Lost in Italy (42 page)

Her words drew him up short and tightened his muscles like the string on a bow. 
Work out like they planned?
  Having become otherwise occupied, they hadn’t worked on their plan yet.  At least he and she hadn’t.

So who
had
she been planning with?

Halli shifted to lean one hip against the railing, presenting him with her profile.  Uneasy, he pressed back into the shadows.  She held the phone low enough that he could see a smile lift the corner of her mouth.

“You haven’t spent the past couple days with him.”

Her body stiffened all of a sudden, and he noticed she held the gun in her right hand, resting against her thigh.

“He said he’d pay it and he will.  You just worry about Simone, okay?  Call if anything else strange happens.”

Fingers of dread crawled along his skin as snippets of conversation hurled through his memory.

“We’re better than mom and dad.” 
The con-artists.
 
So…better how?

“They’re in jail, not us.”
Ben, Rachel and Halli were better because…they’d never been caught?

More pieces fell into place.  He remembered thinking something about the ransom demand had been odd, that someone other than Lapaglia had made the suggestion.  Someone like…her brother, perhaps?  Had that been what
they’d planned
?

Her refusal to stay at Simone’s took on a different light.  And last night.  Christ, last night, she’d flipped back and forth enough times he was unclear who’d seduced whom.

“For a million dollars, it’s the least I can do.”

He thought she’d been talking about dessert when she said that, but in the end, she’d slept with him.  Another case where money was more trouble than it was worth?

Anger began a slow simmer.  Shy, cute little Halli had been playing him the entire time? While he agonized over the possibility of falling in love with her, she’d probably been laying in his bed dreaming of how she and her brother and sister would spend the money she guaranteed he’d pay.  He was so gullible.  He’d been had by the whole damn lot of them!

The knife in his back twisted brutally.

Halli had hung up and now lifted her hands to her face, phone in one hand, gun in the other.  Trent’s gaze narrowed on the weapon.  If he wasn’t careful, he just might have a bullet in his chest, too.  But he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.

He moved into view, leaned his injured shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his bare chest.

“You look worried.”

Halli startled with a small shriek and spun to face him.  The gun bounced at her feet with a couple of dull thuds.

“Oh
God
…sorry.  You scared me!”  She pressed the hand holding the phone to her chest, the other over her mouth, and stared at the gun.  Her gaze lifted to his.  “W-what did you say?”

Trent joined her on deck, scanning the area for anything suspicious.  He bent to pick up the weapon, surprised when she did nothing to stop him.  With effort, he tempered his tone.  “You look worried.”

She actually looked like she was about to cry as she lifted her small shoulders.  “Yeah, well, it’s tomorrow now, you know?”

Her words brought back memories of last night.  How she’d decided to put aside her worries for one night.  His jaw tightened in tandem with his grip on the gun, and he made a small questioning gesture with the weapon.  “Why’d you take this?”

“I started thinking about later and got so claustrophobic I couldn’t breathe down there.”  She motioned below deck.  “I had to get some air, and thought I’d feel safer up here by myself if I had the gun.  Stupid, since I don’t even know how to use it.”

His gaze narrowed at the wobble in her voice.  Damn, she was good.  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I know you didn’t get much sleep the past couple nights.”

He immediately pictured why he’d lost sleep last night.  Judging by the increased flush coloring her fair skin, her thoughts travelled the same path.  He forced the erotic images from his mind and asked, “I take it that was your sister on the phone?”

She nodded.  Trent leaned against the railing, gun held casually at his side, ready for anything.  He did another scan of the immediate area around the dock and George’s house but noted nothing unusual.  “What’s going on?  Is she okay?”

Halli sidled past him to sit at the table where a mug of coffee rested.  “She’s feeling okay, but said Simone got a phone call this morning that really shook her up.  Not that she could understand Simone’s Italian, but Rachel said it looked like she’d seen a ghost.  And when she asked if something was wrong, Simone completely clammed up.  Wouldn’t even look her in the eye.  Rachel said it was very strange and freaked her out.”

Trent frowned.  He didn’t like the sound of that.  Halli distracted him with a downward sweep of her gaze, reminding him he wore nothing but navy boxer briefs.  Betrayal had effectively taken care of his morning hard-on but her attention threatened to bring it back.  He was an idiot.

More color stained her cheeks when she raised her gaze to his.  It wasn’t possible to produce blushes on demand, was it?

“Do you think it’s strange?” she asked.

Yes
.  Everything in his life was strange these days.

He shrugged.  “Hard to say since I wasn’t there.”

Halli lifted her coffee, only to
thunk
the mug back down without taking a drink.  “I realize they’re not friends or anything, but Simone really seemed like she wanted to help yesterday.”

Trent kept his own concern hidden to see how far she’d carry the act.  “It could’ve been a call from the hospital.”

“Yeah.”  Her fingers gripped her mug, knuckles white.

“Would you feel better if I called her?”

Those blue eyes pleaded.  “Would you, please?”

He extended his arm for the phone.  She handed it over with a thankful smile that lit her eyes and wrenched his gut.

Was she really playing him, or did he have it all wrong?  A moment ago he’d been certain, now he waffled.  Shouldn’t he, the actor, be able to figure out if someone was genuine or running a con?

Simone sounded a little out of sorts, but assured him she was just tired.  With miles separating them and the day marching forward relentlessly, he was forced to give her the benefit of the doubt.  He asked about Rachel again, and then made Simone promise to get some rest when she could before hanging up.

“Everything’s fine.”

Halli’s relief was palpable, until their eyes met and her smile faded.  She took her still half-full mug and brushed past to go below deck.  Trent followed, watching her dump out the coffee while he reached for his jeans on the floor.  The phone bounced where he dropped it on the unmade bed, but the gun he set on the corner of the rumpled comforter farthest from her while he dressed.

“Exactly how are you and your sister and brother better than your parents?”  He cringed at the slight note of accusation.  Nothing like telling her he was on to her.

“You heard that?”

“And the rest,” he stated, buttoning his jeans.

She turned around, hands braced against the counter behind her.  She looked nervous, but met his gaze directly.  “Rachel’s just worried about Ben, please don’t take her doubt personally.  A million dollars is a lot to ask even a close friend to fork over, let alone a stranger.”

Not quite the angle he’d expected.  Trent tugged a clean white T-shirt down over his stomach and let his gaze linger on her curves as he stuck the gun into the back waistband of his jeans.  “We’re hardly strangers, Halli.”

Color deepened in her cheeks and neck again.  Trent’s heart insisted she couldn’t fake that, or the shyness he swore he saw in her eyes when he stepped closer.  It was unnerving how bad he wanted back what they’d shared last night.  So bad that he couldn’t keep from crossing to her and reaching out to touch despite his insidious suspicions.

He brushed the back of his knuckles along her jaw and tucked her hair behind her ear.  One moment she looked up at him with such a pure expression of trust, and the next she wrapped her arms tight around him.  He tensed with the instant thought she was going for the gun, but all she did was lay her cheek on his chest and lean against him.

Forcing himself to remain somewhat vigilant, he removed the gun and laid it within
his
reach on the counter before returning Halli’s embrace.

“Rachel doesn’t know you.  And I did mean what I said last night.  I trust you completely.”

Her words were muffled against his shirt, but no less effective.

“Only you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut in despair.  Did she have any clue what she did to him?

“What I said about my parents…”

Her chest expanded and relaxed within his arms.  With trepidation, he waited for her to continue.

“Rachel thought maybe with us getting mixed up in all this…that maybe that meant in some sense we were more like our parents than we thought.  That despite us trying to live normal lives, there was no escaping the past, or who we are.  But I
know
we’re nothing like them.  It may have taken Ben and Rachel a little longer to escape their influence, but it’s true.”

Her voice rang with steel conviction.  He wished he could see her face.  Instead, he kept her talking.  “What was it like, growing up with them?”

A long minute passed before she spoke.  “For the most part it was fun, like a never-ending adventure that once in awhile got a little scary.  Us kids were always part of whatever elaborate scheme they were running and they’d make each one into a game.  I guess you could say they conned us, too, because I thought we were close, until that one time we didn’t leave town before I saw the result of what they’d orchestrated.”  She leaned back in his arms with a sigh and slight shake of her head.  “I was twelve, and though I don’t know the specifics of the con, I was old enough to know I’d played a part in my new best friends’ parents losing their jobs, their house, their savings…
everything
…because of my family.”

Her voice had grown hoarse and she sniffed.

“I couldn’t bring myself to turn them in, even though I wanted to, but I refused to help anymore and things were never the same between me and my parents.  Ben and Rachel took up the slack and watched out for me.  Then, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, someone beat them at their own game and they were convicted less than six months later.”

Trent frowned at the thought of her being alone so young. “What’d you do?”

“Got an honest job, finished high school and worked my way through college.”

She rattled off her accomplishments as if they were no big deal, but there was no mistaking the underlying determination and pride in her voice.  He thought she’d gained strength on this wild ride they’d shared, but in truth, he saw she’d had it all along.

“Ben was already out of school, working for some courier service that took him all around the country.  Rachel always had a flair for art and she started her own business not far from where I live now.  She travels to art fairs all over during the summer and creates in her studio through the winter.  Ben helps her out with the books whenever he’s around.”

Call him gullible, but Trent was well on his way to reforming his hasty conclusions from a few minutes ago.  Why would she tell him any of this if she was playing him?

He took one moment of clear, rational thought to consider Sean and Lorenzo’s murders and everything else they’d been through the past couple days.  The twisted tangle of events leading up to this exact spot convinced him there was no way anyone could plan what they’d been through.  Too many variables would’ve made it impossible, and he felt like a jerk for even going there in the first place.

Thank God he hadn’t openly accused her.

Relief clogged his throat, but he managed to ask, “And your parents…has prison made a difference for them, or you?”

“I haven’t spoken to them since the trial almost ten years ago and I don’t want to.  They’ll never be a part of my life again.”

As if suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation, she brought her arms around to push against his chest.  He released her with reluctance.

“What about your brother and sister?”

She shrugged.  “I know they’ve kept in touch, but we don’t talk about them.”  She reached up to brush moisture from her cheeks, turning her back as she did so.  “I’ve never even told anyone about them.  I can just imagine what people would think or say if they knew.”

Trent made her face him.  “Like you told Rachel, you’re not your parents.”  He saw that now without a doubt.

“Still doesn’t mean I want anyone to know.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” he promised.

He was rewarded with a brief smile.  His stomach chose that moment to grumble for breakfast and Trent decided to get the morning back on track where it should’ve been.

He lifted her chin to give her a thorough good morning kiss.  After a moment, her palms flattened on his chest as she rose on tiptoe to kiss him back.  With effort, he sidelined thoughts of taking her back to bed and ended the kiss.