Captive Kisses (Sweetly Contemporary Collection) (14 page)

“Thank you,” he answered with perfect solemnity. “I have
come at no small trouble to myself, as you know, to see if you are hungry.”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, I am. I have this inconvenient habit of eating at
regular intervals. Some people who live on a more exalted plane, such as in a
blue snit, may not need nourishment that often. I understand this, but still
the question has to be asked.”

“A what?” she inquired, diverted, but also resentful.

“A blue snit. It’s on the order of sulking with muttered
profanity.”

Kelly tightened her lips to keep them from curving into a smile.
For some ridiculous reason, she felt better now that he had come to her. Not
that she intended to allow that to affect her. “I was not using profanity!”

“Ah, but you admit you were sulking?”

“No such thing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he told her, his tone soothing. “I’ll
take you out to the lodge across the lake to eat anyway.”

Surprise brought her up from the bed. “You’ll what?”

“Since we were cheated out of our fish dinner, I thought we
might try the restaurant at the lodge. I’m told they do their specialty,
catfish and seafood, well, but on no account should we order a steak.”

“Who told you?” It was difficult to see in the twilight
dimness of the room. The tenor of his words was calm and slightly amused.

“It might be more precise to say George was told — that’s
the fellow staying with the old gentleman in the guest cottage, in case you
haven’t been introduced.”

“You know very well I haven’t.” His volunteering the
information surprised her. She sat up straighter.

“No matter. About dinner —”

“Why?” she asked abruptly.

“Why the invitation? I told you, I’m hungry, and all this
talk about fish has convinced me that’s exactly what I crave.”

If he was doing this for her sake, as some form of
compensation, he had no intention of admitting it “Aren’t you afraid I might
try to escape?”

“I’m fairly certain you will, but that’s a chance I’m
willing to take.”

“Because you are certain you can stop me,” she said flatly.

“I wouldn’t say certain —”

“Only out of modesty, I presume?” she inquired with vinegary
sweetness.

“And a hard-won conviction that it would be tempting fate.
Besides, you may refuse to cross the room with me, much less the lake. I can
carry you bodily a great many places, but I have better sense than to try it in
a public eating house.”

“Something you don’t dare? I am overwhelmed.”

“I’m sure. Do you want to go or not?”

The temptation to refuse was strong. Acceding to anything he
asked was a bitter decision just now. She was not certain she could do it, and
yet she knew capitulation would be the wisest course. Here might well be the
opportunity she needed. Even if she were given no chance to get away, she might
retrieve some of the ground she had lost this morning by her ill-advised
attempt at freedom. She could practice being accommodating and, at the same time,
prepare the ground for the moment when she would make a more determined and
careful effort. None of these things could be accomplished as long as she
remained cooped up in this room.

She took a deep breath. “I will be ready in half an hour.”

Seven

She was as good as her word. Exactly thirty minutes later,
they left the house. Kelly, a slender figure in a white sundress, the only
thing suitable for evening she had brought with her, stopped at the foot of the
steps. She glanced up at Charles.

“We can go in my car, if you like,” she said.

He shook his head, an unfamiliar figure beside her in a gray
business suit. “While you were dressing, I asked George to get out the
speedboat. It will be quicker and, barring a storm or some other disaster, I
believe I can get you to the lodge without mishap.”

She moved ahead of him along the walkway. When they left the
concrete for the muddy path down to the lake he took her arm. The heels of her
white sandals made a tapping sound along the wooden catwalk. At the landing,
she paused, waiting for Charles to go ahead of her down the steps, then give
her a hand into the boat. She moved to the front, dropping into the cushioned
vinyl seat behind the boat’s windshield.

The cry of a loon came across the water, a haunting, mournful
sound. For no good reason that she could think of, gooseflesh rose along Kelly’s
arms. She let her gaze rove the gathering darkness of the evening that was
already blotting out the shapes of the trees, then looked to the man beside
her. In the dim glow of the instrument panel, he seemed unaffected by the
peculiar atmosphere of the lake at night. His face was calm and a little stern.
She glanced away, drawing her shawl of silky gray-blue mesh closer around her
shoulders.

Charles started the motor, then let it idle to a rich,
rumbling purr. His voice was flat as he spoke. “There is something we had
better get straight.”

Kelly swung to face him. “Yes?”

“We will be going into a place where there will be other
people. You may be tempted to involve them in what is going on here. I want you
to understand, Kelly, that it would not be wise.”

“Are you threatening me?” she inquired, her gray eyes
sparkling with defiance.

“I’m telling you to think carefully about the consequences
before you act. I’m sure you don’t want to endanger innocent bystanders.”

“You seem very sure of yourself. Has it occurred to you that
you may be the one in danger?”

“Knowing how slow the average citizen is to believe an
appeal for help, or to act on it when he is convinced, I doubt it. Still, I
would like your word that you won’t try anything.”

“You would like me to put myself on the honor system, is
that it?”

“That’s the idea,” he agreed quietly.

“And if I refuse?”

He reached to switch off the motor, then turned back to face
her. “Then we don’t go.”

The look in his black eyes was implacable as he sat waiting
for her answer with one arm resting on the steering wheel and the other along
the back of the seat.

“What makes you think I won’t give you my word, then break
it?”

“If you were going to do that,” he said, his mouth curving
in a grim smile, “you would not have warned me.”

Was he wearing a gun under his suit coat? She could see no
bulge that would indicate such a thing, but a good tailor could make it
impossible to tell. She clenched her teeth together in painful indecision. What
would he do if she tried to enlist the aid of the other diners? Muzzle her?
Hustle her out? What if someone tried to stop him? How far would he go to
insure that she remained his prisoner? Her imagination balked at picturing him
as a killer, but there was the evidence of the exchange between him and George
to cloud her judgment. Could she, in all conscience, risk forcing an answer?

“Kelly?”

“I won’t try anything,” she said on a long drawn breath.
That did not have to mean that she would do nothing. There was still the
possibility that she could pass a message someway, somehow.

“Thank you.”

Kelly flung him a narrow look as he turned to flick the
motor into life once more. It was odd, but the appreciation in his voice had
almost sounded sincere.

The windshield of the speedboat provided protection from the
blown spray and the swift wind of their passage. In an amazingly short time,
they were easing up to the dock that jutted out from the lodge. The windows of
the restaurant attached to the fisherman’s hostelry glowed with light. Built
out on piers over the water, it was not a large place, yet the number of boats
bobbing around the dock and cars in the parking lot was an indication of the
quality of the food.

It was cool inside and well lighted, as suited a place where
fish bones, small, white, and hard to see, could be a problem. The walls were
hung with nets ornamented with Japanese glass floats in purple, green, and
amber. The tables were built of rough-cut, weathered wood. Ferns and trailing
plants hung near the windows, and ceiling fans whirled overhead, stirring the
rich smells of seafood gumbo and other dishes succulent with shrimp and oysters
that perfumed the air.

They were shown to a table in front of a large picture
window where they could look out over the gently lapping water. They studied
their menus in silence. To Kelly, everything looked good. It may have been the
delicious smells wafting from the kitchen, or the thought of how little she had
eaten all day, but she was suddenly ravenous.

When they had placed their order and the waitress had taken
their menus away, Charles leaned back. His dark gaze was warm as it rested upon
the golden-brown waves of her hair brushed back from the oval of her face, and
the soft apricot tint the sun had given her skin. The white of her sundress was
a perfect foil for her coloring, while its square neckline gave her a demure
look heightened by the shadows that lay in the depths of her gray eyes.

“Would it be a violation of my agreement to leave you alone,
if I were to tell how lovely you look tonight?”

She did not want to antagonize him, not just now. With one
finger, she traced patterns in the condensation forming on the outside of her
water glass. “I suppose not. Thank you.”

He continued to watch her. “You are quiet this evening,”

“Am I?” What did he expect?

“You have been since this morning.” He hesitated, then went
on. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She sent him a flashing glance. “No.”

“I’m glad, though I don’t think the same could be said for
your dignity, could it? I apologize for my actions. It seemed too good an
opportunity to miss, and much more humane than what I originally had in mind.”

“I can imagine,” she said, the expression in her gray eyes
shaded with irony, and something more.

He frowned, then made a small shrugging movement with his
shoulders. “Can you? I suppose so. It would be too much to expect you not to be
afraid of me.”

“I’m not,” she said with a swift lift of her chin.

“Then why do you flinch when I come near you? Why do you
insist on trying to get away from me when I have told you that you are safe?”

“It’s not that I’m afraid; just that I don’t trust you.”

He stared at her a long moment before transferring his gaze
to the darkness of the lake beyond the window. “I don’t suppose you can be
blamed for that.”

“If how I feel really bothered you,” Kelly said, aware of
the quickening of her pulse, “you would let me go.”

“I can’t do that.”

“But why? I give you my word I am not a danger to you. I’m
just a secretary, as I told you before, a friend of the Judge’s daughter.”

“I know that, but it makes no difference,” he said, his deep
voice holding infinite patience.

“You know?” Kelly stared at him, thrown momentarily off
balance.

“Not only did your identification check out, but I had a
cable from the judge confirming your story.”

“Then why —”

“You must know the answer to that.”

“Because I saw George and the man with him?”

“And because there is a possibility you have been seen at
the lake house by someone with a dangerous curiosity about the connection. The
only way I can protect you is to keep you with me.”

“Protect me! Isn’t that a strange way of putting it?”

His dark eyes narrowed. “In what way?”

“Don’t you mean it’s the only way you can protect yourself?”

“Now where,” he queried softly, “did you get that idea?”

The urge to accuse him, to pour everything she knew into
hard and contemptuous words, brought an ache to her throat. Under the
circumstances, however, that would only serve to put him even more on his
guard. She lowered her lashes. “It’s fairly obvious that you don’t want the
whereabouts of the elderly man with you known, since you kept me from leaving
after I had seen him. I suppose you are afraid I can’t keep my mouth shut, that
I’ll mention what happened to the wrong person.”

“That’s essentially correct, though not the full story.”

She lifted her gray gaze to meet his dark eyes, caught by an
odd inflection in his tone. “What is the full story, then?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it will
be better if you don’t know.”

“Better for whom?” she demanded, her tone bitter.

“For you.”

“You won’t mind if I don’t believe it? I don’t think you’re
sorry at all, not for anything. I think you are enjoying every minute of this!”

“If it were possible to go back and start over, I would, in
a minute, but since it’s not, then yes, I’m enjoying it. I like having you with
me, I like looking at you. It would be better if you could relax and accept it,
but since you can’t I’ll just have to try to make the best of it.”

“To find what entertainment you can in my feeble attempts to
escape you!” she threw at him.