The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max) novel Chapter 15

Lark followed Bobbie into her office and looked around at the walls.

“Wow. You really made this space your own.”

“I did.” Bobbie grinned back as she stood next to Lark and looked at the photos on the wall. She tapped her finger against a photo of Lark, Ollie, and Max hugging her while Bobbie held her degree the day, she graduated law school. “One of my favorite moments there.”

“I bet. You must have been so proud.”

“I was. I prouder though my kiddos were there to see it. I worked hard and I hoped they would see my work ethic and follow suit.”

“They all work hard,” Lark tried to placate Bobbie’s frowned comment.

“They play harder. You know, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve looked at my six kids and wondered where the hell I went wrong.” She rubbed her forehead. “Max was always precocious. Ollie was always a firecracker. When the triplets came along, I tried really hard to keep my focus on them but with preemie triplets all with significant medical needs the first couple of years, I didn’t do as good a job as I hoped. Your mom helped me so much,” she smiled a photo of her and Everly on the wall at a gala of some sort. “She is the best friend I ever had.”

“She says the same about you, Bobbie.”

“I know. It’s because Max gives us spa packages,” she laughed at her joke.

“I read the article he did,” Lark shook her head. “How did you not kill him?”

“I almost did. Olivier is a bold, brash man. He always was from the time I knew him. He has zero filter. Max possesses the same lack of diplomacy. Olivier’s motto for years has been diplomacy is for chumps. He has always encouraged the kids to be who they want to be. I try to reign them in, he pushes them to be creative and free spirited. I have six kids who have multiple grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who all treat them like they are kings and queens. When the triplets were born, Olivier’s sisters and their kids were around a lot making of the babies. It made Max and Ollie feel even more left out. We would send them all out to play and then we would find one of the cousins back in the nursery fawning over the baby dolls. It’s what they called them, the baby dolls. The problem is, they still treat them like this. They seem to forget they were all thriving by the time they started school. My kids are assholes.” Bobbie groaned and walked to her desk. ” Speaking of, can you look at this with me?” She held up a file.

“What is it?”

“Margot was accused of cheating on her exams last year. There was a teacher at the private school who thought there was no way she could have gotten perfect marks. The woman hated Margot from day one because she taught the triplets and Max. It didn’t matter what Margot did, this woman had it out for her. Olivier wanted to pull her from the woman’s class, but I insisted she stay,” Bobbie grimaced, “because we can’t keep removing them from challenging situations. Life isn’t always fair. Now I’m working on a lawsuit because I didn’t remove her.”

“Why?” Lark took the file and sat in the chair adjacent to Bobbie’s workstation.

“It’s no secret Margot is on par with Max in terms of intelligence, maybe even smarter than he is.”

“Really? I didn’t know.”

“No? Well, she is bloody brilliant. She completed all her high school requirements last year. Olivier and I both felt though she was too emotionally underdeveloped to start university, so we made her stay another year at the high school taking college entrance courses.”

“You did it with Max too,” Lark remembered.

“Yes. He was advanced in all of his classes. Margot as well. Anyway, she studied hard and wrote the paper in her physics exam in under thirty minutes and got a perfect score. The physics professor not only accused her of cheating, but she did it at the time in front of all her classmates. She called the Dean into the space, demanded security do a search of her body for any devices or papers she would have hidden on her to cheat and then made a comment about the Villeneuves paying off the school to hide their illegal activities and scheming. She was screaming in front of the entire room of students about how Margot was the latest in a lengthy line of cheaters and she was done with letting such s**t pass.”

“Poor Margot.”

“Margot is so soft, Lark. Unlike Ollie who would have punched the woman out, or Max who would have simply humiliated her, she stood there and cried. The triplets would have tag teamed the woman until she folded but it was Margot. She stood there sobbing her little heart out while the security guy went through all of her belongings, got a female security officer to make her strip down in the changing rooms and then they searched her locker, her laptop, her books.”

“Oh my god.”

“When she got home, she was wrecked. We got the school board involved and the chancellor of the school as well. In the end, the chancellor is friends with a physics scientist from Caltech and got him flown in. The man, in front of the physics teacher, the Dean, the entire board of directors of the school, quizzed Margot at length. He then stood up and told the physics teacher she was a f*****g i***t, in those words, and how Margot was incredibly gifted and offered her a full ride to Caltech right there on the spot. He also told her she would be welcome to attend any of his classes.”

“What did she do?” Lark grinned at the outcome.

“She tripped over her own feet, spilled a glass of water down the front of his shirt and started to cry.”

Lark laughed, “poor Margot. She always was so clumsy.”