His First Choice

Any other time she’d have thought the whole process boring as hell. Funny how fascinating it all was to her now.

Funny, too, how Tressa was blonde, decorated her home like Lacey did and liked the same kind of tea.

She brushed the thought aside. Jem had wanted the divorce from Tressa. Wanted to live apart from her. Lacey was definitely not a “second” choice where the other woman was concerned. She wasn’t something he was settling for because he couldn’t have what he really wanted.

At least not where his ex-wife was concerned.

Growing up in her sister’s shadow was making her paranoid. And it had to stop.

His call came in while she was on her way home from work. He was home already and had Levi watching a video, which gave him roughly twenty-two minutes to have a conversation without Levi paying attention.

He was speaking so softly she could barely hear him—even with her car’s Bluetooth feeding his voice through the speaker system.

“I talked to Tressa before I picked him up from preschool,” he was saying.

Lacey’s heart thumped so hard she could feel it. She hated that. Also hated that she couldn’t read anything in his tone of voice or see his face.

Her interest in him was more than professional. She couldn’t pretend otherwise.

“And?”

“He did cry when she was teaching him to swim.”

“She told you that?”

“As soon as I asked.” He sounded...calm.

“Why was he crying? Was he afraid of the water?”

“He wasn’t listening to her. She was trying to get him to put his face in the water, then lift it back up, and move his arms in a front crawl. But he kept jumping around and splashing. He slipped and went underwater and she panicked. She was scared to death he was going to drown and she overreacted. She reached down and grabbed him as tightly as she could and hauled him up out of the water. And then she yelled at him and made him cry.”

As most parents might have done.

“And I can tell you right now, the reason he wouldn’t have told me was because he hates me to know when he misbehaves. He’s always so eager for me to be proud of him, so eager to get things right...”

She wanted to address that, too, just because she spent her days counseling parents in raising healthy children. Too much of a need to please Jem could result in some real problems for Levi later.

Thing was, she hadn’t noticed him putting any undue pressure on his son. He wasn’t overly harsh with him. Nor did he require anything out of the ordinary of him.

“Levi doesn’t act like a child who fears disappointing you.”

“I don’t think so, either. But Tressa’s right. He never tells me when he’s been in trouble over there.”

“Maybe it’s her he fears disappointing.”

Or maybe she was giving the little boy reason to fear. What if she was threatening him? Telling him he’d have to leave his father’s home if Levi told about the times she lost her temper with him? Not that Lacey had proof of that. Just a supposition.

“I can’t imagine that he fears disappointing Tressa, but I suppose he could think that the reason she doesn’t live with him, like most mommies live with their kids, is because of him. We’ve both talked to him a lot about it, about the fact that Mommy and Dad have a problem between them and that they can’t live together anymore. He’s seemed quite happy living with me...”

“You sound hesitant.” She was almost home, so she pulled off at the beach, parking with a view of the incoming tide, to finish their conversation. Kacey would be waiting with a grilled chicken salad ready. Lacey wanted to get this settled first.

“It’s just... He’s been a little more clingy lately.”

All senses on alert, she pushed her twist to the back of her head and asked, “Like when?”

“Most recently, when we came back from your house last night.”

That one was easily explained by the conversation that had taken place in the puzzle room.