His First Choice

“Me? I wasn’t ever on a show.”

“We did commercials mostly,” Kacey said. “From the time we were two. Mom cashed in on the whole blonde twin thing.”

“She never pushed us, though,” Lacey quickly pointed out.

“Nope, we loved it and wanted to do it,” Kacey said.

Jem was studying her. “I find it hard to picture you loving being in front of a camera.”

“I loved playing make-believe with Kacey,” she said, shocked that she’d been quite that open. “I loved the different places we got to go and the things we got to do...”

“Lacey got to be on a race car one time, Dad,” Levi said.

While Jem cocked his eyebrow at her, Lacey noted that Levi had remembered a minor detail from weeks before. Not normal developmental stage for a four-year-old. Usually their memories didn’t stretch back much beyond a week or so, if that. They were too busy moving forward to hang on to what was behind them. And...

“Lacey,” Kacey said, laughing. “Tell him about that commercial...”

They’d burned their fannies on the hot metal, sitting on the hood of that car. Lacey had quickly figured out that if they took the labels off the cans of motor oil they were there to sell, they could sit on them. Only problem had been when the prompt came to hold up the cans in front of the camera and all they had to sell was blank tin cans.

“You’re the one who got to ride in the car,” she said quickly and turned to the child at her side. “Remember, Levi? I told you my twin sister got to ride in the car...”

Because Kacey had asked; Lacey hadn’t wanted to be a bother.

“What happened at the shoot?” Jem was half grinning as he watched her across the table while Kacey told Levi all about her trip around the track in a real race car when she wasn’t much older than him.

Just to kill time, Lacey told Jem about the short little dresses and Mary Jane shoes they’d been given to wear. About the hot metal on the hood of the car. And taking off the labels to save their backsides. When he

laughed out loud, drawing attention to their table again, she ducked her head.

Because she’d wanted to laugh right along with him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“KACEY’S PRETTY LIKE MOMMY, and Lacey’s nice like Amelia.” Levi’s words blasted into the silence that had fallen when their food came.

Tressa and Kacey were pretty and Lacey was nice? Implying that Lacey, who was identical in looks to Kacey, didn’t appear pretty to a four-year-old?

Jem had taken a bite of burger when Levi’s voice first hit him.

And then Jem blurted, “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” His own words didn’t do much better, following a full twenty seconds behind his son’s.

It was, by far, the most embarrassing moment of Jem’s entire life. And considering how many times his older sister had tried to humiliate him when he was growing up, that was saying a lot.

“Well, thank you for the lovely compliment, Levi.” Kacey recovered first, leaning forward to smile at the boy and hand him another French fry. Probably in an effort to fill the little mouth to prevent it from uttering another word. Jem figured she was onto something.

And that his son absolutely was not. Lacey was far more beautiful than either Tressa or Kacey.

Wait. Lacey and Kacey were identical twins. Both of them were far more beautiful than Tressa.

But then when Jem looked at his ex-wife he saw the sense of entitlement that had her walking out on perfectly good jobs because things weren’t going the way she’d deemed they should. The drama that made life’s challenges so much harder to handle than they had to be.

“I’m sorry.” Jem leaned over to say the words quietly to Lacey. He couldn’t just let his son’s misspoken words hang unaccounted for. “He...”

Shaking her head, Lacey smiled at him, taking another bite of her grilled turkey and tomato sandwich. “He thinks I’m nice,” she said. “You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me, considering how we met. A lot of my kids hate the sight of me.”

Yet she obviously cared so much about them. She had about Levi. And he wondered again about her job. About her. How did she do it? Giving her all to people who didn’t want her around?

Why did she?