His First Choice

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JEM DIDN’T TALK to Lacey on Tuesday. There’d been no real reason to. While he could have made an excuse to call, he purposely chose not to do so. He didn’t want to tempt her, in any way, to call off their date. Or tempt fate, either.

  He talked to Tressa, though. She called him Tuesday right after work. And Wednesday, too. Seemingly to check on Levi, to ask how his arm was doing—a few weeks late on that one. They were due to have the cast off in another week or two.

  Amelia was still out of the picture and he had to wonder if she’d finally had enough. He’d seen the pattern with Tressa often enough not to be surprised by it. She had her way of seeing the world. Knew what she needed. What she thought was right. And if someone didn’t meet her expectations, she didn’t go easy on them.

  In their early days, that had been a good thing for him. She’d encouraged him to work all the hours in the day. To certify in all of the fields in his profession. He’d been planning to do so. Wanting to do so. She’d paved the way with evenings spent helping him study. Quizzing him. Learning his trades with him so that he could focus almost exclusively.

  And she’d made some good investments with the money he was making. He got his contractor’s license and she’d encouraged him to seek out a small job, on the side, separate and apart from the electrician he was currently working for. He was a certified framer. And plumber, too.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d quit pleasing her. Lord knew he’d tried his damnedest to keep her happy. A failed marriage didn’t sit well with him. Because a marriage took two—to succeed or fail.

  He was about to fail her again, he knew, as he pulled up to Lacey’s little house Wednesday just before six.

  “We’re here!” Levi called from the back. Jem had planned to feed him before bringing him over to play with Kacey until bedtime. Kacey had insisted that dinner was part of their date.

  Tempted to tell his son not to mention this outing to his mother—ever—Jem refrained. He wasn’t going to start down that slippery path, no matter how justified he might feel in doing so.

  He knew why Tressa was calling so much all of a sudden—besides the fact that Amelia wasn’t in her life at the moment. She was afraid that Jem was interested in another woman.

  Because of the conversation they’d had Sunday night. He should never have told her he was doing the job as a favor. Or that the client’s sister was babysitting their son.

  She’d always been afraid that Jem would fall for someone else. Every day of their marriage, she’d doubted his fidelity. It didn’t matter that he’d never, not once, given her any cause to doubt him.

  Cheating wasn’t his style.

  But this time she was right. He was interested in another woman. Very interested.

  And he wasn’t going to let her screw up his chance.

  Shrugging aside guilt he had no reason to feel, he helped his son down from the truck and followed behind as Levi ran up the walk, climbed the two cement steps without holding on to the rail and rang the bell.

  * * *

  “YOU WORE YOUR hair down.” Maybe not the best first line for a first date, but as he glanced at Lacey before pulling away from the front of her house, it’s what came out of his mouth.

  Her hair being down was significant.

  “I’m on a date.” Her smile was mysterious. He kind of liked it.

  “You always wear your hair down on dates?”

  “No.” He started the car and pulled away from the house, where her sister and his son watched from the window, waving at them. He didn’t want any intruders on this conversation.

  “What’s the determining factor?” Might as well get straight to the point.

  “There isn’t one.”

  “But you have done it before.” Suddenly he felt like they weren’t just talking about her hair.

  “Once or twice.” He made a turn. And then another.

  “Did it go well?”

  “One did, one didn’t.”

  He pondered that. Wondered if she knew they were really talking about sex.

  “We didn’t talk about where we were going to go,” he said. Wanting badly to go with what he’d mentally termed option B sometime during the past couple of days.

  She was in nice quality white capri pants and a red, white and blue crop-sleeved cotton tunic, with blue sandals and a big red, white and blue cloth purse.

  If she thought the ensemble in any way hid, or detracted from, the lovely curves she was hiding, she was dead wrong.

  “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  So...option B, it was?

  “You want to go back to my place? I’ve got a couple of steaks, some potatoes we can put on the grill. And veggies, too. We could sit out at the fish pond, have a glass of wine...”

  He’d wired the backyard for music. They’d be alone. His bed was close by. No chance Tressa would find them out and about if she happened to be scouring Santa Raquel eateries.

  He didn’t think she’d go that far. Not anymore. She’d learned her lesson on that one.

  But he’d be able to relax more if she could see his truck in his driveway in the event she did another drive-by. He knew she was checking up on him, so it just made sense not to rev her engines if he could help it.

  “I’d actually prefer that,” Lacey said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not as much into having a lot of people around me as my sister is.”

  There it was again...her comparing herself to Kacey. Funny how people couldn’t see themselves as they really were.

  * * *

  INSTEAD OF THE usual blue jeans and various work shirts she’d seen him in, Jem was wearing black jeans and a white polo shirt for the evening. It looked like he’d shaved, too. The nights he’d come to her house to work he’d had a very definite five-o’clock shadow. His dark hair was as natural looking as always...

  Good thing he didn’t wear the polo shirt to work. It was lethal. Not only did it accent the breadth of his shoulders and chest, it showed off the dark hair beneath it. Made her want to run her fingers through it.

  People slept together on first dates all the time.

  She never had. And wouldn’t. But if this was going to be her only chance, if she did it before she was in too deep...

  Stop it.

  “You like your steaks rare?” he asked, standing by the impressive outdoor kitchen he’d built. It had a sink with running water, a small refrigerator—from which he’d taken a bottle of wine—and a bottom cupboard that contained not only the two wineglasses they were using, but various other drinking vessels, as well. Small plastic ones included.

  And there was the grill. Infrared. With two burners off to the side.

  “I like them medium,” she said. “Kacey’s the rare girl.”

  He closed the grill. “You did it again.”

  “Did what again?”

  “Compared yourself to your sister.”

  She hadn’t noticed.

  “Why do you do that?”

  She shrugged and took a sip of wine. She was having a good time, was alone with a man who was affecting her like none other, was filled with anticipation and a tad bit of naughty. Something more in tune with Kacey than herself...

  She’d just done it again.

  “It’s natural, I guess, when you grow up side by side with another human being who looks exactly like you do.”

  He sat down, touching his knee to hers. Could have been an accident, but he kept it there and took a sip of his wine. A light merlot.

  “The curious thing is that you always seem to come off on the bad end of the comparison.”

  She could have been back onstage with lights shining so brightly on her that she couldn’t see anything in front of her. He saw too much.
<
br />   She felt naked. Raw.

  A tad bit defensive.

  “You know Kacey,” she said, sipping more quickly than she otherwise might have done. “She glows. It’s not her fault. Not anything she even wants. But it’s always been that way.”

  “She’s the sunrise. You’re the sunset. Both are equally spectacular.”

  Oh, my God. Had he just said that? She stared at him. She loved sunsets, thought them the most stunning of all the natural wonders...

  She was going to cry.

  “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a sunset guy.”

  Lacey blinked. And blinked again. He got up to turn the steaks—on purpose, she’d bet, giving her a second.

  “I like my steak medium, too, by the way.”

  She knew what he was doing. And if she hadn’t already been falling in love with him, as Kacey kept asserting, she started right then. Falling hard. And fast.

  People fell in love at first sight. And she...

  Afraid, she knew she had to stop the downward hurtle. “People have always preferred Kacey to me,” she told him. If he was going to be blind, she at least needed to tell him what he wasn’t seeing. Better now than later. “From acting directors to the high school prom committee—both junior and senior years—to...men.”

  “Or maybe it was just that she was the easier one to reel in.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If you see a doughnut right up on the front of the tray, and there’s another equally delicious-looking one in the back, which one are you going to take?”

  “The one in front.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Kacey and I aren’t doughnuts on a tray.”

  “She’s accessible. You aren’t so much.”

  She sipped and eyed him, wanting so badly to fall under his spell. To believe what he was telling her. “You’re saying I’m hard to get.”

  “I’m saying you’re more discreet. Which makes you more interesting to a discerning guy like myself.”

  She was in severe danger of adoring this man.

  And his wine, of which she helped herself to a little more, with hands that shook.

  “When Mom and Dad called for us, they always said her name first.”

  “Who was born first?”

  “Believe it or not, I was. For six minutes and ten seconds, I was the only one of me.”

  “You’re still the only one of you.”

  She knew that. More now that she’d moved out on her own. And she was lonelier since then, too.

  “I love having my sister around,” she said. And was just discovering how much. When her resentment of Kacey had begun, she didn’t know, but she knew it was gone. “I miss her like crazy.” The wine had to be loosening her tongue.

  And her brain, too.

  “I didn’t realize how much coming second all the time had affected me.”

  “Who got better grades?”

  “I did.”

  “So you didn’t come second there.”

  “Yeah, I guess, but grades were never that big of a deal in our household.” She and Kacey were already earning enough to support themselves before they’d entered high school. “You know, it’s one thing if your sister is taller than you, better endowed, with prettier features...you get that fate gave you other graces. Hopefully. But to have your looks be exactly the same—from the same egg—and still be overlooked...”

  She sounded pathetic and wouldn’t blame him if he was second-guessing his choice of sisters. A part of her almost hoped he was.

  It would make life so much easier. Safer.

  “Would you rather be Kacey?” He was studying her.

  “Of course not. Her life would drive me crazy.”

  “Plus you prefer softer shades to brilliant white.” Information gleaned from their paint-chip expedition the week before.

  “Yep.”

  “Just think how unhappy you’d be, then, if you’d been the sunrise.”

  Something new and beautiful flowered within her. In spite of herself.

  Lacey smiled at him over the top of her wineglass.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  HE THOUGHT ABOUT having sex with her. About once a minute. Interspersed with keeping his mind on their conversation. More when they weren’t actually talking, like when she bent over to look in the pond to meet Levi’s goldfish—all of which had names. She learned them, too.

  He thought about sex with her a lot as they ate and she slipped the fork between her lips and back out again.

  But he thought of a lot of other things, too. Like how much he wanted to ask her out again, to have her over again.

  Alone. And when Levi was home.

  They talked a little bit about the world, society. Mostly in terms of bringing up a child in tumultuous and rapidly changing times. Her views mirrored his, and he hadn’t even told her where he stood. Not that that surprised him.

  He had no idea who up there was in charge of this stuff, but he actually had the thought that maybe she had been picked especially for him.

  He also knew that he was getting way ahead of himself.

  She’d agreed to have dinner with him, not get married.

  Not that he was getting married, either. He just wanted...more.

  Sex, yes, but even more than that.

  The sun had set. Their dishes were empty—Jem had eaten the last couple of bites of steak from her plate. They each had a little wine left in the bottom of their glasses. There was some in the bottle, too. Enough to take inside with them.

  “What time did you tell Kacey we’d be home?” Levi was going to bed at Lacey’s and probably wouldn’t even wake up when Jem transported him to his car seat and then to his bed at his house. Even if he did, he’d go right back to sleep.

  “I didn’t. She said stay out as late as we want.” She smiled in the way that made him think she was hiding something. Or enjoying a private thought.

  He wanted in.

  “What did she really say?”

  “That she didn’t want me to ruin the evening with a timetable. I’m supposed to relax and just let everything flow.”

  He nodded. “I like that.”

  “How am I doing?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I think we’re flowing along pretty well.”

  He grinned. He knew. But it was still good to hear.

  “Do you ever get angry?” He just had to ask.

  “Of course! Everyone does.”

  Watching her beneath the soft outdoor lighting he’d installed, he said, “I want to see you in a bad mood.”

  The words didn’t sound anything out loud as they had in his mind. He just couldn’t imagine Lacey screaming trash like Tressa did. Like his older sister, JoAnne, had when he’d been growing up and their parents went out and left her in charge.

  “What? You want to see me in a bad mood? Why?”

  The look she was giving him could have made him feel odd. Except that it seemed warm somehow. Maybe he needed to slow down on the wine.

  “They say you don’t truly know someone until you’ve seen them at their worst. I want to really know you.” Now, that had come out as he’d meant it to.

  “So...you show me your worst and I’ll show you mine.”

  He grinned. “I don’t think I can find it right now.”

  “Me, either.”

  Leaning forward, he reached for her and pulled her toward him. She stood, and so did he. They were just standing there, looking at each other.

  “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You’ve seen...”

  With a finger to her lips, he silenced her.

  “But
it’s true, Jem,” she said softly, her gaze seeming to implore him to understand. “Life’s hard enough to deal with without hiding from the truth. One of the things you learn as an identical twin is that you are not original.”

  “But you are individual, Lacey. I know Kacey. I’ve seen her. Spent a lot of time with her. And she’s beautiful. Sweet. Kind. But I look at you, I see into your eyes, and there’s...more. Your eyes show me the essence of you, the person. Not just the body with features identical to your sister’s. You could dress like Kacey and she could dress like you and I’d know you instantly.”

  He had no doubt of that. He just wasn’t sure how to convince her. And sensed it was vital that he do it.

  With both hands, he pushed the hair back from her shoulders, let his fingers trail down her arms to her waist. Beneath the loose tunic. To the smooth skin he’d yet to see.

  Lacey’s hands were on his hips, almost on top of his belt. And when he moved forward, she tilted his way, into him, touching his lips as he touched hers. Pressing into him. They were melting. Her. Him.

  He’d imagined starting off slowly—testing her waters, moving cautiously through the waves of desire. Tasting her lips and pulling back. Instead, her mouth opened—or his did—and their tongues were meeting as if they’d known each other their entire lives.

  His penis almost exploded. Hands shaking, he held on to her, thinking that he’d sit, pull her onto his lap. Ease a small bit of his excruciating pain.

  Or masochistically make it worse.

  And his doorbell rang. The sound came to him faintly at first. Almost something he could ignore. Until his brain computed what it had been. His lips left Lacey’s.

  “That was my doorbell.”

  “You expecting someone?” Her smile definitely belonged in his bedroom.

  “No.”

  The dread in his gut told him who it could be.

  If he left Tressa standing outside, with his truck in the drive, where he’d left it so she’d know he was home and relax and leave him alone, she’d keep ringing. Or worse, come around back. She couldn’t get through the privacy fence. But she could find a knothole to look through...

  “Probably just a neighbor, maybe with some misdelivered mail,” he said inanely, feeling like a two-timing jerk in a bad comedy. “I’ll be right back.”