The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max)

Lark stood helplessly watching as Max tore into his parents, the cardiologist, two nurses and a poor hospital janitor who happened to be mopping the floor when the discussion on his trip to Dallas began. The poor woman kept trying to mop her way backwards out the door of the ICU.

"Mr. Villeneuve, you need to calm down."

"In the history of ever telling another human being to calm down, has it ever actually worked?" Max shot back at the nurse.

Olivier mumbled under his breath about calling someone with a blow dart and an elephant tranquilizer which made Lark snicker. Max's furious gaze flipped to her.

"You find this comical, chère?"

"I find it funny you made promises to me to listen to the medical staff so we could be together until we were old and gray and yet you're here with your blood pressure at," she strained her neck to look round him at the machine he was currently hooked up to, "one-forty over ninety and this morning you were resting at one-oh-six over sixty-eight."

"Sixty-nine," he shot back. "If you're going to quote the numbers, chère get them right. You know I remember the number because I joked that -"

"Enough," Bobbie held her hand up. "Max, this isn't up for discussion."

"Mom, I love you. I do. Butt out."

"No. The doctors are concerned. You underwent surgery only a few days ago."

"Let me get this straight then," he waved to the group of professionals, "you want me to fly back to Dallas, for my grandmother's funeral," he shot a dirty look to the head nurse who earlier called Nana Prue simply a family friend and perhaps skipping the funeral was best, "in a med-evac chopper, with a full team of medical staff.Stop reading the wrong and incomplete storyline, jo b ni b.com has the correct and complete book. You want me to go the funeral in a wheelchair, hooked up to all this s**t," he flung his arm at his chest full of electrodes, "like I'm the poster boy for the guy who broke out of quarantine, and then you want me to skip her wake, go straight to the cardiac hospital in Houston and stay there for another five to seven days. And" he glared angrily, "you want all of this done with a handful of nurses at my side the entire time." When they all nodded vigorously, he threw his hands up. "No!"

"Max, flying puts you at risk of developing DVT post-operatively." The surgeon tried again to explain their concerns. "We opened your chest. We did a bypass surgery."

"I am aware of what you did to my body. I want to be able to honor Nana Prue. I want to say goodbye. It is going to be emotional and shitty and the last thing I want is strangers standing over me, telling me they want to check my vitals while my heart is breaking. To tell me I can't be with my family and have to return back to a hospital and stay there when I know you're all flying back here to be with Gracie," he wiped his nose furiously and then grabbed the tissue Lark passed him with a growl, "is unacceptable. Lark needs me."

"I need you alive."

"What she said," Bobbie grumbled.

"I do not understand why I can't come back here."

"Because it's two more flights, Max, one back to Houston and then when we all go home when Gracie is well enough, another back to Dallas. We don't know when it will be. Each flight puts you at risk. Flying is not recommended at all for a full month minimum post-operatively and you're talking of taking two more separate flights in addition to this one."

"This is some next level bullshit."

"Pressure changes and -"

"Save it," he ruffled his hair. "I want to be with my family. Why is this so hard for you all to understand? We are not in the stone ages. Surely there are ways to keep me safe."

"There are!" the surgeon spoke up. "It involves using a medically equipped chopper with specialized equipment, keeping you monitored completely since it's been three days since we cracked you open and then putting you on bed rest with strict supervised activity to keep blood clots from forming in your legs which will make their way to your brain and cause you to have a stroke."

"Take it or leave it Max." Lark suddenly spoke up.

He turned to face her completely with a c****d eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"You have two choices. Stay here with Grandpa Gael and Grandma Louisa for company and we can live stream the funeral and wake for you, or you can follow the directions the medical staff are providing to the letter and attend in person. It's not up for debate. I'm done with this argument."

Bobbie and Olivier exchanged looks which Lark didn't miss but she couldn't be bothered to dissect them

now.

"Now, get your ass back in the bed, let the nurse put the equipment you've yanked off back on correctly and stop acting like a child. Make your choice. Here or Dallas?"

"You're bossy." Max's eyebrows knitted together giving him a unibrow and his beard was now full in, and he was wild looking in this angry state. "What gives you the right to be so bossy?"

"Pfft, you asked me to marry you, offered to buy me a house behind our parents' houses connected by fences and named our children the other evening. I think I have more than enough rights to be bossy." "You didn't agree."

"Will you get into bed," she asked exasperatedly.

"Agree to marry me and move into the house. I already bought it."

"I haven't even seen it yet!"

"Who cares if you've seen it. It's the location which is important. You want to be close to the parents when we have babies. They're professionals at taking care of babies. If the house is ugly, we'll gut it and rebuild it. Say yes. Say yes right now and I'll stay in Dallas and get started on our forever home from my hospital bed in the cardiac unit there.'

"You cannot blackmail Lark into marriage and living with you, Max," Olivier chastised him.

"Meh, it's fine, Papa Olivier," Lark shrugged. "He's been extorting me in one form or another since birth. Lark don't tell Mom I was the one who brought the ants in the house, or I'll tell them it was you who threw up in her fancy shoes. Lark, if you don't come with me to treehouse and try kissing, I'm telling Ollie it was you who put the paint on her favorite sweater. Lark

"Hey!" Max folded his arms over his chest. "You're spilling our secrets here."

"They can't ground me anymore," she laughed. "I'm no longer afraid of any of them. The one woman I was afraid of, we are burying soon, and while I know she is going to haunt our asses. Not because," Lark looked at the startled nursing staff, "she had unfinished business or whatever but because there is no way on any earthly plane, she's not nosy enough to be poking her head into our businesses all the time." "She's not wrong," Bobbie backed her up to the room. "Nana Prue is likely too much for heaven to contain and they need to let her out once in a while so other spirits can get the eternal rest they deserve." "Marry me, Lark. Move into the house with me."

"Yes. Fine. I'll marry you and move into the house with you."

"By the end of the month I want us married."

"No way."

The surgeon threw Lark a bone, "your honeymoon would be boring if you did it inside a month since you're not permitted to have s*x for a minimum of six weeks."

"Six weeks?" Max clutched his chest, and a string of French expletives flew past his lips, but he wasn't arguing now as the nurses pushed him back into the bed and started hooking him back up to his equipment.

"Three months, Max. I'll even let you plan the entire thing." Lark thought herself an evil genius considering how much she did not want to plan a wedding.

"You're really going to marry me?" his eyes were bright and glossy like he was trying not to cry as he watched her nervously as if waiting for her to say it was a joke.

"Yup. I'll even give you a baby or two but not this year. I want to name our first girl after Nana Prue like you suggested." "You should know, brother," Ollie piped in from the doorway signalling her arrival, "she was telling us earlier Gracie's room before you came down, she was going to marry you and have your babies. She was awake all-night thinking about it. You got shafted.'

"Hey!" Lark shot her an irritated look. "It was my card to get him to stay home."

"You were up all-night thinking of it?" Max grinned at her, "so sweet. Come cuddle," he lifted the edge of his blanket and the entire room groaned.

"No. You need to tell everyone you agree to the medical care plan and promise me, I want your word Max, you will do everything they say from here on out no more arguments."

"What if they take s*x off the table even longer than six weeks? I might argue this."

She looked at Bobbie incredulously, "he's unbelievable."

"He's your problem now, Lark." Bobbie grinned suddenly. "The minute you say I do, there are no takebacks, no returning to sender and no refunds. He's yours until death do you part and he," she pointed at Max, "is his father's double in terms of everything from temperament to genius to laziness in picking up socks. Get a good housekeeper and don't do what I did and think it's silly to have a nanny when you have so much family around. Get a nanny. Get three if you can. Get one who will keep your kids scared straight. But" she was clutching her hands excitedly, "and I cannot say this too much, with all the love I have in my heart, good freaking luck!"

Bobbie then grabbed Olivier, kissed his mouth, and said, "one down, five to go," and walked out of the

room.

Lark looked at Ollie who gave her parents a disgusted sneer and then sighed. "Why do I feel I just got played?"