His First Choice

Her face looked calm. She had to at least have missed the part about Tressa suing her. So there was a God.

He’d had the thought before.

Maybe it would serve him well to remember it more often.

“Just cleaning up. Tressa reached for the door handle and put her hand through the glass.”

“She pounded the glass, Jem.” Her words were calm. No emotion, or accusation. Yet they stopped him cold.

“You don’t know how Tressa gets when she’s caught up in her drama. She’s clumsy. Believe me, I’ve seen it before. She just missed the door handle.”

Lacey’s mouth fell open. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course I believe it! I know it. I’ve been living with this kind of thing all my life.”

“Right. First JoAnne and then Tressa.”

But not Lacey. Thank God again. If ever there was a time that a woman would be pushed into losing control, it would be now. And she was standing there watching him. Not screaming.

“You need to leave that as it is,” she said, coming closer and taking the broom and dustpan from him. “It’s evidence.”

“Evidence? Of what?” Hadn’t she heard a thing he’d said? This was Tressa at her worst. When she was upset, she was careless. “Don’t you get it?” He looked at her. “She found out we’re seeing each other, and now she’s over it. I have to tell you, it went a lot better than I’d feared it might.”

Her jaw dropped again. “You thought this went well?”

“Are you kidding? She was out of here in five. I’ve had nights it took hours to talk her down. I have to tell you, those classes are really making a difference.”

He wanted to believe they were. And wanted her to believe it, too. He wanted her to quit looking at him like that.

To get over the past few minutes and get on to what really mattered. Her. Him. Together.

They’d just crossed a major hurdle to making their lives together official. Give Tressa a few months to get used to the idea, and maybe accept Amelia’s proposal—he’d suspected for a long time now that they were lovers—and they’d be home free.

“You have to call the police, Jem,” Lacey said. “If not for yourself, for me. Because if you think she’s going to leave this alone, you’re wrong. If it was just you, then yes, I would believe it. Because she has you where she wants you and she has to give you your way where she can to keep you there. But me... I’m a threat to it all. She has to get rid of me. Period. Or have her whole world come tumbling down.”

“It’s just talk, Lace. I swear. You need to trust me on this.”

“You’ve asked her repeatedly not to come to this house. Yet she continues to show up.”

“Only when she’s beside herself upset...”

“And isn’t it for just that reason that you don’t want her here? So that you don’t have to live under the constant threat of dealing with her drama?”

Into each life a little rain must fall. He remembered the quotation from his childhood. His grandmother Lillie said it every time anything upset any of them.

He was tired. Needed to lie down. Hold Lacey and sleep it off. “Please, Lace. I took care of it. She’s gone. Just let it go?”

“You led her to believe that there’s nothing between us...”

He was sorry as hell she’d heard that. “She knows I didn’t deny that there was. I’m just giving her time to adjust to the idea. It’s the way things work with her.”

“You seriously aren’t going to call the police?”

“Of course not. That would just set everything back. Way back.”

“You need to get a restraining order, Jem. You’d be granted one immediately just for what happened here tonight.”

“I’m telling you she didn’t mean to break the window. And even if she did, she’d say she was going for the door handle, and how are you going to prove she wasn’t?” He’d been through this so many times it was old hat to him. But he had to slow down and understand that it was all new to Lacey.