The Black Invader

by Rebecca Stratton

  'I have according to you!'

  'Nothing of the sort!' She tried once more to brush the tears from her eyes so that she could see him better, and she thought she had never seen him look more dark and menacing. Even so his voice was quiet and well controlled, with just that trace of huskiness, and it was in sharp contrast to the burning intensity she saw in his eyes. He must have felt her relax slightly after a moment or two, for he eased his grip a little and looked directly into her eyes. 'Are you going to listen?' he asked.

  'I don't seem to have much option!'

  'You haven't!' he retorted, then sighed after a moment or two and shook his head. Then his thumbs slid upward and moved with sensual slowness over the soft skin of her throat, and she shivered in spite of herself. 'I can promise you that nothing is likely to come of this. Tio Enrique doesn't find it as easy to argue with Rosa as forthrightly as I know he'd like to '

  'Because she'd threaten to take Margarita away for good if he did,' Kirstie observed, and he narrowed his eyes sHghtly.

  'Then you know how much he has to lose. I don't think you'll find him very much different from what he's always been, just a little more—wary. Don't make it any harder for him, Kirstie, please; go in as usual, he'll be grateful if you do. The sooner this is allowed to die down the better.'

  It was what she had intended doing, but that was

  before there was any question of Rosa Montanes not clearing her, and she hesitated. 'I—I don't know if I can,' she said, but Miguel wasn't content with that.

  He squeezed his hard fingers into her shoulders and held her firm. 'Of course you can,' he insisted quietly. 'One thing you've never lacked is courage, and unless you want to give everyone the impression that you're afraid to face them, you must go in as usual, Kirstie, hmm?'

  His logic was unarguable, and yet it wasn't going to be easy at all. 'I'll try, if you say so,' she told him with unexpected meekness, and Miguel's faint smile remarked on it.

  'If I say so?'

  'It makes some sense,' she admitted. 'After all, I haven't anything to hide for, I haven't done anything wrong whatever any of you think. I didn't touch Senora Montanes except to help her, so why should I feel guilty about it?'

  'Good!' Once more his fingers pressed into her shoulders and he let his thumbs slide up to stroke the side of her neck with a light evocative touch that made her shiver. 'Now—there was another matter you mentioned that interests me. You said something about Casa de Rodriguez being turned into a paradorel Did Luis tell you about that?'

  It wasn't a subject that Kirstie could discuss easily, and particularly not so soon after being told with shattering frankness that Rosa Montanes had blamed her for her injuries, and she looked at him reproachfully. 'Abuelo told me,' she said, and found it irresistible to add, 'and I told him I didn't need to ask whose idea it was.'

  'You assumed it was me?' He didn't give her the opportunity to answer, but nodded grimly. 'Yes, of course, you would. Anything that happens that you don't agree with you automatically attribute to me, don't you, Kirstie?'

  'Not without reason,' Kirstie insisted, though not

  very happily. If only she had not been so impulsive and broken her promise to her grandfather not to voice her suspicion to Miguel. 'I can't believe your uncle would think up a scheme like that, and Luis— well, who could think of Luis ever turning a beautiful home Hke Casa de Rodriguez into a one-night stand for passing tourists?'

  * Whereas you consider me capable of just about any dirty trick you can think of!' Miguel suggested harshly, and Kirstie stirred uneasily in his grasp. 'Isn't that it, Kirstie?'

  Kirstie didn't reply at once. She didn't like the idea of him being responsible, she had to admit it, but in her mind there seemed no alternative. It would have been easier to blame him if only she didn't so easily recall his gentle concern when her grandfather was missing, and the thrill of being in his arms and of being kissed as she had never been kissed before. Now it made her much too unhappy.

  *I—I don't know who else to blame,' she confessed in a very small voice, and he sighed deeply as he lifted her face and fixed that disturbingly intent gaze on her again.

  'I'm sorry about that,' he said very softly. 'Very sorry indeed.'

  Kirstie raised her eyes briefly, alarmed by the rapid and breathtaking beat of her heart. 'I hadn't meant to say anything to you,' she confessed. 'I promised Abuelo I wouldn't, because we owe you '

  'You owe me nothing!' He cut her off with a harshness that she flinched from, and the blazing fierceness of his eyes made her catch her breath. Then he took his hands from her shoulders and ran one of them through his hair, turning back to her swiftly, as if something had just occurred to him. 'Have you mentioned this to Luis?' he asked, and she shook her head. 'Because you just can't believe he'd do such a thing, eh?'

  'I don't believe he could.'

  'And you hope to marry him, of course.'

  Kirstie's colour flared, and she shook her head until her hair swung back and forth across her face. 'That was Abuelo's idea, not mine,' she told him. 'I told Luis about it, and he was furious.'

  'Oh?' Miguel looked as if he found it hard to believe. 'Then Luis is a bigger fool than I took him for, and I can't imagine why you—warned him.'

  'That you and Abuelo were trying to marry us off?' She shook her head again. 'It was a kind of self-defence. I didn't want Luis to think I had marriage in mind any more than he had.'

  'I see.'

  Something she saw in his eyes was oddly disturbing so that she glanced hastily at her watch as she sought to change the subject. 'Don't you think that if I'm going to work this morning, I'd better go?' she suggested. 'If you're sure it's all right.' He gave her arm a slight squeeze as he slid a hand under her elbow and steered her back towards the house, and they were already approaching the shadowy cool verandah when she spoke again in a quick anxious voice that sought to clear away the last doubts about the welcome she was hkely to get. 'Don Miguel, I hope your uncle does believe I had nothing to do with Senora Montanes' accident.'

  'He does.'

  She glanced up at him, driven on by some irresistible need to ask. 'And you?'

  They came to a halt once more just under the overhanging balcony, and Miguel turned her slowly round to face him. 'You may not believe it,' he said softly, 'but I've spent most of the weekend talking Rosa out of sending for the guardia'

  Kirstie looked up at him with startled blue eyes. 'You—you spoke up for me?' He nodded. 'But why?'

  'Because I don't believe everything I'm told, O.K.?' She was shaking her head slowly in blank disbelief. 'Is it so hard to accept?' he asked.

  'I—I just don't know how to thank you.' She looked up and caught something in his eyes that made her heart

  race like a hammer beat, and it was completely on impulse that she reached up suddenly and brushed her lips on the firm warmth of his mouth. 'Thank you,' she whispered.

  After that she would have slipped away, for her own reactions alarmed and surprised her, but before she could move Miguel had reached out and stopped her, drawing her back and into his arms. Just for a moment she was held fast to the lean excitement of his body while his mouth took possession of hers in a kiss that was hard and passionate but disappointingly brief. And she scarcely believed it when he put her from him.

  'Go and do some work,' he told her very quietly. 'And if you need someone to blame for you being late, then blame me.'

  He was on his way round to the stable before Kirstie recovered sufficiently to realise just how late in fact she was, and as she turned and went into the house she lightly touched her mouth with her fingertips. It was becoming increasingly hard to accept the less gentle aspects of Miguel's character, and she wished with all her heart that she could believe Luis or Enrique responsible for the plan to turn Casa de Rodriguez into a hotel.

  Enrique Montanes said nothing at all about his daughter-in-law's accident, in fact his manner was little different from normal except that he was a little more formal than he u
sually was, and less inclined to make casual conversation. Kirstie would have been happier knowing that he believed in her innocence, but knowing his situation with Rosa she didn't add to his discomfort by saying anything.

  Luis's opinion, on the other hand, was equally uncertain but much more easy to ask for. When she returned early from lunch, hoping to make up some of the time lost in the morning, he was waiting for her, and no explanation was likely to deter him. Luis wasn't a man

  who was easily put aside, so she agreed to talk with him for a short while, and walked along one of the paths with him.

  Before long he stopped and took both her hands in his, raising each hand in turn to his lips and kissing her fingers. 'You poor darHng,' he sympathised, and kissed her cheek. 'What has been going on?'

  Resigned for the moment to losing some of the time she was trying to make up, Kirstie shrugged. 'I suppose you mean the business with your cousin,' she said, and Luis clasped her hands even more tightly. 'I was staggered when Miguel told me she was telling the same tale as Margarita, but he informed me there was nothing to worry about because he'd talked her out of sending for the guardia'

  'Yes, so I heard,' Luis mused, and pulled thoughtfully at his full lower lip. 'I'm rather surprised to find Miguel championing you though I have to admit, if I didn't know my big brother, my pigeon, I'd be jealous. As it is you look such a little, defenceless creature that he probably feels he has to protect you; especially as he got you the job with Tio Enrique and brought you into Rosa's poisonous sphere.'

  'No one in his right mind would believe I'd do anything like that,' she said, 'but it was a relief to know he believed me.'

  'It was only what she deserved,' Luis declared with a vehemence that was very much at odds with his usual romantic image, so that Kirstie wondered if he too actually disliked his cousin's widow, and wasn't just saying it for effect. 'I never could stand her, and the way she treats you—I couldn't blame you for hitting her on the head.'

  'But I didn't!' Kirstie gazed at him uneasily, for his attitude suggested that he wasn't so much convinced of her innocence, as ready to support her if she really had attacked Rosa. 'Luis, you surely don't believe I did it, do you?'

  It was an appeal that anyone would have found hard

  to resist, and Luis kissed her long and lingeringly before he answered. 'Lovely Kirstie,' he said, 'it's a matter of complete indifference to me whether you hit Rosa or not.'

  Shocked by his callousness towards his cousin as well as by his indifference to her own guilt or innocence, Kirstie pulled herself free and looked up at him reproachfully. 'It isn't to me,' she told him. 'And at least Miguel had enough faith in me to talk Rosa out of having me arrested!'

  Luis's pursed lip suggested he disliked losing on comparison with Miguel. 'Or else he doesn't want a scandal,' he suggested with a hint of malice in his soft voice. 'Miguel is very conscious of our family dignity, and he'd hate it if we made the headlines in an attempted murder case. He'd talk anybody out of anything to prevent that.'

  He couldn't mean it, Kirstie told herself, and yet there was an awful cold, sick feeling in her stomach as she stood there facing him. Miguel hadn't actually told her that he believed her version, not in so many words. Then she remembered the touch of his lips, and his kiss seemed suddenly to have the bitterness of a kiss of Judas.

  'Would he^—would he really think about that?' she asked in a very small voice, and Luis seemed completely unaware of her reaction.

  He shrugged his eloquent shoulders carelessly. 'Who knows how Miguel's mind works?' he said. 'He has a touch of Machiavelli about him sometimes, and none of us can follow his machinations. All we know is that he puts the family first and always; you can depend on it, my love.'

  'Machiavelli!' Kirstie echoed bitterly. 'Yes, that just about says it, doesn't it?' He was looking at her curiously, and impulse drove her on. 'I shan't easily forgive him for suggesting that Casa de Rodriguez should be turned into aparadore —that's a typically Machiavellian move!'

  Luis's velvet dark eyes were narrowed briefly when they met hers, then they switched to her mouth and stayed there while he pursed his lips thoughtfully. *I didn't know that idea was general knowledge,' he remarked, and it was impossible to guess what his own opinion was. 'How did you come to hear of it, Kirstie?'

  *Abuelo told me, and he almost certainly got it from Miguel; I suppose he saw no reason not to boast about it, he probably thinks it's a brilliant idea!'

  Luis pondered for a moment, then he leaned and kissed her mouth, drawing her close so that the warmth of his body touched her through the thin dress she wore, and the somewhat over-sweet after-shave he used made her wrinkle her nose for a moment. *Would it be the unforgivable sin to make Casa de Rodriguez into a par-adoreT he wanted to know, and to Kirstie the wonder was that he needed to ask.

  Pushing herself away from him, she still remained in his arms, but she could see his face and try to judge how serious he was. 'I didn't think you'd need to ask,' she told him, 'you know how I feel about it, Luis. I know I lived there for only seven years, full-time, but the Rodriguez go back a long way and I suppose the feeling I have is bred in me. I hate to think of strangers sleeping in its rooms for a couple of nights and then passing on to the next—novelty. It's a home, it's always been a private home, it isn't a showplace for tourists, and I thmk Miguel was—insensitive and—and unfeeling to even suggest it!'

  It still hurt; surprisingly so in the circumstances, and Kirstie fought hard not to let him see how embarrassingly weepy she was feeling. But Luis seemed preoccupied still, tracing a finger down her neck and on to the curve of her shoulder. 'Did he admit it was his idea?' he asked, and Kirstie frowned at him, seeing it as splitting hairs.

  'Not in so many words, but he didn't deny it either, and who else could it have been? I know it couldn't be you or your uncle, so it had to be Miguel.'

  'The Philistine of the family?' he suggested, and laughed shortly. 'Poor old Miguel!'

  She was uneasy, sensing something she didn't understand, something in his manner that did not seem in accord with her own mood, and it occurred to her that he might resent her talking about his brother as she did. 'I'm sorry, Luis, I shouldn't say things to you about him, he is your brother after all.' A glance at her wrist-watch offered a way of escape and she pulled a wry face before she made her excuses. 'I must go, Luis. I was very late this morning and I want to make up some of the time if I can. Senor Montanes is very nice about it, but I don't want to take advantage of it.' Raising her head just far enough, she planted a kiss on his chin, then smiled up at him, though it wasn't a smile that reached her eyes and she thought he noticed it. 'One thing, I'm glad it wasn't you being so horribly mercenary; I'd hate to think I was such a bad judge of character. Adios, Luis!'

  But instead of letting her go, Luis pulled her back and into his arms, kissing her mouth lightly, over and over again until she was breathless, and that was what Miguel saw when he came along a few moments later. The minute she caught sight of him, Kirstie pushed Luis away with both hands and the colour was high in her cheeks. She wanted to feel defiant and uncaring, to let him see that he wasn't the only man who kissed her, but instead she felt small and oddly weepy again because of what Luis had told her.

  For the moment he ignored her and tapped Luis on the shoulder, making him turn swiftly in surprise. 'I'm sorry to interrupt,' he said smoothly, 'but we have a lot of riding to do this afternoon and it's time we got started.'

  'I'm ready when you are,* Luis told him, and gave Kirstie a curiously shifty look that didn't fit in with his image at all.

  'The trouble is, you weren't ready when I was,' Miguel argued abruptly. 'While you were dallying out here with

  Kirstie Fve spent the last ten or fifteen minutes waiting around for you. Is your horse saddled and ready to go, or do I have to wait until you do that too?'

  His arrogance was no less with members of his own family, and Kirstie was in complete sympathy with Luis when he flushed like a scolded schoolbo
y, his eyes gleaming darkly with resentment. 'Don't talk down to me, Miguel,' he told him sharply. 'I dislike it! It won't take me more than a minute or two to saddle the gelding and I'll be ready!'

  He gave Kirstie a brief salute, then went stalking off with his head held high and the stiffness of anger in his stride, obviously expecting Miguel to follow him. Instead Miguel stood looking down at Kirstie in that vaguely menacing way she had become familiar with during the past months. 'Have you been coping?' he asked, and she angled her chin.

  'Perfectly, thank you!' She was haughty as much on Luis's behalf as her own, but haughtiness never paid off with Miguel, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

  'Then I suggest you go back to the office as soon as possible,' he suggested coolly, 'before my uncle has a change of mind!'

  He was already turned and walking away from her when Kirstie called after him. 'Do you object to Luis kissing me?' she challenged, and Miguel stopped and turned back slowly.

  His eyes gleamed below heavy lids and he tapped the long quirt he always used on the pahn of one hand as he looked at her. 'Why should you think that?' he enquired softly. 'I know how much you enjoy being kissed.'

  His meaning was unmistakable and Kirstie coloured furiously as she hastily avoided his eyes. It was much easier to remember the steely embrace of his arms and the hard passion of his mouth than it was to recall Luis's kiss of only a few moments ago, and her heart thudded so hard that it filled her head with its beat. Then she turned quickly and went hurrying across the

  patio. No one, but no one, should affect her as Miguel did, and especially when she tried so hard to dislike him; when she had so much reason to dislike him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KiRSTiE had seldom felt so low in spirit before, and inevitably her grandfather noticed and remarked on it. Tm all right, Abuelo,' she told him, but the old man was shaking his head.

  There's nothing wrong at the house, is there?' he insisted, and Kirstie knew she must have given herself away when she so quickly gave her attention to her sewing again. 'What is it, child?' he pressed gently. 'It has nothing to do with that unpleasant business with Seiiora Mantaiies has it? I was under the impression that Don Miguel had settled that to your satisfaction.'