Tara Taylor Quinn - His First Choice

“Levi...”

“Do I gotta tell?” His lower lip trembled.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “But you don’t have to tell me what you can’t tell. Just who told you not to.”

He didn’t say anything more. So she tried to make it easier on him.

“Was it your daddy?”

Chin on his knee, he shook his head.

“Was it Mara at school?”

Another shake of his head.

“Someone else at school?”

He shook his head again.

She thought about that broken arm. About where he’d been when it had happened. About a mother who never dropped her son off or picked him up from school.

“Was it your mommy?”

He didn’t respond. Not even a shake of the head.

Lacey had her answer.

* * *

THERE WERE SOME days a guy just needed a burger. The biggest, juiciest patty of beef he could find. And when a guy had a pint-size sidekick, it had to be at a place that served pint-size versions of the same.

Instead of taking Levi straight to preschool after their meeting at social services, Jem turned their truck in the opposite direction and drove until they landed at the beach. At Uncle Bob’s—one of his and Levi’s favorite spots.

Lacey Hamilton had told him basically nothing when she’d come into her office alone less than twenty minutes before. He’d been about to say a whole lot, until she’d explained that Levi was with a coworker of hers, looking at her goldfish, and would be along in a second.

“Can I play in the sand?” the boy asked as he unhooked his seat belt.

“Yep.”

Levi climbed out of his car seat in the back and made his way to the front of the truck to get out with Jem.

Jem had been thinking about making the little guy wait until he opened the back door to get him out, but figured Levi would be opening doors on his own—exiting them without wanting his father close—soon enough. He swung the boy up on his hip and carried him toward the entrance.

It was a testimony to their dual state of mind when Levi put his arms around Jem’s neck and rode the whole way in. Most days he’d have been pushing his feet against Jem’s thighs, eager to be down and on his own.

“I don’t have school today, do I?” Levi asked as they waited to be shown to their table. He’d requested one by the big sandbox play area. Tuesday before noon and the place was already crowded.

“Yeah, you do,” he said. He wouldn’t have if Jem wasn’t feeling overly paranoid about having his every move watched. He didn’t want someone thinking that he was suddenly changing his schedule, afraid to take his son to day care, for fear of what someone might report.

Not that he thought, for one second, that Mara or any of the ladies at the day care would report him for abuse. No, he’d pretty much figured out it was either the hospital, because they had to report frequent hospital visits, as he’d learned last night during his reading—Levi had been to the emergency room six times—or Tressa.

She’d wanted to have sex the previous weekend. He hadn’t been interested enough to pull off the pretense, but had thought he’d made a pretty good excuse. She’d seemed to roll with it at the time.

But his ex-wife had a tendency to be vindictive where he was concerned. Someone had to take the blame for the things that hadn’t gone right in her life. Might as well be him.

* * *

LEVI CHATTERED ABOUT building a sand castle while they waited for the burgers and fries Jem had ordered. Not only were they by the big sandbox, the hostess had seated them at a table with a view of the beach.

Jem would have loved to spend the day out there. Playing in the sand with his son. Building castles. Or surfing the waves like he used to do. Before he’d met Tressa, become a husband—and then a father.

“What’s a twin?” Levi’s foot, swinging beneath the table, caught Jem on the knee. The boy’s chin barely reached the top of the table, but he’d been pretty particular about not wanting a booster seat.

He was a big boy and not a baby, at least that day.

“A twin?” he asked, giving his son his full focus.

“Mmm-hmm.” Levi’s chin lifted. “Lacey said she has a twin. What’s a twin?”

An immediate vision sprang to mind. Not one but two of the beautiful blondes, hair down, of course...

What in the hell was it with him? He was bordering on disrespectful the way he kept picturing the woman.

The next second he was shrugging off his propensity for doing so. He was a guy. It was what guys did.

Not that he could remember the last time he’d mentally undressed a woman he’d just met...

“A twin is someone who has a brother or sister who was born at the same time they were,” he said.

“With a different mommy and daddy?” the boy asked, screwing up his nose like he did when he wasn’t understanding something.

“Nope. With the same mommy and daddy.”

“You said I came out of Mommy’s tummy.” Technically, he hadn’t offered up that technical tidbit to a four-year-old child. Tressa had, one night when she’d been explaining to Levi why he was hers and why he should want to spend more time with her. Jem had been left to explain, as best he could, what she’d meant.

“That’s right,” he said now.

“Does everyone come out of a mommy’s tummy?”

Obviously his lesson had lacked some pertinent details. “Yes.” He waited. The last time they’d dealt with this topic, he’d answered Levi’s questions and left the rest for when the boy wanted to know more.

Thanks to Lacey Hamilton needing to tell his son about her birth situation, now was apparently the time for more. As if the day wasn’t already challenging enough.

Both little feet beneath the table were swinging now and softly kicking him. Jem thought about reaching down to stop them, but chose to take the blows instead. If Levi didn’t expunge his energy one way, he’d find another.

Levi’s gaze followed a waiter with a tray full of ice cream sundaes and Jem was pretty sure they were done with the topic. He was ready to ask his son if he wanted a sundae for dessert, in spite of the fact that they didn’t do dessert at lunchtime, when Levi turned back to him.

“Lacey’s mom had two babies in her tummy at one time?”

“Yep.”

“How come my mommy didn’t have two babies at one time?”

Levi had talked a time or two about having a baby brother or sister. So far Jem had avoided the hows and why that couldn’t happen, saying only that mommies and daddies had to be married to have babies. A weak excuse if ever there was one.

“Because you took up so much room, silly,” he said now and grinned for real when he saw their waitress heading toward them with two burgers. One big and one small.

As expected, Levi moved on from the whole twin thing as he ate. Talking about playing in the sand again. And about cars. He wanted a blue one with turbo twin spoilers like the one he’d played with that morning.

“It was really cool, Dad.”

Jem promised him the car. Knowing that on any other day he’d have given Levi some task to complete to earn the toy that he wanted.

Levi seemed to have shaken any of the trepidation he’d had after his encounter in Lacey’s playroom.

But Jem couldn’t shake his awareness of Lacey Hamilton from his mind quite as easily.

And wondered what it had been like for her, growing up with a built-in best friend. Wondered if her twin was a brother or a sister.

Wondered, too, why he gave a damn.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LACEY’S LIFE WAS her work. She didn’t try to hide the fact or apologize for it. She’d made choices and was at peace with them. She liked her life.

She hadn’t grown up thinking she’d be a career woman. She’d gone to college more because it was expected of her than because she had career goals to pursue. But time, experience, clarified things.