Page 131 of Renard's Deliverance

Where was she?

Oh. Crap.

She’d fallen asleep. She wasn’t getting much sleep at night thanks to her nightmares so it was no surprise.

Stefan just didn’t want to let her go.

The bastard.

“What?” She spun to see Renard standing there, glaring down at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Knocked on the door. You didn’t answer.”

“Um, that’s because I’m out here.”

“Sleeping?”

“Yep.”

“Got sunscreen on?”

“Yep.” She gestured to the bottle of sunscreen sitting on the crate next to her.

He grunted. “When did you last apply it?”

“I don’t know. About an hour ago. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. But I knew you should be back from lunch so I knocked, and you didn’t answer. Texted. You didn’t answer. I just don’t like that.”

“Malina turned up.”

He grunted. “Finally.” He turned to glare at the pool. “What the fuck is that?”

“That’s my new pool. Isn’t it great?”

“Gem. That’s a kids’ paddling pool.”

“I know. I found it in Mr. Oldsman’s shed. He gave it to me. I love looking at the water.”

“Gem.” He just stared down at her.

“What?”

“You need a real fucking pool.”

“That’s not in the budget and, anyway, I can stick my feet in the water. I was thinking about planting some flowers out here, though. Don’t you think that would look nice?”

“Yeah, guess it would.”

“Don’t know much about flowers, but how hard can it be to plant and water them?”

Renard didn’t wantto tell her that it probably took a bit more knowledge than that to make plants grow. He also didn’t want to point out that the paddling pool kind of looked ridiculous.

Because he thought he was finally starting to understand why she was making all these changes to a house she didn’t own.

It was because she felt at home here.

She was making it her home.

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