Brazen (B-Squad 1)

“Tamara, shut your mouth,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Why should she?” Bianca asked from behind him, her voice devoid of any fire or ice. “At least she puts it all out there on the table. No secrets with that one.”

It was a solid uppercut to the jaw, the kind that rattled your skull and reverberated down your spine right to your toes.

He pivoted to face her. “Bianca, it’s not what it seems.”

She crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow. “So you filed the divorce papers?”

Flashing back to the year after Freddie died, the broken state of his body after letting himself get pummeled into oblivion in the title bout and the way he was walking around in an angry red haze, he could still feel the pen in his hand when he’d signed the divorce papers but after that, everything faded away. Tamara had promised she’d sign the papers and her lawyer would file them. He’d marked it off his napalm-the-past to-do list and shoved it into a dark hole.

Shame, regret and anger—all self-directed—burned a hole in his gut. He never shined a light into the shadows of his past for a reason, not even when Bianca had asked.

“No.” He barely managed to get the single word out over the lump of emotion clogging his throat.

Bianca shook her head, her wavy brown hair tangling around her shoulders. “That’s one hell of an oversight.”

He reached out, needing to feel the silk of her hair between his fingers and the softness of her skin against his. She evaded his touch with the ease of the self-aware fighter who was always three steps ahead of her opponent, just like she did in the ring. His hand hung in the air between them as useless as the truth told too late. Still, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—give up.

“She left after my manager Freddie died.” He let his hand drop to his side. “I was a wreck. I gave up boxing, turned down all the TV analyst jobs and came back to the Devil’s Dip Gym and tried to forget everything.”

Bianca raised an eyebrow, disgust and anger coming off her in hot waves. “Including your legally wedded wife.”

It took everything he had not to stagger back from Bianca’s perfectly delivered hit to the body. “I signed the divorce papers and had them delivered to her in New York.”

She snorted. “And you didn’t find it odd that your lawyer never followed up telling you the divorce was final?”

“I ignored his calls.”

“Are you shitting me?” she asked, her voice going up a few decibels. “What the hell, Taz? Who does that?”

Tamara chuckled, pulling his attention from Bianca. Shit. He’d forgotten she was even there.

“Oh, that sounds like classic Honey Bear to me,” Tamara said, a serene look of perseverance on her face. “If he can’t beat it into submission, boss it into doing what he wants or generally run roughshod over the world, then he’s not interested.”

“I don’t need your help, Tamara.” He whipped back around to Bianca. The urge to grab on to her and hold her still until he could get her to understand beat against him more insistently than the instinct to breath. “This is fucked up, but this doesn’t change us or how I feel about you.”

Bianca flipped her suitcase lid down and zipped it closed. “Let’s not do this. We rushed into whatever this was between us because of the adrenaline, the danger, and both of us almost getting killed taking down the drug operation at Bisu Manor. Beyond your favorite sexual positions, what do I even really know about you? Not much. Why? Because any time I ask, you shut down tighter than Fort Knox and honestly, I’m not much better, am I? We fuck. We don’t spill secrets. That doesn’t work well in a relationship—and the fact that I had no idea she existed is proof of that.”

The ref in his head yelled out the count—five, six, seven—as he struggled to come back from the deadly emotional right hook she’d landed. “I love you.”

Her gaze locked with his and she gave him a sad, one-sided smile. She pursed her lips together and blinked twice before sucking in a deep breath through her nose.

“No. You love the idea of me. You don’t know me any more than it seems I know you.” She lifted up the suitcase that weighed almost as much as she did without even a wince. “I’ll get someone to take your place for this mission.”

The hell she was. Whoever the hell was behind Genie’s Wish had a hard-on for Bianca and the other women in the B-Squad from St. B’s. The bastard had almost killed her once already. Taz would die before he’d let the asshole succeed.

He grabbed her arm as she walked around him and toward the door, jerking her to a stop. “You’re not going without me.”

“It’s not up to you.” Slowly, she looked down at his fingers around her biceps and back up. Fury burned in her gaze and she shook off

his grasp. “I’m point on this mission.”

True. But he had a trump card and for the first time since Tamara walking in, he saw a way out of this mess. “Lexie and Keir already have everything in place. The resort’s background check is based on me showing up as Trey Alderson. You can’t do this without me.”

Bianca looked heavenward. Sunlight streamed down on her through the skylight, highlighting the golden strands in her dark brown hair. She wasn’t an angel any more than he was, but they were good together—as close as either of them could get. All he had to do was get her to see that again. Circumstances had changed, but his love for her hadn’t.

She let out a deep sigh and dropped her gaze to him. “Fine. Be downstairs for the briefing in five.” Without a second glance at him or Tamara, she strode across the room carrying the massive suitcase and stepped onto the elevator.