Enamored by Diana Palmer

Sterling, loving her with a hopeless passion that he was never able to indulge. The loss had warped him and Diego had seen what loving a woman could do to a man, and he had learned from it. Allowing a woman close enough to love was all too dangerous.
    But the boy…it was hardly his fault. How could he blame Matt for Melissa’s failings?
    He put the coloring book and the crayons gently on the table by the sofa and handed Melissa the women’s magazine he’d bought for her. Then he went back to his chair and sat smoking his cheroot, glancing through a sheaf of papers in a file.
    “I’m going to read, Matt,” Melissa said gently, nudging him to stand up. “You might as well try out your crayons. Do you remember how to color?”
    Matt glanced at the man, who was oblivious to them both, and then at the crayons and coloring book. “It’s all right?” he asked his mother worriedly.
    “It’s all right,” she assured him.
    He sighed and got down on the floor, sprawling with crayons everywhere, and began to color one of his favorite cartoon characters.
    Diego looked up then and smiled faintly. Melissa, watching him, was surprised by his patience. She’d forgotten how gentle he could be. But then it had been a long time since she and Diego had been friends.
    They had an early night. Melissa almost spoke when Diego insisted that Matt pick up his crayons and put them away neatly. But she didn’t take the child’s side, because she knew Diego was right. Often she was less firm with Matt than she should be because she was usually so tired from her job.
    She helped Matt into his pajamas and then looked quickly at Diego, because there were two double beds. She didn’t want to be close to her estranged husband, but she didn’t know how to say it in front of Matt.
    Diego stole her thunder neatly by suggesting that the boy bunk down with her. It was only for the one night, because there were four bedrooms in the Chicago apartment. Matt would have his own room. Yes, Melissa thought, and that’s when the trouble would really start, because she and Matt had been forced to share a room. She could only afford a tiny efficiency apartment with a sofa that folded out to make a bed. Matt wasn’t used to being alone at night, and she wondered how they were going to cope.
    But she didn’t want to borrow trouble. She was tired and nervous and apprehensive, and there was worse to come. She closed her eyes and went to sleep. And she didn’t dream.
    The next morning, they left for Chicago. Despite the comfort of the chartered Lear jet, Melissa was still sore and uncomfortable. She had her medicine, and the attending physician at the hospital had referred her to a doctor in Chicago in case she had any complications. If only she could sit back and enjoy the flight the way Matthew was, she thought, watching his animated young face as he peered out the window and asked a hundred questions about airplanes and Chicago. Diego unbent enough to answer a few of them, although he did it with faint reluctance. But Matt seemed determined now to win him over, and Diego wasn’t all that distant this morning.
    Back in the old days in Guatemala, Melissa had never thought about the kind of father Diego would make. In her world of daydreams, romance had been her only concern, not the day-to-day life that a man and a woman had to concern themselves with after the wildness of infatuation wore off. Now, watching her son with his father, she realized that Diego really liked children. He was patient with Matthew, treating each new question as if it were of the utmost importance. He hadn’t completely gotten over the shock of the child, she knew, and there was some reserve in him when he was with this boy he thought was another man’s son. But he was polite to the child, and once or twice he actually seemed amused by Matt’s excitement.
    He was the soul of courtesy, but Melissa couldn’t help thinking he’d much rather be traveling alone. Nevertheless, he