Bullet Proof: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (7 page)

"As amazing as this little display of dick swinging is, I need both of you," Vivi said, amusement woven in with her crass words. "The Davies-Smythes took a liking to you and you've already made the art connection. I need you to take them up on it right away. Like tomorrow morning right away."

"Why the rush?" Keir asked from his spot by the refrigerator.

"Informants say there's a big delivery coming in day after tomorrow and everyone is freaking out. If it's Genie's Wish, they'll flood the streets with it that night and by Monday it will be too late."

The pronouncement hung in the air and the now-or-never declaration sent a blast of adrenaline through Bianca. "What do you need done?"

"Go to the house. Take a look around. Plant a few small listening devices. Report back," Vivi said. "That's it. Easy as pecan pie at Thanksgiving."

"Count me in." She didn't need to think about it. Unlike
some
people, she believed in helping when she could. "What about you, Mr. I'm Only In It For Me?"

Taz closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, but instead of sending up a prayer, he was having a mumbled argument with himself. The words he muttered under his breath sounded a lot like "crazy woman" and "about the dumbest thing I could do." Still, when he opened those soft green eyes that were incongruously perfect with his tawny skin and the hard curve of his obviously-been-broken-a-time-or-a-thousand nose, his answer was plain to see even before he opened his stubborn, bossy mouth.

"Fine." He practically spit out the word. "But I'm on the record for not liking it."

Inexplicably pleased with his change of heart, no matter how grudgingly given, Bianca did her best not to preen.

"Sweetie, we
all
do shit we don't like. Welcome to life." Vivi shrugged. "You two stay here and get the meet with the Davies-Smythes set up." She pointed at Keir. "Let's go hit the lab with those blood samples."

"Lucky me," Keir muttered as he pushed off the fridge and sauntered toward the elevator.

"I've seen your arrest record," Vivi said. "You have no idea how damn lucky you are."

The bickering duo were still going at it when the elevator closed and started the descent to the garage level, taking with them the human buffer between her and Taz.

Now? He seemed to fill the huge loft with his presence. She'd grown up a Sutherland with more oil money than some Middle Eastern princes and more connections than the best politicians. No one gave her pause—not until Taz. Something about him cut through her defenses. It would be nice to be able to blame the drugs, but that wasn't it. She'd felt it the first time she'd walked into the Devil's Dip Gym and had nearly forgotten her own name when he handed her the membership form to fill out. The drugs only brought everything to the surface where she couldn't deny it.

"Why are you so determined to do this?" he asked, filling in the silence between them as he typed out a quick message on his phone, no doubt setting up tomorrow's meeting at Bisu Manor. His phone buzzed and he glanced down. "We're on for nine tomorrow morning."

Needing to put space between them so she could concentrate on putting together a plan for tomorrow instead of the sexy way he smelled, she rounded the island and sat down opposite him. "Because not everyone is so concerned with only themselves. It's not the worst thing in the world to stick your neck out for someone else, you know."

Taz gave her the narrow-eyed look that she was getting to know too well, the one that seemed to lock in on exactly what she wasn't ready to reveal. "It's not just that you think Gidget is tied into this. You'd do it no matter who was involved."

"Yeah, I would."

And there it was. She'd spent her life avoiding responsibility for anything, but that Bianca wasn't her anymore. It wasn't that she was bulletproof. It was that she knew what she needed to do with her life; she just had to find the right outlet to help.

Everything about it seemed to be a foreign concept to Taz as he stared at her like she had six tits and a goat tail. "Why?"

"You wouldn't understand." And she wasn't sure how to put it into words without sounding like a total sap.

He shrugged those broad shoulders of his as he grabbed a skillet from the hanging rack above the island. "Then use small words while I make dinner."

"You cook?" Keeping the surprise out of her voice wasn't an option.

"It was either that or boxed mac and cheese every day growing up." He turned away from her, set the skillet on the stove, and took out a package of chicken breasts from the fridge.

"That takes me back to the bad old days at St. B's." The forced R.W.O.D. (retiring without dinner) was a favorite punishment for the girls. She'd learned early on how to hide a hotplate and boxes of dried pasta and powdered cheese under the floorboards.

"What? Your rich girl school didn't offer fresh sushi and
foie gras
?"

"Not St. B's. You don't end up there because your parents want to make sure you're well taken care of. It's the modern day equivalent of getting rid of the family bad seed in a nunnery. It didn't matter what happened to you as long as you stayed out of sight."

He poured some olive oil into the hot skillet, letting it heat until the scent filled the loft, and then laid the thin-cut chicken breasts in it. "I'll cook and you'll talk to pay for your supper."

* * * *

It was almost midnight and he was still dressed in his tuxedo shirt and pants, but keeping his hands busy with the food was the only thing Taz could think of to stop himself from either wrapping his hands around her or shaking some sense into her. He flipped the chicken breasts and grabbed the butter, lemon juice, pre-chopped shallot, white wine, and chicken broth. He'd learned to make chicken piccata early on and it had always been his version of comfort food.

Even though his back was to Bianca, he could feel her gaze on him. For most of his life people had watched him. First so they could cross the street when he was walking toward them, then to see him pummel his opponent in the match, and now to see if he'd implode like he had that last time in the ring after he'd all but killed his mentor and manager Freddie Atlas. No matter when they looked, though, there had always been fear in their gaze—but not with Bianca. No. Hers was always curious, hungry, challenging.

It was fucking addictive.

He shifted the pan, sliding the chicken around in the oil. "So, St. B's?"

Maybe it was because he had his back to her. Maybe it was because they'd formed some kind of adrenaline bond. Hell, maybe it was because she was starving and he was making her dinner, but she did the one thing he wasn't sure she would. She started talking.

"After the fifth time I got caught shoplifting, the very expensive lawyer my parents hired persuaded the judge to let me go with a slap on the wrist by promising I'd be attending St. Bernadette's Academy for Young Ladies the next day." The bravado in her tone couldn't cover up the underlying sadness and shame. "So I went straight from the juvenile holding cell to the private airstrip. No stop at home. No last hug from my parents. No parents at all. They were skiing, the French Alps I think, so it was the lawyer who took me to St. B's in Vermont. I was eleven."

Damn. And he'd thought living in the big houses was nothing but cream puffs and servants. "Your family's loaded, right?"

"Totally."

He slid the chicken out of the pan and replaced it with the lemon juice, chicken broth, chopped shallot, butter and wine, scraping the bottom to get up the browned bits. "Why shoplift?"

"After my older brother died, my parents...changed." She paused and he could imagine her pressing her lips together and inhaling a deep breath through her nose to steady herself. "They stayed away from the house as much as possible and when they were there, they were inebriated ghosts. My mother would drink and cry in the library where my brother hung himself. My father would drink alone in his study until he passed out. The only time my parents seemed to remember I was around was when the cops picked me up." Her voice shook on the last few words. "I guess they'd finally had enough of remembering, so off to St. B's I went."

He turned the stove off and poured the sauce over the still-warm chicken. Food didn't solve the past, but it helped the present. Take the win when you can get it, that's what Freddie had taught him. He grabbed two plates from a cabinet and carried them along with the tray of chicken piccata to the island, where he laid everything in front of her.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She gave him a half smile that trembled around the edges as she took the plate he offered. "Shoplifting was a stupid thing to do. I just didn't know how else to get their attention. Thanks to that idiotic plan, I ended up at St. B's, where attention was the last thing you wanted."

"Sounds like a prison camp." He put a piece of chicken on her plate and spooned some extra sauce around it.

"Not a bad comparison," she said. "We lived in bunkhouses of ten, wore uniforms, worked on the on-site farm in the mornings and went to classes in the afternoon and evening. That wasn't what made it bad, though. It was the administrators who saw St. B's as their own little dictatorship and enforced corporeal punishment along with more creative things to keep the population submissive. I don't know what I would have done without the other girls in the B squad dorm. We saved each other."

Knowing how
creative
cruel people with power over another human being could be, he clamped his jaw shut before he offered to track the fuckers down and kill them. Slowly. It wasn't his fight. She wasn't his girl. And no matter how nice this scene of domestic tranquility was, like everything else in his life, it was temporary. With more force than necessary, he yanked the center drawer in the island open and took out silverware and napkins.

He handed her a napkin, fork, and knife. "You never told anyone?"

"Who was there to tell? My family put me there and it's where I stayed until the authorities raided the school after three students committed suicide and the administrators tried to cover it up. They shut down the school and we were all sent home. If it wasn't for my B squad, I don't know that I wouldn't have been one of those three."

"So you got out and became a ghost."

"To family traditions." She raised her beer bottle in a macabre toast. "It wasn't alcohol with me. It was trips and spa retreats and yoga clinics. But I'm changing that. I'm not going to be a ghost anymore."

"Instead you want to risk your life by doing the DEA's dirty work." He shook his head in wonder and...awe. Fuck, she was getting to him.

"I want to help people and this is one way I can." The conviction in her voice matched the stubborn tilt of her chin.

No doubt about it; like him, she was a fighter. It called to the bruiser in him, the one who nearly went to jail for beating the shit out of his abusive dad who'd taken a drunken swing at his mom. He knew that fire, that righteousness that powered the do-good instinct. He also knew the flip side, when that impulse ends with the death of the one person who didn't deserve it.

Fisting his fork hard enough that the metal bit into his palm, he shoved the memory of Freddie vainly gasping for breath away and forced himself to make the first lame comment that came into his head as he sat down next to her. "You probably always root for the underdog in movies too."

"Every damn time. That's what you do when you've spent too long in the underdog's shoes." She cut off a bite of chicken, her grin more than a little strained. "Now you better tell me funny stories about growing up with your not-blood brothers, the fighting toilet cleaners, or you'll ruin the taste of what smells like some delicious chicken piccata."

So he did. Embellishing a few of the funny things and playing down the sad, he gave her the short history of the wild bunch of boys who'd grown into men at Devil's Dip Gym under Freddie's wary gaze. By the time their plates were clean, both were laughing about the time Duke dared Marko to dye his hair puke green right before a junior boxing match.

He stood and reached for her empty plate, but she stopped him with her hand on his forearm. 

"You cooked, I'll clean," she said, her voice breathy and soft.

Neither of them moved. They just stood there staring at each other, with her tiny hand on top of his arm. Electricity sparked in the air around them, making his whole body vibrate. She did this to him, even without Genie's Wish, because that drug only amplified what he was already feeling. He wanted her. He'd wanted her since the first time she strutted into his gym like she didn't just belong, she ruled the place.

She glanced up at him through her thick eyelashes, her brown eyes dark with desire, and she dragged her teeth across her berry pink bottom lip. He nearly lost it right there because she wanted him just as much.

Take the win when you can get it.

Touching Bianca was like combining the feeling after every win he'd ever had in the ring and multiplying it by a thousand. She didn't want him for his fame or his bank account or that excited little shiver of being with a man whose fists were considered by the law to be lethal weapons. She wanted him. That was the most win he'd ever had in his life.

Done fighting the attraction, Taz dropped the plate. It hit the granite island with a loud clang, but he didn't look to see if it broke. He was too busy kissing Bianca for the first time.

CHAPTER SIX

Bianca couldn't blame the drugs for this and she didn't care. She wanted Taz too much. His lips were like fire, searing her and demanding she take it, take all of him despite the heat—maybe because of it. She couldn't get enough. She needed more of what only he could give her.

His hand cupped the back of her head and he twisted his fingers in her hair, holding her firmly in place as he plundered her mouth. That's what it was. It sure wasn't something as sweet and innocuous as a kiss.

No. What his lips and tongue were doing to her bypassed all of that. Kissing Taz was like having three shots of tequila before noon—wild, intense, and too delicious to spend any time considering whether or not it was a good idea.