Page 29 of Bad Boy in Her Bed

“Did you hurt anyone?”

“Not physically, no,” he answered, taking another step back.“Did a lot of damage to the home, scared the couple pretty bad, but no, no one was hurt.”

Her delicate brows furrowed, her lips pursing as she nodded slowly.“That’s what the rumors are.I just wanted to hear it from you.”Giving him a tight smile, she unlocked her car and got in.“I’ll text you later and we can go over anything I flag, okay?”

His voice was tight in his throat, and he sounded hoarse when he spoke.“Yeah.Sure.Talk to you later.”

With a wave, she backed up and pulled out of the lot, leaving him alone to remind himself that it had been worth it.

Even if, for the first time since he walked into the state pen six years ago, he didn’t believe it.

*

Jocelyn yanked theelastic from her ponytail and ran her hands through her hair, blowing out a puff of air in frustration.

No matter how she organized the numbers, Serpent’s Tongue Ink’s deposit slips didn’t add up to its cash invoices.Breaking it down week by week, there was a constant overage of around five hundred dollars, the final total coming in at almost thirty thousand dollars for the year.

Checking the time, she hit the print button and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, her eyes blurring from staring at a screen for thirteen hours.

She didn’t contact Birch all day, her determination to get through the stack of disorganized slips and handwritten invoices never wavering.

Her mother had swung by earlier, bringing with her a homemade meal and half a tray of lemon squares.They chatted for a bit until the last bite of lasagna was gone, her mom not so subtly fishing for information about Birch and Jocelyn deflecting it with talk of the family’s plans for the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations.

Collecting the stack of spreadsheets from the printer, she crawled into bed and set them beside her before giving in and firing off a text.

U up?

Birch was quick to respond, her phone buzzing in her hand as he called back.

“Hey,” she greeted him, snuggling down into her blankets.“How was your day?”

She could hear him closing a door, followed by the soft creak of his mattress.“Not bad.Got my ass handed to me on two distance runs this morning.Spent most of the afternoon doing a couples tattoo.Read through Grey’s assignment for his technical communications course without screaming.And now I’m lying in bed on the phone.How about you?Find anything the Feds might be interested in?”

Rolling onto her side with a groan, she turned off the light.“Well, it’s not good news.I’m going to need you to bring over Serpent’s Tongue’s bank statements from the past year as soon as you can round them up.”

“That good, huh?”he sighed.“I have them filed away, so I’ll drop by with them tomorrow after work.I’ll bring dinner too if that will soften the blow.”

“We’ll worry about it over burgers,” she agreed.“Can I ask you something personal?”

He went quiet for a moment.“Sure.”

Frowning into the darkness, she tightened her blanket around herself.“Why did you do it?The break-in?”

His response was quick, almost rote.“It was a Saturday night, and I thought the house would be empty because it was July Fourth and most of the town was at the park for the fireworks.I parked a block away and took the path between Hubbard Street and—”

“Not the how,” she interrupted.“The why.”

There was a long pause before he replied.“I was a twenty-two-year-old single guy raising two boys and under a lot of financial pressure.I didn’t have a strong role model growing up, so when things got rough, I looked for the fastest way to deal with it.”

Something was off in his answer.His words sounded as though he was reading a formulated statement to a judge.“Do you regret it?”

He chuckled dryly.“I was thinking earlier about that.Yeah, I do.I don’t regret a lot of things I’ve done, but that is one of them.”

“Would you do it again?”

“What do you think?”

Staring at the faint light peeking through her curtains from the street below, she thought about it for a moment.“I can’t even imagine you doing it the first time, so no, I don’t think you’d do it again.I have a hard time seeing you as a bad guy.Which I worry may come back to bite me in the ass, if we’re being up front here.”

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