His First Choice

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  When Tressa had called him, panicked, in the middle of the night because Levi had been flailing around in his bed and screaming and she’d been unable to wake him, Jem had thought his ex-wife was overreacting. Again. He’d told her to calm down, to rub Levi’s back and talk to him and see if that woke him up. And then to call him back in five minutes.

  She’d called him in ten. Levi had been having a chocolate cream cookie and a glass of milk.

  The crisis had passed, he’d thought.

  Once again he was back to wait-and-see.

  He hated that place.

  * * *

  KACEY HAD BEEN with her almost a week and Lacey was getting spoiled. The little house she’d purchased a couple of blocks from the beach was spotless and she hadn’t lifted a finger. Dinner was waiting for her no matter how late she got home each night. Her laundry was not only done, but hung in order exactly as she liked it.

  And neither Lacey nor Kacey had had a single sip of alcohol.

  “It’s like you said,” Kacey was saying as they strolled along the beach the Saturday after Memorial Day. “I didn’t need it, I just wanted it.”

  Lacey had hoped the words were true; she believed them to be true. Still, it was good to know for sure...

  “If you kept your mind blurred, you didn’t have to face what was really going on.”

  In denim shorts that showed off her long, tanned legs almost up to her butt, and a cropped white shirt, Kacey looked like every guy’s dream—at least in Lacey’s estimation—but for the frown on her face. It matched the vibe Lacey was getting.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  At Kacey’s urging, Lacey had left her hair down that day. It hung even longer than Kacey’s and had the same loose natural curls, giving it body. But where Kacey’s hair glistened and hung sexily around her face, Lacey’s looked dull and hung in her eyes. She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that.

  It didn’t matter if they both went to the same stylist, used the exact same product and washed their hair at exactly the same time... Kacey’s hair had more glow.

  Kacey kicked up sand with her bare toes and then turned to the water, standing and facing the horizon as her toes sank into the sand.

  Waiting for a middle-aged couple who were holding hands to pass, Lacey joined her at the water’s edge. She’d worn shorts, too. The six-inch ones she always wore. Black, that day. And a sleeveless, button-up white blouse with a little lace collar.

  “I love my job,” Kacey was saying. “I just don’t like my life.”

  Kacey loved the condo she’d bought when they’d both received a healthy royalty check for a year’s worth of commercials they’d done their last year of high school. Lacey had used the money to pay for college.

  “You don’t like the men in your life.” Lacey homed in on the real problem, the one most difficult for her to talk about with her sister.

  If ever there was a sore spot between the two of them, men would be it. Which was why Lacey usually kept her mouth shut on the subject.

  With a sideways glance at Lacey, Kacey made a face. “You’re right, I don’t. But it’s more than that. Being here...with you...it’s making it all so much more clear to me.”

  “Being with me? Why?” Lacey frowned at her sister. Truly perplexed. Yeah, they shared a bond that was stronger than life. But they didn’t have to be together to have it. It just was. Like their identical features.

  “Just being here,” Kacey said, shrugging.

  A pair of twentysomething guys passed by. Closely. As though they’d made the trek down the beach specifically to get close to them. To Kacey. Neither one of them tried to meet Lacey’s gaze, which was fine with her. She’d learned a long time before that life was about a lot more than looks.

  “You’ve got a great life, Lace. Full, like you don’t get home until after dark, and when you do, you’re tired, but it’s a good tired. Like you spent your day doing things that make you feel worthy. They fill you up. And...your house—it’s like a real home. You have your own yard, a driveway.”

  “You can more than afford a house in Beverly Hills, Kacey. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

  “I know.”

  The guys passed by a second time, making eye contact with Kacey. She turned back to the water.

  “It’s just...your house, your life...it feels like...substance, you know?”

  “I live alone,” she pointed out. “It’s you being here that’s giving my house all that substance and life you’re talking about. Picture me coming home every night, to an empty house with no lights on, unless I failed to turn one off in the morning, with no dinner cooking and laundry to do. You’ll be liking your life a whole lot better. At least you have hall lights and a doorman to greet you every night. You have people at the pool who greet you when you go down. Same for the gym on the third floor.”

  Lacey would still pick her house in Santa Raquel, but that was beside the point.

  “Are you going to tell me about him?”

  “About who?”

  “Whatever guy’s finally managed to snag your interest.”

  Lacey moved her foot in the sand sinking beneath her feet and almost lost her balance. “There’s no guy in my life,” she said quite clearly. “I haven’t been on a date in over a year.”

  And then it had been a date Kacey had set her up on. Not that she was going to admit that to her.

  Knowing the truth about the differences between her and her identical twin was one thing, looking pathetic because of them was another.

  “I could date if I wanted to,” she added, a tad bit defensively. She’d been asked out. She just hadn’t wanted to go.

  “Of course you could—you’re gorgeous.” Kacey was looking at her and then turned her head just a fraction. Lacey didn’t need to turn around to know the two men had returned.

  Her sister smiled, but then turned back around. “It’s not a matter of you being capable of finding a date, Lace. It’s a matter of you being open to finding a date.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it.

  “And something tells me that you’ve met someone.”

  She hadn’t said a word. And just because one particular face kept showing up in her thoughts didn’t mean that anything had changed in her life.

  “You’re imagining things,” she said now, waiting for Kacey to turn back around and put the guys out of their misery. Hoping at this point that she would. And was uncomfortable when she didn’t.

  “You watched that aftershave commercial last night like you were memorizing every detail,” Kacey said.

  The guy in the commercial had been a construction worker. She’d taken a little side trip, trying to remember if the only other construction worker she knew personally, Jeremiah Bridges, wore cologne.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said now, wondering how long they were going to stand there staring at the horizon with the ocean lapping at their feet. Until the tide came in? The tips of her shorts would get wet and she hated driving with the wet, soppy feeling at the back of her knees.

  “You had a pretty good study of the men’s underwear section at the department store the other evening.”

  It was the whole “boxers or briefs” thing. Yeah, Jeremiah’s face—and, well, other imagined parts of him—had come to mind, but that only meant the guy was memorable.

  He was a reprobate. And prickly, too. The fact that he stood out in her mind was hardly her fault.

  “You’re wearing your hair down.” Kacey broke into Lacey’s silence.

  “You told me to!” No hiding the accusation in that tone.

  “I always tell you to. You never listen.”

  “I do, too.” Pretty much every time her sister nagged her, she’d leave her hair in a ponytail rather than putting it up in the twist she p
referred.

  “I want what you have, Lace,” Kacey said.

  “I don’t have anything.”

  “You have a chance.”

  “Right. Like you don’t?”

  “You think I’m going to meet some nice normal guy who’d like to make a real home with me?” Kacey’s pain cut through Lacey’s defenses.

  “You will,” she said, grabbing her sister’s hands and turning her to face her. “Just stop spending all of your time in the clubs and Hollywood hangouts.”

  “I go to the library one night a week,” Kacey told her. “I actually joined a book club. Not a single normal guy has even talked to me.”

  Because she effervesced sex and power and money, which intimidated “normal” guys. Even when they’d been little with parents who’d had a middle-class income, Kacey had fit right in with the celebrities they’d encountered at the studios, as though she’d been born to be a star.

  Lacey had liked the work, liked a lot of the places they got to go; she’d just been more reserved. It had been a lot easier to let Kacey charm all of the strangers with whom they’d come in contact. She was a natural at it.

  Lacey had no idea what to tell her. Except... “Well, one thing you can do is stop going out with guys who clearly aren’t what you’re looking for.”

  Nodding, Kacey dropped one of her hands, kept hold of the other and started walking again.

  “So...you aren’t going to tell me who he is?”

  “There is no one.”

  “I understand, you know?”

  “Understand what?”

  “Why you won’t tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Kids ran and played in the sand. Some darted in and out of the chilly Pacific waters. Men, women, teenagers lounged in the sand. It was Santa Raquel in the summertime and Lacey loved it.

  “It’s okay, Lace.”

  “What is?”

  “That you don’t want me to meet him.”

  Oh, God.

  Stopping in her tracks, she pulled her sister to an abrupt stop, as well. A girl jogging on the beach veered around them and gave them a dirty look.

  “It’s not that,” she said, looking Kacey in the eye. “I swear, Kacey.” Though, if truth be told, if there really was a guy, then...maybe...

  “I just want you to know that I understand. I don’t blame you if...”

  “He’s a client, Kace,” she said, words pouring out of her without forethought. “Or rather, was a client. Very briefly. He doesn’t even like me. I swear, I’m not seeing anyone. I just...think about him. No clue why. And I’m going to make sure I stop.”

  “He wasn’t hurting a kid, was he?” Kacey knew what she did for a living, in every detail Lacey was at liberty to give.

  “Of course not.” Jeremiah Bridges doted on Levi, who obviously not only adored his dad, but felt secure with him, too. It hadn’t taken Lacey long to assess that one.

  “So...he’s...”

  “Nothing.” Lacey started walking again back the way they’d come, toward the car. They could go shopping again, or something. “He’s nothing. So nothing he wasn’t worth mentioning except that I couldn’t have you thinking I don’t trust you.”

  “It’s not a matter of trusting me,” Kacey said. “You know I’d never date a guy you even thought you liked.”

  Yeah, she did know that. Kacey was right. She wasn’t the problem.

  Guys were.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JEM COULDN’T BELIEVE his eyes when he pulled into Uncle Bob’s on Saturday, glanced toward the beach and saw Lacey Hamilton in double. In both forms his fantasies had taken. One was drably overdressed, and the other rather undressed. He skipped over the version with long, tanned legs exposed, and stared at the one with loose black cotton shorts that hung to her knees.

  He much preferred taking his time to unwrap his own package, not have it arrive out of the wrapping. He’d always been weird that way.

  But her hair... It was the first time he’d seen those blond locks down in real life. It fell almost to her waist and he...

  “Come on, Dad!” Levi’s little feet kicked the back of his seat and he heard his son unfasten the belt in his car seat. “We haveta eat.”

  They were a little late for lunch. He’d taken Levi to work with him as he always did on Saturday morning and had been occupied much longer than planned getting through the list of problems his foremen had handed him during their weekly meeting. Nothing he couldn’t handle, though. A straight driveway that was now going to be curved. Some wiring that had blown when a drywall screw had missed a stud. Windows that didn’t fit. And roof tiles that had been delivered in black rather than the rust brown the customer had ordered.

  Keys in hand he got out of the truck, opened the backseat door to help Levi down and watched as the two women made their way slowly toward the beach parking lot that was adjacent to Uncle Bob’s.

  He wasn’t going to call out to her. He didn’t ever want to see her again.

  “It’s her and her twin, Dad! See?” Levi said, loudly enough for anyone in the parking lot to hear. Uncle Bob’s parking lot, not the adjacent one.

  So much for thinking that the woman had given his son nightmares.

  “Yeah, I see.” Jem, giving a small tug on Levi’s hand, turned toward the restaurant. “And her name is Lacey.”

  “Lacey!” Levi called out immediately. Not at all what he’d intended. Should have kept his mouth shut...

  He thought about telling his son they absolutely did not want to see the other woman. Telling him that for their own safety they had to stay away from her. But he couldn’t figure out how to do so when Levi had been told she was a friend. He’d let her take Levi alone to a playroom. He’d let her in their home, to see Levi’s room and most prized possessions.

  The women were almost at the first row of cars. He didn’t see the one that had been parked outside his home on one of the worst nights of his life.

  “La-a-a-a-a-ceeeeey!” Levi called again, turning around to watch her as Jem pulled him toward Uncle Bob’s.

  “She stopped!” Levi said, digging his feet into the graveled pavement. Deciding that dragging his son in front of his ex–social worker wouldn’t be a smart move—he’d never drag him, period—Jem stopped, too.

  “Come on, Dad! She sees us!” Levi was pulling him now, away from Uncle Bob’s front door.

  Coming up with no other options, Jem looked toward his son’s goal. “I want to see a twin.” Levi’s voice was not getting any softer.

  “You’ve seen twins before,” he told the boy. If he’d been able to remember when, he’d have pointed the instance out to him. There weren’t any in preschool, that he could think of. None of Jem’s buddies had twins... Surely...

  “Hi, Lacey!” Levi called as they got close to the women. Short-shorts was coming toward them now. Jem knew an uncanny disappointment that the big, welcoming smile on the unknown woman’s face didn’t also appear on the identical face next to hers.

  Clearly Lacey was no happier about this meeting than he was.

  Or than he wanted to be.

  But, damn, she looked good.

  “You still got my car?” Levi asked as they all met at the guardrail separating the two lots. “The green one with the turbos?”

  Lacey’s grin lit up the sunshiny day as she knelt down. “Why, yes, I do, Levi. I just saw it when I was in the playroom yesterday and I thought of you.”

  She’d had another child in that room. Someone else she was investigating. Possibly ripping from his or her home.

  A child in danger whom she could be saving from serious harm.

  Her job couldn’t be easy.

  “I wanted to see a twin,” Levi told her, his hands on the guardrail that ca
me up almost to his chin.

  “Hi, I’m Kacey.” Jem saw the perfectly manicured fingers reaching toward him, noticed the shiny polish and looked into eyes that weren’t Lacey’s. Instead of seeing a sunset, he was blinded by the light.

  “I’m Jem,” he said, taking the hand, shaking it. He was curious, but not moved at all. Which was crazy, since he couldn’t get Lacey Hamilton out of his mind and the only difference between the two was the fact that Lacey had threatened to take his son away from him.

  Sort of.

  “Dad, Lacey says that her sister’s visiting her. We’re having a sister visit, too, huh?”

  Levi had overheard his phone conversation with his sister. It had been brief. Mom and Dad said you were coming. You’re welcome to stay with us. She accepted the invitation. Told him she’d let him know the exact date of her arrival—sometime in August. And they’d hung up.

  “Yes, we are,” he said now, embarrassed as hell as he looked at the two identically gorgeous women. He thanked God they couldn’t read his mind as he tried to wipe it clean of every fantasy he’d ever had. About them, or anyone else.

  “We’re going at Uncle Bob’s,” Levi said next. “Do you like Uncle Bob’s?” The question was directed at Kacey.

  “I’ve never been there,” Lacey’s look-alike said, kneeling down as Lacey rose. “I’m visiting, remember?”

  “Does Aunt JoAnne know Uncle Bob’s?” Levi was frowning as he peered up at Jem.

  “No, son.” JoAnne had been at his home only once, and hamburgers at the beach weren’t her thing. At least not if Jem thought it was a good idea. Maybe if Levi made the suggestion...

  “Well, you should bring her here if you like them so much,” Kacey was saying while Jem stared at Lacey. With her hair down she looked more...approachable.

  He smiled at her.

  And then grinned like an idiot when she smiled back.

  “We could bring you, couldn’t we, Dad?” Levi turned to look at Jem, who felt like he’d been caught with his pants down.

  “Well...”

  “No, we were just heading home,” Lacey said. “We’ve got...”