His First Choice

“Another month.”

“You want to come to Santa Raquel?” She didn’t usually ask. Actually, she never did, as was evidenced by Kacey’s open mouth as she turned to look at her.

“You’re serious.”

She nodded.

“But...”

Lacey had made a big deal about needing her own space. A big deal.

“You’re the world to me, Kace.” She’d rather live every moment of the rest of her life in Kacey’s shadow if it meant keeping her sister healthy. And alive.

“I promise not to look at or talk to anyone,” Kacey said.

She was serious, and Lacey felt sick. Physically, like she had a ball of warm, mushy clay in her stomach.

“I made a mistake, Kace.” She prayed her sister was emotionally open enough to read her. “Those things I said, I was blowing off steam...”

“You were right.”

“But it’s not your fault. You don’t do anything to attract people. They just gravitate to you.”

“I’d give anything to send them your way. Well, not the Deans. But the good ones...”

For some bizarre reason a vision of Jem Bridges popped into her mind. “It’s really okay,” she said. “I’ve been on my own for more than a year.” Since she’d moved out of the condo she was sitting in and transferred to the Santa Raquel branch of California state social services. “And I’m over all that.” At least in any way that mattered.

“You aren’t just saying this? You really want me to come up?”

How could her sister have been hurting this much over the talk they’d had when Lacey had told her she was moving out, and Lacey hadn’t known?

“Look me in the eye,” Lacey said now. And when Kacey’s gaze was glued to hers, she leaned in closer. “Feel me, Kace.”

Kacey nodded.

“Now you tell me. Do I want you to come up and stay with me?”

The tears that filled Kacey’s eyes hurt Lacey’s heart. And she was ashamed of herself for having caused her sister so much pain.

CHAPTER TEN

JEM HATED HOW much Lacey Hamilton’s brief intrusion into their lives had affected them. If the vulnerable look on Tressa’s face when he’d picked Levi up from Amelia’s little beach house on Monday afternoon hadn’t been enough, the fist clenching his own gut as he dropped Levi off at day care on Tuesday would have done it.

But he’d already been disturbed by Lacey’s effect on him.

Fantasies of the woman had followed him all over his boat as he’d spent the weekend alone in his garage, building his dream, with a couple of jaunts out to celebrate the holiday.

Dillon, his most trusted foreman and college buddy who’d dropped out to marry his pregnant girlfriend, had had him over on Saturday night for a barbecue with him and his family. On Monday he’d met a group of the guys at a local bar for a couple of brews.

Still, if it hadn’t been for the social worker hanging around in the back of his mind all the time, he wouldn’t have worried at all when he had to leave his son in safekeeping so he could get to work on time Tuesday.

Levi had been a little weepier than usual.

Weepy. A girlie term. Which didn’t describe his son at all. But the little guy hadn’t been whiny, and he really hadn’t cried all that much, either.

He’d just almost cried over things that normally didn’t bother him. Like being told that he had to go to day care when he’d wanted to spend the day with Jem.

And finding out that they were out of peanut butter and he’d have to have his toast with just jelly that morning.