His First Choice

She was going to have to find someone to finish her dream room. Kacey had already told her she’d be home that next weekend and they’d find someone together. Her sister thought she was going to pay the second contractor, too, but she wasn’t. Lacey had enough in savings to build a whole new house if she wanted to. And she was going to stand firm on this one.

No more lying down in the middle of the road for her.

She didn’t kid herself into thinking she was suddenly going to be bright and bold and bitchy, or even anything close. She was who she was. She got mad and she got over it. But she was going to learn how to speak up for herself. To demand what she needed.

In a kind way, of course, because it wasn’t fair to those who cared about her if she didn’t. Kacey’s pain, her sister’s guilt, had been a real eye-opener to her. She’d set Kacey up for failure by not expressing her feelings until the one night they’d spilled over and ruined her sister’s world.

They were past that now. Had been over and over and over it all over and over and over again during their week together.

Avoiding the unfinished dream room, she passed through the kitchen and grabbed the key off the kitchen table, shoving it in the first drawer she came to, blinking back tears.

She’d made her ultimatum. He’d made his choice.

Neither one of them could take either back.

She’d been unfair to him. He’d been unfair to her, too. Neither of them could help who they were.

And if they couldn’t stand up for each other, they weren’t good for each other, either.

Promising herself that if she got through the night, the morning would be easier, she rolled her suitcase down the hall. She and Kacey had already talked everything through. She was going to unpack. Take a hot bath. Go to bed. Get up in the morning and go to work.

If she couldn’t get to sleep, she was going to call Kacey.

And on Friday, Kacey would be there, filling her home. Just as she’d filled Kacey’s the past week.

She flipped on the bedroom light.

Something wasn’t right.

Heart pounding, she froze, looking around. The room had been disturbed.

She didn’t have a gun. Her cell phone was still in her purse on the kitchen counter.

Had her bed been slept in?

Nothing else was out of place. Just the stripes on the comforter weren’t lined up along the edge of the mattress. And the pillows were wrong. Cases went on the bottom, shams on the top.

There were wrinkles, too. As though someone had climbed around after the bed was made.

She stepped farther into the room and peeked into the adjoining bathroom. A cartoon caricature bandage wrapper was in the trash.

A washcloth had been used, and there was a glob of toothpaste in the sink. She definitely did not leave globs behind.

But Levi did.

Curious now, shaking, she moved through the house.

The bed in Kacey’s room was made. But equally disturbed. The spare bathroom didn’t look as though it had been touched. Except for the raised toilet seat.

The pillows on the living room couch were there, but not how she arranged them. The remote was on the left side of the table, not the right.

There were used glasses in the dishwasher that she hadn’t used. And paper plates in the trash.

Had Jem and Levi stayed at her house while she’d been gone? She supposed she should be mad about the intrusion. She wasn’t.

But she wanted to know why.

Attempting not to glance around the corner and down the hall from the kitchen toward the wall that was going to have an archway into her dream room, Lacey failed. She did a double take. There was an archway where an outside wall had been when she’d left.