His First Choice Page 16

  The immediate defensive traffic in his brain slowed. Allowing Jem to process information calmly.

  “When did this happen?” Her question broke into his thoughts.

  “March. We had those few warm days and Tressa keeps her pool heated.”

  “Here’s the thing, Jem...” He waited through her pause, wanting to know her thoughts. “I don’t want you upset with me, but this is what I do for a living, and I can’t just turn it off because I’m not working.”

  “I want to hear what you have to say.” As she said, she dealt with kids every day. He’d value her input.

  “You remember I told you about a report of bruising? And you were adamant that if there’d been any, you’d have noticed?”

  His blood ran cold.

  “After I interviewed you—and Levi—I knew you were right. There was no way you’d have missed the bruises, and I believed you hadn’t seen them. It’s partially why I closed the investigation. There was no evidence to substantiate the claim, so I had to believe someone had simply been overzealous.”

  He wondered if she should be telling him all of this.

  “But now... The timing’s right, Jem. I think that Levi’s torso was covered in bruises. And that they’d faded before you saw him.”

  Tressa wouldn’t hold Levi so tight, for so long, that his torso would be covered in bruises. She’d... No, she just wouldn’t. She was his mother.

  A drama queen, yes. Unpredictable and self-absorbed a lot of the time. But not when it came to Levi. She always put him first.

  His almost-full-time custody of their son was a case in point. Tressa was missing so much, and she knew it. Innumerable tearful late-night phone conversations were testimony to that fact.

  She planned everything else around her weekends with him—never canceling or going out when it was her turn to care for their son—unless she absolutely couldn’t help it. She was agreeable anytime Jem asked her to keep Levi for an hour or two if he had a business dinner or association meeting to attend.

  “Say something.”

  He didn’t know what to say. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “You think she’ll be honest with you? If she was going to admit to hurting him, don’t you think she’d already have told you?”

  He had to remind himself that Lacey didn’t know Tressa. Or how her mind worked. If she’d done something she wasn’t proud of, she wouldn’t come out and tell him. That served her no benefit and could cause her discomfort. But lying to him when he asked a direct question could cost her more.

  Bottom line was, she needed him. And the divorce—the fact that he’d gone through with it—had shown her that there were some things he just was not going to put up with. No matter how much he understood her inner workings.

  And sympathized with her very tough past.

  “I think she’ll be honest,” he told her. “I’d like to give her that chance. Are you agreeable to that?”

  “What do you mean? It’s not up to me if you talk to your ex-wife.”

  “I assume that since you made one report as a private citizen, you can make another.” He’d figured that out shortly after he’d breathed a sigh of relief that she was off his case. And thought there was nothing more to fear from her.

  Truth was, he had nothing to fear from her. Not because she was off the case, but because she cared about the exact same things he did.

  “And it also stands to reason that with your position, a report you might make would carry more weight than one another, unknown citizen might make.”

  “So what are you asking?”

  She didn’t deny the fact that she might call her coworker.

  “I guess I’m asking you to be my partner in this,” he said. “Let me talk to Tressa. I’ll get back with you and let you know what she says as soon as I do. And then, if you feel that you need to make your call, you let me know that, and you make your call. Nothing behind your back and nothing behind mine. Does that work for you?”

  This was bigger than asking her out for a date. Way bigger. And yet, in some ways, it seemed to have the same implications.

  “Levi’s not going to be spending any time with his mother in the next couple of days, is he?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then it works fine for me.”

  “All of it?”

  “You talking to Tressa, you mean?”

  “That. And the not going behind each other’s backs part. I tell you everything Tressa says or does. You tell me before you make any calls you feel you need to make.”

  “Yes. That works for me.”

  “No matter what you think, or what, professionally, your instincts are telling you, you’ll let me know before you report any concerns.”

  “Yes, as long as Levi isn’t in immediate danger. But you have to know, Jem, I will report concerns even if you don’t want me to.”

  “Good.” His feet were back up on the rock. The goofy grin was gone, but something more substantial, and just as good, seemed to be taking its place. “Because rest assured, Lace, if you ever think my son is danger, I want you to move hell and high water to help him.”

  She didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure why.

  “You called me ‘Lace.’”

  He hadn’t realized. But...

  “You’d rather I didn’t?”

  “No, I kind of liked it. It’s just...only Kacey and my parents have ever called me that.”

  “She says it all the time. I guess it just stuck with me.”

  A ridiculous conversation, but he liked it, anyway.

  Almost as much as he liked her.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LACEY WAITED ALL day Monday to hear from Jem. He’d be working, for sure. And Tressa would be, too. Still, she was on edge. In a queer sort of way. Levi was perfectly safe for now. If Tressa was abusing him, in any way, Jem would keep the boy away from his mother even before the state could intervene. So Levi wasn’t the immediate concern.

  Which left...Jem.

  She was concerned about Jem contacting his ex-wife and getting into an emotional discussion with her.

  Because she was jealous?

  He’d asked her on a date. No more. She had no ownership over him in any way. No matter how much she was drawn to him.

  Or how perfect he seemed to her.

  And even if she did feel a little like she was sending a steak into a lion’s den, it was more than that. If Tressa had fooled Lacey so completely, then was it possible that she was doing a number on Jem, too? It wouldn’t be the first time she’d seen a woman be manipulative.

  Not that Lacey knew Tressa at all. Jem knew her. Lacey had spent a couple of hours with the woman.

  But after ten years of living her job, her instincts were usually spot-on.

  Which would mean that Tressa wasn’t hurting her son. And yet, Levi’s story the day before had been true. She was sure of that.

  And clearly it was significant enough to him that he was talking about it almost three months later.

  She’d meant to tell Jem about Levi’s last comment, too. About being afraid that “she” would not let him live with his father.

  Whether the “she” was Tressa, or Lacey, or someone else entirely in the little boy’s mind, Jem needed to know that his son was harboring the fear that he could lose his home with his father, at an age when the little boy needed security more than anything else. Security was the freedom that allowed kids to grow. To think they could do anything. Explore. Learn. Reach out and take life on...

  Jem wasn’t going to be working on the house that night, or at all that week. He wanted the footer to cure for a week. And also had to have it inspected before he pulled out the metal frames, backfilled the holes and poured the cement that would become the floor of the room.


  Any other time she’d have thought the whole process boring as hell. Funny how fascinating it all was to her now.

  Funny, too, how Tressa was blonde, decorated her home like Lacey did and liked the same kind of tea.

  She brushed the thought aside. Jem had wanted the divorce from Tressa. Wanted to live apart from her. Lacey was definitely not a “second” choice where the other woman was concerned. She wasn’t something he was settling for because he couldn’t have what he really wanted.

  At least not where his ex-wife was concerned.

  Growing up in her sister’s shadow was making her paranoid. And it had to stop.

  His call came in while she was on her way home from work. He was home already and had Levi watching a video, which gave him roughly twenty-two minutes to have a conversation without Levi paying attention.

  He was speaking so softly she could barely hear him—even with her car’s Bluetooth feeding his voice through the speaker system.

  “I talked to Tressa before I picked him up from preschool,” he was saying.

  Lacey’s heart thumped so hard she could feel it. She hated that. Also hated that she couldn’t read anything in his tone of voice or see his face.

  Her interest in him was more than professional. She couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  “And?”

  “He did cry when she was teaching him to swim.”

  “She told you that?”

  “As soon as I asked.” He sounded...calm.

  “Why was he crying? Was he afraid of the water?”

  “He wasn’t listening to her. She was trying to get him to put his face in the water, then lift it back up, and move his arms in a front crawl. But he kept jumping around and splashing. He slipped and went underwater and she panicked. She was scared to death he was going to drown and she overreacted. She reached down and grabbed him as tightly as she could and hauled him up out of the water. And then she yelled at him and made him cry.”

  As most parents might have done.

  “And I can tell you right now, the reason he wouldn’t have told me was because he hates me to know when he misbehaves. He’s always so eager for me to be proud of him, so eager to get things right...”

  She wanted to address that, too, just because she spent her days counseling parents in raising healthy children. Too much of a need to please Jem could result in some real problems for Levi later.

  Thing was, she hadn’t noticed him putting any undue pressure on his son. He wasn’t overly harsh with him. Nor did he require anything out of the ordinary of him.

  “Levi doesn’t act like a child who fears disappointing you.”

  “I don’t think so, either. But Tressa’s right. He never tells me when he’s been in trouble over there.”

  “Maybe it’s her he fears disappointing.”

  Or maybe she was giving the little boy reason to fear. What if she was threatening him? Telling him he’d have to leave his father’s home if Levi told about the times she lost her temper with him? Not that Lacey had proof of that. Just a supposition.

  “I can’t imagine that he fears disappointing Tressa, but I suppose he could think that the reason she doesn’t live with him, like most mommies live with their kids, is because of him. We’ve both talked to him a lot about it, about the fact that Mommy and Dad have a problem between them and that they can’t live together anymore. He’s seemed quite happy living with me...”

  “You sound hesitant.” She was almost home, so she pulled off at the beach, parking with a view of the incoming tide, to finish their conversation. Kacey would be waiting with a grilled chicken salad ready. Lacey wanted to get this settled first.

  “It’s just... He’s been a little more clingy lately.”

  All senses on alert, she pushed her twist to the back of her head and asked, “Like when?”

  “Most recently, when we came back from your house last night.”

  That one was easily explained by the conversation that had taken place in the puzzle room.

  “And?”

  “He had that nightmare at Tressa’s. He was particularly clingy the next day when I brought him home.”

  “Was that the first time?”

  “No. The first couple of days after he broke his arm he was off.”

  “And no other times?” Mara had said his demeanor had changed noticeably over the past months.

  “Not that come to mind. Kids change every day, it seems. One minute he’s a baby wanting to be held. The next he’s pushing away from me to get down. He wants me to cut his meat, and then suddenly it’s all about him doing it himself. His personality is changing, sure, but nothing that seems alarming or abnormal.”

  She didn’t see Levi every day—or hadn’t until recently. Mara had known him since he was a baby. Mara was around developing toddlers and preschoolers every day. She’d know about normal developmental personality changes.

  Still, Mara wasn’t a professional counselor. “Have you talked to Tressa about the clinginess?”

  “No. But she’s talked to me about him being upset. Mostly because of the nightmare.”

  “What does she say about it?”

  “That he’s afraid you’re going to take him away from me. That he won’t be able to live with me anymore.”

  She’d known. Her instincts were still honed—in spite of her personal involvement. But there were a couple of things off...

  “How would he have known why I was in your house? Or why he came to my office? Did you tell him?”

  “Of course not. Absolutely not. He’s a four-year-old. There’s no way he’d understand that on any level that could be okay for him.”

  “Agreed. But you’d be surprised what some parents do. Kids, even ones with advanced intelligence, still believe pretty much everything their parents tell them. Some parents, those with something to hide, will manipulate their kids into believing or hiding things.”

  And someone had told Levi why Lacey had first come into their lives.

  “Tressa didn’t tell him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You didn’t. And I didn’t. Who else is there?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d bet my bank account and future earnings that it wasn’t her.”

  He had her attention. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he told me that she told him you were a friend of hers. That you just wanted to get to know us because she’d talked all about us and made you want to know us.”

  She frowned. Watched as a lone surfer rode a lame wave in the waning sun. “That doesn’t sound like something he’d have made up.”

  “He didn’t. I asked her if she’d told him who you were and she was as shocked at the idea as I was. Seeing it as cruel. Which was why she didn’t want him there when Sydney showed up on Friday night. She was afraid she’d get upset, or cry, or say something, and he’d catch on. If she’d told him that you all were trying to take him away from me, she could have just let him stay. Sydney was just there to talk, like you were at my house with him present the first time.”

  He was right.

  “So maybe she’s wrong and this doesn’t have to do with me at all.” Which brought up the second thing wrong with the theory. “If he thought I was out to separate the two of you, wouldn’t he be panicked at the thought of us alone together? Wouldn’t he want to keep the two of you away from my house? And certainly shun me as a friend?”

  “He’d move into your house if I’d let him.”

  The words brought a vision to mind she hadn’t allowed herself to focus on. She was the woman who found good and loving homes for children. Not the woman who brought them home.

  “I guess we’ll just have to keep a watch on things and see what brings on the episodes,” Jem was saying. And she figured they’d used up fifteen mi
nutes, at least, of their twenty-two.

  “It could just be that he’s clingy when he’s tired,” she said against her better judgment. If there was even a slight chance that Levi was in danger, she couldn’t be giving his father reason to put his guard down.

  Yet she cared about Jem and wanted to soothe him if she could. He was a good father. The best. Doing a job solo that usually took two people. And doing it better than most, in her admittedly prejudiced opinion.

  “I’m still bothered, though,” she had to add. “Tressa’s story about the swimming incident. One grab to haul Levi out of the water wouldn’t have caused bruising all along his torso.”

  “No, but the fact that she’d held on to him for dear life every second he was putting his head underwater, then picking it up and learning to move his arms and kick his feet, would certainly do so.”

  What healthy parent held their kid so tightly they were bruising him for that length of time?

  “Do you think it’s possible she was pissed at him for his noncompliance, and forcing his head underwater over and over?”

  The scenario fit exactly what Levi had described.

  “I don’t,” Jem said. “There are just some things Tressa wouldn’t do. Purposely hurting Levi is one of them.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “I am sure.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Because my ex-wife thinks she needs me. And she knows that if she ever...ever...does one thing to hurt my boy she will never see either one of us again.”

  He believed what he was saying beyond the shadow of a doubt. Lacey was convinced of that much.

  She wanted to believe him, too.

  But she drove home with a heavy heart.

  Sometimes people couldn’t see what was right under their noses.

  Was it possible that Levi wasn’t the only Bridges male that Tressa had been manipulating? Was Jem a victim, too?

  She told herself she was being ridiculous, that Tressa’s drama was wearing off on her. But once the idea had been planted, she couldn’t seem to escape it.