Captive Kisses (Sweetly Contemporary Collection)

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and
dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews — without the written permission of publisher or author,
except where permitted by law.

Copyright
© 1980 and 2012 by Patricia Maxwell

First
Signet Edition: 1981

First E-Reads Edition: 1999

Steel Magnolia Press Digital Edition: 2012

Cover Design by
LFD Designs For Authors

One

There it was, the lake house. A rambling, white-painted
structure with long expanses of veranda on three sides swathed in fine mesh
screen, it sat beneath the shade of ancient live oaks hung with swaying gray
strands of Spanish moss. Just beyond the house, half-hidden by the lush
Louisiana undergrowth, was the guest cottage with its connecting walkway grown
up with grass between the cracks. Both places were quiet, somnolent in the heat
of the September afternoon. The only sound was bird calls from the leafy green
canopy overhead and the distant hum of a motor far out on the tree-ringed lake.

Kelly Hardy sat in her small red car, looking at the house.
She ran a hand through the gold-brown waves of her hair, a troubled frown
between her clear gray eyes. The lake house was more isolated than she had
remembered. Set on the back waters of Green Lake on a narrow peninsula of land
at the end of a winding gravel road, its nearest neighbor was more than a mile
away. Why hadn’t she noticed before? The answer to that was this was the first
time she had driven here by herself. All the other times she had been giggling
and talking to Mary and Peter and Mark in the back of the station wagon while
Judge Kavanaugh drove. She hadn’t cared how far it was, or how long it took to
get there, as long as she was with the Kavanaugh family.

How long had it been since she was here? It must have been
three years at least. The last time had been for the high school graduation
party the judge and his wife had given for Mary’s graduating class.

Mary Kavanaugh had been a good friend, still was, for that
matter. It had been sweet of her to include Kelly in all those family outings,
and kind of the judge and his wife to take up time with another awkward
teen-ager, one who had no family. Kelly’s father had been killed in an
automobile accident when she was thirteen, her mother had died a few months
later of cancer. Her teen-age years had been a trying time, living with an aunt
who had a family of her own. The happiest moments she could remember had been
spent at the lake house. Then on graduation she had earned a scholarship and
moved away from the small town where the Kavanaughs lived. She had taken a
two-year accounting course at college and found a job. After working for a
year, she had earned a week’s vacation, and she had thought to spend a part of
it with Mary, catching up on everything that had happened since she had been
gone. Being one of the last people hired at the firm where she worked, she had
little choice in vacation dates. She had not minded taking her time off so late
in the year, however, until she had discovered that the Kavanaughs had planned
a trip to Europe for that period. They would leave a week before she reached
town and return just as she was going back to work. When Kelly had spoken to
her on the phone, Mary had been contrite, wailing in frustration. The European
jaunt could not be postponed; it had been planned for months, and in addition
scheduled for the two weeks just before court reconvened for the fall. At
first, she had wanted to cancel her trip and stay, but Kelly wouldn’t hear of
it. Finally, after consulting with her mother, she had suggested that Kelly go
down to the lake house. There Kelly could read to her heart’s content,
sun-bathe, swim, loaf, whatever. That was the only way Mary would be satisfied.
She could not stand the thought of Kelly rattling around town with nothing to
do. She wouldn’t be able to enjoy herself unless she knew Kelly was having a
good time, too.

It had sounded lovely, the sun-soaked days, the quiet. Kelly
was not a boisterous type. She didn’t particularly care for large crowds,
noise, or loud music, and she loved to read, as Mary well knew. The peace, the
long, endless summer days with Mary and her brothers, was what had appealed to
her in the past. But now, as she sat in her car with perspiration popping out
all over her from the sticky, ovenlike heat, it did not seem like such a good
idea. There was something disturbing in the silence that lingered around the
lake house, something that set her nerves to tingling and made her search the
shadows beneath the trees with her eyes.

She was being silly. There was nothing there. The track of a
drive that led down to the house had been overgrown with grass and weeds. No
one had been near the place since the early spring, according to Mary. They
didn’t come down here, forty miles from their home, so much anymore, not since
the boys, Peter and Mark, had left college and taken jobs out of the state and
Mary had begun a promising career as a painter. They were all scattered,
getting on with their lives. The judge still fished for crappie and bass now
and then, but he had been told by his doctor to take it easy, not go out alone
in a boat. Utilities for the year round and taxes, to say nothing of upkeep,
were making it burdensome to hold on to a place they had little use for any
longer. According to Mary, her mother and father had been thinking of selling.

There was no use sitting here, making herself jumpy and
nostalgic by turns over something she couldn’t help. The sun would be setting
soon, and she had to unpack the car, put away the groceries she had brought,
turn on the air conditioning, and manage some sort of meal for herself. She
would also like to have a quick, cooling swim if the raft anchored out from the
shore was still floating. She couldn’t see it from here because of the screen
of cypress trees and willows that grew out into the water, though she could see
the fishing pier. At least that long, wooden catwalk looked to be in good
shape.

Kelly stepped from the car and closed the door. She
stretched, stiff from sitting for the long drive, a slender figure in shorts
and a top of salmon-colored cotton terry, worn with natural straw sandals. The
first thing she had better do was let herself inside. That had been troubling
her ever since she had spoken to Mary on the phone. She had said in passing
that the extra key was in the usual place. As far as Kelly knew, that was under
the fern tub that sat beside the steps of the side door, but after so long a
passage of time it was possible the hiding place had been changed.

She knelt beside the tub with its trailing green fronds,
lifting one corner. The heavy wooden half-barrel tilted obligingly on its brick
supports. She felt underneath, running her hand as far as she could reach.

There was nothing there, no small metal box such as the
judge had always produced. Picking up the end of a tree limb that lay nearby,
Kelly raked further back under the tub. Still nothing. Getting to her feet, she
stood with her hands on her hips. She should have known better than to take
such an important detail for granted. If she had only thought to ask — but she
hadn’t.

With the fine curves of her mouth set in a firm line, Kelly
opened the screen door of the side porch, and stepped inside. She felt over the
side door, around the outside light fixture, and lifted the door mat. She even
tried the door handle. With a defeated sigh, she moved back outside. All right.
She didn’t like to do it, but she had no choice. There was another way into the
house.

Moving around to the back side of the house, facing away
from the lake, she came to the windows that corresponded to the large bedroom
where she and Mary had always slept. There had been a latch that didn’t lock.
Kelly and Mary had never worried about it, nor had the judge. Crime was
practically nonexistent that far from civilization. There was no danger while
so many people were in residence, and scarcely more when the house was empty.
There had never been any problem with burglaries on the lake, not even with the
house being as distant from its neighbors as it was. However, the judge
maintained that a determined criminal would make short work of any lock or
window glass, and that there was no use frustrating him unnecessarily. There
was, in any case, nothing of any great value at the lake house to steal. It was
furnished for comfort and durability, with the destructiveness of teen-agers in
mind rather than style, beauty, or expense.

The window was too high for her to reach, even after she had
found a screwdriver in the glove compartment of her car. It took a minute more
to locate a cinder block, left over from the judge’s barbeque grill project, to
use as a stepping stool. It was only high enough if she turned it on end.
Standing on that precarious support, she lifted the screen from its channel,
maneuvered her screwdriver beneath it to release the latches, then set the
whole framing on the ground. Maybe the judge was right, she told herself with a
grin; this housebreaking business was child’s play.

The window was stiff, sticking for an instant, but she
pushed it upward. Setting the palms of her hands on the sill, Kelly boosted
herself higher. Her block toppled from under her, falling to its side with a
thud. She teetered for an instant, supporting herself with her arms. Then she
grabbed for the inside molding of the window.

At a slight sound behind her, she hesitated, her nerves
sounding a sudden alarm. Abruptly she was caught and dragged backward. She gave
a cry of pain as her arm was scraped over the sill, and then she was dumped on
her feet. Before she could move, before she could recover her breath, her wrist
was snatched in an iron grasp and she was spun around.

“Who the hell are you, and what do you think you are doing?”

With those harsh words ringing in her ears, Kelly stared
into the face of a tall, dark man. His black eyes burned with anger underscored
by deadly menace. The chiseled lines of his features were implacable. His grip
on her arm was so tight her hand was already turning numb. He wore only a brief
white swimsuit, and the bronzed, muscled hardness of his body was jeweled with
drops of water. There was about him the coiled strength, awaiting release, of a
predator.

Shocked surprise held Kelly immobile for an instant, then
fury came washing back along her veins in a warm rush. She jerked at her wrist,
clasping her hand into a fist. “Let me go!”

Immediately her arm was twisted behind her back and she was
brought up against the ridged firmness of the man’s body. “I asked you two
questions,” he said, “and I suggest you come up with answers — fast!”