Captive Kisses (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) (16 page)

Kelly let her gaze touch the cup he held, then move on past
him. “I’m not sure my coffee qualifies on all four counts.”

“It’s delicious,” he said, saluting her with the cup.

Despite his overbearing ways, Charles was a man with many
attractive qualities, not the least of them being his easy companionability at
times like these, when she ceased to fight him. With his coat off and his tie
loosened as he stretched at ease, he was devastatingly handsome, she had to
admit, and yet he lacked the self-consciousness of most good-looking men. On
occasion he could show great sensitivity, and an amazing empathy for what she
felt and thought. What had he been trying to say earlier at the restaurant?
That he would have liked to start over with her under different circumstances?
The idea had a certain appeal. What would he be like if there were no senator,
no George, no connection with organized crime?

What was she doing? The next thing she knew, she would be
regretting what she had done, volunteering to remain in order to rehabilitate
him. It was laughable, women’s susceptibility to the appeal of a rogue. Or was
it another aspect of the hostage situation, the reluctance to leave captivity
because it had become comforting and familiar?

Kelly lifted her cup to her lips once more. Charles had
half-finished his coffee and was sipping his Drambuie. He should be showing
signs of sleepiness soon, after four tablets. Was that too many? Not enough for
a man his size? What would he do if he began to suspect something was wrong
before he passed out? Would he become violent? Why hadn’t she thought of that
before? She would have to be ready to jump up and run at his first movement.

“What are you thinking of?”

He was watching her, his eyes dark and considering. She met
his gaze briefly. “Nothing.”

“You must have been. You were frowning as if you had found a
bug in your coffee, or else were hatching a new plot to give me gray hair.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my coffee,” she said, and took
another swallow to prove it.

“You were plotting then?”

“What else?” she inquired, sending him a bright smile.

He arched an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to feel like one of the
villains in O. Henry’s tale “The Ransom of Red Chief.’ You know it?”

“I think so,” she answered, a gleam of real amusement rising
in her gray eyes. “The story of the two con men who kidnap a ten-year-old boy
who is a holy terror, and wind up paying his father to take him back?”

“He was an exhausting brat who did his best to wreak mayhem
on them, had to be constantly amused, and robbed them of sleep because they
were afraid of what he might do while they dozed.”

“If you are comparing me to a brat,” she began slowly.

“I’ll have to agree that doesn’t apply,” he said, flicking
her a glance where she sat curled into the corner of the couch, “but the rest
is certainly apt.”

“You know what to do to be rid of me.”

“Yes, but unfortunately, real life is more complicated than
fiction.”

She stared at him, wariness creeping into her manner. She
did not like the way he was watching her, the intent look of remorse and
readiness in his dark eyes. Lowering her gaze, she swirled the coffee left in
her cup. She was about to raise it to her lips, when she was caught by a sudden
yawn. She smothered it with the tips of her fingers, then looked up as Charles
emptied his cup and set it to one side before he came to his feet.

Alarm coursed along her veins as he swung toward her, but
she could not seem to move. She felt the urge to yawn building in her chest
again, and she looked in horror at the creamy coffee she held.

Charles leaned over her, reaching for her half-filled cup.
At the last minute, she snatched it from his fingers. The warm brew sloshed
over the side, soaking into the white cotton pique of her sundress. It scarcely
seemed to matter. Her heart was pounding as Charles caught her wrist and
forcibly removed the coffee cup from her hand.

“That’s enough of that, especially since I don’t know how
much you put in it. At least you didn’t drink your Drambuie. That combination
of pills and liquor can be fatal.”

“How —” she breathed.

He met her eyes briefly. “The oldest dodge in the world; I
switched the cups while I was carrying the tray. As for how I knew, a window,
such as the one over the sink in the kitchen, becomes a mirror at night with
darkness behind it. Strive to remember that, my darling Kelly, the next time
you decide to slip me a mickey.”

She closed her eyes, as much to shut out the gentle mockery
overlaid with concern of his smile as from need. Hopelessness washed over her,
bringing a numbness so great that she did not protest as she felt him slip one
hand under her knees and the other behind her back to lift her into his arms.

He carried her along the hall to her bedroom. There, he
stood her on her feet while he whipped back the covers. As he turned back to
her, his gaze moved over the brownish stain that marred the front of her dress.
The next thing she knew, he had reached behind her, unzipped her dress, and was
slipping the wide straps off over her shoulders.

“No,” she exclaimed, fear cutting through the dazed distress
of her senses.

“It would be a shame for your dress to be ruined.”

Paying no attention to her clutching hands, he stripped the
white sundress from her, leaving it in a pile on the floor as he picked her up
and deposited her on the bed. He drew the sheet up, then sat down beside her,
taking her hand in his. It was long seconds before she realized that his warm
fingers were pressed to the pulse in her wrist.

He placed her arm across her waist, then sat staring down at
her. Kelly kept her eyes resolutely closed. He would go in a moment, and she
could be alone with her latest and most humiliating defeat.

Abruptly he bent forward to place his hands on either side
of her pillow, lowering his lips to hers with a gentle, almost experimental
pressure.

“Strawberries,” he murmured. “You always taste of
strawberries, and something more that is sweeter still.”

It was her lip gloss but she did not intend to inform him of
it. Slowly, she lifted her lashes. Her voice no more than a whisper, she said, “I
hate you.”

He got to his feet, his face like a mask as he moved toward
the door. He paused with his hand on the knob to look back. “So you have said,
not that I blame you. Sometimes, I don’t like myself much, either.”

Eight

Kelly let the screen door of the veranda swing shut behind
her. She stood on the steps a moment with her hands pushed into the pockets of
her jeans. The sun was shining. A light breeze swayed the Spanish moss on the
trees and sent a soft rustling through the leaves of the dark green ceiling
overhead. She frowned.

It was one thing to make up her mind, but some-thing else to
act on the decision.

She had awakened well into the morning. It seemed she had
benefited from her enforced, dreamless sleep. Rested, if not refreshed, she had
lain for some time thinking, endlessly mulling over what had taken place in
these last few days. She had come to a few conclusions, none of them
comforting.

First, she thought her failure to win her freedom was
largely her own fault. She had let fear and the prospect of immediate freedom
push her into hasty, ill-considered action. She would have been much better off
to have waited, gaining Charles’s confidence as originally planned, biding her
time until his guard was down. As it was, she had only increased his wariness.
It would take time to recoup the lost ground. Still, the effort had to be made.
What other choice was there for her?

He was not indifferent to her; his attitude of the night
before had made that plain. Whether it could be used to her advantage was
questionable, but she had to try. If she could convince him that she had
accepted her fate, that she was becoming content with his company, he might
grow lax in his supervision. If she had little real hope of it happening, it
was still her best chance. Then if the situation became desperate, his feelings
for her might well tip the balance, meaning the difference between life and
death.

Life and death. It was hard to believe, in the clear
brightness of the morning, that the issue could become so clear cut. But she
had not imagined that conversation she had overheard, nor the tense
presentiment of danger that had hung in the air the night before when the boat
with its spotlight had cruised past the house. Charles had tried to make light
of it, to change the direction of her thoughts, and he had been successful for
a time. On closer consideration, she wasn’t deceived, he had been more tightly
alert than at any time since the first day she had arrived. And this morning he
was with George and the senator at the cottage. No doubt they were discussing
the incident, plotting strategy.

Who had been in that boat? Was it the lake patrol, acting on
some land of information concerning Charles or his activities? Was it some
other kind of police? That was the only supposition that made any sense, but
surely any such authority would not have acted in a manner so certain to either
put a criminal on his guard or else make him bolt. Maybe that was what they had
wanted. Even so, it still didn’t make sense. There had been nothing about the
boat to indicate it was an official craft there in a legal capacity, and even
Kelly herself had been affected by something sinister in its activities.

There was another possibility. If the senator was
sufficiently important, if he had been carried across state lines, then his
kidnapping became a federal crime, under the jurisdiction of the FBI. If that
were the case, however, wouldn’t there have been a big commotion about it in
the newspapers and on television? Charles had said they had been in residence
at the lake house for a week before her arrival on the scene. She would have
noticed a case like that in the news before she left. The only front-page issue
she could remember reading about was the bribery and corruption scandal growing
out of the last election. One of the top politicians in the state was supposed
to come to trial on charges stemming from it when court reconvened in less than
a week now, and the media had been having a field day with it. It was remotely
possible that these local events had overshadowed other items to the point
where they might have gone unnoticed.

The slamming of the door drew her attention toward the
cottage. From her bedroom window earlier she had seen Charles making his way in
that direction. Now it was with dread as well as anticipation that she saw a
man leave the front porch and move toward the catwalk.

It was George who stepped from among the trees. He carried a
fishing rod in his hand, but as he scanned the surface of the lake he had
nothing about him of the relaxed content of the fisherman. On sudden impulse,
Kelly moved down the steps, setting out on the path that would take her to the
water’s edge.

“Good morning,” she called when she was in hearing distance,
though she kept her voice as low as possible.

The man turned. “Good morning.”

Though there was a certain reserve about him, the hefty
guard had smiled. Kelly decided to take this as an invitation to join him on
the catwalk.

“Nice day,” she offered as she drew nearer.

“Yep.”

He was not exactly a talkative sort. “Where is Charles?”

The guard tilted his head in the direction of the cottage,
as she had expected. “He’ll be out in a minute, now that you’re up.”

“He — is a strange man.” She didn’t know what she hoped to
gain by this one-sided conversation, but she persevered.

“Mr. Duralde? I wouldn’t say that exactly.”

Kelly felt a quickening along her veins. Duralde. She had
his last name. A vague memory flickered, then faded. She let it go. “Any man
who does what he’s doing can’t be ordinary.”

The guard sent her a straight look. “He told you about it,
did he?”

“A little.” It would not do to pretend to know too much.

“Well, it does take guts, I’ll have to hand him that.”

Carefully, she formed her next question. “Why do you suppose
he’s doing it?”

“Doing what? Watching after the old guy? First off, because
of the way old man Duralde, his dad, got it, and second, maybe because he gets
tired of the rat race.”

“That would be it,” she agreed with a nod she hoped looked
knowing.

“He’s a throwback, you know, like the old planters that used
to stay out on their land without seeing a soul nine months out of the year,
then the other three go into New Orleans and raise merry hell, slice each other
to ribbons, or blow each other’s brains out on the dueling ground.”

“He — lives above New Orleans, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right. Takes care of the whole shooting match; cane
fields, soybeans, oil wells, cattle, you name it, by himself. It’s like a
regular town, and him the mayor, doctor, and fire chief rolled into one.”