Lost in Italy (18 page)

With the worst of the agony in his arm having subsided to an insistent throb, he angled toward the rear running lights and gingerly pulled on his left elbow to get a good look at the gash.  It hurt like hell, but luckily the bullet had only grazed his bicep.

Halli’s indrawn breath made a hissing sound through her teeth.  His sideways glance took in her ashen face as she stared first at his arm, then the dark stains on her hands.

“You’re not one of those people who freaks out over a little blood, are you?” he asked.

Wide blue eyes rose to meet with his, then dropped back to his arm.  A thick, red rivulet had worked its way through the wet hairs on his arm until it dripped off his elbow onto his jeans.

“Uh…that’s more than a little.”

Another drop hit his thigh as she reached a hand to grip the side railing.  He took note of her white knuckles.  “Sit down before you pass out.”

She blinked before visibly pulling herself together.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine.”  She took a step toward him.  “I can help.  Ah…first thing is to stop the bleeding.  Right?  What do we need?  Bandages.  First aid kit.  You have to have one on a boat, right?  Where would that be?”

She whirled toward the front of the boat and back to him with the last two questions.

Trent picked up the gun again and stood. “Slow down.  I’m getting dizzy watching you spin.”

“What are you doing?  Sit down,” she instructed when he tried to move past.

Funny how the blood rattled her, but she didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the weapon in his hand anymore.

And she didn’t move out of his way.  “I can get the kit if you tell me where—”

“Right now, I’m more concerned about how far we are from the house than my arm.”

“We’re far enough.”

“I’m still going to check the GPS.”  He tried to sidestep, but she moved with him.

“You’re getting blood all over the place!”

Her palm pressed flat against his chest as if she thought she could actually force him to sit down.  Trent took a hasty step back.  Away from the heat of her hand and the unexpected yearning it triggered the moment she made contact with his bare skin.  “What do you want me to do about it?  For Christ’s sake, making sure we’re safe is more important than a few drops of blood.”

A sound of frustration rumbled in her throat, and the next thing he knew, she yanked her brown sweatshirt over her head and thrust it under his elbow.  “There.  Now you can check your stupid GPS while I find the first aid kit.”

On her way below deck, he heard her mutter, “Like I’m dumb enough to stop within shooting distance of the house.”

“It’s in the head,” he called.

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—”

“This is gonna hurt.”

Another blaze of pain scorched his arm.  Trent cursed through his clenched teeth, braced his feet, and throttled back to an idle.  From the corner of his eye, he saw Halli drop the bowl to catch the back of the captain’s seat when the sudden stop pitched her forward.  She made the grab, but still lost her balance.  He lifted his left arm so as not to impede the tumble that landed her sideways across his legs.

Hmm.  Interesting turn of events.
  The angry sting of peroxide bled into the background, along with his annoyance.

Halli recognized the aggravation in Trent’s tight jaw a second before he brought the boat to a rocking halt.  Next thing she knew, she lay sprawled across his hard thighs, and his right arm saved her head from slamming against the throttle.  The bowl was a goner, but her fingers remained clenched around the small bottle of antiseptic as she stared up into Trent’s narrowed eyes.

She’d pissed him off.  Well, who cared?  She didn’t even feel bad for ambushing the big baby with the peroxide.  He’d been
shot
, for God’s sake, a little bit of sterilization should’ve been no big deal.

His warm, masculine scent surrounded her, full of testosterone, threatening to undermine
her
resentment.  Desperately, she clung to the emotion like a life preserver while the boat swayed, because anger was so much easier to deal with than outright fear.  Anger she could control.

Below deck a few minutes ago, the fact that he could’ve been killed by that bullet had hit her hard.  Hard enough that she’d had to scrub his blood from her hands and take a moment to compose herself or return with the first aid kit blubbering like an idiot.

His fixation on her chest may have heated her from the inside out, like his intense gaze was doing right now, but it’d also given her a convenient channel for her jumbled emotions.  And then he’d called her
sweetheart
again.  A word he tossed about so casually it made a mockery of the endearment.  Her dad had used words like that as if they were nothing, too.

That’s it.  Don’t think about how great Trent smells, or how sexy his body is, or how wonderful it would feel to have his arms hold you close...think about how he reminds you of Dad.

In essence, they were both actors.  Both played whatever part they needed to get what they wanted.  Having learned that lesson years ago,  she didn’t trust Trent’s act one bit, especially when she wasn’t entirely sure what it was he wanted.  Told herself she didn’t
want
to know.

Before her own traitorous body proved her a liar, Halli grasped the steering wheel to pull herself up and off of his lap.  Once she was sitting, he gripped the other side of the wheel, trapping her between his arms.  His softened hazel gaze locked on hers, and her breath caught in her throat.  Her heart pounded, slow and deep.

This is why she’d avoided looking at him the past fifteen minutes.  The man annoyed the hell out of her and yet he could mesmerize a cobra with those eyes.  With his heat caressing her skin, she discovered she was much more susceptible than a snake.

It didn’t help that the whole time she’d cleaned his arm, she’d had to consciously keep her gaze from lingering on his broad, bare chest.  It was one thing to feel those muscles cloaked under a cotton T-shirt and quite another to visually feast upon them unclothed.  Not to mention, she couldn’t shake the memory that he was commando under the wet jeans that molded his thighs and backside.  The same muscled thighs she currently sat upon.

He leaned toward her.  Intent shone clear in his eyes, and she suddenly couldn’t summon a single ounce of willpower to resist.  The gentle rocking motion of the boat enhanced the seductive air cloaking the softly-lit cockpit.  Once again, she was awed that
he
would want to kiss
her
.

His warm breath caressed her lips and her breath hitched in anticipation.

“It’s so sexy when a woman literally throws herself at me.”

Nothing like a dose of of his ego to ruin the sensual fantasy she’d foolishly descended into.  Either he was making fun of her, or she was just another convenient, willing notch to add to his proverbial bedpost.  Halli turned away from the temptation of his mouth and half-naked body and pushed against the arm holding her captive.  There was hope for her yet, if not him.

“This was your fault, and you know it, you bigheaded
jerk
.  I rest my case, and your arm’s still bleeding.”