Run To Rome

Trent abruptly dropped her on her feet, grasped her shoulders and spun her around. With her back pressed to the door, he leaned in until their noses almost touched.

“You think I’m enjoying this? There’s a hell of a lot better things I could be doing right now than keeping your ungrateful ass safe.”

She shrank into herself. Her audible swallow reached his ears.

“I didn’t ask for any of this. I just want to find my brother and sister and go home.”

The waiver in her small voice hit Trent smack dab in the chest with a force greater than her head butt on his chin. His anger vanished on a sigh. “I know,” he said softly, eternally sorry this innocent bystander had been dragged into his nightmare. “And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that happens.”

She stared past his shoulder, blue eyes alight with a shimmer of tears. “I still don’t trust you.”

He lifted her chin with a crooked knuckle and offered a smile that’d never failed him before. “Hey, remember back in the car with the Carabinieri? You trusted me then.”

She pulled away with a jerk. With her chin raised, her blue gaze met his and held. “Yeah, stupid, gullible me.”

Trent frowned. “What?”

“They were nice guys. They seemed trustworthy. You could’ve told them what happened and I’d be at my hotel with my family by now.”

That pitiful wobble shook her voice again, but this time he ignored it. “Listen to me, and listen good, sweetheart. This thing goes deeper than you could ever imagine. If the men who were chasing us find out where you are, you’ll be as dead as my friend is right now.” The reference to Lorenzo roughened his voice.

Her face blanched white, but he cleared his throat and kept talking. “I have to see what the hell you’ve got on that video before I can even begin to think about who I can trust. Your life and mine depend on at least one of us being smart about this whole thing.”

She took a shaky breath. “How do I know you’re not just acting again?”

“Acting?” he asked in disbelief.

“When the bullets were flying, you had me convinced this was all real, but then you turned around and played those military guys like you were walking the red carpet.”

“That’s because I’ve played the movie star to death. It’s so second nature I could do it in my sleep. This—” he gestured to the shot-up car and her “—I’ve never played before. Believe me, Halli, I couldn’t fake this if I tried.”

She didn’t look convinced. When she fumbled behind her back for the door handle, he lost what was left of his patience. Grasping one of her elbows, he stepped aside and thrust her in front of him, toward the house. Anticipating immediate resistance, he took hold of both her arms, clamping them against her sides before moving close to murmur softly in her ear. “Had this been some sort of elaborate scheme to take advantage of a gullible tourist, I’d have had you inside already.”

Her back stiffened against his chest.

“Relax, sweetie, I’ve never been that hard-up.”

He reached around her to key in his four digit security code for the house alarm. Once inside, he reactivated the alarm and steered her through the foyer, a

cross the living room overlooking the lake, and to the bar. He pushed her butt into a plush burgundy chair his decorator had picked out a few years ago.

“Sit. Stay.”

Her chin took on a mutinous tilt. He waggled a finger in front of her face. “Uh-uh. Be a good little girl and this’ll go so much easier.” He turned his head, searching, until he noted the sash holding the curtains back. One of those would work perfectly. When her gaze followed his, he raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to take it a step further?”

She sat back in the chair and crossed her arms. Her breasts pushed up, separated by the strap of her travel purse, causing Trent a moment of distraction. Those hidden curves were intriguing.

Abruptly, he spun around to the bar. He took a moment to empty his pockets of Lorenzo’s recording device, cell phone, and his wallet, then reached for the full bottle of Glen Grant Single Malt Scotch Whiskey.

“I always suspected you’d be a jerk,” she said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

Trent downed one shot and poured a second. “Don’t you read the tabloids? This is me, sugar.”

“I’ve got better things to do with my time than read about a bunch of spoiled rich people who have everything they could ever want and yet they continually throw it all away.”

Considering her condescending tone, he faced her so he could lean back against the bar. She stared out the nearest window, as if the lake were infinitely more interesting. So, Ms. My-Name-Is-Halli thought she was better than him, did she?

He drank the shot and poured another. Well, maybe she was. Bet she didn’t have the whole world stroking her ego while at the same time watching, waiting, salivating over any little mistake she made so they could feel better about their own sorry-ass lives. Bet she didn’t have a father who never bothered to hide his disappointment no matter how much money her last movie made at the box office.