His First Choice

Head whipping to the side, pins pulling against her scalp as the twist she’d put in her hair that morning moved, Lacey looked at him.

Her question had clearly not been an invitation. If he was making fun of her...

He wasn’t smiling. Not even close.

What was going on here?

“I don’t have a love life,” she said slowly. Was he seriously interested in her love life?

No. It was Kacey’s he wanted to know about. Wow. Crazy that it took her a second to figure that out. The year and a half living apart from Kacey had softened her brain.

And...Jem was a nice guy. A truly nice guy. He’d pay attention to Lacey out of genuine interest. There were a lot of nice guys out there. They couldn’t help gravitating toward Kacey...

“I don’t believe you.” He’d stopped at a light and was looking directly at her. Kind of like Kacey did when her sister was telling her something without words.

She’d given him the perfect opening to ask about what he really wanted to know—her sister’s love life.

“It’s...true.” She stared back at him.

The light turned green. He pushed the accelerator.

And her heart sped up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BY FRIDAY JEM had a building permit in hand and was looking forward to the project at Lacey’s like he used to look forward to working on his boat. He’d be doing the work mostly by himself. He hadn’t put labor in the bid.

Which meant he was going to have to work after hours.

It also meant that Lacey would be home while he was there. He’d like things just to have worked out that way, but couldn’t kid himself. He’d planned the entire venture, down to starting while Lacey’s sister was still in town. Kacey seemed hell-bent on spending time with Levi.

That left Lacey to Jem. It was only going to take him a couple of weeks to get the work on her room done. Which gave him that long to get her to go out with him.

For some reason the goal—which generally took him seconds to accomplish when he met someone he wanted to date—seemed out of reach.

He showed up unannounced Friday night, just to tape the clear plastic envelope containing the permit to the front of the house.

Levi stood beside him as he stuck the envelope to the front window, where he was required to leave it displayed from before the job began until after it was complete and inspected by the city.

Before Jem could stop him, Levi reached up on tiptoe and pushed the doorbell. He didn’t even know the kid could reach that high.

“Levi!” he said. “We aren’t here for a visit.”

“I wanna see Kacey and Lacey. And they want to see me.” He stood there, arms folded against his chest, staring at the door.

It didn’t open.

“They’re not home.” He stated the obvious, his mind filling with an immediate picture of the two beauties walking side by side on the beach just blocks away. That gave him an almost undeniable need to get his ass down there before any of the hundreds of summer visitors—of the male beach-bum variety—hit on them.

“But I wanna see them!” Levi’s wobbly voice gave warning to a brewing storm.

“They aren’t home, son. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Why did we come now?” Instead of when the sisters were home, Jem filled in the blank.

“Because we had to drop off this permit so I can start work tomorrow morning...”

He knew as soon as he said the words that they were a mistake. He walked down one of the two steps from Lacey’s small porch to the paved walkway leading up to her house from the tree-lined street. Arms still firmly crossed, Levi stood his ground.