She hadn’t heard that. “When did he say that?”
“A couple of nights ago. You were in the bathroom and he and I were talking about timing for the project in relation to when I have to leave.”
Lacey didn’t have time to deal with completely inappropriate jealousy.
She might be overreacting. And Levi might be in danger.
She’d risk one to prevent the other.
Pulling her phone off the clip on her shorts, she dialed Sydney’s private cell.
* * *
FUNNY HOW LIFE could turn on a dime. In twelve hours’ time, Jem had gone from looking forward to the weekend with great anticipation, to dreading the job he had ahead of him.
He could call one of his teams to build the room, but he’d take a loss for all labor costs if he did so. Just to save himself some discomfort.
His comfort wasn’t worth that amount of money to him.
“I love you, Dad.”
Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw the far too serious expression on his son’s face and said, “I love you, too, Levi.”
He’d never been comfortable saying the words, not with anyone, until his son was born. I love you were some of the first words he’d taught the boy.
If there was some good out of the events of the night before, Levi back at home with him would be it.
All of it.
“Are we going to see Kacey and Lacey now?”
“Yep.”
“Can I play with them while you work?”
“We’ll see.” If they didn’t want to watch his son, he wouldn’t be working that day. Even if he’d been able to find a sitter at the last minute, he hadn’t felt inclined to do so.
He was working for free. The least the traitor could do was provide free child care.
As soon as he’d had the thought, Jem gave himself a mental admonishment. Lacey was doing her job, because she cared about Levi.
He knew her well enough to know the truth about that statement. Even if there did exist a social worker who was hooked on his or her own power and got some kind of adrenaline rush out of lording it over a dysfunctional family, she sure didn’t exist in Lacey Hamilton.
The woman was true blue.
She was also dead wrong about Tressa.
As he was going to tell her, the first opportunity he got.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“HE’S GOT LEVI with him.” Kacey turned from the front window to look at Lacey, her expression filled with worry.
“That’s good.” Truth be known, she was relieved.
“It’s good that he’s here, too, huh?” Kacey asked, coming closer. In a sundress with ballet slipper flats, she was as dressed down as she got. But she needn’t have bothered.
Any hope Lacey might have secretly held that there could possibly be a chance for her and Jem to explore whatever she might have been feeling between them had just been quashed.
“He’s been around all week, Kace.” Before she’d ratted him out.
Well, technically, she’d ratted out his ex-wife, but Tressa and Jem seemed to be pretty close. Closer than any divorced couple she’d ever known. And in her course of business, she’d known a lot of them.
Lacey had dressed down, too. In her newest pair of six-inch navy shorts and a white tank top. Kacey had tried to get her to put on one of her sundresses. She just hadn’t wanted to do so.
It wasn’t her.
And if nothing else, she was honest with herself and others about who and what she was.
And wasn’t.
Kacey was the “movie star.” Lacey was her shadow. And a damned good social worker.
He was on his way up the walk, with Levi, in jeans and a white T-shirt just like his father, skipping along beside him.
“A whole week and he doesn’t even see me most of the time,” Kacey said. “He’s been too busy looking at you.”
She wanted to tell Kacey she was dreaming. Or lying. But she’d noticed, too. She’d been afraid that she’d been fooling herself.
In a week’s time, with her sister right there every single day they’d seen each other, Jem still looked at Lacey first. And most often. He smiled at her, directed his conversation to her. Of course, it was her house.
But Kacey was paying the bill...
“Looks like I get to babysit today.” Kacey was smiling—and heading toward the front door. “See, it all worked out fine.”
Her sister never had been one to see the trouble in her path.
Which could be why she was still living alone and dating losers.
Not that Lacey was doing any better.
* * *
AS SOON AS it became obvious that Jem planned to put in a full day of work as long as he could count on the sisters to take care of his unexpected charge that day, Kacey offered to take Levi to the beach. Jem gave his permission.
Without hesitation.
First, because he knew how much his son would enjoy the outing and Levi’s emotional health was his first concern at the moment.
And second, because he knew he needed to have a word with Lacey Hamilton without Levi anywhere near enough to hear.
“His suit’s in that bag,” he said, indicating the backpack he’d carried in with him. He’d loaded it that morning with snacks, a swimsuit, change of clothes, juice boxes and a Super Why! video. All with Levi’s input as the boy stood there supervising.
“I’ll show you,” Levi said, taking Kacey’s hand. He turned back before he got to the bag, though, grabbing Lacey’s hand, too. “Come on, aren’t you going with us?” he asked, looking between the sisters.
“Lacey needs to stay here, Levi,” Jem said. “She’s the homeowner and I may have some questions as I get started.” Levi wouldn’t know what he meant, but he wouldn’t question the tone of voice, either. The words were for Lacey, letting her know that if she wanted the work done, she best stay put.
Right or wrong, he was angry with her and needed to let her know before he started work on her house. It wasn’t too late for her to change her mind.
Or for him to change his.
He didn’t miss the long glance the sisters exchanged, and that silent communication, like they were speaking a foreign language right in front of him, purposely, so he wouldn’t understand, pissed him off, too.
Deathly silence fell as soon as Kacey and his son vacated the house.
Jem waited for Lacey to apologize. To explain. To say anything at all. He got angrier every second that she just stood there.
To her credit, she didn’t attempt inane conversation, talk about getting started or leave him to his work.
“You could say something.” After he bit back what he really wanted to say, he got the words out.
“No, I can’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ethically, I can’t.”
“Oh, no, lady, you aren’t going to play that card with me. No way. You think it’s fine to pretend to be a personal friend to my son and me and then turn on us and not be personally accountable for having done so?”
That hadn’t come out right. He was beyond caring at the moment.
“Sounds to me like you have a pretty skewed sense of ethics.”
He hadn’t meant to say that, either.
“I can, personally, discuss with a friend anything a friend wants to discuss with me, personally. I cannot bring up or speak to state matters that involve my employment with social services.”
He wanted to ask her how long she’d worked on that one, or if it was rote. Maybe she’d done this before—befriend someone just to spy on them because she couldn’t find proof of wrongdoing in the usual way.
The thought shamed him. And hung around, too.
She hadn’t negated
his “friend” claim. She’d kind of supported it.
The realization calmed him. Not much, but some.
“You’re waiting for me to bring it up.”
“I can speak to you as a friend if you have something you want to discuss.”
He held his tongue and called it a victory.
“Do you have any idea what happened at my ex-wife’s house last night?”
“Literally, none at all. I can guess, though, based on what I do for a living.”
“They didn’t rescind his mother’s visitation rights, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t know.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“I knew a temporary request for supervised visits was a possibility.”
They were standing in her kitchen a few yards apart. He wondered if they should sit. But she didn’t offer.
Maybe he should just get his tool belt and get to work. Have the conversation later. Or never.
“There was no evidence to substantiate another look at her. Tressa’s a good mom. And an incredibly protective one.”
“Then why is he with you, and not with her for the weekend as planned?” He’d have thought the question a challenge, if not for the fact that she could only be asking as a friend.
He’d never had a friend feel less like one at the moment.
He’d never cared more.
“Tressa lost it when Sydney Gardner showed up at her door last night, asking questions about nightmares, shaking and throwing up.”
“Did Levi have any nightmares recently that you know of?”
“That sounds, Ms. Hamilton, like a professional question, not a friend one.”
She sat with her hands clasped together on her cute little oak kitchen table—a set for two, which was all that would fit in the small space.
When she didn’t say anything, he pulled out the seat opposite her. Far enough that he could scoot down, lean back and look as though he didn’t have a care in the world, without bumping his knees against the table leg.
“Let me explain something,” she said when he’d assumed his position and grown still, staring at her. It occurred to him, as he waited for her to continue, that he could be mirroring his son from the night before with his jutting chin and arms crossed against his chest. When Levi had found out that he had to go to his mother’s for the weekend.
“I made a call, as any concerned citizen should do, when my sister told me something that made me afraid for Levi’s safety. After relaying only what I’d been told, and nothing more, I hung up.”
“Obviously you told whoever you called that you’d had Levi’s case, but closed the investigation.”
“I did not.”
He wasn’t sure what to do with that.
“The minute I became personally involved with you, I ceased being a social worker,” she continued after he’d grown greatly uncomfortable with the silence.
“So you didn’t tell your coworker about Levi’s case.”
“I did not.”
Okay, then, maybe he’d been wrong.
“I knew she’d find it, though. And know exactly why I called. That’s why I called Sydney at home. We’ve worked together a lot over the past eighteen months.”
If she was trying to tell him something good, he missed it.
She’d set him up and was playing semantics.
Now he was more than just pissed. He was...disappointed. To the point of...he didn’t know what.
“Sydney’s a professional through and through. She’s as dedicated to these kids as I am.”
Her hole was getting deeper.
“She won’t speak to me of this case ever again. And I won’t mention it, either. I can’t. That’s what happened when I called her.”
She was looking him in the eye, and he saw a sunset again. The kind that brought you to your knees.
Calmed you. And invigorated you at the same time.
Which pissed him off all over again.
“You’re telling me you can’t speak on my behalf.”
“I’m telling you I have no power whatsoever. Either way.”
She couldn’t speak against him, either.
And she hadn’t. She’d simply called in a private citizen concern.
“Tressa’s a mess.”
And that was Lacey’s fault.
“Did Levi have a nightmare at her house recently?”
“The weekend after his meeting in your office. It was because of you. Not Tressa.”
Well, not her, Lacey their friend, but Lacey the social worker who took him from his father to play games he really didn’t want to play.
Still, Lacey was a woman. Tressa was a woman, and Levi’s mother. She was the one who’d experienced the nightmare firsthand and knew what it was about. She was the only one who’d talked to him about it.
“Is it possible she ‘lost it’ then, too, and shook him to make him stop screaming out?”
“She couldn’t wake him up. She called me and I talked her through it. She did not shake him. He was flailing around with that cast on his arm and she was afraid he was going to hurt himself.”
“Maybe he accidentally hit her with the cast and that made her angry. Maybe...”
He shook his head. “No way.”
“He told Kacey she shook him until he threw up.”
Jem didn’t move. Not even so much as to allow his expression to change.
“You didn’t know, did you? That he threw up?”
He scrambled to make sense of what was going on quickly enough to hold his own and protect his family. “I know that he threw up when he was over there for Easter. He ate an entire chocolate bunny.”
“Was Tressa playing with him at the time?”
“I don’t know. I know he threw up on her.” Tressa had called him then, too. Because she was a drama queen.
“He was upset and she thought he’d be happier if I came to get him.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
And Levi had come home weepy because he didn’t feel well.
He’d been fine the next day, though. His usual self.
“Did you go get him the night of the bad dream, too?”
“No. Tressa called back and said it was all under control. I talked to him. They were having a late-night snack and he sounded happy.”
He’d been weepy, though, once he’d come home. Because home reminded him of Lacey’s visit?
But then why did his son welcome the woman’s return to their lives, to the point of not wanting to go to his mom’s so he could see Lacey and Kacey?
Because of Kacey?
“Did Levi ever tell you about the nightmare?”
“No.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“No. I didn’t want to make it into some big deal if he was past it. Didn’t want to make it more of a big deal than it was.” He heard the defensiveness in his tone. Damn her.
And her job.
“Yet he told my sister about it.”
He didn’t like that part. Didn’t really understand it. But he couldn’t see how he could work out such an omission with a four-year-old.
“Tressa’s a good mom.” He heard himself sounding repetitious, but didn’t know any other way to help her understand, make her understand, for God’s sake.
This was his life she was messing with.
And she was making any possibility of something between them more remote. Didn’t she get that?
“She called me last night as soon as she knew why Sydney was there. She was upset and didn’t want to upset Levi. She asked me to come get him immediately and asked Sydney to sit with them, and not ask her any more questions, until
I arrived. That’s how conscientious she is of our son’s welfare. Sydney called me after speaking with Tressa. She wanted to speak with Levi.”
“I’m assuming you let her.”
“Of course.”
She didn’t ask the outcome, but he told her, anyway. “She said that she’s going to keep an eye on Tressa, stopping in now and then during her weekends, but that she wasn’t overly concerned. Just being careful. I’m assuming because you were the one who’d made the call.”
She’d overreacted. It was obvious to him. And while one part applauded her level of conscientiousness, another part of him resented the fact that she hadn’t just called him, as a friend, and asked him about it. “We could have had this conversation last night, you know. Without involving social services.”
He could swear a look of pain crossed over her face. Or remorse?
“I’m a social worker, Jem. You have no idea the things I see—day in and day out, over and over—with different kids, different families. I will always err on the side of better safe than sorry.”
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
IT 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.
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 64
