His First Choice

“Yeah, you do,” he said. He wouldn’t have if Jem wasn’t feeling overly paranoid about having his every move watched. He didn’t want someone thinking that he was suddenly changing his schedule, afraid to take his son to day care, for fear of what someone might report.

Not that he thought, for one second, that Mara or any of the ladies at the day care would report him for abuse. No, he’d pretty much figured out it was either the hospital, because they had to report frequent hospital visits, as he’d learned last night during his reading—Levi had been to the emergency room six times—or Tressa.

She’d wanted to have sex the previous weekend. He hadn’t been interested enough to pull off the pretense, but had thought he’d made a pretty good excuse. She’d seemed to roll with it at the time.

But his ex-wife had a tendency to be vindictive where he was concerned. Someone had to take the blame for the things that hadn’t gone right in her life. Might as well be him.

* * *

LEVI CHATTERED ABOUT building a sand castle while they waited for the burgers and fries Jem had ordered. Not only were they by the big sandbox, the hostess had seated them at a table with a view of the beach.

Jem would have loved to spend the day out there. Playing in the sand with his son. Building castles. Or surfing the waves like he used to do. Before he’d met Tressa, become a husband—and then a father.

“What’s a twin?” Levi’s foot, swinging beneath the table, caught Jem on the knee. The boy’s chin barely reached the top of the table, but he’d been pretty particular about not wanting a booster seat.

He was a big boy and not a baby, at least that day.

“A twin?” he asked, giving his son his full focus.

“Mmm-hmm.” Levi’s chin lifted. “Lacey said she has a twin. What’s a twin?”

An immediate vision sprang to mind. Not one but two of the beautiful blondes, hair down, of course...

What in the hell was it with him? He was bordering on disrespectful the way he kept picturing the woman.

The next second he was shrugging off his propensity for doing so. He was a guy. It was what guys did.

Not that he could remember the last time he’d mentally undressed a woman he’d just met...

“A twin is someone who has a brother or sister who was born at the same time they were,” he said.

“With a different mommy and daddy?” the boy asked, screwing up his nose like he did when he wasn’t understanding something.

“Nope. With the same mommy and daddy.”

“You said I came out of Mommy’s tummy.” Technically, he hadn’t offered up that technical tidbit to a four-year-old child. Tressa had, one night when she’d been explaining to Levi why he was hers and why he should want to spend more time with her. Jem had been left to explain, as best he could, what she’d meant.

“That’s right,” he said now.

“Does everyone come out of a mommy’s tummy?”

Obviously his lesson had lacked some pertinent details. “Yes.” He waited. The last time they’d dealt with this topic, he’d answered Levi’s questions and left the rest for when the boy wanted to know more.

Thanks to Lacey Hamilton needing to tell his son about her birth situation, now was apparently the time for more. As if the day wasn’t already challenging enough.

Both little feet beneath the table were swinging now and softly kicking him. Jem thought about reaching down to stop them, but chose to take the blows instead. If Levi didn’t expunge his energy one way, he’d find another.

Levi’s gaze followed a waiter with a tray full of ice cream sundaes and Jem was pretty sure they were done with the topic. He was ready to ask his son if he wanted a sundae for dessert, in spite of the fact that they didn’t do dessert at lunchtime, when Levi turned back to him.

“Lacey’s mom had two babies in her tummy at one time?”

“Yep.”

“How come my mommy didn’t have two babies at one time?”

Levi had talked a time or two about having a baby brother or sister. So far Jem had avoided the hows and why that couldn’t happen, saying only that mommies and daddies had to be married to have babies. A weak excuse if ever there was one.

“Because you took up so much room, silly,” he said now and grinned for real when he saw their