Free In Name Only by Roxanne Jarrett

aware of the flight attendant standing in the aisle, looking down at them, regarding them with a faint smile.
    Simon gave a strange, half-strangled laugh, as if relieved at the interruption. He ordered some coffee for them both. Jill leaned back in her seat. More. What in the world could she have been thinking of?
    "Oh, won't this trip ever end?" she groaned.
    "It's hardly begun."
    "Well, why don't you pull out that briefcase of yours and do some work," she snapped. "You don't want to waste a precious minute, do you?"
    "Temperamental," Simon remarked, as if adding it to a list of her attributes.
    "Not temperamental. Bored, tired, hungry."
    "Hungry," Simon said. "The child doesn't eat and then complains that she's hungry. We'll have to watch that when we get home."
    "Home," Jill exclaimed. "I don't even know where that is or what it is. Home. How can you talk about home when you won't tell me about it?" She paused, aware that she was both tired and feeling silly.
    "Home is a big, rambling villa with a red tiled roof and more rooms than you can count," Simon told her patiently. "It's watched over by Senhora Cordero who will take you in hand at once and make certain you eat."
    "And plump me out, no doubt. Where did my uncle live?"
    "In a hotel. He planned to buy a villa when you came down. Our life styles were quite different. He wanted nothing but the clothes on his back, until he began getting paternal feelings as far as his niece was concerned. On the other hand, I purchased Las Flores in order to preserve an old bit of Manaus before the bulldozers got to it."
    "Is it very old?"
    "Turn of the century. It has all the lovely plumbing conveniences newly installed. You'll like it."
    Jill regarded him curiously. "How did you and my uncle meet?"
    "In the jungle to be precise. I worked for a construction company at the time. We were putting a road through a rough part of Amazonia. The Indians didn't want to give up a piece of it, and I don't blame them. Your uncle was a geologist searching for manganese deposits. He traveled light with a couple of Indian guides, but it was their territory. He was set upon one night; the guides disappeared, and when I came upon him he was running for his life. Just one of those lucky meetings. There I was in my jeep, and there he was. After that it was just a matter of time before we formed Carteret-Todd and went out to do a little mining of our own."
    "Is the jungle still so dangerous?" Jill asked.
    "The Indians are more peaceable now perhaps, but the frontier towns are rough, anyway. Camp Esmeralda, where we're digging for manganese is one of them. That's where your uncle was felled by the log."
    "Why was he there, though? I mean, if Carteret-Todd is so successful, why wasn't he in a safer place, like an office or something?"
    "Your uncle was a tough character. Dan liked a fight," Simon told her. "He liked to be where the action was. It wasn't enough for him to sit in an ivory tower. He felt he had to be in everything."
    "And you?" Jill asked quietly, her heart in her mouth. "You don't just chase danger for the fun of it, do you?"
    Simon turned to her and regarded her with an affectionate smile that surprised and pleased her, until he spoke. "I'm afraid, my young bride, that I do."

Chapter Five

    A light tapping on her arm woke Jill, blinking, unable for a moment to place herself in time or even space.
    "We're here." Simon stirred in his seat, unfastening his seat belt buckle.
    "Manaus?" Jill looked out the window and saw that the plane had stopped a short distance from a low, modern, brightly lit building. The ground was wet, and a light rain was falling. "So soon?" she asked, stretching luxuriously. She had fallen asleep at once, as soon as the plane had taken off from Caracas.
    Simon draped his raincoat about her shoulders for the short run from the plane to the customs shed. The air, even with the rain, felt pleasant and cool and she welcomed it after the long plane ride with its stale,