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She, Vivi, Lexie, Gidget and Elise had made up half of the residents in a ten-person bunkhouse. They wore uniforms, worked on the on-site farm in the mornings, and went to classes in the afternoons and evenings. That was boring and tough, but not the kind of thing to send three students to their self-inflicted deaths. No, that had happened because of 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—right up until the feds got an anonymous tip, raided the place and shut it down for good.
If it hadn’t been for her girls, Bianca easily could have been one of the three students found hanging from the rafters in the school gym. She looked around at the women who’d saved her sanity at St. B’s. Sure, their senses of humor were black, their attitudes huge and their ability to trust seriously impaired, but they’d earned every one of their personality quirks the hard way.
Now it was her turn to pull on her cast iron big girl panties, ignore her shredded insides and do whatever it took to get Gidget home.
“I appreciate it, but we have more important things to deal with. Let’s get this briefing going,” Bianca said, girding herself for the mission ahead. “Are the guys still out in the hall?”
Vivi cracked open the door. “Yoo-hoo, big bad muscly men,” she called out. “Are you going to hide out for much longer? We have a mission briefing to do.”
“We’re not hiding.” Six-foot-three, heavily tattooed with a too-pretty-for-words, male model face and the kind of muscles that made other muscles jealous, Keir—the resident fixer—swaggered into the room. He always maintained his so-confident-he-left-cocky-in-the-dust vibe, but the worry was there, as visible as the gold flecks in his brown eyes. “It was a tactical retreat.”
“You were scared by sweet little ol’ us?” More than a foot shorter, Vivi made up for the inches in attitude.
“Said the spider to the fly,” Keir muttered.
The rest of the guys filed in behind him, each as tall and muscular as the one who came before. Vividly tattooed and bearded Marko Pike, with his gruff, one-syllable answers, was the man to know if you wanted to blow things up or bash heads in. Fast-talking Lash Finch, with his dark good looks and killer brains, could take out a target with a sniper rifle from an obscene distance or use his hands up close and personal without a twinge of conscience. Duke Trino, the resident ginger, had enough sex appeal and devious charm to get a person to agree to just about anything, and gathered secrets about people like squirrels collected acorns in the fall, which made him the perfect infiltration operative.
Their Romany heritage showed through in their unique names and their tawny brown skin. Trained on the street and in elite units of the military, they were dangerous, skilled and strutted down the skinny gray line between legal and not with a don’t-give-a-fuck shrug. They were not the kind of men you wanted to mess with and—not for the first time—she was glad they were all on the same side.
Lash stopped in front of the chair she sat in and stared down at her. The fact she was sitting down made him look even taller than his six feet, four inches. She knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth and it was the last thing she needed—or wanted—to hear.
She held up her hand. “Not now, Lash.”
“Look, it’s none of my business—really none of any of our business—but I’ve known Taz my whole life and Tamara for as long as she’s been in Taz’s,” he said in a rush. “There has to be more to this than it appears.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice steadier and stronger than she’d thought possible. “We have more important things to worry about right now.”
Bianca turned her attention to the map of the Indulgence Resort on the wall opposite her desk. Lash didn’t fidget at her side, trying to figure out what to say next. Men like him didn’t do that. Instead, he glowered at her.
“Lexie, can we get this show on the road?” she asked, ignoring the man-shaped concrete wall in front of her. “The jet won’t leave without us, but I don’t want it sitting on the tarmac loaded up like a flying armory for any longer than necessary. Taz will have to catch up when we’re in the air.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Taz from the door. “I’m here.”
Her world jolted to a stop hard enough to give her whiplash. Hurt and anger razed a fiery path through her, leaving nothing behind but an empty shell. There weren’t tears. There wasn’t fruitless hope. There was pain and there was nothing. She curled her fingers around the armrest of her chair. She could do this. She didn’t have a choice. For this mission, he would be her pretend husband and they would be on the most decadent of honeymoons.
She swiveled her chair to face the door. Taz stood just inside the opening with Tamara in all of her beauty queen glory at his side.
“What’s she doing here?” Elisa asked, ice chips in her voice.
“After our lengthy separation, I just can’t stand to be away from him for even a moment.” Tamara wound her arm around Taz and made cow eyes at him.
“Are you shitting me?” Lexie asked.
Keir pinched the bridge of his nose and the vein at his temple bulged. “He’s posing as a happily married newlywed during the mission; a second wife really isn’t in the picture.”
“So I’ll stay in the background with you guys.” Tamara turned, giving the room a good view of her perfect curves, and snuggled up against Taz. “If I don’t go with you…” She looked up at Taz and narrowed her eyes. “…all bets are off.”
Searching his face, Bianca looked for any sign of the man she’d thought she’d known only a few hours ago. The air of dominance and his palpable refusal to back down from any challenge remained. What she didn’t see was the lazy smile that had become more and more frequent the longer that they’d been together. Part of her reveled in the fact that it had disappeared along with any hope of them having a future together.
“Whatever.” She pivoted her chair so she again faced Lexie standing in front of the projected map. “You’ll stay with the rest of the team on the yacht a few miles offshore.”
“Sounds lovely,” Tamara said.
Bianca swallowed back the bile that rose at the other woman’s response. Lovely? Oh yeah. Just as much as getting a root canal while walking across hot coals during a blizzard in the arctic.
Taz
Trapped and unable—at the moment—to dig his way out of the mile-deep hole he’d found himself in, Taz took the first open seat in the back of the room where he could watch Bianca even if he couldn’t touch her.
