Free Love on Trial by Diana Palmer Page A

cooed softly, with more than a trace of Spanish accent, “what a wonderful surprise to find you here! Can you come back with Renaldo and me for a drink?”
    â€œI’m with friends, Angel,” he replied with a smile.
    â€œNo importa,” Angel said breezily, “bring them, too! I’ve got a villa near here, with miles and miles of beach. And Renaldo would love to talk over old times with you.”
    â€œWhere is your brother?” he asked,puncturing Siri’s vain hope that the missing “Renaldo” might be the woman’s husband.
    â€œBack there. Rey…Rey!” Angel called, and a strikingly tall, dark man came wandering up to join the small group. His eyes swept over Siri’s slender body.
    â€œYou remember Hawke, don’t you?” Angel asked with a flash of white teeth.
    â€œMost assuredly,” Rey said. “A pleasure. And this is…?” he asked, swinging without warning to face Siri, his eyes level and plainly interested.
    â€œMy partner’s daughter, Siri Jamesson,” Hawke replied with a curtness in his tone that was lost on Rey.
    â€œA pleasure,” the Latin repeated, and lifted Siri’s hand to his lips.
    Hawke introduced Randy and Kitty, and Angel persisted until she got her way and had them back in the rented car headed for her villa. Oh, well, Sirithought wearily, at least she had escaped the snakes.
    But when they got to the hacienda-style villa with its seemingly acres of untouched beach, Siri wondered if the snakes just might not have been better. Between Angel’s openly seductive manner toward Hawke and Rey’s dead-tilt efforts to catch Siri’s wary eye, it was like being caged with tigers.
    The worst of it was the familiarity between Hawke and the little brunette. They were more than just old friends, and it showed. Why it should have mattered so much, Siri didn’t know. But it mattered. She wanted to get out, to run, to go home. She couldn’t bear the way his dark eyes played on Angel’s face, and she didn’t understand her own indignation.
    â€œWhat do you do, Miss Jamesson?” Rey asked politely, perching himself comfortably on the arm of the massive chair she was sitting in. “Are you an attorney like your father?”
    â€œI’m a reporter.”
    â€œA reporter!” His eyes brightened with interest.
    Siri laughed. “I work for a daily newspaper, but I cover the police beat; fires, wrecks, murders, those kind of stories. And believe me, there’s nothing funny about that.”
    â€œA woman involved in such tragic work?” he exclaimed. “You must have nerves of iron!”
    â€œNot really,” Siri admitted, sipping the rum punch in her tall glass. “What do you do?”
    He shrugged. “Not much of anything,” he admitted. He grinned. “I have, fortunately, the means to pursue a life of pleasure.”
    â€œHow nice,” she murmured appropriately.
    â€œYes, it is.”
    She glanced at him, mentally comparing him with Hawke, who also had the means to pursue a life of pleasure, butpreferred useful work that also had its dangers. Hawke didn’t seem to care for Angel’s brother, and she wondered if he didn’t remind him of his own father; a pleasure seeker, uninvolved and uncaring except for his own idle pursuits. It didn’t sound like much of a life, but she kept quiet. To each his own, she thought.
    â€œI wish I had not promised to join my friends for a cruise,” Rey said. “I would much prefer to spend the time with you.”
    â€œUnfortunately,” she smiled, “I have very little time to spend on pleasure. I’m a working girl, and I’m here on assignment. I have to account for my days.”
    â€œYou are not…how you say…Hawke’s woman?” he asked.
    She glared at him. “I have a steady boyfriend back home who suits me very well,” she said with ice in her