The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max) novel Chapter 16

Lark was lying on her bed in her childhood bedroom and staring at the ceiling, contemplating whether or not she was ready to talk to Ollie yet. Her phone rang and she lifted it, checked the number, ignored it, and then let the phone fall to her chest. Nope. She wasn’t ready.

“Told you she was ignoring us.”

She turned her head to her window and saw two faces leaning in. She sat up in her bed.

“Seriously. You climbed the drainpipe.” She couldn’t believe her eyes. She grimaced at Max. “Should you be exerting yourself?”

Ollie sneered, “do you actually care?”

Max elbowed his sister but then responded to Lark, “I’m supposed to be remaining stress free but you’re being an asshole and making my blood pressure increase.”

“I’m being an asshole? What do you call a man who repeatedly ignores a woman’s request to be left alone?” she called him out refusing to get up for them. She lay ack down.

“But I know you don’t mean it,” he grinned at her, both dimples on full display. “You miss me as much as I’ve missed you. Ollie told me. You don’t want to elevate my blood pressure arguing with me, do you?”

She shot Ollie an annoyed look before turning her attention back to him, “You survived all this time without me. I’m certain I am not the cause of your ailments now.”

“You are.” Ollie climbed through the window and landed with a thud on the floor.

Instinctively, Lark looked to the door as if worried her parents would hear and then threw her hands up. “Why are you here? You’re mad at me, I’m mad at both of you and you,” she grimaced at Max, “are not anyone I want to be around.”

“Well, Max and I talked. In fact, we even went to talk to a counsellor together. We decided we love you too much to let you

go.”

Lark frowned at Ollie’s comment. “You went to a counsellor?”

“Yes. Mom sat us down on Monday, all of us, all six of us, and called us assholes. I mean, she usually sits us down like this quarterly but this time she meant business. She told us point blank she was tired of our bullshit. Then on Wednesday she called me and Max in after she apparently worked with you on Margot’s file and said you were perhaps the most professional person she ever met and your ability to put your work and personal feelings aside to help the mother and sister of the biggest pair of assholes who have ever hurt her in her life might be your biggest character flaw.” Ollie perched on the edge of the bed and squeezed her leg.

“Character flaw?” Lark frowned at Bobbie’s assessment rolling to her side.

“Mm. She seems to think you’ll be too soft on us and take us back too easily and we’ll hurt you again. She said since she knows you have weak spots for both of us, she’s going to be your backbone if you can’t be. She said she’s going to kick our asses if we keep hurting the one person who ever loved us as unconditionally as she does. Mom said she was really ashamed of how we’ve behaved with you. I mean she’s said it before but this time she was really frustrated and pointed out we were going to lose you forever if we didn’t straighten up. She suggested we go to counselling as individuals and as siblings and even family counseling, to deal with our resentment over the fact she was a shitty mom who raised such self-absorbed assholes.”

“Your mother was not a shitty mom!” Lark defended Bobbie furiously.

“We know, chère,” Max held up his hands defensively. “We made sure she knows she has done nothing wrong. We were spoiled selfish little pricks and it’s not her fault. Dad overcompensated for missing eight years of our life by never disciplining us and we took advantage like the monsters we were. We were a bad example for our younger siblings to follow and they’re following with gusto. The woman is a saint. If I had to deal with six mini versions of Olivier Villeneuve, I would have divorced him, given him full custody, and hidden somewhere in the French countryside where nobody would ever find me again.”