Welcome To Redemption: Series Collection (Books 1-6)

by Donna Marie Rogers

  “You didn’t see anything else?” Trent Tomlin prompted.

  Her hands trembled. She clasped them together in her lap, absently fiddling with the Velcro adjuster on his cap. After the past ten minutes and the sharp tension in his voice, she was afraid to ask her next question, but forced the words out anyway.

  “What do you think I saw?”

  He gave a brief glance behind them and yanked up on the hand brake lever. His knuckles brushed along her leg as he reached down into her space. She flinched in alarm, but with her camera now fisted in his large hand, he simply resettled into his seat. He powered it on and hit rewind.

  Three seconds later he swore under his breath. “You got another battery?”

  “I left the case in the car.” With Ben and Rachel.

  More swearing. He shoved the camera at her and snatched his cap from her death grip. After settling it low over his brow, he released the hand brake, shifted the idling car back into gear and hit the gas.

  Her head bounced off the headrest as the car shot forward. Dumbfounded, she stared out the windshield. Comprehension dawned and this time she purposely let her head thump back as she squeezed her eyes shut in dismay. Stupid idiot. She’d just missed a chance to escape. Movie star or not, apparent rescue or not, she didn’t actually know the man. He could be a serial killer for all she knew. Unlikely, sure, but only an hour ago she’d have also said being abducted by him was unlikely. Unlikely did not mean impossible.

  What did seem impossible was getting back to her family. The further he drove, the more lost she’d be. Because even if she got away, she hadn’t seen any city name signs where they’d pulled off the road and had no idea where they’d left her. Her English/Italian dictionary also sat on the back seat of the blue rental.

  “Where are you going?” she asked after a minute of silent berating.

  “To my house.”

  “Your house? Shouldn’t we go to the police?”

  “La polizia?”

  His perfect Italian accent threw her for a moment.

  “No can do, sweetheart.”

  “People shot at us! All we have to do is show them your car.”

  He maneuvered around a corner, their speed sedate compared to earlier. “We can’t trust them.”

  “We can’t trust the police?”

  “Not here. Didn’t notice anyone rushing to stop that chase, did you?”

  True, the entire car chase hadn’t alerted a single officer of the law, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be trusted.

  She watched Trent from the corner of her eye. His attention constantly shifted, as if he was keeping watch, and she guessed there’d be no convincing him.

  Then again, maybe he just didn’t want to get caught. That thought didn’t make her feel any better.

  “Take me to the US Embassy,” she said as firmly as possible, like he didn’t have a choice.

  “The embassy’s in Rome.”

  Alarm undercut her bravado as she pictured the map of Italy in her mind. “But that’s hours away.”

  “There’s a Consulate General in Milan.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Basically the same thing as an embassy.”

  That’s right—she knew that. She just wasn’t thinking straight with all that’d happened. A deep breath helped quell her rising panic. Giving into her anxiety would get her nowhere. One thing she did know, she didn’t want to go to back to Milan without finding Ben and Rachel first. She wasn’t sure how she’d find them, but she’d have to figure something out. If she could get out of this car and away from him.

  “You know, you could just drop me off—”

  “No.”

  “It’s not like you need me for anything. I didn’t see a thing, and I—”

  “Until I see what you’ve got on that video, you and I are best friends, honey.”

  Her teeth ground together at his fake, condescending southern drawl. “It’s Halli.”

  His head turned, and despite the sunglasses, she felt his gaze rake over the comfortable sweat pants and T-shirt she’d worn for the long trans-Atlantic flight. “That’s your name?”

  “What else would it be? Look, you can have the video. I don’t want it, there’s nothing on it that matters to me.” She fumbled with the camera as she spoke, but her shaking hands made it impossible to extract the small SD card. Tears stung her eyes as frustration mounted. “Just take the whole thing and let me go.”

  She shoved it into his lap, hating that her voice wobbled at the end. She’d saved six months to buy the camera, but hopelessness is what made her composure crumble, not the stupid camera. Before she made a complete fool of herself, she averted her head and took a couple deep breaths to get control of her nerves.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  His quiet statement made it worse. She clutched the travel purse angled under her right arm and around her neck, aware the ripples of anxiety grew with each passing moment. Bet Ben and Rachel hadn’t figured this into their fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants plan. Heck, even she couldn’t have planned for something like this. A tear slipped from her lashes and out of nowhere, a laugh bubbled up. Was this what hysterical felt like? Didn’t matter, she needed some sort of emotional release, and more tears wouldn’t get her anywhere.

  “Do you have a phone? Can I at least call my brother and sister?”

  To her surprise, he set her camera on the console between them and then dug a phone from his pocket. Halli grabbed it like a drowning person latching onto a life-preserver. Shaking fingers forced her to start over twice before she got the number right.

  Please, answer, Ben. Please.

  Relief swelled when the call connected, but instead of her brother’s voice, she got some strange recording in Italian. She tried again with the same result. Biting back frustration, she dialed a third time. This time, all she got was dead air. Then a series of beeps sounded in her ear.

  “The call won’t go through,” she said.

  “Service is spotty around the lake,” Trent informed her. “You can try again later.”

  Tears threatened yet again as she slapped the phone against his outstretched palm and leaned her head back against the seat. “I planned this to be the trip of a lifetime. Something to remember.”

  His answering chuckle held a note of disbelief. “Sweetheart, if you don’t remember this, whatever you had planned didn’t stand a chance.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “What, you’re not having fun?”

  Halli jerked her head up and straightened in her seat. “No, I’m not. Getting shot at and kidnapped wasn’t listed anywhere on my itinerary.” The planned one or the windblown one.

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped, glaring at him. “After we landed, right about now, in fact, we were supposed to go right to the hotel to freshen up, then get something to eat and tour the Villa Carlotta instead of listening to Ben’s bright idea to stop for a quick look at the lake. Tomorrow after breakfast, I wanted to visit a couple churches headed south and around Como, and after lunch, we were going to explore the village of Careno.” She ticked off each day on her fingers. “The next day I planned a drive around the lake until we reached Mandello to see the motorcycle museum—my brother’s a motorcycle nut. Then on Wednesday…or was it Thursday?...no, Wednesday, we’re going to—”

  She halted mid-sentence when his eyebrows became visible above his sunglasses and underneath the bill of his cap. Heat flooded her face as she lowered her hands to her lap.

  “You were being sarcastic.”

  He gave her a patronizing grin. “Yes.”

  And the pathetic idiot that she was, she’d given him a play by play. To avoid looking at him, she stared out her side of the car and opposite the lake as he navigated south. They were now driving around Lake Como, Italy, and she couldn’t even enjoy the scenery.

  Heck—alone with Trent Tomlin, and she couldn’t enjoy the scenery. The man voted Most Sexy by
women across America not once, not twice, but four times. Most of her female co-workers at PBS had agreed; any woman who didn’t fantasize about Trent Tomlin was either blind, or a lesbian.

  She snuck a quick peek from beneath her lashes. Yeah, though he hadn’t been easily recognizable, he was still hotter than ever with all that rough scruff.

  She’d always loved his movies, especially the Shain West ones that were an exciting cross between Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone, but set in the 1800’s. However, things she’d heard on TV and read in the tabloids while standing in line at the grocery store suggested he was an irresponsible, incorrigible, work-a-little-party-too-hard Hollywood playboy.

  She wasn’t naïve enough to believe everything they printed, but a picture told a thousand words. Or more accurately, a hundred pictures told a thousand words. The beautiful co-stars, glamorous supermodels and semi-talented pop singers who adorned his arm changed as often as his tie. So while she may have fantasized about the image of the man like the rest of America, it didn’t mean she respected him.

  And, now that she’d been abducted by him, she certainly didn’t like him.

  “Where exactly is your house?” she finally asked. They’d passed Brienno and Moltrasio, names she recognized from the hours pouring over maps the past two years. Yet more miles between her and her family.

  “Torno.”

  If only she hadn’t wasted so much of her camera battery filming on the plane and in the airports. But she’d wanted to catch every moment to remember later. Trip of a lifetime and all that. Then the town name Trent had said registered and she realized they’d be traveling through more populated areas as they rounded one of the southern tips of the lake.

  “Why don’t you just stop at an electronics store and buy a battery?”

  “Great idea, if you don’t take into account that most of the shops close down between noon and three for the traditional Italian siesta, and right now”—he glanced at his watch—“it’s one-fifteen.”

  Darn it, that’s right. She knew that, too, and had even planned for the inconvenience—just not the rest of this craziness.

  “And,” he continued, “I can’t really drive around town with bullet holes in my windshield, now can I?”

  She wished he would. Maybe the police—la polizia, she mimicked in her head—would stop them, and she would be free. At this point, she acknowledged it wasn’t so much that she was afraid of him, she just wanted things back to normal. Back with Ben and Rachel. They would never believe what’d happened—she wouldn’t believe it if it hadn’t happened to her.

  Come to think of it...what had he been doing there? Halli snuck another glance toward his stern profile as they passed the sign for Cernobbio. How did he know she’d been filming and those guys would come after her? Were they really after him?

  Halli shifted in her seat to get a better look at his face. “Why were you—”

  “Sonofabitch.”

  She drew back, then followed his gaze to see a large, dark blue SUV-type vehicle up ahead on the side of the road. Two uniformed men stood at the rear, alongside the pavement. One waved a red and white paddle and the other—Halli’s heart went nuts all over again—had a very big, very scary-looking gun slung around his neck and shoulders. The kind the bad guys used in the movies.

  “Oh my God, who are they?” she whispered.

  “Carabinieri.”

  Even the name sounded scary. Instinctively she cast Trent in the role of protector and leaned closer. “Are they bad?”

  “Italian military police.”

  He flicked on his right turn signal and downshifted to pull over in front of their vehicle with a few short jerks. Halli sat up straighter at the word police. Thoughts of protection quickly transferred from Trent to the armed military men.

  “It looks like it’s just a random checkpoint,” Trent added. The tightening of his fingers on the steering wheel and flexing of his forearm muscles belied the casual statement. “You keep quiet, I’ll handle this.”

  Unable to believe her luck, she glanced behind at the two men approaching, then whirled around and reached for the door handle. Trent’s hand encircled her wrist before she could open the door.

  “I said I’ll handle it,” he warned in a low, controlled tone.

  “Let me go or I’ll scream.”

  She pulled against his hold, but his grip tightened. “Don’t do this, for both our sakes.”

  An unexpected vulnerability in his voice made her pause. He removed the mirrored glasses and their gazes locked for a timeless moment. Her breath caught as she stared into the beautiful hazel eyes that made women’s hearts beat madly all around the world.

  Darn if they didn’t have the same affect on hers.

  The voices of the two officers reached her ears. She pulled again and this time Trent let go. She reached for the handle once more, but her hand wavered.

  No. She would not be sucked in like a besotted fool.

  “Halli. Please.”

  The husky, desperation-tinged entreaty hit its mark. Darn him.

  But, then again, he didn’t know her. He couldn’t know she found it impossible to say no when someone pleaded with such raw, naked honesty. Could it be he was telling the truth and she should trust him? Having been conned by her own parents growing up, she was never quite sure when to trust her instincts.

  Yet...those had been real bullets whizzing past her ear as he sped through the narrow streets of Lenno like a maniac. The three holes in his windshield proved that. Did they also prove that he probably had saved her life?

  She glanced back over her shoulder. The officer with the gun stood back a few feet, weapon not quite raised, but ready none-the-less. The one with the paddle stopped next to the driver’s side of the convertible, one hand on the side arm at his waist.

  “Documenti, per favore.”

  Halli met Trent’s gaze once more. The plea in his voice reflected in his expression. She gave a silent sigh and released the handle to sit back in her seat. A flash of relief darkened Trent’s eyes before he removed his cap and turned a smile to the officers.

  “Si, si, I got it right here.”

  The first officer’s eyes widened and he let loose an excited stream of Italian. The second relaxed his hold on his gun and stepped forward with a big smile. Halli caught Trent Tomlin and Shain West. Obviously, they were familiar with the movie star. She watched Trent pump each man’s hand with an aw-shucks grin. When the officer holding the big gun beamed at her, she thought about her similar reaction not that long ago. She cringed inside even as she smiled back at the man.

  Had she been this star-struck?

  She’d stuttered and blushed like a virgin teenager. Yeah, she’d been pathetic.

  Squaring her shoulders, she decided it didn’t matter. Now that she’d gotten to know him a little, she was over his celebrity status. Humiliation firmly set aside, she focused on the conversation between the three men.

  Trent Tomlin really was one hell of an actor. He spoke a combination of English and Italian, just enough, apparently, to bond nice and tight, so that when the paddle officer finally turned his attention to the bullet holes in the windshield, Trent laughed it off with a grimace.

  “There was a goof up—un spaglio—at the movie set. Domani, they will change the glass.”

  “Domani?”

  “Si, tomorrow, domani.”

  The other officer pointed to the rear of the car and asked another question. Trent nodded and spouted more words she didn’t understand. When the officer looked at her again, she kept smiling, not sure what else to do.

  One guy winked at Trent and they shared a laugh before he extended a small notebook and a pen. Halli got the feeling she should be insulted, but not a word had been spoken. Trent flipped to the back of the book and signed one piece of paper and the cardboard with a flourish. After a couple slaps on the shoulder and more handshakes, the officers returned to their vehicle.

  Halli glanced at Trent, expecting to see a t
riumphant grin for his success in fooling the men. The act certainly had been impressive. Instead, he leaned his head back, eyes closed, no smugness to be found. The misery etched in his features made her heart skip an empathetic beat.

  Before she could do more than blink, he blew out a deep breath, straightened and shifted the convertible into gear. She choked down any sympathy, grimly reminded by his hands fisted on the wheel and his now inscrutable expression that while he may be known around the world, he was still a stranger.

  One very capable of deception.

  He donned the hat and glasses once more, effectively shutting her out. The wind whipped her hair in her face as he accelerated and she raised a hand to brush strands from her eyes. Other than a brief glance to her side of the car, he kept his gaze trained straight ahead, his jaw tight, face blank.

  Unease rippled through her. The ground alongside the convertible sped by at a dizzying rate and she cursed the stupidity that had convinced her to trust her unreliable instincts.

  “So, what now?” she asked over the rush of wind.

  “Now we switch cars at my house, find a battery, and see if you caught a murder on that video, sweetheart.”

  ~~~

  Buy LOST IN ITALY at Smashwords

  We thank you for reading and hope you enjoy some of our other stories.

  Watch for more in the Welcome To Redemption Series in the future!

  Donna

  &

  Stacey

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