanted to admit, because, like his father, he was trapped in a spell from which he did not want to escape. He had known her less than twenty-four hours, yet he wanted to know her in every way possible. She was a woman of mystery, and he wanted to peel away the layers under the overt beauty, to discover the real person who appeared secure and mature beyond her years.

“It will be over—soon,” he crooned in a deep, comforting voice.

Nodding, she touched her fingertips to her eyes. “I want to go home.”

He led her around the building and to the parking lot. Their driver stood beside the car, holding open the rear door. Aaron helped her in, then slid onto the seat beside her. She sat, back pressed to the seat, eyes closed. Reaching over, he took her hand in his, holding it protectively. Her fingers stiffened momentarily, then relaxed in his grip.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him through a shimmer of sparkling tears. “I’m sorry I fell apart back there.”

He returned her smile with a wink. “You’re entitled. I know it hasn’t been easy for you.”

“What I had to go through was nothing. It was Oscar who suffered—”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” he interrupted.

“Yes, I do. I promised Oscar I would tell you.”

Vertical lines appeared between his eyes. “Tell me what?”

She pulled her hand away from his. “Everything. I met Oscar for the first time when I was seventeen….”