Love on Trial (4 page)

“All of them aren't like you,” she countered, feeling strangely out of her depth.

“Oh, to be twenty again, and so wise.” He sighed heavily. “I appreciate the sentiment, little one, but with the amoral and licentious life I lead, it's hard to remember the innocent days of my youth.”

“I doubt you were ever innocent,” she muttered darkly.

“I was until my fourteenth birthday,” he said, and smiled amusedly at the flush that burned her cheeks.

“Why don't you go home?” she asked hotly.

“I might as well,” he remarked, studying his empty glass and her angry face.
If you were waiting up for your father, you'd better sleep light. He and Nadine were going strong at the disco when I left.”

“You, at a disco?” she said insultingly.

“How good are you?” he challenged.

“I'm young,” she countered, “remember? We youths adjust to new steps better than you old people.”

“By God, I ought to take you over my knee,” he threatened.

She backed away, grinning. “Remember your blood pressure,” she cautioned. “We wouldn't want you to have a stroke or anything.”

His eyes kindled with amusement. “You damned little cat,” he said.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Grayson. Anyway, it's way past my bedtime, and you interrupted me right in the middle of
The Three Bears.
”

He returned his empty glass to the bar,
stubbed out his finished cigarette, and started toward the front door.

“Remind me to send you a copy of the unedited version,” he told her with a wry smile.

“Dirty old man,” she said, blissfully unaware that she was flirting with him, or that it was the first time she ever had.

“Little brat,” he countered. He turned as he started out the door. “Better start packing, Siri. I'm planning to fly down to Panama City in the morning. I'll call you in time to get breakfast before we leave.”

“Okay. Hawke?”

He turned. “Yes?”

She shrugged apologetically. “I'm sorry I acted my age.”

“You haven't, yet.” He tugged at a strand of her wispy blond hair. “I don't think you know how.”

“How to what?” she asked curiously.

“Goodnight, honey.” He went down
the steps two at a time without bothering to answer her.

 

The next morning, sitting beside Hawke in the big Cessna he co-owned with her father, she wondered why she'd been so terrified of this trip. The weather was sunny, the plane was comfortable, and Hawke was actually being pleasant for once and not his usual sarcastic self. In fact, she was enjoying every minute of the flight.

Her one regret was that Mark hadn't accepted her decision to make the trip. She'd finally had to hang up on him on her way to the airport, amid ultimatums that he'd never see her again if she went. And while Jared might understand his daughter's sudden change of mind, Bill Daeton was still scratching his gray head trying to figure out his police reporter's strange behavior.

Siri sighed pleasantly and closed her eyes. For the next week, she wasn't going
to let herself look backwards. She was going to enjoy the sand and the sun and the surf, and do her job, trying not to get in Hawke's way.

She glanced at him, noticing the hard, dark face that never seemed to relax, the rigid lines of his chin and mouth. They hallmarked the uncompromising personality of the man. Womanlike, she wondered if there was any tenderness under that stony exterior. No more of that, my girl, she warned herself firmly. Hawke was safe only so long as she thought of him as a big brother, a friend. She had a feeling he'd be totally devastating in a romantic role, and she was wary enough not to want to find out. With such a man, there'd be no freedom at all. It wouldn't be the way it was with Mark—a relationship that was comfortable, that made no demands, that left her to live as she pleased. Oh, no, Hawke would make demands. He'd want a woman who could match his own fierce spirit, who'd be as
much a part of him as his own soul. He wouldn't settle for any easygoing relationship. She didn't know how she knew that, but she was sure she was not mistaken.

They landed in Panama City, and Hawke reached up to lift her to the ground from the metal step. It seemed almost as if he deliberately let her slender body slide slowly against his before he finally eased her feet to the pavement. His dark eyes held hers disturbingly the whole time, reading the effect on her flushed face.

“There's a restaurant here,” he said as he released her. “Do you want to stop for a cup of coffee or go straight to the hotel?”

She took a deep breath of the hot, sea-smelling air. “I'd kind of like to get to the beach,” she admitted, trying to disguise the childlike eagerness to wet her feet in the surf.

He only chuckled, as if he could pick
the thoughts out of her mind. “All right. I'll get a cab.”

 

It was her first time in Panama City, and her eyes digested the atmosphere of it as they made the short trip from the airport to the hotel. The “Miracle Strip” gave a sweeping impression of blinding white sand and scruffy palm trees, beautiful modern hotels, and, most of all, traffic. It was noisy with the impatient sound of horns and voices calling back and forth, drowning out the distant sound of waves breaking against the beach. The predominant smell at the moment was not tangy sea air, but exhaust fumes from the tangle of automobiles.

“Disappointed?” Hawke asked beside her.

She flicked a glance at him, quick enough not to be caught by those wise, dark eyes. “A little,” she admitted. “It's going to be terribly crowded.”

“You're a reporter, remember?” he
taunted. “Crowds, and the people that compose them, are supposed to be your stock-in-trade.”

“I get sick of people sometimes,” she said absently, her eyes on the colorful, skimpy dress of tourists pouring from the motels on the wide highway. “I have to deal with them all day long, every day. Even when I get home at night, the phone always rings, and very rarely because of an emergency,” she laughed. “Once I had a lady call me about putting an ad in a rival paper—at 11:30 at night, yet.”

“Where would you be without those people?” he asked with a trace of a smile.

“Sleeping peacefully at night like everybody else,” she quickly responded. Her eyes went to a flaming red hibiscus blooming against the brick wall of a motel they were passing, and she smiled involuntarily. “I don't know how I got to be a reporter in the first place,” she mused, almost talking to herself.
“Crowds terrify me. I rarely even go to parties because I wind up sitting tucked away behind a potted plant with a glass frozen to my hands.” She glanced at him. “Do you mind crowds? I don't suppose you could, being surrounded by them all the time.”

“It goes with the job, honey,” he replied. “A lawyer gets used to it.”

“But do you really like it?” she persisted, meeting his eyes at last.

He reached out a big hand and twisted a strand of her soft hair around his fingers. The touch made her pulse race. “I like what I do. The kind of life my father preferred would have been the death of me.”

“He…he built ships, didn't he?” she asked.

He caressed the strand of hair absently. “He was in shipping, Siri, when he wasn't frequenting casinos or sailing on the Aegean with some new playmate. Mother ran the business.”

She dropped her eyes to the steady rise and fall of his chest. “Is she still alive?”

His eyes shifted to the white shoreline in the distance. “Both my parents are dead,” he said flatly, and in a tone that didn't encourage her to pursue the subject.

“I don't mean to pry,” she said gently. “I'm so used to asking questions…I suppose I ask too many sometimes.”

He drew a deep breath and lit a cigarette. His dark eyes glanced at her. “Two different worlds, Siri,” he remarked quietly. “I'm used to keeping secrets, while you're conditioned to revealing them. I'm a solitary man, little girl. Privacy is sacred to me.”

She shrugged. “I thought I'd apologized,” she said in a small voice, turning her attention out the window. She felt vaguely like a scolded child.

“For God's sake, don't pout!” he shot at her.

She flinched at the tone. “I'm not,” she managed.

There was a brief silence. She wanted to sink right through the floorboard. He was angry with her, and she couldn't understand why. But it was like being a little bruised. Tears misted in her eyes, and she couldn't understand that, either.

“Siri,” he said gently.

She kept her eyes averted, not answering him. The lump in her throat hurt.

“Siri,” he repeated, and his big hand went out to force her chin up so that he could see her face. “Oh, damn!” he breathed when he saw the unshed tears.

“Will you just leave me alone?” she fired at him, jerking away from his hand.

A deep, harsh sigh came from the other side of the cab. He moved, catching her by the nape of her neck to press her face against the lightweight fabric of his summer suit jacket. “Let it out,” he said at her temple. His arm circled around her
shoulders, bringing her closer. “Let it out, Siri.”

She fought the flood of tears, but they spilled over silently, running hot down her cheeks, onto the pale blue fabric. Her small hands clenched on his massive chest, as she relaxed against him with a choking sigh.

He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped her red face. “You don't even cry like a normal woman,” he said softly.

“I never cry,” she whispered, embarrassed, drawing away from him. “It wasn't allowed when I was growing up.”

He brushed the damp hair away form her cheek. “Why?”

She shook her head. “Mother hated the sound of it. That's all I remember about her. I remember how she punished me for crying.”

“What brought this particular cloudburst on?” he asked softly. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Did you speak to Holland before we left?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

She lifted her face proudly. “That's my business, Hawke.”

He reached out and touched her soft mouth with a dark, gentle finger, tracing its full outline. “I didn't mean to snap at you. There was a woman once, Siri. She used to blow up and pout if I looked at her sideways. You brought back a memory that sets fire to my temper.”

“I didn't think a woman lived who would get that close to you,” she remarked, as she mopped away the last traces of tears with the once-white handkerchief now stained with lipstick and mascara.

A mocking smile touched his hard mouth. “There was one until I found out she liked my money more than she liked me. The curse of being rich is that you never know whether people prefer the man or the wallet.”

“Cynic,” she accused. She shifted on
the seat to hand the handkerchief back to him. “If the money bothers you that much, why not donate it to charity?”

“To what charity?”

She grinned at him. “The Lonely Hearts society?” she suggested.

He chuckled softly at her impudence. “I'm not that lonely.”

“Of course not. You probably have to lift the mattress every night to chase out the women,” she agreed.

“What makes you think I keep women, you little innocent?” he challenged.

She studied the big masculine form beside her, the darkness of his face, the sensuality of his chiseled mouth, the massive chest that strained against the open shirt, where a nest of hair was just visible….

“Don't you?” she replied.

He caught her eyes and held them, just as he had that day in the restaurant, and something in the look made her blush.

He leaned forward, allowing the hand
holding his cigarette to rest against the back of the seat while he caught her cheek with the other hand, turning her face toward him. His thumb passed gently over her lips, parting them, pressing harder now, caressing the pearly hardness of her teeth. She tasted the faint tartness of tobacco on that tough skin, and felt her pulse whipping her at the touch that was openly seductive. His eyes dropped to the inviting young softness of her mouth.

Before either of them could move, or speak, the cab pulled up in front of the hotel and stopped. The moment of intimacy shattered into a thousand shimmering pieces, and was lost amid the subsequent routine of gathering possessions and getting settled into new lodgings.

 

Hawke's secretary had booked them a suite with bedrooms leading off opposite sides of a huge sitting room. It was practical, but knowing Gessie's diabolical
train of thought, Siri took offense at the insinuation of it. Gessie knew that Hawke wouldn't think of taking advantage of his partner's daughter. But she also knew how compromising the arrangement would look to all concerned, especially to Mark Holland. Siri flushed with anger as she studied the suite.