“They aren’t random,” he offered obliquely. “And I’m not happy that you just strolled into Lion Court. You know how I feel about privacy.”
Finally, she seemed to relax, rolling her eyes at him. “Oh, come off it. Walcott let me in and he wouldn’t have if you were doing any of your underground shenanigans. Now, are you going to introduce me?”
“Tilda is my cousin,” he called over his shoulder to us as he moved to where his shirt and phone lay on a stool.
“His favorite cousin,” she amended with a wide smile that made her pale, freckled face glow. She walked to the boxing ring and extended her hand through the ropes to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the family, I suppose.”
“Bianca,” I replied, accepting her hand, noticing it was smooth and perfumed unlike my calloused, chipped-polish fingers. “My brother over there with Ezra is Brandon.”
“Actually, now that you’re here, you might as well be useful,” Tiernan said blandly without looking up from his phone, fingers flying over the keys. From my angle, I could count the black tally marks marring the skin between his shoulders. Thirteen of them. I wondered with some apprehension what they might represent. “Take Bianca and Brando shopping for me, will you? Bianca starts school at Sacred Heart Academy on Monday and Brando is going to St Michael’s Prep.”
“Oh,” Tilda cried, clapping her hands. “Yes, of course, I can help! Are you ready to go now?” She seemed to realize I was wearing an oversized tee and Brando was wearing his Spiderman pajamas. “Well, obviously not. I’ll give you ten minutes to freshen up and Ezra can take us into the city. I have an appointment at four I cannot miss, so we better get cracking.”
I bugged my eyes out at her enthusiasm, but she was already turning around to chat to Ezra about the itinerary.
“I don’t need new clothes,” I told Tiernan, stalking over to him. “We don’t need anything more from you.”
“Don’t be pathetic, Bianca,” he tsked. “You have no money but mine. No house but this house. No family but my own. You’ll take what I give you and be happy.”
“I like my clothes,” I argued, somewhat childishly, but I didn’t care. Even if I stuck out like a sore thumb at some fancy school, at least I would be remaining true to myself.
A down-on-her-luck Belcante always held their head high no matter what.
Tiernan finally lifted his gaze from his phone to drop it slowly down my body. Heat seared my cheeks as I realized I hadn’t brushed my hair that morning, the heavy mass of it tangled around my head and shoulders, my shirt three times too big and holey at the hem. His eyes lingered on my bare legs, on the ends of my polished toenails as they curled into the mats with my effort not to squirm.
“I don’t like them,” he finally announced. “And what I think matters most.”
“What would you have me in, diamonds and fur?” I demanded. “That’s not me.”
Or, it hadn’t been in over five years.
His jaw clenched and I noticed he hadn’t shaved yet that morning, a dark pelt of short stubble shadowing his lower face, highlighting that incongruently full, beautifully shaped mouth.
“I’d have you in silk,” he murmured, low and intimate just for me to hear as the others talked elsewhere in the room. “The same texture as your skin. I’d have you in sapphires the color of your eyes and cashmere as soft as your hair.”
“Why?” I cleared my throat of the desire that was lodged there. “Why do you even care what I wear?”
“You represent this house now, and I will not have any possession of mine less than perfectly presented.” God, he was cold and hard. I wondered madly if he’d been made instead of born, some automaton stolen from a factory.
“Says the man with the disfiguring scar,” I quipped, almost immediately regretting my words because they were unfair and untrue.
The wicked, long-healed scar bisecting his lower left cheek from ear to chin puckered the skin into any angry line, but it in no way diminished the impact of his blatant handsomeness.
Somehow, it heightened it.
Besides, I didn’t care about his scars or anyone else’s. I knew too well that everyone bore their own wounds whether or not they were visible on the flesh or buried deep beneath it.
Tiernan moved just slightly, a tiny recoil someone else less in tune with his physicality might have missed. But I noticed it. And I knew my barbed words had landed.
“Scarred or not, I am the man in charge of your life,” he reminded me, sneering that beautiful mouth into an ugly, hateful expression. “Remember that when Tilda takes you into the city. If I find out you’ve said anything ugly to her, disrespected her or her authority in any way, you’ll think locking you in your room last night was merely child’s play.”