Minden, Maryland
Christian Montero let himself into the small, elegant apartment building in Minden, Maryland, where his fiancée, Dosha, lived. The building had only three stories and he walked up the stairs to her top floor corner apartment. Before he got to the very top of the stairs, he could hear his beloved playing Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and he continued climbing. But he paused as he got to her door. She was nearing the end of the piece that was one of his favorites. She was good, he thought, and he let the music wash over him as she finished. He knocked softly.
And in a few seconds she was in his arms and he held her firm, lush body against his rock-hard frame and enjoyed the light fragrance of the Tahitian gardenia perfume she wore. For a few moments he nuzzled her neck. "You smell good enough, you feel good enough and you look good enough for me to just swallow you whole. You had better speak up before I go ahead and do it."
She kissed the corner of his mouth and grinned. "I'll enjoy being a part of you."
He held her tightly. "I missed you this morning and you missed a good breakfast. I wanted to come over sooner but I didn't wake up."
"I don't wonder. You didn't leave here until one. It's a little after ten now."
"We have time..." He started to kiss her again, slowly, deeply and she shuddered with love and pleasure, her body relaxing against his until she felt liquid, totally compliant.
She pulled a little away. "Um-m-m, don't get your engine revved. We don't have that much time. Besides, you ought to be sated after last night."
"Are you?"
"Don't expect me to answer that. I'll only incriminate myself. Chris, if being engaged is this wonderful, what will our marriage be like?"
His index finger caressed her lips lightly. "Well, in a few days, we are going to find out. We have something special, my love, and everything in me tells me it will last forever."
Then she touched the narrow inch-long scar beside his right eye, kissed it a lingering kiss and he pulled her closer. "Querida," he told her. "I cannot begin to tell you how much it moves me when you kiss my scars. All memory of pain leaves me and I am whole again."
He held her away from him and his eyes ravished her tall, lissome body. She wore a cream-colored silk sheath, lined and closely fitted with a boat neckline and cutouts along the three-quarter sleeves that showed off her silken skin.
"We're due at the college at eleven," she said, "and you'll give your wonderful speech about Puerto de la Cruz and being a Spanish Brown Baby descendant brought up there. Oh, Chris, the students are going to love this. I'm so glad I thought of it. Summer school gets boring for most of them. Make-up classes. It's hot and they'd rather be out having a good time."
"Like I'm having right now."
She laughed. "Don't kiss me again or we'll both be having a really good time."
"Like last night? That was heaven itself."
"And more."
"I listened to you play before I came in. I told you Ramon Muñoz wants you to work with me on the Arts and Culture project in the United States, Africa and Europe." He took her hand and frowned. "Querida, you are so great a pianist and you enjoy teaching so much. Can you bear to give it up? Are we asking too much of you?"
She shook her head. "No. I like the idea of reaching thousands where I reach far fewer now. It's something I want to try and I'm going to love working with you." She tweaked his nose. "My own personal banker. The love of my life."
Christian was a bank manager with Banc International, a worldwide bank that was focusing more and more on the "people" side of banking. He was being groomed for a top level management post. Looking at his tall form as he took off his suit jacket, she almost salivated at his well-formed biceps, abs and pecs.
He patted her slightly rounded stomach and his eyes were sultry. "In a few months, you will be mostly flat no more. I am going to throw my condoms off a cliff and we are going crazy with bone-melting lovemaking."
At times he could be so funny and so sexy. Then just as suddenly, his eyes would become shuttered and he would be light years away. She shook him lightly. "Honey, where do you go when you're away from me like this?"
He came back to himself and looked at her tenderly, but his expression was somber. "One day I will tell you," he said softly.
She drew up her shoulders. "We're still standing here and I haven't quite finished dressing. No lipstick. No eye makeup. I'm really naked without my makeup."
He half closed his eyes. "Not as naked as you're going to be if you don't get started. I don't want to let you go."
"Me, neither. I guess it's a good sign. Did you talk with Socorro this morning?"
"I did and she wants you to call her later. My grandmother said to assure you that it is only good news she has for you and that she forgot to give you a jade ring she wants you to have for luck. The old girl is really crazy about you."
"The feelings are mutual. Honey, I'm not going to wait to send her wedding pictures. I'm going to take my digital camera when we meet with Roland for a fitting of my wedding gown this morning. She's a woman and she'll enjoy seeing every stage of the process."
"You're so sweet."
"I'm glad you think so. That's surely the way I feel about you." She hesitated for a moment; she shouldn't have asked it, but she was going to. "Christian?"
"Yes, querida?"
"Does this wedding remind you of your wedding to Isabel? Does it make you feel sad?"
He thought a long moment and his eyes were far away again as he motioned her to a sofa. "Let us sit for a moment, love." As they sat close to each other, he took her hand in his. "There's no comparison."
"But you two were so in love. I heard about your love for each other all over Puerto. You were the ideal couple, people said. What a horrible end."
He nodded. "Life deals us hands we never expected, but sometimes there are wonderful things we don't expect, either."
"I want to make it up to you," she said fiercely, but he seemed to listen to some distant drummer and she didn't call him back.
She got up, reluctant to leave him if he needed her, but he didn't seem to need her now. "I'll be back with you in a very little while," she told him.
He roused himself and smiled. "Do not let me have to come after you, then we will never get where we are going today."
She grinned. "But we are insatiable lately. We haven't always been this keyed up."
"We are anxious, eager to be married, afraid the gods are going to separate us and this I know I could not bear."
"I couldn't, either. I..."
She began to ask another question about Isabel, but he stopped her with a question of his own. "You had a deep love once and it hurt you. Do you think you have recovered?"
"Oh, yes, you've erased every other lover from my life."
"Do you think of him often?"
"No. I haven't seen him since he went to prison...." She hesitated then. "He got out just before I went to Puerto. I would've told you, but I didn't want to spoil what we were experiencing. He said he was sorry. Well, he damned well ought to be..."
He took her hand again. "Don't talk about it now if you don't want to. We all have our demons to exorcise. We'll help each other to do so."
"Yes. Sweetheart, I better go and finish getting ready. Make yourself comfortable. Fix yourself a drink, or I'll fix you one before I start. At the college Matt wants to meet you again and wish you well and the students want autographs before and after your talk. Oh, Chris, I'm so excited."
He grinned. "So am I, and it is not altogether about the talk today. I do not need a drink. I am a bee surrounded by honey. I feel like dipping in."
She threw back her head, laughing. "You're thirty-four and I'm thirty-four. We're not teenagers. Where's all this lust and passion coming from?"
"Love helps it along. I only know that around you I feel alive, intensely, feverishly alive. I'm at my best and my fervent wish is that I could live with you forever. I didn't feel that way before I met you." He gave her a quick squeeze.
"Okay, leave me please before we are a tangle of bodies again."
She got up, still laughing. "Oh, we're a pair, all right. We need to be married. We should've married months ago."
"But you wanted a big wedding."
"Uh-uh, my mother wants a big wedding. I would've married you a week after we met, but I'm her only daughter and I like pleasing her when I can. She's in heaven."
"And you, my love?"
She was somber then. "Whenever I am with you, I'm in heaven, too."
In her bedroom Dosha couldn't stop smiling. Seated at her dressing table with the triple mirror, she thought love had done wonders for her. She had never considered herself a beautiful woman, but thanks to Christian, she was close to it now. Rispa had always somberly told her, "Don't expect looks to get you what you want, love." But now that she had Christian Dosha knew she was radiant.
She spread her makeup cape around her shoulders, put a towel across her lap. She had already thoroughly washed and creamed her face, now she began to expertly spread on her expensive makeup, using liquid blush foundation, a touch of finespun rose-tinged powder and green eye shadow. Then she brushed mascara onto her long, thick eyelashes. She loosened her springy, curly-kinky earth-brown hair and the healthy, elastic curls sprang free. Christian loved to play with her hair, bury his face in it.
As she worked, her mind went back to the first time she had met him. Marty had asked her to go with him to a friend's house to see one of Marty's best paintings and that painting had turned out to be the stunning portrait of Isabel, Christ-ian's late wife. Dosha had stood with her brother, entranced at the genius of that painting. The spirit of the woman was there with them, her flesh rendered little less perfectly than Michelangelo's David. She had turned to compliment her brother and her eyes had locked with Christian's across the room.
She had stood rooted to the spot. Then he had moved toward them. He was ruggedly handsome, yes, but in a natural, unadorned way. He had a rough, masculine edge and he seemed to pose a hint of danger she was drawn to, was half afraid of and did not understand.
She had been faintly aware after a little while at Marty looking at the both of them, bemused before he introduced them. "This is Dosha," Marty had said. "I've told you about her. You've seen her photos."
And Christian's voice had been husky. "They don't do her justice. They do not capture her spirit." He had lifted her hand, kissed it, and that kiss had burned her flesh. Nothing she had ever felt compared with what she felt with Christian from the beginning.
He had asked her to drive with him to the hills below El Teide mountain and she had consented. He had invited Marty, too, but a smiling Marty had declined. So they had gone, had dinner in the early evening under a summer sky on the terrace of a quaint Spanish restaurant and their love had begun.
They had watched a waterfall sparkling by night lights and a full moon and she had been entranced. He had drawn her to him and kissed her throat very lightly. "You smell like the earth after a summer rain," he told her. "Fresh, full of flowers and sun. I'm glad I met you, Dosha, and I'm never going to let you go."
She had never been a bashful woman and she was forthcoming now. "I'm very drawn to you, too."
"You wear no rings.Are you free for me to stake my claim?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm going to court you. Will you let me?" Suddenly, he had sounded unsure of himself.
"Try me," was all she could say and she had moved closer and they were kissing deeply, their tongues exploring the hot hollows of their mouths and both were trembling with long held-back need and desire.
He had stopped abruptly, laughing ruefully. "I am going to take you home before I kidnap you like any pirate. With you, I am not altogether civilized, querida."
Then he had suddenly changed the subject. "Have you never been married? Have you no children?"
"No to both questions."
"But you've been in love. You are a woman who has been loved and deeply. What happened?"
She thought a long moment. "Yes, I've been in love and it turned out badly. My husband-to-be cheated on me and then he went to prison." She did not want to continue. "One day I'll tell you about it, but not now."
"I'm sorry." He lifted her hand and kissed it, then again.
"New love heals old pain if we let it."
Here we are, she had mused, talking about love, and we've only known each other a few hours. Could it happen like that? It could happen and it had happened to them just that way.
They had seen each other steadily during the two weeks she had visited Marty in Puerto de la Cruz and in a month they had become engaged. In the following months Christian had visited her in Minden, Maryland as often as he could and she had gone back to Puerto.
And, ah, his family. Chief of the Homicide Division Rafael Montero fell in love with the woman his son had chosen and his grandmother, Socorro, the noted fortune teller, told her why. "You are incredibly like my son-in-law's wife and my grandson's mother and my daughter, Magdalena. Oh, marry Christian and you will have two slaves for life. They both love you so."
Dosha had laughed, her eyes sparkling. "I'm afraid I'm his slave. I love Captain Montero, too, and you know I love you. You're a wonderful family."
"And you will make a wonderful addition. The cards have long told me that you would come to us one day. That knowledge has soothed my spirits. Now you're here and welcome."
Dosha came out of her reverie, rotated her shoulders and her neck. Good thing she had worn no lipstick a few minutes ago when Christian had kissed her so ardently. They both had deep hungers that had gone unfilled for a long time.
She smiled faintly again as she remembered the feel of his lips on her skin and smoothed on cinnamon-coral lipstick with a brush, then the whole stick. There, she was done. She wondered why she had put her dress on before her makeup and it occurred to her that she wanted to show off her form and the dress to Christian while he had time to watch. Now she removed the cape and the towel.
Standing, she stepped into her tan leather, medium-heeled sandals and twirled while looking at herself in the triple mirror in the closet alcove.
Excerpted from If Love Is Good To Me by Francine Craft Copyright © 2006 by Francine Craft. Excerpted by permission.
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