Brazen (B-Squad #1) (3 page)

T
az took
stock of the situation.

It was bad. Correction. It was a motherfucking disaster of epic proportions.

Bianca was about ten seconds from diving for her gun and probably double-tapping him in the back of the head execution style. Meanwhile his ex, Tamara, was acting like queen bee of the western world and looking at him as if he should be kneeling at her feet.

There was no way they were still married. No. Fucking. Way.

“We
aren’t
married.” He turned to face Bianca, who had murder in her dark brown eyes. “This is my
ex
-wife and I haven’t seen her for two years.”

Bianca didn’t say a single word. He didn’t realize there could be something that could liquefy his lungs faster than when he’d been an eight-year-old boy facing down his drunk, screaming father before having a swift backhand—or worse—snap his head back, but there was and he was staring right at it.

She’d gone cold. Anger stole her natural sexy heat that ignited the room and instilled everyone around her with the same brazen, balls-to-the-wall attitude she had. He’d faced down hardened criminals, desperate fighters and even his own father’s haymakers, but he’d never been as worried as he was at this moment.

His gut shriveled up and his chest suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. He’d had it with Bianca—had that moment of triumph, of hope, of winning—and now he may have lost it.

For the past six months he’d avoided her questions about his past. She knew how breaking into the Devil’s Dip Gym with his brothers had changed his life.

Gym owner and trainer Freddie Atlas had caught them, but instead of calling the cops on the group of fourteen-year-olds going on thirty to life, he’d started training them as boxers. Taz had made it all the way to a light heavyweight title bout before everything spiraled out of control. His inability to control himself when he saw a guy almost backhand a woman had led to a brawl and almost cost him his chance at the title. While chewing Taz’s ass raw—and rightfully so—after that, Freddie had a massive heart attack. The old man’s death was a black stain on Taz’s soul that would never wash clean.

Bianca knew all that. She knew the important stuff. Every other question that she’d posed, he’d answered by changing the subject—usually with his lips or hands.

The time for that had past.

He wasn’t a talker—never would be—and now when he needed the words, he had none.

Tamara didn’t have the same problem.

She turned on her thousand-watt smile that had won her a room full of beauty queen trophies. “Oh, Honey Bear, it seems I forgot to file those nasty divorce papers. I just knew you’d come to your senses and straighten your head out eventually.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, almost blinding him with the glare off the two-carat diamond ring he’d given to her five years ago. “So it seems I am still Mrs. Tamara Hazard, you lucky man.”

Married.

It hit him harder than Fabian Hofstettler’s right hook in the tenth round of the title fight. Talk about shock and awe. Tamara had just dropped the mother of all bombs in his living room.

“I signed the papers,” he said, trying to wrap his brain around the sharp left his life had just taken.

“Can you believe what sticklers the courts are for actually filing the paperwork? I swear it’s all just a scam for money.” Tamara shrugged and peeled off her coat, then draped it across the back of the black leather couch in the living area. She glared across the open space and gave Bianca a slow up and down that pierced the haze of his shock. Then, she turned back to him, her smile back in place, if not in the least bit genuine. “I’m willing to overlook the little bit of fluff standing next to you
this
time, but I won’t ignore your whores anymore. She needs to get out of my home. Now.”

“What did you just call me?” Bianca snarled.

Oh fuck.

For the first time since he’d gutted and renovated the loft, he regretted not adding any interior walls. He pivoted and put as much of himself as possible between Tamara and Bianca. The towel around his waist gave minimal coverage, let alone protection, but he wasn’t about to let this escalate from total disaster to apocalyptic.

Oblivious and indifferent to the danger she courted, Tamara scrunched up her nose and tilted her head in a mockery of sympathy. “I’m sorry, do you prefer home-wrecking slut instead?”

Bianca shoved at him, trying to push him out of the way.

That was not going to happen.

She wasn’t the type to go full-on hellcat with a stranger, but he still wasn’t about to go anywhere. He wouldn’t leave her side. Not now. Not ever. He just had to convince her of that.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?” Bianca asked the other woman even as she continued to shove at him.

“Slow, isn’t she?” Tamara asked before letting out a dramatic sigh. “Let me break it down for you in small words. I’m Mrs. Tamara Hazard, and I don’t give a shit who
you
are as long as I never have to see you again. If I do, I’ll take you apart faster than it takes a gel manicure to dry.”

Bianca froze behind him.

He shoved a clammy hand through his now-dry hair. Tamara had never gone all possessive over him. Ever. His supposed-to-be ex-wife was up to something. He knew it like he knew one of the worst sounds in the world was the ref’s hand slapping the canvas when his cheek was pressed against it.

“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.

Freddie had always told him to take the win when he could get it. Well, this was about as much of a win as he was getting today and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it slip out of his grasp.

“Toodles, darling.” Tamara waved her fingers at Bianca as the elevator doors closed.

He turned on his ex-wife. Oh hell yes she was his ex, no matter if some technicality of paperwork not being filed had them still tied together.

She met his assessing gaze head-on. She was ballsy, he’d give her that. She always had been. Whatever it took to get what she wanted, Tamara was going to do—whether that was landing a rich husband, winning a beauty queen title or getting whatever it was she was after now. And she wanted something from him. The woman wouldn’t be standing in his living room unless she did.

He stalked through the loft to the living room, stopping a foot in front of his ex-wife. “What game are you playing, Tamara?”

“The only kind that matters.” She trailed one sharp fingernail down his bare chest as she peeked up at him through thick eyelashes. “One for your heart.”

Bile rose in his throat. Their marriage hadn’t been about love so much as it had been about a merger of beauty and brawn, with lots of money and wild sex to smooth the way.

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away from him before she reached the towel at his hips. “I’ll need confirmation you’re not lying about the paperwork not being filed.”

“Oh Honey Bear, you make all the calls you want to your lawyer when his office opens back up on Monday. He took the week off you know. I tried contacting him first before the idea to surprise you at home came to me.”

“Lucky fucking me,” he grumbled, shoving his fingers through his hair.

* * *

Bianca stared at the oversized map of the small islands making up the Indulgence Resort that was projected onto the wall at the B-Squad’s official headquarters, one floor down from the loft where Taz and…her stomach churned…his wife were.

Saving Gidget.

Taking down the mystery drug kingpin.

Keeping Genie’s Wish from being unleashed on the world.