One corner of my mouth turns up in a cocky grin. “Are you?”

Lark rolls her eyes. My smile spreads. Something about getting under her skin is addictive. Every time I do, it feels like I’ve sneaked beneath her defenses to run amok in a place most people never even see.

But as I’ve quickly learned, she’s never one to be outdone. “Bitch, please. I’ve had years of practice,” she says.

My laugh seems to startle her. The sander growls against the table to accompany the lethal look she gives me.

“I can’t wait to see how quickly this whole thing will be feckin’ banjaxed.”

“I’m guessing ‘banjaxed’ is bad?” she asks, and my brows raise in affirmation. “Well then, if it all goes tits up, it won’t be because I’m the one who couldn’t pull it off. And I can guarantee it won’t be me in the batch oven. So I guess you’d better not fuck it up.”

Lark gives me a saccharine smile beneath her mask, one I can see in her eyes, the way they narrow and crinkle at the corners. I reply with a dark smirk of my own. If she thinks I can’t play this game with her folks, she’s wrong. I’ll make this the best goddamn parental first meeting she’s ever had, so good that even she’ll think she’s fallen in love with me.

… Probably.

Fuck.

Lark pulls me out of my spiraling doubts when she says, “What about your boss? I’m assuming we’ll need to meet him too.”

All that amusement I felt while teasing her only moments ago snuffs out as though she just flipped a feckin’ switch. The thought of taking Lark to meet Leander has slithered around in my mind since Sloane and Rowan’s wedding. It’s swum in the murk of all the other worries that came along with this insane plan, but this is the first time it’s landed a bite.

“Yes,” I reply, my grip on the blade handle so tight that my hand aches. “He doesn’t expect to see an actual romance—”

“Thank God.”

“—but he will want business assurances. Likely a financial commitment.”

Lark gives me a single sharp nod. Her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. “Give me the paperwork. I’ll get it done.”

“Leander Mayes is seriously fucked up, Lark. Even if he wants something from you, you can’t count yourself as safe, yeah?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, her eyes narrowing behind the safety glasses. “I said I’ll get it done, and I will.”

Though I hate to admit it, I admire her determination. Lark doesn’t falter, even when I expect her to. But I don’t know why I keep thinking she’ll break apart when she never has, not once since the first time I met her. She could have cowered from me that night, but instead she got all up in my face with her Budget Batman shite. I trapped her in my trunk and she feckin’ escaped. The moment I realized she was gone, I double-backed and zigzagged the country roads, searching for her until dawn. Every time I’ve argued with her since then, she’s either hit back just as hard or let my barbs slide over her shoulders like they were nothing more than silk.

“All right, duchess. Once you sign your soul to the devil, we’ll use Leviathan resources to track down this killer of yours. We’d better get on with meeting Leander as soon as we can after your family. He travels a lot, so I’ll get the details of what he wants and when he’ll be around so that you can have it ready in advance.”

Lark nods before she pulls her attention away from me. The moment she looks down at the table, she jolts as though shocked, her gasp audible despite the sound of the machine.

I’ve taken two hurried steps toward her before I even realize what I’m doing, my blade forgotten on the floor and the belt tapping against my thigh. I’m nearly at her side when that giant dog jumps to his feet, again putting his body between us.

“Are you okay?” I ask as she switches the sander off. Lark has the machine still clutched in one hand as she slaps the other down on the table, her gaze caught on the surface. She lets go of the sander to pull her safety glasses and mask off, but she doesn’t look my way. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No. Nope. Totally fine.”

She doesn’t sound fine at all. “You sure about that, duchess?”

“Very sure.”

“Something wrong with the sander? I can have a look.” I take a few slow, careful steps around Bentley, but Lark tries to wave me off. “I’m pretty good with taking things like that apart, I can probably fix it—”

“No. I’m good. I just …” Lark’s entire body is tense, from the palm she presses her weight into, to her tight shoulders, to her lips that are set in a grim line that traps whatever words she was about to say.

“You just …?”

“I just realized I should put a star right here.” Lark nods down to her hand where it’s splayed across the scoured epoxy, but she doesn’t lift it away, not even when I edge into her space to stop at her shoulder. “Yep. Right there. A big black glittery star.”

“Okay … well … go for it.”

“I will.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“I don’t want to lose my place. It has to go right here. Yep. This exact spot. I can feel it.” A grimace flickers across her face before it transforms into a smile that’s both pained and a bit … deranged. “There’s a star-shaped cake tin in the kitchen, second cupboard to the left of the stove. Can you please go grab it for me?”

“You have a cake tin shaped like a giant star? Why does that not surprise me.”

“Just please go and get it, would you?”

“What’s that smell …?”

A sudden blush ignites in Lark’s cheeks. “Bentley. He farted.”

I shift my attention to the dog, who looks toward Lark at the sound of his name. He lets out a disgruntled huff and glares at me as though I’m the one who passed wind. “Are you sure he’s not sick or something? It smells like he ate something rancid. You should change his food.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Lachlan, but for the love of all things holy, pretty please with a glittery cherry on top … cake tin?”

“All right, all right. I’m going.” With an eye roll that Lark doesn’t see, I turn on my heel and leave the room, but not before I give her a final glance over my shoulder. Head bent, shoulders slumped, I can almost feel her relief.

I fasten my belt as I head toward the stairs and up to the apartment, where my two suitcases lie unopened next to the door. The cake tin is exactly where she said it would be, which for some reason I find surprising. Lark seems chaotic, yet when I peek in a few cupboards, everything is highly organized. Mugs lined up by size and design. Tea organized by color. Every tin of soup or sauce in neat rows, labels facing forward.

Storing that observation away, I take the cake tin downstairs and enter the room where Lark hovers over the table as she free-pours a thin stream of black epoxy on the surface. When I pass the star to her and wait to see what she’ll do next, she mutters a thank-you but doesn’t take her eyes from the table surface. She sets the star down to surround the small dollop she’s already poured and then speeds up the process until she’s filled all the angles and points with glittering black resin.

I lean against the table edge and cross my arms. “Everything good?”

“Mmhmm. Great.” Lark falls into silence, all her concentration on the edges of the metal as she checks the boundaries for any bleeding black edges. When she seems satisfied, she sets a UV lamp over the star and turns it on before wiping down the rest of the table. She hums as she works, a melody I don’t recognize until she lets the lyrics start to slip out. The tone of her voice is both haunting and pure, both light and shadow, like you can take what you want from her and hear the song the way only you need to.

“You’re a fan of the Smiths?” I ask. Lark’s singing fades to silence, the wiping slows, and she regards me for a long moment. “‘How Soon Is Now?,’ right?”

“Yeah. You like them?”

One of my shoulders lifts in a shrug before I bend to retrieve my wayward knife. “I like that song. Not all their stuff.”