A frown creased her brow as she faced him. “What’s in my head?”
Trent held back the smile that threatened. “The head. The first aid kit is in the head. That’s what a bathroom is called on a boat.”
She rolled her eyes and spun away. “Then just call it a bathroom.”
This time he gave in to the smile, though it bounced harmlessly off her back. In the next instant, the smile became a grimace as he stooped to pick her video camera up off the floor by the captain’s chair. He stowed it in the storage box under the seat cushion before dumping the gun in the cup holder next to the steering wheel.
Still standing, he leaned back against the chair and checked the GPS. She’d gotten them out of range all right, only in the wrong direction. The worrisome question surfaced of how Lapaglia had connected him to Halli, but he shoved it aside to concentrate on getting them to a safe location. He wanted a lot more water between them and Lapaglia’s henchmen until he got his arm bandaged and figured out what the hell to do now. Heading south toward the city of Como wasn’t going to cut it.
He turned the boat north and navigated to the west shore of the lake so they could pass across from his villa without drawing attention to themselves. Thankfully, there were enough boaters this July weekend that the Scappare blended right in on their way up the shoreline to Bellagio.
Another check of his arm revealed the bleeding had slowed some. He didn’t mind the blood loss if it washed away the bacteria he knew thrived in the dirty lake water, but Halli had been right about not getting it all over the boat.
What she didn’t realize was he enjoyed the added bonus of viewing her Wet & Wild T-shirt again. In fact, when she reappeared with the first aid kit, a couple of towels, and a bowl, Trent got a birds-eye view. In the combined illumination of the running lights and cockpit, he noted the blue rhinestones matched her eyes perfectly.
She set up her makeshift triage station on the small refreshment table behind his chair. Then she gave him a small cup of water and a couple of ibuprofen tablets to swallow before instructing, “Give me the shirt and lift your arm.”
He sat fully in the captain’s seat, but because they were coming up on a couple of boats, kept his concentration on the water in front of them. Or at least tried. As she placed the bowl under his elbow and began washing the blood from his arm with a wet towel, he couldn’t help a sideways glance every so often, dividing his attention equally between her face and the cleavage-revealing shirt.
One side of her hair was tucked behind her ear, the other fell forward. Shiny strands blocked his view of her shadowed face save for one glimpse of dark lashes lowered in concentration, lips pressed tightly together. Her administrations were firm, but gentle, and he experienced the same leap of his pulse as before when she’d touched his chest. Something about this woman had really grown on him.
Right now, despite his bleeding arm and the potential danger of Lapaglia and his men finding them again, he wanted nothing more than to pull her close and kiss her. He imagined the press of her chest to his without the bulky sweatshirt to interfere, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened in response to the ill-timed fantasy.
Halli, on the other hand, remained steady, her attention focused on his arm as if she were disarming an explosive. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had intrigued him so much, which made her obvious disinterest in the rest of him more than a little irritating. His macho ego, the one he relished putting on display for the tabloids, sat up and demanded he do something about her indifference.
“Sorry your new sweatshirt got blood all over it,” he offered.
“I’m not. It’s ugly.”
“Wow. Nice.”
“Well, you could’ve at least grabbed something I might want to keep after this is all over.”
He smiled at her put-out tone. “You’re right. I apologize for not taking the time to shop for you when people were chasing us with guns.”
Finished washing, now she dabbed a dry towel in a wide circle around his torn flesh, no longer quite so gentle. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Take the jerk route again.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d made that accusation. He craned his neck to the right and adjusted the wheel to navigate a safe distance around another vessel. “You keep calling me a jerk and I’m gonna start to believe you mean it.”
“I do mean it. You’re a sarcastic, egotistical jerk.” She finished wiping his arm with more force than necessary and set the cloth on the table behind him.
Wow. Her feathers were finally good and ruffled, but damned if he could figure out why. He cast another look in her direction, and when she stubbornly ignored him, his gaze dropped to Wet & Wild. A flush of awareness heated his entire body, but there was no doubt she was chilled in the night air.
Forcing his attention back to the water, he chuckled softly. “Since it means so much to you, sweetheart, if we get out of this in one piece, I’ll buy you anything you want. And furthermore, I’m not ego—owww!”
A severe burning sensation engulfed his bicep as liquid streamed down his arm. His instinctive flinch away from the unexpected pain accidentally swerved the boat at the same time. Halli stumbled and Trent grabbed with his injured arm to keep her on her feet.
“What the hell is your problem?”
She pulled free as he straightened the boat and slowed down. After making sure the coast was clear in front of them, he tossed her a dark frown. She quickly positioned the bowl back under the liquid dripping from his elbow. Peroxide he assumed.
The smile Halli lifted toward him was laced with saccharine sweetness. “I’m sorry, did that hurt?”
“Yes, it hurt! You gotta warn a guy before you do something like that. At the very least you—”