Flame of Diablo (9 page)

she said sweetly.

'I should hot be too reassured.' He

sounded amused. 'If I decided I wanted

you, you would share this rather

cramped bed with me.'

The smile was just right. Coolly amused,

and more than a little sceptical. 'You

really think so?'

'Si, querida
,' he said very softly, 'I—

really think so.'

Inwardly Rachel was blazing with

temper at his calm assumption that she

would tamely co-operate if he chose to

seduce her, but she did not let her anger

show. And she was angry too at the way

he watched her/his gaze wandering

between her mouth and the three opened

buttons on her shirt. She had the

strangest urge to fasten the buttons, cover

herself up to the throat, but she

controlled it. Such an action would be a

blatant betrayal of her own awareness of

him which she didn't want to admit even

to herself.

'I was forgetting,' she said guilelessly.

'You have this "thing" about blondes,

don't you? Oh!' Her hand came up to her

mouth in well-simulated dismay. 'I

shouldn't have said that...'

He stubbed the cigar out in the ash-tray.

'Ramirez seems to, have been busy,' he

commented. He sounded almost bored.

As he probably was, she decided. The

blonde
senora
from the States was now

just a memory, and a man like Vitas de

Mendoza did not exist on his memories.

He

stretched

lazily,

making

her

conscious of the lean, muscular length of

his body beneath his close-fitting black

clothes, then linked his arms loosely

behind his head. The lamplight glinted

on the silver medallion at his throat.

'Ramirez has been talking about you

also,
chica.
He tells me you want to go

to Diablo in search of—a brother?'

'Yes, I do.'

He frowned. 'Why is this quest so

urgent? He told you of the army patrol?'

'I want to find Mark myself. I don't want

anyone else involved,' said Rachel, her

heart hammering.

He was watching her again, and why did

she have this strange impression that he

could see more with his one good eye

than most men could with two?

'But then I ask myself why,
querida,'
he

said musingly. 'And I do not care for

some of the answers that present

themselves. Tell me, Raquel, is this

brother of yours involved with the

guaqueros?'

Her hands gripped each other until the

knuckles whitened.

'I don't know what you mean.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'No? Then I

will

explain.
Guaqueros
are illegal

emerald miners—men, women and

children who search for the elusive

green flame of wealth in tunnels that

smother them, rockfalls that crush them

and rivers that drown them. They all

dream of the fortune that will be theirs,

but do you know where many of them

end up—as corpses in the back streets of

Bogota, shot or with their throats cut for

the sake of their pitiful finds. They say

you can find your way to Santa Isabel

where the
esmeralderos
live by the

bloodstains. So if your brother is in

Diablo looking for emeralds, you had

better tell me now.'

It was painful to swallow because her

mouth was so dry.

'My brother is a geologist on a post-

graduate field trip,' she said at last.

'Whatever he's looking for, it isn't

emeralds. The only reason I'm looking

for him is because our grandfather is ill

and wants to see him urgently.'

And there's nothing in that to interest an

army patrol, she told herself. Perhaps

there was a reward offered for

information

about

illegal

emerald

mining, and that was why Vitas de

Mendoza was so interested in Mark's

activities. Certainly he must have

another source of income apart from

acting as a guide. The sort of fee Carlos

had named would not pay for that

expensive silken shirt, or anything else

he was wearing, for that matter. Unless

his clothes were gifts from satisfied

clients, she thought bitterly.

'A geologist?' he said thoughtfully. 'An

expert who would know where to look

for emerald matrix if anyone did.'

'I suppose so,' she acknowledged,

wishing that she had described Mark as

a botanist or an ornithologist.

'And he chooses to make his field trip to

Diablo,' he went on, still in that

thoughtful tone. 'Not the most obvious

place, one would have thought.'

She shrugged. 'He had some Colombian

friends at university. Perhaps one of

them mentioned it to him.'

'Perhaps they did,' he said drily. 'That is

what I am afraid of,
querida'

Rachel wanted to get away from this

topic of conversation. She regretted now

giving in to her impulse to have some fun

at his expense, to make him believe she

had been waiting with bated breath for

him to offer her his services as a guide,

and then tell him coolly she had made

other arrangements. The encounter

between them was not going as she had

planned at all.

And something else had occurred to her

too. He had called her Raquel, as Isabel

had done. But he didn't know her name.

She had never mentioned it to Ramirez

or signed the register, and even Carlos

Arnaldez only knew her as Senorita

Crichton. 'How do you know my name?'

she asked suddenly, uncaring as to

whether he recognised her question as a

ploy to change the subject.

He shrugged. 'While I was waiting for

you to come back, I amused myself by

reading your passport. You had left it

here beside the bed. It made interesting

reading, and the photograph almost does

you justice.' He smiled lazily. 'But I

looked

in

vain,

querida,

under

"Distinguishing

marks"

for

that

enchanting heart-shaped mole you have

on your left hip. Were you afraid some

inquisitive

Customs

officer

might

demand to see it?'

Rachel had the curious sensation that she

had been turned to stone.

'You were annoyed at the lateness of my

visit,' he went on mercilessly. 'Yet I

came to your room earlier—using Juan's

key again. You were sleeping so

beautifully that I did not have the heart to

waken you.'

Theatre dressing-rooms were by no

means private places, and in any case

there

was

a

kind

of

backstage

camaraderie between actors of both

sexes in which Rachel had always

joined without a second thought. Yet the

knowledge that this man had stood

beside her bed and seen her asleep and

next door to naked made her burn with

shame. The scraps of lace she had been

wearing would have hidden nothing from

him.

'Thank you for that at least,' she said, her

voice shaking. 'Now perhaps you'll do

as I asked originally, and get out of my

room.'

He gave her a long mocking look as if he

knew all about the torment of rage and

humiliation she was concealing behind

an impassive exterior.

'You seem to forget,
querida
,' he swung

his long legs to the floor, 'you need me.'

Slowly she shook her head, and although

the edge had been taken off her triumph

by his disclosure, it was still sweet.

'Thanks, but no, thanks,' she retorted.

'I've made other arrangements.' She rose

to her feet. 'You aren't the only guide in

Asuncion, Senor de Mendoza, and under

the circumstances I'd feel safer with

someone else anyway. Now please get

out of my room and out of my life. I

really don't want ever to have to set eyes

on you again.'

He was very still suddenly and she knew

that she'd got to him, and a fierce joy

rose in her. So the irresistible, the

indispensable Senor de Mendoza had

been rejected at last, and he didn't like

it. If anything could compensate for his

abominable Peeping Tom act, then it

was this knowledge.

He came towards her very slowly, and

there was menace in every lithe

muscular line of him. She'd told him to

go, but she was tempted to run herself.

There was more to his look of

smouldering anger than slightly dented

pride, and she didn't particularly want to

know what that additional element was.

His hand closed round her arm, his

fingers biting into the softness of her

flesh, and she had to choke back a cry.

'Who is this man you have hired?' he

asked very quietly and deliberately.

'Answer me, damn you.'

'Let go of me,' she muttered between her

teeth. 'You're hurting my arm!'

'I'll hurt more than your arm before I've

done with you,' he said in the same

deliberate tone. 'Tell me whom you've

hired to take you to Diablo.'

'I'll tell you nothing,' Rachel snapped.

She bruised easily, and the thought that

she would have to spend the next few

days with the mark of his hand upon her

was an abhorrent one. 'If this is meant to

be a demonstration of your
machismo,

then I'm not impressed. I don't respond to

bullying.'

'Then what do you respond to?' he asked,

half under his breath. 'This?'

The hand that was holding her jerked her

forward, and she was stumbling, falling

forward against the hard warmth of his

body. She wanted to recoil, but she was

off balance, and his arms were a prison

round her, and his mouth a punishment

on hers. No one in her life had ever

dared subject her to such a kiss, and she

fought him like a wildcat, her fists

beating at his chest and, when that didn't

work, going for his face with her nails.

She heard him swear, and hoped that

she'd drawn blood, but he still didn't

release her. Instead his kiss deepened,

forcing apart the lips she had kept tightly

clamped against him. His mouth was a

degradation, but in fighting him she

degraded herself as well. It was better,

she told herself, to simply endure the

loathsome intimacy of his embrace. He

would soon grow tired of forcing his

kisses on a statue.

But it was one thing to resolve to be

passive in. his arms, and quite another to

carry it through. As if he had guessed her

intention, his kiss suddenly gentled. One

hand moved to the nape of her neck,

stroking it softly, sensuously, and she

was tremblingly, tinglingly aware that

his other hand had left her waist and was

sliding inexorably upwards over her rib-

cage to cup her breast. His mouth moved

on hers as softly as a breeze, his tongue

making a lingering exploration of the

outline of her lips.

It was a tantalising contrast in sensation.

His fingers felt cool on her bare nape,

yet burned through the silk of her blouse.

And all she had to do to escape him was

step backwards, out of this web of

beguilement that his hands and mouth

were weaving about her. For her own

self-respect, she had to break free.

But her slim body was moving of its

own volition, arching towards his in a

blind, unthinking response which had

nothing at all to do with self-respect, and

everything to do with needs she had

hardly been aware of up to that moment.

And it was Vitas who stepped back.

That, was what returned over and over

again to shame and torment her when she

was alone. That, together with the faint

smile which told her that to him a

woman's body was no more than a

musical instrument that he had mastered

long ago, and his parting words before

he left the room, leaving her trembling

and bereft.

'My felicitations,
querida.
One day you