Leather & Lark: The Ruinous Love Trilogy (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, 2)

There’s a steady tension in the air, the shearing whine of friction and an electric motor wrapped in the melody of music that echoes down the concrete corridor. Lark’s voice mixes with the mayhem, a pure and precious sound, the one thread of calm within a cacophony. When I stop at the doorway, her back faces me, head bobbing in time to the song as she guides a sander across the surface of a long golden block of a coffee table on a raised cart. A huge dog rests a few paces away from her slippered feet. Its thick coat is a mix of white and dark, patches of brindle and splashes of dots, as though the universe said fuck it and just mixed all the options together. The beast senses me above the racket and stands, raising its bearlike head to let out a single, authoritative woof.

The room is plunged into sudden silence as Lark switches off the sander and music, then turns to face me.

I cross my arms and resolve to keep my eyes on Lark’s face and not on the thin sliver of exposed skin I can see between the sides of her overalls and the cropped shirt that skims her ribs. “Hi.”

Lark doesn’t smile. If anything, she looks a bit disappointed when she lowers her mask and raises the safety glasses onto her forehead to eye me as though I’ve ruined her hopes by showing up at her door. “Hi.” The dog rises to stand between us, its posture stiff as though the stocky legs have been cast in steel beneath the fur. If she gives the right command, I’m pretty sure Lark could ask the beast to rip my throat out and it would happily oblige. “Go lie down.”

The dog gives me a dirty look and takes a step closer before it drops to the floor with a huff, its legs askew.

“What is it?” I ask, shifting my attention to Lark as the beast drills its glare into the side of my face.

“Some would call it a dog.”

“What kind of dog.”

“American Akita.”

“He looks … broken,” I say, taking in his wonky legs that seem bent at uncomfortable angles.

“He’s an Akita. It’s what they do.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bentley.”

“Bentley?” I snort a laugh. “Let me guess, the last car you crashed before the Escalade?”

Lark glares at me then turns away, smoothing her hand across the table. “Bentley Beetham.” The dog lets out a long sigh as though he’s heard this explanation a thousand times before. He’s clearly just as done with me as she already is. “Ornithologist. Mountaineer. He climbed Everest in 1924. But my dad was more interested in how he’d rappel down cliffs with a rope around his waist so he could photograph gannets with a camera that probably weighed half as much as he did.”

“Bit of a twitcher, is he?” I ask, and when Lark casts me a sharp glance over her shoulder I smile. “Your dad. A bird watcher.”

“Yeah. What was your first clue?” Larks says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“When do I meet him? I’ll bring some binoculars and birdseed. Fionn should have some to spare.”

Lark shakes her head, her eyes trained on her hand as she sweeps the dust from the table’s surface. She doesn’t answer at all, so I take a few steps into the room with a wide berth around the dog, absorbing the details of what seems to be her hobby space. There are unopened cans of quick-curing epoxy resin stacked beside a steel counter where tools lay next to folded fabric and boxes of hardware. Nails. Screws. Crafting wire in gold and silver and copper and pink. Paintbrushes in mason jars stained with a rainbow of dried splashes. And glitter. Pots and pots and pots of glitter, in every color glitter can possibly be made. Gold most of all.

“Big fan of sparkles?” I ask as I pick up a pot of gold flecks and twist it in the light. The glitter sticks to the walls of the jar like a threat.

“You came down here to harass me about glitter?”

“Actually, I came to talk about the plan. We have a lot to figure out. Where do you want to start?” I set the pot down and pull a worn metal stool from beneath the table. When I’m seated facing her, I undo my custom stropping belt and loop the metal ring around my middle finger to pull the strip of leather taut.

“Umm, not with getting naked, that’s for sure.”

“You wish, duchess,” I say with a wink and a grin as I take my switchblade from my pocket and start to run the edge across the leather, sharpening the polished steel. “I mean for real. Where do you want to start? Probably best to not Blunder Barbie our way through this situation of ours, don’t you think?”

Lark eyes me over her shoulder and I feel the burn of her gaze as it slides across my face, down to the ink that covers my arms, to the new wedding band on my finger and back again. “I guess you had a point about meeting my family. We’d better get that done first before they slit your throat and cremate you in an industrial batch oven.”

“That … that escalated quickly.”

Lark shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time they tried that, according to my auntie Ethel, anyway.”

“You mean the sweet old lady Ethel from yesterday? That Ethel?”

With a dismissive flick of her hand, Lark lowers the safety glasses onto her nose. “Yeah but like, who knows with her. I don’t think the rotary batch ovens get hot enough to cremate someone. But they’d do a pretty good job at the killing part.” Lark shoots me a bright, untroubled grin before she pulls the mask over her nose and turns on the sander to scour the surface close to one end of the table. “We should go over to my parents’ place on Sunday though,” she says over the whine of the sander. “Family brunch, rain or shine.”

“Nothing like diving into the deep end. Maybe we should practice before then? You know, to be convincing and shit?”

“If you mean, ‘maybe we should have sex,’ you can fuck right off.”

I snort, though the image of my tattooed hands on her soft thighs unexpectedly bursts through my mind. “I mean, maybe we should try pretending we can stand each other in a public setting. I like not dying.”

“You’re not the one whose family is being actively killed off,” Lark says. A spike of protective rage instantly replaces the desire I just felt. “So yeah, I also don’t think it’s wise to leave it longer than we have to. For my sake or for yours.”

“Right. The batch oven.”

“Exactly.” Lark glances over her shoulder at me as she continues swirling the sander across the table. Her gaze lingers on me for a long moment and I should probably mention something about how she’s about to make the table surface uneven, but it feels like the words have slipped right off my tongue. “We’ll need to be convincing with my family,” she says before I can cobble a sentence together. “Do you think you’re capable of that?”

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.”

“Same.” She turns her attention back to the table but glances over her shoulder at me as though she can’t keep her gaze away. “You listen to a lot of music?”

“Yeah, at the shop.”

“The leather studio?”NôvelDrama.Org owns this.

“That’s right.”

“You made the wing above Sloane’s booth,” Lark says, and I nod. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

Lark watches me for a moment as though expecting me to elaborate. I could tell her how it was the largest piece I’ve ever made, or how I hand-tooled every feather individually before laying them all together. Or maybe she hopes I’ll ask her if I’ve heard her sing before today, whether I know any of her music. And I have, but I don’t say that either. I sure as hell don’t need more connections to Lark than the legal ones that already bind us. I want them easy to snap when the time comes. So I remain silent.

I see something in her eyes. Disappointment. Maybe a little bit of hurt.

Lark goes back to her project, and before long she resumes humming as she cleans the table surface and examines the edges. She says nothing more as she works, not until she casts a glance to the clock above the workshop sink and then her watch, her lips moving in a silent calculation. She turns the UV lamp off and sets it on her workbench before turning to face me.

“Help me get it upstairs?” Lark asks, and I eye the table before lifting my gaze to her.

“You’re done?”

She nods.

“Fine,” I say, “but only if we’re using the elevator. I’m not carrying this feckin’ thing up eight million stairs like we did with your couch when I helped you move in last year.”

Though Lark rolls her eyes, she looks nervous, the most nervous I think I’ve seen her about anything. “Okay,” is her only reply before I take position to push the cart, and she begins to steer the leading edge, Bentley following behind us down the corridor.

When we reach the century-old Otis freight elevator, the doors are already open, the floor covered with a thin film of dust. It’s the first untouched area I’ve seen so far in this massive building. Granted, I haven’t been to every hidden room or storage area, but it’s hard not to notice how clean this place is despite its size and former purpose. Even the windows are perfectly streak-free, no spiderwebs wavering in the drafts from their corners, no desiccated insects gathered on their sills.

Lark moves out of the way as I push the table into the elevator. She hovers by the door when it’s in position, watching from the threshold while I head to the manual controls to figure out the simple mechanism.

Lark makes no motion to enter. “You getting in or what?” I ask. Her body seems to tighten as though she’s ready to take off running, but she steps inside instead, the dog sticking close to her heels. Though I give her a quizzical look, she just ignores me. I wait until her gaze shifts away from me before I flick on the overhead fluorescent light and she startles. “Up or down. Seems straightforward enough. You wanna get the door there, duchess …?”

Lark blinks as though coming out of a haze and looks from me to the cord that will pull the two halves of the door shut. But she doesn’t move.

“Got a thing about elevators?”

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

“It’s just … I don’t trust this one,” she says. When she looks at me again, her face is flushed. “My stepdad said they got stuck in it the first time he came to see the place with the realtor. He got it serviced when he bought it, but that was a few years ago.”

“If it hasn’t seen much use, I’m sure it’s fine. It’s all mechanical. And we’re not climbing far.”

Lark still doesn’t move. “I’m not afraid.”

I don’t try to hide my grin and I can tell it irritates her. “Right. But for argument’s sake, if you are, you can just take the stairs.”

“And let you ride alone with my coffee table? Fat fucking chance. It has sentimental value to me and I’m sure you’d love nothing more than to oh-so-accidentally bust it up.”

I blink at her. “A table … one you just made … has sentimental value to you …?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And you think I’m going to break through three feet of epoxy resin with what, my bare feckin’ hands?” I slap a palm on it and Lark looks like she’s going to pass out or rip my face off, and I’m not sure which reaction brings me more glee. “Why did you make it so feckin’ enormous anyway?”

Lark’s eyes narrow to thin slits. “If you don’t like it, you can go hang out by yourself in your room.” She pulls the rope to shut the door, then folds her arms across her chest and raises one brow in a challenge. Feckin’ stubborn. She has the iron will of someone used to getting their way. It stokes my urge to find something to push her with, harder and harder until she’s forced to relent. In fact, I’m not sure there’s much right now that would give me greater satisfaction than seeing Lark Montague concede defeat at something. Anything.

Shaking my head, I let out a low chuckle as I turn my attention toward the mechanism. “All right, you feckin’ catastrophe. Fingers crossed, yeah?”

I shift the lever to the up position and the elevator lurches as the motor comes to life and the cables begin to pass through the sheave. It’s a shaky start, but the car lifts toward the upper floor. I turn enough that I can see Lark, who looks a little more relieved now that we’re moving. “See?” I say. “I told you it would be fine.”

But then there’s a lurch. The motor goes silent and the elevator grinds to a halt.

Lark and I stare at each other, unmoving. I can actually watch the panic creep into her body, her pulse surging in the tiny veins that swell next to her temple.

“Are we at the second floor?” she asks, and I glance around at the box we’re in as though it might cough up an answer.

“Not quite.”

“Then why are we stopped?”

“I assume one of the electrical wires in the motor burned out.”

“I thought you said it was mechanical.”

“It is mechanical. With an electrically powered motor.” When I give her a shit happens shrug, Lark’s eyes narrow to a slash of menace in reply. “Let’s just be glad the lights are still on, shall we?”

The fluorescent bulb flickers.

My hand hovers over the switch. “For fucksakes.”

“No, don’t touch it.” Lark’s hands are out, her gaze darting between me and the ceiling as the bulb hums and pings with the effort to say on. Her chest rises and falls with heavy breaths. “Please … I don’t know how to get out. I need the light—”

The utter terror in Lark’s eyes claws at my heart. I take a step toward her …

And then we’re plunged into darkness.

Lark lets out some kind of sound I’ve never heard a person make despite having thought I’d heard them all, something between panic and powerlessness and despair. The dog whines. There’s a crash against the steel wall.

“Lark.”

She doesn’t reply, but I hear her increasingly rapid breathing from the corner of the pitch-black box. And then I hear her whispering, though I can’t make out what she says.

“Lark,” I say again as I pull my phone from my pocket and turn on the flashlight. I keep it pointed to the floor and pan toward where she sits curled in the corner like someone trapped in a horror film, hands over her ears and eyes wide but unfocused. Bentley stands next to her and lets out another whine, his tongue lolling with every panting exhalation. I step around the table and the dog gives me a single woof of a warning bark. When I drop to a crouch and try to look as nonthreatening as a bloke like me can, the dog stays plastered to her side, but seems to relax a little. “I won’t hurt her.”

I shift my attention to Lark. She’s shaking. Her brow is misted with sweat. She whispers a string of numbers. Two twenty-four three eighteen five thirty-nine six twelve six fifty-two. The sequence repeats twice before I manage to creep close enough without upsetting the dog that I can put a hand on her ankle.

“Lark …”

She still doesn’t respond. A chill washes over me. I’ve seen this look before. It was when I dumped her in the trunk of my car the first night we met. There was a plea in her eyes despite her defiance. I’d thought it was petulance.

I was wrong. Very fucking wrong.

I try to ignore the feeling in my chest like I’m sinking, caught by an anchor that’s pulling me to the darkest depths of the ocean. “Hey, duchess.” I squeeze her ankle, just a little, my wedding band an unfamiliar point of reflection in the dark. When Lark’s whispering slowly fades and her eyes focus on the patch of light on the floor, it feels like the first breath I’ve taken since the lights went out. “It’s okay.”

Lark doesn’t reply, just blinks at me for a moment until something seems to settle in her thoughts and she breaks her gaze away. Her cheeks flush a deeper crimson. She draws her legs in even closer to her chest and I let her go, though I don’t want to. It feels wrong, somehow. But she seems embarrassed to let me see her in distress. I shouldn’t want to touch her at all, even if I think she needs it.

I clear my throat and lean back to put some space between us without really moving away. “I’m good at fixing things,” I say for the second time tonight. “I can lift you out the roof hatch and then have a look at the mechanism.”

Lark turns her head toward me only slightly. Her inhalations are still uneven, her tears a continuous stream that she can’t seem to stop. “What about Bentley?”

“He’ll be all right in here for a little while.”

“How long?”

“I dunno, duchess. Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe an hour. It depends.”

Lark shakes her head and wraps a shaking arm around the dog, who sinks into her side. “No. I’ll stay.”

“Lark—”

“Go,” she says, her voice unsteady though her tone brooks no argument. She shifts enough to pull her phone from the pocket of her overalls, switching on the flashlight. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can call me.”

“I’ll call Sloane.”

That sinking feeling returns to fill my chest as I watch Lark bring up her favorite contacts, where my name doesn’t appear in the short list. She presses Sloane’s name but it goes straight to voicemail. Without glancing up at me, she tries Rose next, who picks up on the second ring.

“Boss hostler. How’s married life, pretty lady?” Rose says for a greeting.

Fresh tears still glisten on Lark’s skin and her shoulders tremble, but her voice is summer sunshine when she says, “Oh you know, lots going on. How are you, what’s new? Teach the good doctor any new circus tricks yet?”

Rose cackles on the other end as Lark gives me a glance that clearly says fuck off immediately. And I should want to leave. I should not want to linger here. Lark would rather be in this metal box alone with her fears in the dark than sharing the shadows with me. And it’s best that way. For both of us.

But when I back away from her pool of light, it feels like the wrong thing to do.

In the time it takes me to hop onto the table and open the roof hatch, I never hear a complaint from Lark, only her questions to Rose, anything to keep her friend talking or make her laugh. Their voices follow me as I force open the door to the second floor, which is not much of a reach from the roof of the elevator. I hop out to Lark’s open-plan living and dining area and head back down to the first floor, and with a little scavenging of tools from her craft room, I manage to fix the faulty electrical connection within the hour.

Lark looks as though she hasn’t slept for days when the elevator finally opens where it was supposed to. I roll the coffee table into place in the living room and we work together to get it just where she wants it. Lark stands back to look at her work for a long moment, her expression unreadable.

“It looks good,” I say. “Like it’s deserving of sentimental value despite being brand spankin’ new.”

Lark doesn’t rise to my teasing, nor does she hit back. She only gives me a faint nod.

I face her and suck in a breath. “Lark, I—”

“No.” She turns to me, her bright blue eyes are pink-rimmed from tears. “I’m done for today. Thank you for your help.”

I want to say more. I want her to talk to me. I want to listen. But there’s no give in her expression.

It’s for the best …

I give her a nod and let her show me to the guest room. She takes Bentley out for his final walk of the night as I unpack my bags. I don’t see her when she comes back into the apartment, I only hear her enter the primary bedroom with the dog in her wake. Though I cook enough for two and text her when it’s ready, she doesn’t appear for dinner. If it wasn’t for the quiet music that slips from the crack beneath her door, I’d be convinced that I’m alone. Even the gentle melodies fade away before midnight, and I go to sleep wishing I’d said more than I did.

I wake from a nightmare shortly after three in the morning and head to the kitchen for a fresh glass for water. The last thing I expect to see is Lark sitting curled in a round chair by the windows, a guitar nestled in her lap and headphones on her ears, papers spread before her and a pen discarded on the pages.

She doesn’t see me. But I see her clearly. Puffy eyes. Blotchy skin. Swollen lips. The sheen of tears on her cheeks, as though they haven’t stopped. She’s stripped down to her raw edges, to the bloody knuckles from battling with life. I’ve lost skin in this fight to survive too, and though I’ve tried to cover the physical marks with ink, the ones in my memory never seem to heal. Sometimes old scars still ache, an echo of sharp moments.

Have I wounded her? I know I have. But maybe not with a fresh, shallow strike that would soon be forgotten. No, I think I sliced through thin tissue that first night we met. And there is something still bleeding deep beneath the wound.

“Two twenty-four three eighteen,” she sings, her gaze disconnected from the world around her as she stares out the window. “Five thirty-nine six twelve six fifty-two …”

I turn and leave before she can see me, feeling like I’ve finally settled at the bottom of the sea.