Then Zel made the mistake of making eye contact with Faith’s hard-ass brother again, who was still glaring at her as if he were Superman trying to drill through lead.
The hot pool of anger that had been bubbling under her breastbone ever since she’d discovered she would never see her parents again erupted without warning, and the burning desire to wipe that pissy look off his handsome face consumed her.
Who was he to judge her? Just because he was older and bigger and a guy and had done a few years of law school, and probably had every girl in Brooklyn, swooning over those wide shoulders and that dark messy hair, which curled around his ears and made him look kind of hot.
He didn’t know shit about her, or her life.
She lifted her chin and stuck her tongue out at him, swaying her hips for all she was worth.
He went rigid, those forbidding brows drawing down in anger.
Up yours, arsehole. Like I care what you think of me.
The emerald glare went nuclear as he gripped his knee, the knuckles whitening as the grey fabric of his suit pants wadded up under his fist and he exercised every last ounce of his self-control to keep from leaping up and doing… Something.
Heat blasted across her backside, the phantom slap he couldn’t deliver thrilling her as she sent him her best screw-you grin and headed after Seb. But she could feel Tyrone Sullivan’s glare blazing down her spine all the way to her bottom, as she sashayed down the darkened corridor towards the door marked Principal’s Office. The tips of her breasts and the hot spot between her legs throbbed deliciously with a thrilling combination of defiance and excitement, the heady rush of adrenaline as intoxicating as the wine the day before.
Mr. High and Mighty might be an arsehole, but at least he’d noticed her.
But then she stepped into Mother Superior’s office, the cloying aroma of lavender polish and incense and old leather wrapping around her like a shroud, and the buzz died. The dim lighting made the place look like a tomb. The small elderly woman rose from behind her desk like a black crow, compounding the horror movie effect. Nausea galloped up Zel’s throat, and the pounding pain behind her eyes threatened to split her skull in two.
Just lie through your teeth and everything will be okay. They can’t hurt you if you don’t care.
*
It took less than five minutes for her to discover that lying didn’t help. And that they could hurt her. Especially her brother. And she couldn’t do a thing to stop them, because she was just as powerless and pathetic now as she’d been at thirteen.
And she was still dumb enough to care.
Chapter One
‡
Ten years later, Brooklyn.
Tyrone Sullivan cracked open an eyelid as the jaunty jingle of Irish pan pipes and fiddles blasted him out of a dream starring Mila Kunis and a quart of Rocky Road ice cream. Darkness and the gentle sway of the Brooklyn Bay registered alongside the throbbing in his groin, before the fiddles and pipes returned.
What the hell was his brothers’ band doing playing on his house barge in the middle of
the freaking night?
The fiddle and pipes stared up again. And memory flashed, flushing out the last images of Mila dripping ice cream.
Son of a bitch, his youngest brother Finn had loaded the band’s signature tune onto his iPhone as the ringtone yesterday when he’d gone ’round to Finn’s new place to share a beer after work.
Ty bolted upright. And pain exploded across his left eyebrow at the exact same moment he remembered he’d zoned out on the house barge’s cramped front bunk while reviewing his latest case—a single mom battling an eviction notice in Bensonhurst—instead of making it to the bed in the back.
He groped for the phone, his boner deflating as all thoughts of Mila vanished in a puff of agony.
“This better be good,” he growled into the phone as he rubbed his now throbbing brow and swung his bare feet to the floor.
“Is this Tyrone Sullivan? Faith’s brother? The attorney?” The woman’s voice sounded clipped and tense.
“Sure, who is this?” The cut-glass accent seemed to originate from the Upper East Side by way of Buckingham Palace, so whoever the woman was, she sure as hell wasn’t a potential client. And why the heck was she calling at, he checked the phone’s clock—two o’clock in the goddamn morning?
‘It’s Zel.’
Huh? ‘I don’t know anyone called Zel.’