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."