His First Choice (12 page)

Everything inside of him slowed down and came to a halt.

He was as bad as Tressa, making it all about him. Which wasn't like him at all.

“Fair enough.”

“I can't speak to anyone officially now,” she said. “I'm off the case. But I have to tell you...from where I'm sitting, I'm concerned about Levi. Are you absolutely certain that your ex-wife isn't hurting him?”

“Absolutely.” Tressa was a lot of things, but she loved Levi. “She'd die for him.”

“That doesn't mean that, in a fit of drama, she wouldn't hurt him.” She was looking at him deeply. The thought was inane. And still there. She was trying to tell him something, but he wasn't getting it.

“Tressa isn't the violent type.”

She didn't look any more satisfied with his answer than he was with the entire conversation.

But at least he knew one thing.

She was, officially, completely, off the case. He had nothing more to fear from her.

And for that, he was glad.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
T
ALL
STARTED
because he had to eat. Levi, that was. And, well, Jem, too. When Lacey and Kacey had returned home Friday from their walk on the beach, and she'd seen the permit taped to her front window—the moment when she faced the fact that she really was getting her new dream room—she'd insisted that Kacey show her how much the room would cost.

She was going to contribute at least half of it. They settled on Lacey's half being her birthday gift to her sister, because Lacey was getting truly upset, and that was when she'd seen how little Jem was making on the deal.

Not because he'd broken out his labor costs, but because she'd done the math on the choices she'd made. And while they'd been in the home improvement store, she'd seen how much lumber cost.

Kacey had pointed out that he'd have a pretty substantial contractor discount, but the wood wouldn't be free.

He was doing this as a favor to Kacey.

So they were going to have to do favors for him—like watching Levi, and feeding them both.

As soon as she and Jem had reached their somewhat tenuous truce Saturday morning, she'd left to make a grocery store run to get more tuna, chips, fresh fruit and peanut butter and jelly just in case.

When Kacey and Levi returned from the beach, she served lunch in the dining area off the kitchen. She didn't eat in there often, preferring her table for two in the little nook in her kitchen.

But there were four of them.

For dinner, too.

On Sunday Jem showed up with a booster seat in hand. “I had an extra out in the garage,” he said as Lacey stared at the thing and Kacey took it from him.

“It goes in my chair,” Levi said, walking straight up to the chair he'd knelt in the day before, his good elbow helping to prop him up on her dining room table.

The booster chair move-in was unexpected, except that she figured she knew Jem's real motivation. Kacey. She'd seen guys do some pretty crazy things over the years to get to her sister.

Like walk a mile each way to get her the fish tacos she was craving. They'd been fifteen. The guy was their next-door neighbor at the time. Lacey had asked for regular tacos. He'd forgotten and brought fish for her, too. She hated fish tacos.

There'd been the jeweler who'd designed a necklace just for Kacey. Of course, he'd also then used her name to sell a mass-produced version of the original. With her permission.

She'd once had a man sail a yacht from Florida to San Diego just to pick her up for a two-hour date because she'd mentioned that she wanted to see his yacht.

Lacey had been the first one to express an interest in seeing the seventy-foot yacht with a swimming pool on the deck. Mostly because she didn't really believe there was one. He'd shown her a picture, and she'd introduced him to her sister. He was fascinating, had done a lot of things with his life and was still in his midthirties, but she hadn't felt any sparks. She'd known Kacey would, though. Kace went for flashy guys, the ones who wore all the right clothes.

And jewelry. She liked guys who wore rings.

Jem had a class ring on his right hand. Even when he worked.

Maybe none of the things Lacey could currently bring to mind were as crazy as building a room, but they were close.

Kacey had fallen hard for the yacht guy. They'd been hot and heavy for more than a year. She'd wanted to get married, start a family. He'd had more pressing matters. Like sailing around the world, buying into a casino in Monte Carlo and looking for a summer home in Greece.

Jem was the marrying kind, a family man.

And gorgeous.

He was also successful. He wore a tie to work when he wasn't giving away his labor for free. His jeans were designer, even when wearing a tool belt, and his work shirts looked like they came straight out of a high-end men's fashion magazine.

He wore the glint of success well; it might be understated, but it was still there.

Lacey almost felt sorry for him when Kacey wouldn't give him a second look.

And so, on Sunday, when her pager went off, a callout to any available case agent to see to an emergency, Lacey pushed the callback button immediately. Her coworkers wouldn't be surprised. Lacey was most always the one who took after-hours calls. Unless she was already on one.

Jem didn't seem all that put out, either, when she stepped outside to tell him she'd been called into work. He'd been measuring and stopped. Looked up at her.

“The child in danger is lucky to have you on the way,” he said and then smiled at her.

She nodded and left him alone with her sister and his son. Let Jem and Kacey work out whatever would or would not be between them. Lacey had learned a long time ago she couldn't fight nature.

No matter how much she might like a guy.

And there was another issue at hand, too. She wasn't working Levi's case anymore—couldn't go anywhere near it professionally—but she cared every bit as much about his safety as she had when she had been his caseworker.

Being a friend didn't mean that she lost her work skills. Just like Jem building a room for her at slave labor wages didn't mean she'd get a second-rate room.

Sydney had Tressa covered. And Lacey had access to Levi. Easy, natural, uninstitutional access.

The call she'd received involved two girls, aged six and seven, who'd been left alone for at least two days. A neighbor had called the police.

Law enforcement was at the scene before she was. Lacey caught a hint of what they feared—that something had prevented two normally attentive parents from returning home to their girls—but her job wasn't to solve the mystery.

The neighbor who'd called the police had already fed the girls. She offered to keep them with her, but when neither girl seemed inclined to seek the woman out for comfort, Lacey decided to take them with her.

Helping the girls pack a couple of days' worth of their favorite clothes, pajamas and toys, she took them back to her office, where she set them up with a snack in the playroom, and then, leaving the door open and taking a monitor with her, she headed down the hall to her office to make some calls.

The girls had an aunt in Santa Barbara. They'd both told her so on the way to the office, in between asking if she was taking them to their mommy and daddy. The aunt was fairly easy to trace down, but didn't answer the phone number listed for her on the internet.

She didn't answer her door, either, after Lacey made a call to local police to make a well-check run. There was no sign of disturbance at the home and neighbors said she'd gone on a trip up the coast for the weekend.

They also said she had a brother in LA, an uncle to the girls who was married with a couple of kids of his own. He'd already heard from the police, was distraught to find out that his sister and brother-in-law were missing, and he and his family were on the way to Santa Raquel.

The overall prognosis for the family didn't look good—a sudden disappearance of seemingly conscientious and loving parents. The girls were in good hands, though. And for the night, at least, back in their own home as, after investigation, Lacey released them to their aunt and uncle.

But Lacey couldn't help thinking that their lives were going to change forever after that day. Just as she couldn't stop thinking about the one thing the police had also wondered...

If the parents were so loving and conscientious, why were both cars gone, and the girls left home alone?

It wasn't for her to figure that one out. All she could do was wonder, and wait. And worry, if she let herself get in too deep.

That wasn't her job, either.

But the not knowing, and her inability to do more for the children in that moment, left her pensive.

Missing lunch with her sister and Jem and Levi didn't improve her mood, but she knew the day had transpired as it was meant to do.

Her life was dedicated to helping children.

Which was why, Sunday afternoon, while Jem was getting ready to pour cement in the trench he'd dug with a backhoe around the perimeter of the new room—not that she'd been paying attention earlier in the week when he'd explained the process to her—Lacey suggested that she and Kacey build a puzzle with Levi. She'd picked a couple of them up at the store on the way home, just to make certain that she didn't walk in on the tail end of lunch. She'd chosen one-hundred-piece puzzles and was fairly certain that Levi would not only take an interest in them, he'd be able to do them without help.

Jem had already been back at work, and the kitchen had been cleaned up, by the time she'd walked in, and rather than disturb him—or hope to glean any change in his demeanor that would indicate whether or not he'd enjoyed lunch alone with her sister—she joined Levi and Kacey in her craft room, at the multipurpose table she'd set up. Levi sat on his knees on a chair, leaning his elbows on the table—his fist, and cast, pointing straight up to the ceiling—and picked up puzzle pieces as soon as she'd dumped them.

She took to her own task, as well. Leading his conversation, and letting him regale them with his imaginative tales. The puzzle was almost done and Levi was a happy, well-adjusted boy without a care in the world.

If all they talked about was his life with his dad. Things he liked to do. And cars.

“Did you notice that when you mentioned his mother his little lips got thin and he quit chattering?” Kacey asked softly when Levi left the room after announcing that he had to go potty.

“Of course I did,” Lacey said. There was something about Tressa. The woman was genuinely caring. Sweet and loving. And volatile on occasion. A toxic mix.

Of course, Lacey was also in the process of fighting the hots for Tressa's ex, so she'd be more apt to find fault with the other woman. It was natural. Human nature. It was a good thing she was off the case.

“Can we do another one?” Levi asked twenty minutes later as they took apart the car puzzle and put the pieces back into the box.

“Sure!” Kacey told him. Lacey went to check on the pasta casserole she'd put in the oven, and to see how much longer Jem was going to be, and then went back to join them.

Levi and Kacey were talking about their trip to the beach the day before. About sharks and boats and little-boy things.

“Do you like to swim?” Lacey asked, rejoining them at the table. They already had the perimeter of the puzzle a quarter of the way done.

Kacey seemed to be having as much fun as Levi was. She was a natural with him and would make a great mother. And...

“Uh-huh.” Levi had answered her question about swimming.

“Did your daddy teach you how?” Kacey asked. “Do you have a pool in your backyard?”

Lacey could answer that one for her—they didn't. But apparently they had a goldfish pond she had yet to see.

“Mommy does,” Levi said. “She teached me.”

Nice. Normal. Conscientious. Good mothering.

“And you like it?”

“Uh-huh.” The boy nodded while he picked up a piece and put it in its proper place. They were making a train with a smiling face on the front of the engine.

He was concentrating. Showing no signs of discomfort or stress. But he was back to the same one-word answers he'd given her when she'd questioned him in the playroom at work. Not chattering on as she'd come to recognize as his normal way.

Because he didn't like being questioned? Was she making problems where there were none?

The little cast came into view. And she thought of the unexplained bruises on his torso. Nightmares. A mother who chose to have her son immediately taken away when a social worker showed up at the door. The day care's report of changed developmental performance and personality. One and a half known hospital visits for each year of his life.

Normal or not?

On a hunch, she asked, “How old were you when you learned to swim?”

She didn't expect him to know. Four-year-olds didn't usually catalog in a time sequence.

“I dunno.”

“Did you take lessons besides with your mom?”

“Nope.” He placed another piece.

“Do you swim at your mom's a lot?” Kacey asked, her tone completely different from Lacey's.

“I dunno.”

Feeling guilty for the interrogation, Lacey decided to let the whole thing drop, to trust Sydney to do her job.

She found an eyeball for the engine's face and handed it to Levi. “Here, I think this goes in over there,” she said, not saying where “there” was.

He put it immediately in place. “Did
your
mommy teach you to swim?” His soft
r
's grabbed at Lacey.

He wasn't looking at either sister. They looked at each other. “Yes,” Lacey said when Kacey shrugged her shoulders like she didn't want to answer.

“She taught both of us at once,” Kacey added then. At which Levi looked up at her, cocking his head and frowning. “Does twins' moms have four hands?”

“Of course not, silly.” Lacey grinned at that. He was a normal, sweet little boy. She was giving him too much credit, thinking he was so completely advanced and purposely holding back.

His face didn't clear. “How does she hold two under at once?”

“Hold two under?” Kacey asked the question. Lacey's heart thrummed in overtime. She told herself not to jump to conclusions.

“You know, hold you under so you don't suck in your nose and then you come up again.” Kacey's eyes widened.

“Oh, you mean holding on to you and dunking you under to help you glide through the water and then bring you back up?” Lacey said, breathing easier. Toddler swim classes, at least in California, where children were around water frequently, were common. Drowning deaths among young children were, statistically, a high cause of death and the best protection for them was knowing how to swim.

Levi had been placing a piece. It didn't fit, though he tried to force it, and he finally gave up. Climbing down from his chair to stand on the floor, he said, “No, you know, like this.” He grabbed hold of his ribs and then squatted down, paused several seconds and then jumped up with both feet leaving the ground. As though springing up out of the water.