This wasn't her. Well, it was, but it hadn't been for a while. She'd locked up the restless girl always on the prowl for the new, the fun, and the risqué six months ago, right around the time she'd decided to change her life for good.
Her first stop in Operation Make Bianca a Bulletproof Badass had been to her friend Bayleigh MacKenzie's upscale lingerie shop to get a recommendation for a trainer who could remake her into Lara Croft. Bayleigh asked Cade, her husband and a private security agent who did God-knew what all over the globe to save people, for a name. His call? Devil's Dip Gym run by one Taz Hazard. It was where Cade trained along with several of the MacKenzie Security guys. They'd tried to recruit Taz to be a part of their team, but the former boxer had always turned them down.
"Why won't you work with the MacKenzies?" She blurted out the question, obviously having lost her mental filter along with her inhibitions at Bisu Manor.
Taz's hand stilled on her ass. "Being one of the good guys is not my thing."
The valet had the shitty timing to pull up at that moment in a silver convertible Porsche with its top up. The car had to be from the 50s or 60s and had been lovingly restored. The beauty looked like something James Bond would drive. Standing there in a tux, his undone bowtie hanging around his neck and first few buttons of his shirt open, Taz would make one panty-dropping Bond.
"So why help me out in there?" she asked as the valet got out and hustled around the back of the car to open the passenger door.
Taz guided her down the front steps to the car, giving the valets a good look at her naked back and the black silk top string of her thong before helping her inside the low-slung sports car. She should hate that. She didn't. It was like the part of her she'd shoved into the closet had finally gotten a chance to come out and play in the moonlight. Settling back into the leather seat, she fastened her seatbelt.
Leaning in the car, he flipped open her gown's high slit and slid his hand up her inner thigh, watching her face as she melted against him. "Maybe I was just trying to get in your pants."
"You could have had me in every position in the Kama Sutra in that room, but you didn't. Instead, you tried to get information for me." She barely had enough control not to scoot down the seat so his calloused fingers brushed against her slick, panty-covered folds right in front of the valets and anyone else who happened by. "Why?"
Instead of answering, he withdrew his hand and shut the passenger door with a resounding thunk, leaving her alone to listen to the blood rushing in her ears and the incr
easingly louder voice in her head wondering how it would feel if he finally touched her skin to skin without anyone watching. All the teasing had left her half crazed. She was a woman with a healthy sex drive, but this whole night had been ridiculous. Part of it was Taz, no doubt about it. The man was beyond sexy, but there had to be something else to it. An answer hovered on the edge of her consciousness just out of reach, then he opened the driver's side door and sat down behind the wheel and all thoughts of why she was reacting this way lost out to thought about how she could get him between her legs.
"I took a cab here. You can drop me off at—"
He cut her a hard look. "We're going to my house. Now, it's my turn to ask the questions." His knuckles were white as he held onto the steering wheel and drove out of the driveway. "Who is Gidget and what does her disappearance have to do with the Davies-Smythes’ art collection?"
Where to begin? She barely knew herself.
"Gidget is someone I knew from boarding school and I don't know what her disappearance has to do with art. It's just the only thing I have to go on." She clasped her hands together on her lap, the gnawing hunger for him settling into the more normal level of desire she felt every time she saw him as opposed to an all-consuming need that turned her into a lust zombie.
"When was the last time you saw Gidget?" he asked, combing his fingers through his dense black curls that flopped forward again despite his attempt to manage them.
"The day I left St. B's."
"St. B's?"
She grimaced as her stomach turned the way it always did when she had to think about her worst memories. "St. Bernadette's Academy for Young Ladies, known among the inmates as St. B's Reform School For Rich Bitches Who Done Wrong."
He stopped at a red light and turned to her, confusion clear in his light green eyes. "You haven't seen her since rich people high school?"
"Yeah." She shrugged, posturing despite the guilt creeping up her spine.
"What makes you think she's even missing?"
"We have the same maid."
He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Of course you do."
"We keep up on social media, but after I left St. B's, I lost track of the girls I hung out with." And there it was. You weren't supposed to lose track of the people who'd seen you through something like St. B's, but she had. She'd been too wrapped up in herself to find out how the others had faired once free of St. B's clutches.
The light changed and Taz turned left into a fast-gentrifying neighborhood that was a mix of residential and commercial with the organic hemp vendors next door to an apartment building. "Okay, walk me through this. Start with why you believe Gidget is missing and why you haven't gone to the authorities."
Bianca took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders in preparation to roll out the story, glad to be able to tell someone who actually gave a shit—and for all his denials, Taz did. She'd seen the way he talked to up-and-coming boxers at his gym, mentoring them. He was a pain in the ass, but he wasn't an asshole.
"Constance, that's our maid, mentioned in passing that one of her clients hadn't been around for a while and she needed to bring the client's French Bulldog with her when she cleaned my apartment. Of course I recognized Oui Oui—that's Gidget's dog—right away from her Instagram. I asked Constance about it and she told me that the police blew off her missing person report because Gidget isn't exactly known for staying in one spot long or for being particularly fond of authority figures. When Constance got ahold of Gidget's parents, they said they couldn't cut their trip in South America short. So that left me."
He made a right turn, keeping his eyes on the road. "And where does the art come into play?"
"The last picture she posted on Instagram was a painting, one that the Davies-Smythes recently acquired, according to the Ft. Worth society gossip. I tried to talk to them to find out who they bought it from or if they even still had it, but couldn't get past their social secretary. Then I heard about the parties."