The absolute last thing he wanted to do right then was leave Lacey standing out there alone.
The second last thing was to face Tressa.
So maybe it wasn’t her.
He hoped to God it wasn’t her.
He’d warned her about showing up at his place.
If she was there, it meant she was in a bad enough mood that she didn’t give a damn.
And that was not on his agenda for the evening.
Or any evening.
He knew before he got to the door that it was Tressa. He saw her car parked behind his truck in the driveway. Her way of blocking him in. Holding him captive to her.
Hurrying to the door, before she got more upset and insisted on searching his house to see what he was doing with their son there, he hoped to God his lips didn’t look kissed as he pulled open the door.
“What’s wrong?” he asked the second he saw her.
“Nothing. I just...wanted to see Levi.”
“He’s in bed, already asleep.”
“So, I can peek in on him.”
“No, Tressa. You know our agreement. My home is my space.” He was not going to let her drama into his world.
“I just want to see him, Jem. He gets his cast off soon and I just... I feel horrible that it happened, and...”
Her tears softened the steel around his heart. Tressa really did care. She loved Levi. And he knew how much she let things eat her up inside.
“You’ll wake him up, and since he knows he only sees Mommy at her house, he’ll be confused. Hasn’t he already been through enough?” He hated to use her own tactics against her, feeling dirty, like he was becoming her, but since he obviously couldn’t do as she wanted—mostly because Levi wasn’t in his room—she left him no choice.
A chair scraped against a paver outside. He realized, too late, that he’d left the sliding glass door open in his haste to prevent a Tressa meltdown.
Turning her sharp gaze from behind him, to Jem, she said, “You have someone here.”
Not now, Tressa. For God’s sake, not now.
“A buddy is out back sharing a beer with me.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jem.”
“Fine. I’m on a date. We just finished dinner.”
“With Levi in the house?” Her voice had already raised an octave, the sharpness growing more acute.
He wanted to help her. To make her see how she looked when she got this way. To hear how she sounded. He knew she didn’t mean it. And would be sorry later. She’d make it up to him.
Except that it just wasn’t possible anymore. Because he knew that no matter how sorry she was, there’d be another time. And so—God help him—he’d taken their son and walked out on her when she’d thrown out the divorce challenge one particularly exhausting Sunday afternoon.
“Single father’s date, Tressa. And it’s just dinner. Outside.”
“No. Don’t you pull that bullshit on me, Jem Bridges.” Tressa’s voice rose another octave. “You forget, I know you.”
He hoped none of his neighbors had their windows open. One of the reasons he’d made the stipulation that Tressa couldn’t come to his house was because he couldn’t stand the way people looked at him after one of her screaming episodes. Like he should somehow be able to stop her.
Like he must have done something pretty heinous to have upset her like that.
“You can’t wait to stick it in her, can you?” she spat. Literally. Her saliva landed on his chin. “You’re nothing but a whore, Jem Bridges. A whore! I worked like a dog, helping you get where you are, supporting all the long hours, the responsibilities I had to take on alone, while you climbed up in your world. And now that you’re the boss, what do you do? Do you take care of me? The one who had your back during the hard years? No. You walk out on me. On our family. So you can whore around. You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
“It’s not what you think, Tressa.” It wasn’t a one-night stand, a cheap liaison. But she’d like the truth even less. Because if Jem had another woman in his life, she’d lose even more control...
“I see that twinkle in your eye, Jem,” she said. “It hasn’t been there in a long time. I’d actually forgotten it. Until suddenly—ta-da!—here it is. Just like you to rub my face in it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tressa had no right looking into his soul. He’d taken all rights back from her when he’d left their marriage.
“You’re a damned loser, Jem. You know it, and so do I. She’s welcome to you.”
She turned to leave and Jem breathed a sigh of relief. Until she turned back. “Don’t you think you’re going to get away with this, Jem.” Her voice was lowered, but not enough. “I came over here to make love with you. Because I know it’s been a while for you and I know you have your needs, and how do you repay my kindness?” If a guy could die of the cringes, he’d be gone. “This is how you repay me? By tramping around on me? Well, forget it, buddy. You better hope you get some from her, because you sure as hell aren’t getting it from me. This door is closed.”
He’d heard that one so many times it didn’t even faze him. He only wished it were true. When was Tressa going to figure out that he couldn’t get it up for her anymore? Not even if he’d wanted to.
“I hate you,” she said. “If Levi weren’t asleep, I’d take him out of this house right now. He’s way too good for you, Jem. I wish to God you weren’t his father.”
She’d been back down the walk as she spoke. Reaching the grass, she turned and fled to her car.
But not before he’d seen the tears pouring down her face.
She was hurting. More than she could bear.
And he was sorry.
* * *
SHE HADN’T WANTED to overhear, had tried her best not to. But then, when she’d resigned herself to her fate, she’d tried to hear every word so that she could know what they were dealing with. She’d expected him to reappear as soon as the screaming stopped. She heard the front door shut and heard Tressa’s car starting up in the distance.
It was another two or three minutes before Jem reappeared. His gaze sought hers. And then moved away.
“I’m assuming you heard that?” he asked almost nonchalantly as he stacked their dirty dishes, silverware on top.
“Most of it.” All of it. But having counseled many people on the victim end of abuse, she wanted to spare him as much humiliation as she could.
Instead of sitting and talking to her like she expected, he carried their dishes into the house and came back for their wineglasses.
“Sorry about that, I just wanted to get them rinsed and in the dishwasher before stuff hardened.”
Since when did steak juice harden? But she understood. He’d needed time to collect himself.
He might be forgetting, but this wasn’t her first rodeo. Or even her fiftieth.
“And I’m sorry about back there, too.”
“You have no reason to apologize.”
Their wineglasses sat on the table, untouched. The bottle looked forlorn next to them.
“You ready to go?” He was still just standing there.
“If you want me to,” she said, not sure what was going on. Weren’t they going to talk about what had just happened?
He knew what she did for a living.
“Of course I don’t want you to, but I’m sure you want to. Come on, I’ll take you home.” He reached out a hand to her.
She ignored it. “If I wanted to go home, I’d say so, Jem.”
Even if he wanted her to go, she didn’t feel like she should. What she’d just witnessed... It had strengthened the suspicions she’d been having since Sunday. Mara was right. Levi was being abused. By his mother.
The woman was cl
early out of control.
She thought Jem was going to argue with her, insist on taking her home. He surprised her when he sat down.
“Kind of ruined the evening,” he said.
“Not unless we let it.”
His grin was forced.
And Lacey wasn’t sure what to do. She was too close. Couldn’t find her boundaries...
“Can I bring back the twinkle to your eye?” she asked. And immediately hated herself for the question. As if this was in any way about her.
He tilted his head. Looked at her. And smiled. A real smile. “You already have.”
“I’m glad.”
“Believe it or not, I am, too.”
He needed time. She didn’t like it, didn’t want to not help him, but she wasn’t a professional when she was with Jem.
She was a woman tuning in to the heart he was starting to show her. Or, if nothing else, a friend tuning in to a friend.
“You want to call it a night?” she asked then.
“No, but...yeah.” His gaze was direct, touching her as intimately as his lips had and far more deeply.
Lacey nodded, picked up their wineglasses and walked into the house, leaving him to follow with the bottle.
She couldn’t take away what had happened to him. Not just that night, but for however long he’d been a partner in an abusive relationship. But she could tend to him now. By listening to what he wasn’t saying.
Giving him what he seemed to need. Time to himself. To assimilate. To recover.
He collected his keys. She grabbed the oversize red, white and blue cloth bag Kacey had presented her with that evening when she’d returned from work. Her sister had spent at least part of the day shopping.
He turned off lights as they moved to the front of the house. She let herself out. He locked the door as he exited behind her.
He didn’t touch her. She didn’t walk close enough to him to risk contact.
Neither said a word as they drove home. Lacey wondered if their first date had been their last. If one perfect kiss was all she was ever going to know.
She wondered if he’d send a crew to build her birthday present.
She wondered what she was going to tell Sydney. And knew that she had to let Jem know that she’d be calling her coworker in the morning. She’d given her word. He’d tell her everything Tressa said, and she’d let him know before she called in a report.
When he pulled up in front of her house, she had the words ready to spill. She was going to call Sydney in the morning.
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” His question forestalled her.
“Yes.” Her answer came without forethought. But even if she’d taken time, she knew it would have been the same.
“We don’t have a lot of time before Kacey has to leave.”
“A week.”
“I very much want to share you with Levi,” he said. “But I need you to myself.”
“I understand.”
It was too much, too soon. And there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it.
“I’m sorry.”
Leaning over, she touched her finger to his lips. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
He looked like he was going to say more, but leaned over and kissed her instead. An intense, tongue-joining promise of a kiss. And then he walked her up to her front door, made small talk with her sister, collected his son so tenderly the boy didn’t stir in his sleep and was gone.
Lacey spent the night wondering how much of what she thought had happened really had or if she’d read too much into things, been clouded enough by the wine that she’d only felt as though she’d actually walked on cloud nine.
And knew that until she had a chance to talk to Jem again, she wasn’t going to say anything to anyone. Levi wasn’t going to be with his mother during the next twenty-four hours.
She had a little time to figure everything out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JEM CALLED TRESSA Thursday on his way home from work. He’d learned a long time ago that it was best to be proactive with her.
He knew it was vulnerability behind her crazy words, her need to try to control those she cared about. Her own little piece of the world.
She’d been abused from the time she was a toddler. Her parents had withheld love anytime she didn’t meet their expectations. And worse. She’d been hit regularly, locked in the laundry room for a couple of days at a time, even burned with her father’s cigarette once. But the worst, for her, was the emotional starvation.
He figured that was partially what made her so prone to drama. She had too much stored up inside of her. A lifetime of emotion that had had no outlet.
And now that she was no longer held captive, now that she was free, she had a desperate need to do all she could to keep her world the way she thought it should be.
He also knew that if he called her, she’d calm down. And it was best for Levi, for his overall development, if the mother who loved him, and whom he loved, was calm.
“Are you going out with her again tonight?” That didn’t bode well.
“Do you want to talk or do you want me to hang up?” He left the control up to her, but his message was clear, too. He wasn’t going to go through a replay of the night before.
“I want to talk.”
In his truck, on his way to pick up Levi, he nodded.
“I’m sorry, Jem.” The apology was a bit fragmented through his Bluetooth, but he’d known it was coming, too. Maybe had even called to collect it.
“I know.”
“It’s just... I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.”
“You keep by our rules and you’ll never have to find out.”
“But what if—and I’m not saying this is even a remote possibility in your life right now—but what if you ever do meet someone and want to marry again. She’ll have a say then, and I’ll lose...”
“Any woman I would ever marry would know, before she accepted my proposal, that you are my son’s mother and will always be a part of our lives.”
The words left a heavy weight on his shoulders. One he didn’t want. But he’d promised her a lifetime. For better or worse.
His son needed his mother because he loved her, had bonded with her, and because she loved him in a way no one else ever could.
“And I spoke the truth,” she was saying now. “I don’t mean to be so harsh, but I did give up everything to help you get where you are.”
He understood that.
“And you are a lot looser than I am. Since our divorce I haven’t slept with anyone but you, while you’ve had at least two other lovers that I know of.”
He’d had one. But that number could change soon. And was none of her business.
“I understand,” he said, because he did. She wasn’t going to admit how awful she’d been or take accountability. In her world, people used your mistakes against you. But he also knew that she was sorry.
“I need you to honor our agreement and stay away from my house, Tressa.”
“Why, because I ruined your little tryst with your whore friend?”
Every nerve in his body tightened. “I had dinner with a woman, period. That was all I had intended and all I did. You are the one who made it seem like something more.”
“Wait...” she said before he mustered the composure to hang up. “I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that.”
He took a deep breath. He needed peace more than he needed to be right.
“I’m sorry. I’m guessing you didn’t get much sleep last night.”
He hadn’t.
“I’m not saying that as a dig or an innuendo. I know that my drama unsettles you. I really do try to rein it in for you, Jem. We’re jus
t so different, you and I.”
“That we are.”
“But that’s not my fault.”
“I never said it was.”
“I know. You’re so good to me, Jem. And I...just need you to know that I know that. And that...I appreciate you so much.”
He started to relax. “I need you to stay away from my house.”
“I know. And I will. I promise. Amelia and I are going to the city tonight. She’s got tickets to a Broadway play. We’re going to spend the night in Beverly Hills and treat ourselves like queens.”
Thank God. Amelia was back in the picture. And Tressa was going to be a hundred miles away. A double gift. He could relax and give himself completely to his night with Lacey. Without worrying that he’d be bringing the wrath of Tressa down on her.
“What about work tomorrow?” He wasn’t going to keep supporting her. Alimony was up and he was done.
“I took a vacation day. But I do want to talk to you about that,” she said. “But not today. I’ve got to get packed and...”
“I have a question for you.” He was just curious.
“What’s that?”
“Did you call Amelia or did she call you?”
“She called me. And apologized, too.”
Tressa used to make him apologize for everything that happened between them, too. Until he’d finally refused to do so.
“So now I have a question for you,” she said.
And he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“This woman from last night...are you going to see her again?”
“Considering what she overheard last night, what do you think?” He could have out and out denied that he had another date. But the words stuck in his throat—as though they were somehow disloyal to Lacey. With his luck, fate would sic karma on him for the lie and take Lacey away from him.
“She was a little upset with you, huh?”
“It was a first date, Tressa. Wouldn’t you have been?”
Which made it doubly miraculous that Lacey had taken the whole thing in stride.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He didn’t think she meant it that time.
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