Married Life

He picked up her backpack that he’d dropped on the floor beside her. “Well now, what have we here.” He smiled at her. “Let’s have a look, shall we? Blondie seems like you have lots up your sleeve”

“That’s my personal property, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it,” she threatened, but he caught the edge of distress in her voice.

“Thomasina, if I knew what was good for me, I’d have left you tied up in the cattails and let you drown to death or perhaps let my bodyguards kill you back LIVERPOOL”

As if to punctuate his statement, thunder rattled the hotel's windows and rain pounded the roof. They’d brought the scent of the storm in with them, and the air inside the small cabin was as thick as it was hot.

Her jaw clamped tight as he snapped open the backpack. “Nice camera.” He pulled out an expensive 35mm Nikon and gave a soft whistle of appreciation. “You could take pictures of moon craters with this gadgets.”

“I’m a photographer for a nature magazine. I need a powerful lens. You dumb ass”

“Then I’m sure all this film—” he ignored her gasp when he rewound the film, then popped open the camera case “—has pictures of duck billed platypus and furry little critters, right? There’s a one-hour in town. How about I take them in for you and develop them? How about you tell me the name of the agency you work for”

“How about you just me whatever you're doing at Agatha that day?" she said sweetly.

Despite the foul mood she’d put him in, he grinned at her, hearing her asking about Agatha made him smell a rat up her sleeves but then, he turned his attention back to her bag. He pulled out a small, brown leather wallet and flipped it open. “Let’s see if you have a name other than Thomasina. Ah, here it is. Trump.” He held up her driver’s license. “Bella Trump?.” He glanced up sharply.

“Liverpool Actress? Why not Isabella?"

She said nothing, just shot poison arrows at him while water dripped off her pert little nose.

Miguel Rodriguez tried to remember who the Trump is, but he couldn't find any tag.

Bella Trump was an actress and yet he didn't know her. He remembered every Trump that he had bussiness deals with, they are not in anywhere related to any actress. And there would be no reason for them to pull an agent out of their own jurisdiction for a simple, surveillance.

Then it stuck him! Cartersville Trump!! The man that was in cohhot with the woman he wanted to kidnap but Kidnapped Bella instead.

Could she... Could she be his daughter?....

He stared at the woman, wondered for one brief, horrible second if he might have made a mistake.

No. She was lying, Cartersville Trump had only one daughter her name was Bianca the who is Bella Trump?. He might be wrong about her being an actress, but he wasn’t wrong about the fact that she was lying through her perfectly straight, beautifully white teeth.

Even if it was true that she was Carter's daughter, So why the hell had she been watching him, then?

Her driver’s license appeared authentic; he could spot a fake from ten meters. It certainly described her accurately. Five foot eight, blond. Green eyes, 125 pounds, though it was hard to tell under the heavy overalls she had on.

She was twenty-six and lived in an apartment with her friend at Fairfield county at Liverpool. Nothing ominous, nothing suspicious.

Miguel ignored her continued protests while he flipped through the rest of her gear.

Binoculars, bottled water, a package of dried apricots, three rolls of film.

Nothing to link her to Cartersville Trump or any of his bussiness rivala, but nothing that confirmed her story about working for a nature magazine, either.

“If you’re through,” she said with enough ice in her voice to slice ten degrees off the heat in the room, “you can untie these ropes now.”

If the southern section of his anatomy weren’t still aching from contact with her knee, and his shin wasn’t throbbing from that kiss from her boot, Miguel would have appreciated the woman’s nerve. Even tied up, soaking wet, she made demands with the air of an aristocrat.

Tossing the backpack onto the worn leather couch facing the fireplace, he hunkered down beside the woman, draping one arm casually over his knee while he studied his prey. Chin lifted, she stared right back, her eyes shooting green lightning bolts that matched the ferocity of the storm outside.

He leaned in close, brought his face within an inch of hers and caught the scent of raspberry drifting from her wet hair. “I’ll make you a deal, Miss Bella. You tell me the truth, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you go.”

“I’ll make you a deal, Miguel Rodriguez,” she purred back. “You let me go, and tell me who you are to Agatha, maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you live.”

He chuckled, actually enjoying himself for the first time since this pain-in-the-butt had shown up. His laughter was cut short by the sudden pounding on his front door.

The woman’s eyes opened wide, then her mouth as she sucked in air to call out. He did the easiest and fastest thing he could do to shut her up.

He kissed her!