His First Choice (17 page)

“Can I bring back the twinkle to your eye?” she asked. And immediately hated herself for the question. As if this was in any way about her.

He tilted his head. Looked at her. And smiled. A real smile. “You already have.”

“I'm glad.”

“Believe it or not, I am, too.”

He needed time. She didn't like it, didn't want to not help him, but she wasn't a professional when she was with Jem.

She was a woman tuning in to the heart he was starting to show her. Or, if nothing else, a friend tuning in to a friend.

“You want to call it a night?” she asked then.

“No, but...yeah.” His gaze was direct, touching her as intimately as his lips had and far more deeply.

Lacey nodded, picked up their wineglasses and walked into the house, leaving him to follow with the bottle.

She couldn't take away what had happened to him. Not just that night, but for however long he'd been a partner in an abusive relationship. But she could tend to him now. By listening to what he wasn't saying.

Giving him what he seemed to need. Time to himself. To assimilate. To recover.

He collected his keys. She grabbed the oversize red, white and blue cloth bag Kacey had presented her with that evening when she'd returned from work. Her sister had spent at least part of the day shopping.

He turned off lights as they moved to the front of the house. She let herself out. He locked the door as he exited behind her.

He didn't touch her. She didn't walk close enough to him to risk contact.

Neither said a word as they drove home. Lacey wondered if their first date had been their last. If one perfect kiss was all she was ever going to know.

She wondered if he'd send a crew to build her birthday present.

She wondered what she was going to tell Sydney. And knew that she had to let Jem know that she'd be calling her coworker in the morning. She'd given her word. He'd tell her everything Tressa said, and she'd let him know before she called in a report.

When he pulled up in front of her house, she had the words ready to spill. She was going to call Sydney in the morning.

“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” His question forestalled her.

“Yes.” Her answer came without forethought. But even if she'd taken time, she knew it would have been the same.

“We don't have a lot of time before Kacey has to leave.”

“A week.”

“I very much want to share you with Levi,” he said. “But I need you to myself.”

“I understand.”

It was too much, too soon. And there didn't seem to be any way to stop it.

“I'm sorry.”

Leaning over, she touched her finger to his lips. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

He looked like he was going to say more, but leaned over and kissed her instead. An intense, tongue-joining promise of a kiss. And then he walked her up to her front door, made small talk with her sister, collected his son so tenderly the boy didn't stir in his sleep and was gone.

Lacey spent the night wondering how much of what she thought had happened really had or if she'd read too much into things, been clouded enough by the wine that she'd only felt as though she'd actually walked on cloud nine.

And knew that until she had a chance to talk to Jem again, she wasn't going to say anything to anyone. Levi wasn't going to be with his mother during the next twenty-four hours.

She had a little time to figure everything out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

J
EM
CALLED
T
RESSA
Thursday on his way home from work. He'd learned a long time ago that it was best to be proactive with her.

He knew it was vulnerability behind her crazy words, her need to try to control those she cared about. Her own little piece of the world.

She'd been abused from the time she was a toddler. Her parents had withheld love anytime she didn't meet their expectations. And worse. She'd been hit regularly, locked in the laundry room for a couple of days at a time, even burned with her father's cigarette once. But the worst, for her, was the emotional starvation.

He figured that was partially what made her so prone to drama. She had too much stored up inside of her. A lifetime of emotion that had had no outlet.

And now that she was no longer held captive, now that she was free, she had a desperate need to do all she could to keep her world the way she thought it should be.

He also knew that if he called her, she'd calm down. And it was best for Levi, for his overall development, if the mother who loved him, and whom he loved, was calm.

“Are you going out with her again tonight?” That didn't bode well.

“Do you want to talk or do you want me to hang up?” He left the control up to her, but his message was clear, too. He wasn't going to go through a replay of the night before.

“I want to talk.”

In his truck, on his way to pick up Levi, he nodded.

“I'm sorry, Jem.” The apology was a bit fragmented through his Bluetooth, but he'd known it was coming, too. Maybe had even called to collect it.

“I know.”

“It's just... I don't know what I'd ever do without you.”

“You keep by our rules and you'll never have to find out.”

“But what if—and I'm not saying this is even a remote possibility in your life right now—but what if you ever do meet someone and want to marry again. She'll have a say then, and I'll lose...”

“Any woman I would ever marry would know, before she accepted my proposal, that you are my son's mother and will always be a part of our lives.”

The words left a heavy weight on his shoulders. One he didn't want. But he'd promised her a lifetime. For better or worse.

His son needed his mother because he loved her, had bonded with her, and because she loved him in a way no one else ever could.

“And I spoke the truth,” she was saying now. “I don't mean to be so harsh, but I did give up everything to help you get where you are.”

He understood that.

“And you are a lot looser than I am. Since our divorce I haven't slept with anyone but you, while you've had at least two other lovers that I know of.”

He'd had one. But that number could change soon. And was none of her business.

“I understand,” he said, because he did. She wasn't going to admit how awful she'd been or take accountability. In her world, people used your mistakes against you. But he also knew that she was sorry.

“I need you to honor our agreement and stay away from my house, Tressa.”

“Why, because I ruined your little tryst with your whore friend?”

Every nerve in his body tightened. “I had dinner with a woman, period. That was all I had intended and all I did. You are the one who made it seem like something more.”

“Wait...” she said before he mustered the composure to hang up. “I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that.”

He took a deep breath. He needed peace more than he needed to be right.

“I'm sorry. I'm guessing you didn't get much sleep last night.”

He hadn't.

“I'm not saying that as a dig or an innuendo. I know that my drama unsettles you. I really do try to rein it in for you, Jem. We're just so different, you and I.”

“That we are.”

“But that's not my fault.”

“I never said it was.”

“I know. You're so good to me, Jem. And I...just need you to know that I know that. And that...I appreciate you so much.”

He started to relax. “I need you to stay away from my house.”

“I know. And I will. I promise. Amelia and I are going to the city tonight. She's got tickets to a Broadway play. We're going to spend the night in Beverly Hills and treat ourselves like queens.”

Thank God. Amelia was back in the picture.
And
Tressa was going to be a hundred miles away. A double gift. He could relax and give himself completely to his night with Lacey. Without worrying that he'd be bringing the wrath of Tressa down on her.

“What about work tomorrow?” He wasn't going to keep supporting her. Alimony was up and he was done.

“I took a vacation day. But I do want to talk to you about that,” she said. “But not today. I've got to get packed and...”

“I have a question for you.” He was just curious.

“What's that?”

“Did you call Amelia or did she call you?”

“She called me. And apologized, too.”

Tressa used to make him apologize for everything that happened between them, too. Until he'd finally refused to do so.

“So now I have a question for you,” she said.

And he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

“This woman from last night...are you going to see her again?”

“Considering what she overheard last night, what do you think?” He could have out and out denied that he had another date. But the words stuck in his throat—as though they were somehow disloyal to Lacey. With his luck, fate would sic karma on him for the lie and take Lacey away from him.

“She was a little upset with you, huh?”

“It was a first date, Tressa. Wouldn't you have been?”

Which made it doubly miraculous that Lacey had taken the whole thing in stride.

“I'm sorry,” she said again.

He didn't think she meant it that time.

He hoped to God she didn't ruin the best thing—next to Levi—that had ever happened in his life.

* * *

I
T
WAS
J
EM
'
S
idea that Kacey and Levi spend the evening at Jem's house, leaving Lacey's home for the two of them for their date.

Kacey, who was like a saint on a mission, was ready to move her things over there and trade places with Jem. As it was, she jokingly threw her toothbrush in her purse. At which time Lacey told her she was being ridiculous and said they weren't planning on a late night.

Kacey didn't know how little chance of success her date with Jem had that night, because Lacey hadn't mentioned Tressa's visit the night before. Or the talk they'd put off.

She'd texted Jem and asked him if it was a good idea that Kacey and Levi be at his place, in case Tressa showed up again. Jem had texted back that Tressa was in LA overnight.

But that didn't mean his ex-wife wouldn't still be there, too. Between them. Because she had to tell Sydney about the outburst she'd witnessed.

The things Tressa had said...they bordered on psychotic. And if Jem didn't see that, if he was too blinded by the smoke to see the fire...

If he'd been living with Tressa's episodes so long they seemed normal to him, chances were that he couldn't be relied on to see the dangers to Levi, either.

Not that the boy was in any danger at the moment. Tressa didn't have him again for another week.

He just had to see that even though Tressa loved her son, if she had times when she was unable to control herself, she could also be hurting him.

If
he could see. But then he'd have to see that he'd been a victim, too. It was a hard enough fact for women to face. Because of the stigma it carried, men fought seeing that particular reality even more.

But even if Jem was a victim, it didn't make him any less desirable in Lacey's eyes, or any less manly. If anything, it showed her his backbone—that he'd survived, had gotten out. Ran a successful business and was raising an adorable and mostly well-adjusted kid.

She didn't find him any less sexy, either. Most particularly when he showed up at her door in board shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. She'd let Kacey talk her into one of her ankle-length sundresses. It was tie-dyed and had spaghetti straps but was loose and flowing so she could still feel as though she wasn't flaunting something she wasn't willing to share with every guy who looked her way.

Her hair was down again. And she'd put in the pearl-and-gold flip-flop earrings she'd bought on a trip to Hawaii with Kacey a few years before.

Jem stopped cold and stared when she opened the door to him.

“Your sister said to tell you she forgot to move the wine from the freezer to the refrigerator.” Kacey had driven over to Jem's. She didn't want to be without a vehicle in case of emergency.

He was still standing on her stoop.

“I already found it and moved it,” she told him, then added, “She made a grilled chicken and vegetable casserole for us, homemade rolls and peach cobbler for dessert. All on her own. I thought we were going out.”

Kacey had set the table, too, with linens and wineglasses and candles. Lacey wanted him to know it wasn't her doing.

That, after the night before, she wasn't presuming anything.

“Can dinner wait?” he asked.

“Of course.” Her heart sank and she felt a little stupid in the dress. She might just be on the shortest date in her history.

“I thought we'd take a walk on the beach. Enjoy the sunset...”

The glance he gave her as he said the last word robbed her of the doubts that had been plaguing her since she'd left him the night before. She hadn't imagined that this...intense whatever this was...was forming between them.

Dinner was in the refrigerator. Just needing to be warmed up.

“I'd like to take a walk,” she told him. And locked her front door behind them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

O
NE
THING
J
EM
had learned from his years with Tressa was that it was better to get things out in the open than it was to avoid them hoping that they'd go away. They never did. They just festered and eventually exploded into something more than they'd ever needed to be.

He wanted the beach and the ocean to help ease them back to where they'd been before Tressa's interruption the night before.

He'd been back and forth on his chances. They hadn't looked that great in the middle of the night. By the time he'd left his house with Kacey and Levi happily visiting with Levi's goldfish, he'd been feeling a bit more optimistic.

He took her hand as they set out from her house, and liked the feel of her fingers intertwined with his. It was a turn-on. And an odd kind of reassurance, too.

“So, let's talk about what happened last night,” he said as they turned a corner and could see the beach a block ahead of them.

“Okay.”

He waited for her counselor stuff to come at him. It wouldn't be anything he hadn't heard before—like each time he'd encouraged Tressa to get help and then had been asked to join in for a session so the counselor could explain his wife to him.

Again.

Lacey wasn't talking. So he told her a little bit about Tressa's upbringing. About the abuse and the way she'd gotten herself out, paid her way through college and not looked back. “She's been to counseling,” he assured her. He knew the ropes. “She's one of those who chose to rise above instead of fall in.”

Those had been the words of one of Tressa's counselors. He'd never forgotten them and had hung several years of marriage on them.

“She just gets...scared...sometimes. She's petrified of being alone. And she and her best friend had had a fight.”

“Amelia?” Lacey asked. And he remembered that she knew a lot more about Tressa than he'd given her credit for. She'd investigated her, interviewed her, toured her home and...

“Yeah, Amelia.”

They were at the corner, waiting to cross the street to the beach. There was no light, just a four-way stop on a two-way street, and they had to wait for the traffic to clear.

“Anyway, she apologized. And she's agreed not to come to my house.”

“She's not allowed at your house?”

“Just as part of our personal agreement. I need my space from her drama.”

Lacey nodded and he looked at her.

“She mentioned it,” she said, stepping off the curb as the traffic cleared.

As they made their way to the sand, dropping hands to take off their flip-flops, and then rejoining them, he pondered what she'd said.

“Tressa told you about me? About our relationship?”

“Only in terms of her. She said the divorce was because her drama was too much for you day in and day out.”

He bit his tongue. Life was cleaner that way. He absolutely was not going to be dragged into the “he said, she said.”

Lacey was looking at him. “That's not true?”

Just like that, life changed. Jem was at a crossroads, and nothing was going to be the same again. He had a choice to make. If he remained loyal to Tressa, he was committing himself to a lifetime of having her come before anyone else, other than Levi.

If he didn't, he couldn't go back.

He had no idea what a life of not taking care of Tressa looked like. The sun was setting, but that didn't account for the red he was seeing. This is what Tressa had meant. What she'd known. He'd thought she'd been telling him that his future wife would try to tell him what he could and could not do.

That wasn't it at all.

It was him. He had to decide. Where did his loyalties lie? With Tressa and the family they had created? Protecting the mother of his child from herself, or being completely open and honest with a different life partner? What was best for Levi? Not a life with Tressa. He knew that. Clearly.

In the end, it didn't feel like it was his choice to make. Whatever hold Lacey had over him had taken control.

They were walking along the sand. Them and many others. Joggers. Couples. Kids.

Jem remembered a summer at Myrtle Beach with his family. They'd built some killer sand towns. Not just castles. Modern-day towns.

He wanted to build one with Lacey. Right then.

The rest of the world be damned.

Her question still hung between them. He'd never met a woman who was more about listening than talking.

After Tressa, Jem found solace in the comfortable silences he could share with Lacey.

“We divorced because Tressa called a client and told him that I was screwing his wife. Her word—
screwing
—not mine.”

“Were you?”

The question was fair. She'd heard Tressa call him a whore. Not that she'd have taken that literally, obviously, but it had implied infidelity.

“The woman was seventy years old. So was the man, but that didn't preclude him from having a much younger wife I could have been screwing. In Tressa's mind.”

“Oh.”

Yeah. “When Tressa found out how old the wife was, she told him I was doing it with his daughter.”

Lacey missed a step, held on to his hand tighter and said nothing.

“The couple had their sixteen-year-old granddaughter living with them. She had cerebral palsy and I'd carried her out of the car and into the house one day because the battery on her chair had died. Unbeknownst to me, Tressa had been driving by the place because I'd been spending so much time there. But also, she said, because I smiled a lot when I talked about them.”

“So what happened?”

“I apologized, profusely, for my wife's paranoia. The man took me aside. He told me about his own indiscretion, back when he'd been serving in the Korean War. How he'd spent the past forty years making it up to his wife. He told me to have patience, to love my wife and to understand that I had to do whatever it took to rebuild trust.”

“Had you been unfaithful?”

The question disappointed him. “What do you think?”

“I doubt it, but I've learned recently that I'm not impartial where you're concerned.”

And just that quickly he was soaring above the waves again. He'd best be careful lest he even begin to resemble his ex-wife with her emotional bursts.

But, again, the question was fair.

“I was never unfaithful to my wife. Not once.”

“So why did she think you were?”

Her question sounded curious. Almost clinical. Not challenging. And he said, “I've tried like hell to figure that out. I think, in my wholly unprofessional opinion, that it stems from the way her folks withheld love as a means of discipline. I don't think Tressa ever really feels like she can trust anyone to care about her. To be true to her.”

“Not a bad analysis.”

He was glad she thought so.

“You were telling me about your divorce.”

“It turned out that Tressa's phone call was so ludicrous that no one gave it any credence. Except for me. When I thought about what could have happened... What if that girl hadn't had a disability? Or the wife had been closer to my age? What if she'd seen me talking to a sixteen-year-old in a pool? What if she'd called that girl's father? Not only could I have lost a lucrative client, but I could have been charged with statutory rape.”

Lacey walked beside him in silence, still holding his hand.

“I couldn't live like that anymore.” He told her his shame—that he'd left his wife because she'd been abused as a kid and he couldn't handle the backlash.

“You shouldn't have had to live like that at all.”

God, he loved those words. Soaked them right up. And knew that, as she'd said, she wasn't impartial where he was concerned.

“Tressa admitted to what she'd done, admitted that I'd never been unfaithful to her. In writing. She sent a letter to my clients, taking full accountability for her inappropriate behavior.”

“And she told you she'd never do anything like it again.”

“That's right.”

“Has she?”

He hesitated. She'd come close. But... “No.”

“So last night, saying you whore around, when she knew you had a date in the backyard, you don't think that was similar behavior?”

He could see how she'd think so. “She was just having a rough night. She's fine now.” Tressa was a pain in his ass, but he could handle her.

Lacey stopped to pick up a shell and show it to him. A perfect, unchipped half clam with a beautiful rainbow of colors inside and beige swirls outside.

She put it in the pocket of her dress. A memento of their date, he hoped. The first of many keepsakes they'd collect together.

“Has she ever been violent with you?”

“Of course not.” He was a six-foot-tall one-hundred-and-ninety-pound male in excellent shape. He could carry his weight and then some. Tressa weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds and couldn't lift even half that.

“She's never thrown anything at you?”

Not
at
him. There'd been the time she'd taken toast out of the toaster and thrown it across the room. A wineglass she'd thrown against the wall once.

“No.”

“Never slapped you?”

He'd stopped her arm midswing, holding on for the brief second it took for her to collapse against him, sobbing, begging him to love her.

“She's never physically harmed me in any way,” he said quite succinctly. He wanted Tressa out of his life, but he wouldn't throw her under the bus. She had enough problems, enough people who'd trampled her heart and who'd been disloyal.

He wasn't going to have her pay for something that wasn't on her. He couldn't live with himself if he did that.

“I don't go for Tressa's drama,” he said slowly. Double-checking the honesty in his words. “But Amelia, she can handle it better than I can. And she's an attorney. She'd know if there was something in Tressa that pushed the boundaries of legal or not.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She says that Tressa's her friend and she's not going to talk behind her back.”

The lawyer was loyal. He respected her for that. And trusted her to care enough about Tressa to have done something if Tressa was in real trouble.

“I have no desire, whatsoever, to spend any more time than I absolutely have to with my ex-wife. At the same time, I don't want her paying for my issues.”

“
Your
issues?”

“I'm not good with drama, with emotional outbursts.” Of the female variety. Give him a guy's anger twenty times a day.

“Jem, I'm sorry, but I just have to say. What I heard last night...those things Tressa said to you...they were abusive. It's not
your
issue. People don't talk to each other that way.”

Her tone had changed. Completely. He was holding her hand and still felt as though he'd been cut adrift.

Not because she was against him. But she'd become...impartial. He didn't like it.

So he was going to set her straight right then and there. She and Kacey might have had the perfect family, but most weren't. No matter how great your parents were, or how close you were to them and your siblings. No matter how many grandparents were in and out all day long, or how many cousins and aunts and uncles filled church pews with you.

“You're wrong.” He'd tried to soften the blow, but there were some things that just were...what they were.

“Tressa is a walk in the park compared to my sister, JoAnne.”

She stopped in her tracks, only inches from him as she stared up at him in the growing dusk. They really should turn around, even though there were enough homes, restaurants and resorts lighting up the beach that they'd be fine even when it was fully dark out.

“Your sister talked that way to you, too?” she asked softly, studying him. He allowed it because she was back with him. Friend more than professional. The softness in her gaze was completely personal.

“My sister was the devil herself when I was growing up.”

Every family had one. You just did everything you could to make certain it wasn't you.

Unless you were JoAnne. She'd had no reason. Not like Tressa...

“How so?”

She was his sister, his only sibling. Family. He wished he'd been a little more circumspect in his word choice.

He looked for a way to explain without coming off like a complete jerk.

“JoAnne was five when I was born,” he said. He'd probably gone back a little too far. “Up until I arrived, she was it. My folks' whole lives revolved around her. They'd had a tough time getting pregnant and she was like a gift from heaven to them.”

And then he'd come along. A son.

“After I was born...my folks probably weren't as sensitive to her needs as they could have been,” he said, thinking back, aiming for fairness. “She had some jealousy issues.”

That went unattended. Forever.

“And she took it out on you?”

She'd locked him in a closet once when their mother was making cookies, so that he didn't get to lick the bowl. He was five. He'd turned on a light and looked at the pictures in the books that were stored on a shelf next to him.

“My folks had this thing,” he said. “If we were bad, we weren't spanked or put in time-out. We had perks taken away from us. If I back-talked my mother, I'd lose the fishing trip my father had promised me for the weekend.”

Lacey's silence left him far too much room to say more than he wanted to.

“So JoAnne had this game. When we were in the car, she'd pinch me. Over and over. If I told, we'd both get in trouble, which meant that we'd both lose a perk. Her contention was that she'd lost all perks she'd cared about when I was born.”