Run To Rome

She shook off his hand and rubbed her arm before pointing her stuck-up little nose in the air. “I asked you a question before you swiped my camera and left. A damn important one, too. Maybe next time you’ll answer instead of blowing me off.”

“I told you I wasn’t involved. Besides which, who says I owe you any explanations?”

“You kidnapped me!”

He turned to face the desk, eyeing the balled page in his hand. Her expression from a moment ago flashed in his mind. Sympathy...?

His journal. Sean. His gut tightened at the thought of her reading his private words and he deliberately made his next words condescending. “We’re not really having this discussion again, are we?”

“Oh, goodness, no. Wouldn’t want to bore the great Trent Tomlin.”

A forward jerk of his knee slammed the third drawer closed with a thud. “Your sarcasm is not appreciated.”

“Neither is yours.”

“I was serious.”

“So was I.”

Trent slapped the notebook on his desk and turned to lean back against the polished wood. He ignored the article that floated to the ground and focused on Halli, his hands braced on either side of him, fingers gripping the edge of the desk. “Look, I’m tired and I’m hungry, so can we cut the childish bullshit and be done with this for tonight?”

Red spots appeared on her cheeks as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Aw, poor baby.”

“Saving your ass—twice, I might add—isn’t as easy as I make it look, so go make yourself useful and whip me up something to eat like I asked earlier.”

Her eyebrows shot up and her entire face flared crimson. “Screw you,” she spat as she spun toward the door.

“Been happenin’ all day, sweetheart,” he drawled after her.

The door slammed so hard a couple of his brother’s framed photographs bounced against the wall. Trent glared under his arm at the leather-bound notebook on the desk. How much had she read? All of it he’d bet. Damn her. She had no right reading his personal thoughts. How’d she like it if he crawled inside her head and exposed her deepest regret?

His hand fisted tighter, his knuckles as white as the paper crushed between his fingers. When the wave of emotion abated and he’d reconnected with his self-assigned character, he smoothed out the page against his thigh, then picked up the book and thumbed the pages until he found where it belonged.

She now had her answer as to his involvement.

And the added danger that went along with that knowledge.

Chapter 9

Childish bullshit?

Make yourself useful?

Halli fumed as she straightened up the mess she’d made in the living room. What a jackass.

Slamming the cabinet door hard enough to rattle the beveled-edge glass on the top doors gave her no satisfaction. She’d provided him with the video, hadn’t she? The all-important recording he was so desperate to see. That was useful. How in the world could the arrogant jerk she’d just dealt with be the same man whose emotional, written words touched her heart and brought tears to her eyes?

As if her thoughts conjured him, Trent strode into the room. He carried a cardboard box in his arms and she stopped straightening the chair cushion to glare at him, noting his jaw looked to be clenched just as tight as hers. So what. Let him be angry. Let him be hungry. He couldn’t pay me to follow his condescending order to—

He turned his back as he dropped the box onto the couch, completely ignoring her. Halli wondered what he was doing, until he bent to rummage in the box. Then she found herself checking out his butt.

What was wrong with her? She didn’t even like the man!

Well, to be fair, she didn’t object to certain aspects of him, and his butt was certainly one of those. But movie-star looks and an amazing body didn’t make up for his overall…jerkiness. Was that a word? Who cares, she decided, still staring at his defined, denim-clad backside. If the pants fit…

It dawned on her when he set aside some lighting gear on the couch that the box he’d brought out contained camera equipment. Most likely from the room his brother had used. She thought of the tortured emotion revealed in Trent’s journal entries and the tense set of his shoulders took on a

whole new meaning. Her anger melted away.