Sweetly Contemporary Collection - Part 2 (Sweetly Contemporary Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  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.”

  “He didn’t say much about it,” she said. “I suppose it’s a big place?”

  “I should say so. Back when his dad was alive and involved up at Baton Rouge, they had their own railroad spur and post office.”

  Kelly felt a rising excitement. She was close to something important; she could sense it. George was garrulous enough, it seemed, as long as he thought she had been told more than she had.

  “Charles’s father —” she began.

  “There you are, Kelly. I’ve been wondering when you were going to get up so I could have breakfast.”

  She turned her head sharply to see Charles lounging at the end of the catwalk. As much for the benefit of the guard as for Charles, she gave him an offhand good morning.

  “Come along and stop distracting George. He’s hopeless enough with a fishing rod without someone like you at his elbow.”

  “Aw, Mr. Duralde,” the guard protested.

  Charles’s dark gaze did not waver as he smiled at Kelly. For all the humor and the implied compliment in his words, it was a command.

  “You shouldn’t have waited for me,” she said.

  “And eat alone when I could have your charming company? Unthinkable. Besides, you are better at frying bacon.”

  Keep it light. That seemed to be Charles’s attitude toward her this morning. It had certain advantages, even Kelly could see that; and if it would get them over the hump of their first meeting after the fiasco of the night before, then that was all to the good.

  “Duralde,” she said with an effort at airiness as she walked beside him back toward the house. “At least I know your last name now.”

  “Does that help?” He slanted her a quick look from the corner of his eye.

  “I think it does.”

  “That’s good then.”

  “I still don’t know why you didn’t want to tell me.” She had a good idea but it might be best to affect innocence.

  “I thought you might be the type to read post-office wanted posters, but apparently not.”

  Was he attempting to disarm her by making a joke of the truth? She would not put it past him, and yet, the more she tried to picture Charles Duralde as a killer, the more fantastic it seemed. “I — I’ll have to mend my ways.”

  He made no answer as he held the screen door for her, then followed her into the house. They went straight to the kitchen. Kelly took out the bacon and began to peel the strips apart, placing them in the electric skillet. Charles got out the makings for toast. It was as if they were a couple long married with a set routine, Kelly told herself. The only difference was her acute awareness of him as he moved about the homey task with a kitchen towel tucked into the top of his jeans. He handled himself in the kitchen with brisk, masculine efficiency, as if cooking were a neutral task neither male- nor female-oriented, one that had to be done and therefore should be completed with the greatest dispatch. It was doubtless because he was single, used to doing his own cooking, and because he knew that she would refuse if ordered to perform such menial chores alone, that he pitched in so willingly. If he ever married, he would probably sit back like most other men and expect his wife to do everything.

  Perhaps she was assuming too much? Maybe he was already married? Just because he had taken her in his arms, because he had not refuted any of the bachelor pursuits she had suggested as his interests, did not mean that he had no wife. There was no ring on his strong brown hand but some men did not wear them.

  It didn’t matter, naturally, but she was curious. Her mother used to say that if she wanted to know something the best way to find out was to ask, and if the man who was keeping her prisoner gained the impression that she was becoming personally intrigued with him, wasn’t that what she wanted?

  “Tell me something, Mr. Duralde —”

  “My name is Charles.”

  “Charles then. Is there a Mrs. Duralde? Someone with whom you usually share these little domestic duties?”

  He gave her a swift glance as he slipped the toast pan into the oven and turned to the refrigerator to take out a can of frozen orange juice concentrate. “You mean my mother?”

  “You know very well I don’t!”

  “Then yo
u want to know if I’m married. I wonder why?”

  “No reason,” she said with a slight shrug.

  “How disappointing. The answer is no.”

  Kelly realized belatedly that she should have been more provocative about her reasons, should have smiled at him, lifted a brow, anything except retreat into sullenness. Or would that kind of behavior, coming so soon after the night before, have made him suspicious? The art of seduction was something she knew little about. It was going to require some careful thought.

  A few minutes later, she turned to the dish cabinet for a platter for the bacon just as Charles was reaching for juice glasses. She brushed against him for a brief instant. This time, before stepping back, Kelly remembered to allow her lips to curve upward momentarily. The effect was worthwhile. For a long instant he stood still, a suspended look in his dark eyes as they rested on her face.

  Abruptly he moved aside. “After you.”

  She was not certain whether to be elated or disappointed that he held himself away from her, well beyond the range of touch, accidental or otherwise.

  Over the breakfast table, Kelly racked her brains for something to talk about. She could come up with little other than the most trite of commonplaces. It would not do, she thought, to mention the things George had told her. It was likely to bring about a crisis, causing Charles’s wrath to descend on the man’s head, which would, in turn, prevent her from learning more from the guard. More than that, it would give him the impression that she had been snooping, a direct contradiction of the picture of fatalistic resignation she wanted to create.

  That did not prevent her from thinking about what she had learned. What in the world had George meant by saying that Charles took care of the whole shooting match? He had made it sound like some kind of giant farming operation or business conglomerate. What had that to do with a Mafia operation? It made no sense.

  Duralde. The name plagued her. It could be she had heard it mentioned along with those of some of the other figures in the state who operated outside the law, men reputed to be crime bosses of high standing. If so, she could not pinpoint when or how.