His First Choice

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “So when he comes to pick up his son, I’m just to give him to him like usual?”

  “Yes. If anything different needs to happen, you won’t be the one to police it. You just do your job and leave the rest up to me.”

  “Will I hear from you again? I mean, if this turns out to be nothing, will you let me know?”

  “Absolutely.” And the fact that the woman was asking told Lacey that Mara was on the up-and-up. Someone making a false report generally didn’t give consideration to the fact that it might be found to be false. Or want to be told if it was.

  But she had to ask, “Other than seeing them through day-care-related activities, have you ever associated with either Mr. or Mrs. Bridges?”

  “No, ma’am.” Straightforward sincerity—Lacey liked that.

  “And will you have a problem handing Levi over to his father?”

  “Not if you tell me it’s okay to do so.”

  The buck stopped with her. She hadn’t understood, when she’d signed on to this career, that one wrong decision on her part could get a child killed. And still, there wasn’t any other job, any other life, she’d rather have.

  “It’s okay,” she said now. But only because she knew she had enough time to intervene, to get to the day care and put other plans in motion, if upon further investigation she decided differently. The day was young yet.

  And obviously, since he’d dropped his son off on schedule as usual, Bridges wasn’t currently posing a flight risk. She wanted time to do some searching before he was onto her. “Just one more thing,” she added. “For now, just until I tell you differently, please don’t say anything to anyone, other than possibly a coworker where appropriate, about your conversation with me.”

  “Of course not. I don’t want anyone to know it was me.”

  Lacey understood. And hung up filled with mother-bear determination, doing her best to ignore the heavy sadness lurking within her.

  Chasing down abusive parents, stopping them, was her life.

  And she was good at it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JEM WASN’T IN a great mood. Levi’s cast was putting them a bit off their game, and while he was certainly up to the challenge, his son had not yet mastered the art of dealing with frustration. Or disappointment, either. May in Santa Raquel meant T-ball, and since they’d started a new five-game program for four-year-olds, Levi had been determined to play. Tryouts were happening that very night and his little boy was sitting at the table with a partial plate of spaghetti, wearing it and a frown.

  “I wanna go,” Levi said, the sound that curious mixture of baby voice and male determination giving Jem’s heart a bite every time he heard it. Had he ever been that bent on anything when he’d been young? That unwavering? Or that damned cute? Sure didn’t feel like it.

  But then his upbringing had been different from Levi’s. He’d been spoiled rotten, loved to distraction by both his parents and raised at home. Not at day care. He’d never had to fight for anything.

  Not that Levi didn’t have everything he needed, as far as physical wants went. Difference between him and his son was the constancy of a mother’s love, and growing up at home. Tressa loved Levi every bit as much as Jem’s mother had loved him. She just wasn’t the constant type.

  Still, none of that had to do with playing ball.

  “You want to go watch other boys play when you know you can’t?” he asked, feeling cruel. But better say the words and stop the train before it crashed. Because taking that young man to a T-ball field and expecting him not to throw a tantrum when he was told he couldn’t play with a cast on his arm—something Jem had been telling him repeatedly since the night before when it had dawned on Levi that there were worse things than the pain in his arm—was definitely a train wreck in the making.

  “I can try,” Levi said, his tongue still struggling over his r a little bit. The tiny bit of baby left in him. Jem would miss it when it left, but knew, too, that it had to do so.

  “No, you can’t, son,” he said now, taking his son’s pint-size fork and turning it in the spaghetti left on Levi’s plate. If he’d had his way, the pasta would be cut in little pieces, like he’d been doing since he’d first introduced the boy to table food. But part of Levi’s new insistence that he wasn’t a baby anymore and could do everything like Daddy did was an adamant refusal to eat spaghetti cut up in little pieces. Hence the food on his clothes. “You know the rules. You can’t play because your cast puts other kids in danger. You could accidently hit one of them in the head with it.”

  Not to mention the fact that he could trip over his feet and fall on his way to first base and do further damage to a very tiny arm that was already broken in two places below the elbow.

  Handing the filled fork to his son, Jem clamped down on his own negative emotions where the whole thing was concerned. His weren’t as easy to deal with as his son’s were. Not in his shoes, at any rate. Anger didn’t sit well with him. He’d grown up in a home where talk was the way to resolve issues. Where an open forum of understanding took the stage when there were difficulties. Or time-outs did.

  Aggression was for hard work. For athletics where appropriate. For protecting those you loved.

  Not for circumstances beyond your control. Or the control of others. It wasn’t Tressa’s fault that Levi had climbed up her bookcase trying to get a video he wanted to watch, or that as she’d grabbed his arm to help him down, he’d slipped and she’d lost her grip.

  Just because he’d expect a mother to know that you grabbed a child around his middle, not by the arm, to steady him didn’t meant that Tressa would automatically think to do so.

  Taking the fork, Levi ate, but the sustenance didn’t relieve his frown any.

  “I thought we’d go for ice cream for dessert,” Jem said, winging it now. “Like we were going to do after tryouts. You can still eat ice cream with a cast, can’t you, buddy?”

  Levi shrugged.

  “And as soon as the cast comes off, we’ll set up our own tee in the backyard and play every night if you want to.”

  He’d been planning the tee and batting net as a present for Levi’s fifth birthday, if his son loved the sport as much as he’d thought he was going to after playing a few games.

  “I don’t want to.” The succulent tone took away any validity Jem would have given to those words.

  “You want to help me with the boat?” He was, very slowly now that he was a single dad, building a boat out in the second car portion of his garage. Nothing big or fancy. But one that would be seaworthy. If he ever got it done. “We can work on sanding the wood for the bow together.”

  Normally he saved boat building for the times when Levi was with his mother. It could be dangerous business, depending on what he was doing. And it helped him pass the time that the boy was away, without pacing a path in his carpet.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Levi attempted to wrap spaghetti—clearly a work in progress—and raised the fork backward to his mouth, balancing a lone noodle until it nearly reached its goal before sliding off the fork onto his lap—leaving a bit of red sauce on the table as it bounced by.

  The boy wrapped again, lowered his head to his plate and slurped up the pasta on his fork, creating a ring of red around his lips.

  “Good job, sport,” Jem said, raising his hand in the air for the high five that Levi generally landed with a meaty slap when he accomplished a task. “That was a whole bite!”

  The boy shrugged. He didn’t high five. He didn’t even look up.

  Sliding from his seat to crouch on the floor by his son’s chair, Jem moved his head until he could look directly into his son’s downcast gaze. “You mad at me, son?”

  Levi shook his head.

  “You sure seem mad.”

  Another shake of the head, and then t
hose big blue eyes—so like his mother’s—filled with tears. “I wanna play T-ballllll,” he wailed and, throwing himself at Jem, started to sob. “You said I could and we been waiting and I wanna play balllll,” he said again, smearing red sauce all over both of them as he clutched Jem with his dinner-caked pudgy little hands, cast slung around the back of Jem’s neck.

  “I know you do, son,” Jem said, standing with his son clutched to his chest, wishing he could make the world right for the little boy, and hating the fact that he couldn’t.

  And knew that particular pang was probably only just beginning to be a force in his life. One that was going to follow him to the grave, no doubt.

  There was a hurricane storm of tears, and then they dried up.

  “Is it time for ice cream yet?” the boy asked, pulling away to play with the top button of the now-stained white dress shirt Jem had worn with his jeans to work that day—along with the tie he’d discarded the second he’d climbed into his truck afterward.

  “Let’s see how much of this spaghetti you can eat first,” he said, setting the boy gently back in his booster seat and scooting him up to the table. “The more we eat, the less we have to put away for later.”

  Levi twirled, slurped and chewed, wiping his dripping chin with the back of his hand as often as with the napkin Jem kept reminding him of.

  When Jem burped, Levi laughed, mocked the sound deep in his chest and laughed again. T-ball tryouts, and the Great Disappointment, apparently a thing of the past.

  Jem went with the flow. Oh, to be young again. Able to cry away the hurt in a blast of snot and tears, and then move on.

  He’d do well to take a lesson from his son. Minus the snot and tears, of course.

  * * *

  ONE OF THE things that suited Lacey was that her lifestyle complemented her job. No family waiting for her to come home to, expecting dinner on the table and numerous other things. No, she was free to work the hours required of her—hours that also included time when most people weren’t at work, as that was when she could observe them at home—without taking flack for it like some of her coworkers had to do.

  Ella Ackerman had officially stepped down from her position as Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital’s representative to the High Risk Team when she’d found out she was pregnant, but still two months away from delivery, she was filling in for her temporary replacement while the other woman was on vacation. She fully intended to take up the position again when she was back to work full-time after the baby’s birth.

  A neonatal charge nurse, Ella, like Lacey, was another one who couldn’t walk away from the little ones who weren’t fortunate enough to be born to the safe and healthy life most assumed to be a given. Ella’s cause was more encompassing than the children, though. Married to the founder of the Lemonade Stand, a unique domestic violence shelter hidden within Santa Raquel boundaries, Ella seemed to live and breathe the fight against abuse. She and her husband, Brett, the Stand’s founder, dedicated much of their spare time to the women and children who’d been displaced from their homes due to the violence enacted upon them by family members.

  She was always ready to help and never seemed to run out of energy or hope.

  Yet even Ella had sounded a bit downhearted when she’d called back that afternoon to let Lacey know that Levi Bridges had been in the emergency room a total of six times in four years. He hadn’t been flagged as a potential victim of abuse because none of the incidents looked at individually had appeared as anything more than accidents that might befall a young child.

  His parents were educated, employed and, from chart notes, were appropriately attentive, concerned, aware and loving with the little boy. There’d never been any noted substance abuse or smell of alcohol on anyone’s breath when the boy had been brought in.

  The first time was for a cut on his head when he’d been six months old. He had scooted himself off his blanket on the floor and over to a wall, where he’d pulled on a cord plugged into a socket. He’d yanked a lamp off the table and down on himself, where the base had cut his forehead, leaving a wound that had required six stitches.

  The second time he’d had a pea up his nose. Third had been a serious laceration to his foot. It hadn’t required stitches, but the father, who—it had been charted—was visibly distraught, had also requested an X-ray, wanting to make certain that the foot wasn’t broken. He’d had his son strapped into a seat on the back of his bike and the little boy’s foot had come loose and had been caught in the spokes. The fourth time he’d stepped on a hot coal that had fallen out of a backyard pig-roasting pit. And fifth had been for a high fever for which they’d never found an explanation. His temperature had come down quickly after medication; lab work showed a healthy toddler and a follow-up doctor’s appointment had been a well-child visit.

  Possible scenarios of misconduct ran through Lacey’s mind as she turned her midclass black sedan into the neighborhood of the address she had for Jeremiah Bridges—Levi’s father.

  Six hospital visits, followed by a call of suspected abuse. A home visit was going to happen. Immediately.

  And would have whether she’d had a family to go home to or not.

  * * *

  THANKING THE FATES that had seen to it to deliver such a great kid to him, Jem lingered over dinner, giving Levi all the time he wanted to invest in mastering the art of spaghetti rolling. While tear streaks still showed in the tomato sauce smeared on the little guy’s cheeks, you’d never know that they’d just come through a major crisis.

  Chances were it wouldn’t come up again, either. Levi didn’t generally revisit a storm that had passed. One of his better qualities, Jem thought. One that would serve him well into adulthood.

  So would his lack of vanity where his looks were concerned. Jem didn’t expect that one to last much past kindergarten. He himself hadn’t started to care about his appearance until at least junior high, but kids grew up a lot quicker these days...

  The peal of their doorbell stopped him in his thoughts. Not pleasantly. Dread hit the pit of his stomach, as it did anytime something unexpected happened. Would the sensation never dissipate? Fade away like Levi’s mourning of his T-ball season?

  “Stay put, buddy,” he said with a serious look at his son.

  “Okay.” The little boy’s answer was one Jem trusted implicitly. Levi had his less than stellar moments, but Jem had learned to discern when he could count on the boy to do as he was told. Which, thankfully, so far was most of the time.

  If it was Tressa at the door—and who else would it be at dinnertime on a Monday night?—she was probably upset about something. Or pissed at someone. Neither of which were moods their son needed to see. She’d want Jem to take care of whatever or whoever it was. And if he could, he would. Tressa, for all her waywardness, was a good mother. And she adored her son.

  Pulling open the door with what he hoped was an expression that would calm down his drama-ridden ex-wife, he was shocked to see a slender blonde standing on his front porch. Obviously she had the wrong house, but...he suddenly didn’t mind. She was a looker. More than a looker. That body... Those drab pants and shapeless jacket were hopefully hiding some sexy lingerie...

  “Mr. Bridges?”

  He blinked. What the hell?

  Had he just been fantasizing about a stranger on his porch? In broad daylight? With his son just feet behind him?

  Clearly time for him to get a little...in an appropriate place at an appropriate time. As soon as possible.

  Tressa was generally accommodating... He just usually lost all desire anytime he thought about her in that way these days.

  “Jeremiah Bridges?” The woman spoke for a second time. Her hair was pulled back tight in a twist thing on the back of her neck. He actually thought about reaching back there and pulling out the hairpins. He had to know how long it was.

  “
Yes,” he blurted, embarrassed that he was still standing there like an imbecile, thinking about sex. “I’m Jem Bridges. What can I do for you?”

  Was one of his men in trouble? He didn’t know all their wives, but he’d met most of them at one time or another. And couldn’t remember any looking like this.

  So maybe she was a girlfriend...attempting to catch someone out in a lie... He gave himself a mental shake. Most of the world was not like Tressa.

  “I’m Lacey Hamilton, Mr. Bridges.” She handed him a card. “I’m from child protective services.”

  Jem’s chin dropped. His gut knotted over the spaghetti he’d had for dinner.

  Not a wife. Or a girlfriend. She was an agent from child protective services. And there could be only one reason she’d come to his house.

  Only one child there. Only one child in his life. One child he knew well enough to answer for to any child agency.

  With a mother who, on occasion, tried to make Jem’s life hell.

  Which meant only one thing to him. The beautiful woman standing on his doorstep wasn’t there to feed his sexual fantasies. She was there to implode his life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE FIRST THING Lacey noticed from her spot on the front porch looking in was a clean home—at least what she could see of it. The father, not so much. He was clean-cut enough, but the red stains on the front of his white button-down shirt were a bit off-putting. His open blue gaze kind of captivated her—until she blinked, and broke the contact, and remembered that the man’s lean, cowboy-type good looks had nothing to do with her reason for being there.

  Other than giving her a sign that she wasn’t dealing with someone currently drunk or obviously down on his luck.

  Well-to-do, well-dressed, gorgeous fathers abused their kids. And cowboys with stained shirts could, too.

  “May I come in?” she asked. If he refused, she’d get a warrant. Then there’d be a strike against him in her estimation.

  “Of course.” He stepped back.