Page 17 of Bad Guys Need Love Too

“No. I mean, be careful with your heart. And hers. If this thing goes pear-shaped—and I don’t mean the killer, I mean the attachment you have to her—I don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”

He understood what she was saying. When this was over, things couldn’t go back to the way they were. Not now that Lark knew she had a stalker. Not now that he’d been close enough to do more than justwatchher.

Everythingwas different now.

“I’m always careful,” he repeated quietly.

Ren could only hope he hadn’t just lied to his one and only friend. Or to himself.

CHAPTER 10

Considering everything she’d been through the day before, and the fact that she was wearing a stranger’s underwear and spooning with a stranger’s dog, Lark slept better than she had in, well,ever.

Or maybe Ren’s high-end mattress and sexily scented clothes just worked better on her than melatonin gummies. All she knew for sure was that her head hit the pillow and her memory for the past twelve hours ended there. She woke up sweaty (Dammit George was like a furnace), drooling into the pillow, and more well rested than she’d ever felt in her life.

But as good as she felt and as much as she would’ve loved to roll over and go back to sleep, her bladder just simply wouldn’t allow it. So, she staggered out from under a disgruntled Dammit George and made her way to the bathroom. Thankfully, she managed to avoid peeing herself.

Her relief was short-lived, though, once she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror.

Sweet baby Jesus on a purple pony!

She looked likeNight of the Living Deadhad vomited all over her. Her mascara had migrated from her eyelashes nearly all the way down to her cheekbones. Her bun had passed messy hours ago and was now living inrat’s nestterritory. And there was a sleep crease on one of her cheeks that was deep enough to make her wonder if it wouldevergo away.

All in all, she figured corpses that had been floating in the river for a week looked better than she did in that moment.

Lark took a few moments to scrub her face and wrangle her hair back into a decent-looking messy bun. There wasn’t anything she could do about the pillow crease other than pray it’d go away, so that’s what she did as she mentally prepared herself for seeing Ren again.

He probably looked phenomenal, the bastard. He just had the look of a man who rolled out of bed, brushed his teeth, and was ready to tackle the day as a solid ten out of ten.

But when she padded out to Ren’s kitchen, Dammit George hot on her heels, it wasn’t Ren she found sitting at the table, nursing a cup of coffee.

It was the most beautiful woman Lark had ever seen in real life.

Lark had always assumed that women who looked likethisone were creatures of myth and legend and simply didn’t exist outside of Hollywood. But here was such a creature in all her glory.

She had a flawless peaches-and-cream complexion that Lark would need a shit ton of makeup to replicate, but this woman didn’t even look like she was wearing anything other than lip gloss on her fully, pouty lips and mascara to highlight her icy eyes. She also had a heart-shaped face, which was somethingLark had only read about in romance novels up until that point. And framing all that gorgeous natural beauty was a headful of shiny, bouncy, shampoo-commercial-worthy auburn curls.

Then there was her body.

She had a perfect hourglass figure—the kind that artists would probably fistfight each other to win the privilege of painting or sculpting. She looked tiny, too, which didn’t usually make Lark self-conscious, but in this case, kind of made her feel huge and ungainly in comparison.

“Hi,” Perfect Curves Barbie (or PCB, as Lark decided to refer to her in her mind) chirped. “Sleep good?”

“Um…yes. Who are?—”

But her question was drowned out as PCB caught sight of Dammit George. “There’s my perfect, handsome boy,” she said in a baby talk voice that seemed to enthrall Dammit George if his full-body wiggle was any indication. “How are you doing, sweet baby?”

Dammit George flopped over and exposed his belly to the newcomer, and she provided the requisite scritches with her perfectly manicured, blood-red fingernails.

After a few more moments of chitchat with the dog, PCB turned back to Lark with a sunny smile. “Sorry. I haven’t seen this boy in a minute. I’m Tenley, by the way. It’s very nice to meet you.”

Wait…thiswas Ren’s friend? The one he mentioned last night? He wasjust friendswiththiswoman? How the hell was that possible?

Tenley smirked. “I’m married. Very happily married, I swear. Ren is like a brother to me.”

Lark blinked at her. Could she read minds, too?

She snorted. “I’m really good at reading people, but your face is an open book.”

---