Tressa could drain blood from a turnip.
But not from him. Not anymore.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in...ever...Lacey had to fight an urge to leave work right on time that next week. She did her job as well as always. She took time for casual conversation with her coworkers—keeping connected to what mattered most—and volunteered for extra duties.
But while she gave her all to these activities, as usual, she struggled with the idea that she had a sister at home who had to be kept under control. Now that Jem was in the picture.
He was there three nights that week when she got home, as she’d known he was going to be—Kacey’s arrangements, not hers.
Her sister was paying for the job Jem had been hired to do. Technically he was working for her, and she wanted things well under way before she had to get back to Beverly Hills and the taping of the next season of The Rich and Loyal. Hard to believe that they were already well into Kacey’s second week in Santa Raquel.
Lacey’s driving need to be home had nothing to do with keeping her sister from being alone with Jem. She swore that fact to herself every single day as she refused to give in to the drive to get home before Jem arrived. She only wanted to make certain that she was a part of the choices being made for the home she owned and would be living in.
A couple of times she acknowledged to herself that while Jem’s guaranteed eventual response to Kacey didn’t matter to her, she didn’t trust Kacey not to tell Jem more about her than Lacey wanted him to know.
That her sister was on a mission to get Lacey hooked up with a man she was truly hot for went without question. Kacey openly admitted to the plan to Lacey.
That didn’t mean she was going to be successful. She wasn’t. Kacey had no control over men’s reactions to her. Or to Lacey.
Which was why there was no need for Lacey to try to minimize Jem’s alone time with her dazzling sister. Nothing was going to change the fact that Lacey just didn’t measure up in the exuding department.
At least not practically speaking.
What the week did do was show Lacey how much her sister loved her. She knew, anyway, but, still, it filled her heart, and broke it, too, to see Kacey trying so hard to be invisible. Didn’t matter what she wore in the makeup or clothes department, didn’t matter what she did with her hair, Kacey entered a room with her eyes open and people were drawn to her.
It wasn’t her fault. There was nothing either of them could do about it.
Maturity had brought that knowledge to Lacey’s heart.
Moving away, having a life of her own where the two of them weren’t being compared, where she wasn’t always seen side by side with her sister, had been her way of dealing with reality. Of finding her own peace. Her sense of self and a chance to be truly happy.
And a chance to let Kacey be happy, too. Feeling guilt for something you couldn’t help was excruciating. Hurting the one who was a part of you from the womb wasn’t something you could ever be at peace with.
Jem measured and brought computerized drawings. Lacey signed city permit forms. Twice that week Kacey had pushed the two of them—Lacey and Jem—out the door to go look at flooring, screens, paint swatches, while Kacey entertained Levi at Lacey’s house.
She’d chattered about the house. Asking questions about the framing process. Pouring the floor, leveling it. Running electric. Keeping her mind focused so it didn’t run away with her.
He cooperated nicely. Answering questions. Explaining in detail—with utmost patience with her ignorance. Making suggestions, based on what she said she wanted, not on his own tastes.
She didn’t even know his own tastes.
Or anything new about him. Other than that he was a very patient man. And clearly very knowledgeable about his business.
And that was as it should be.
They didn’t mention Levi. She couldn’t. Not for any ethical reason, but because it didn’t feel right to her, discussing a former investigation. He didn’t mention his son, either, which she found a bit odd. Parents generally went on and on about their youngsters, finding every normal developmental advancement a miracle and oftentimes accomplished better than anyone had ever done it before.
She put his reticence down to the fact that she’d represented a chance that Levi could be taken away from him. But in his shoes, she’d have been glad for a chance to mention the boy in the nonthreatening setting, conveying the sense of normalcy that Jem wanted her to know existed within the walls of his home.
“How long is your sister staying?” He broke protocol—asking a personal question—as they left the home repair superstore he’d taken her to just before closing Thursday night, after she’d been more than an hour late getting home. He’d wanted her to take a look at retractable shades, and to consider windows, as well, for the two screened sides of the new room, so that she could use the space year-round.
He’d already talked her into including a heating duct. She’d have to have heat and air to include the square footage in her home’s value assessment.
It also meant raised taxes, but not enough to make the trade-off a bad idea.
“I’m not sure,” she said now, feeling suddenly deflated in spite of the fact that she’d been expecting questions about Kacey. It had only been a matter of time. “She’s got another couple of weeks until she has to go back to work. I’m hoping she’ll be with me that long.”
“You two really lived together until you were thirty?”
“Yep.”
“What about relationships?”
What about them? Defensiveness sprang forth, but she wasn’t susceptible to it anymore. “We had them,” she said, assuming, she hoped, a Kacey smile as she answered lightly.
“But neither of you married.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“That’s a bit personal, don’t you think?” She could be Kacey when she needed to be. Like a lot of identicals, they’d done their share of switching places and fooling people as they’d been growing up. She just had to make sure she didn’t make eye contact.
It was the eyes that gave them away.
“It’s just... You’re both so beautiful and...”
Lacey actually got hot from the inside out. Which brought to mind the complaints her mother had made a year or two ago as she’d gone through middle-age flashes.
“Why this sudden interest in our love lives?” Her tone held authority, not come-hitherness. She was Lacey again. Because there was no point in trying to be anyone else.
“My interest isn’t sudden.”
Head whipping to the side, pins pulling against her scalp as the twist she’d put in her hair that morning moved, Lacey looked at him.
Her question had clearly not been an invitation. If he was making fun of her...
He wasn’t smiling. Not even close.
What was going on here?
“I don’t have a love life,” she said slowly. Was he seriously interested in her love life?
No. It was Kacey’s he wanted to know about. Wow. Crazy that it took her a second to figure that out. The year and a half living apart from Kacey had softened her brain.
And...Jem was a nice guy. A truly nice guy. He’d pay attention to Lacey out of genuine interest. There were a lot of nice guys out there. They couldn’t help gravitating toward Kacey...
“I don’t believe you.” He’d stopped at a light and was looking directly at her. Kind of like Kacey did when her sister was telling her something without words.
She’d given him the perfect opening to ask about what he really wanted to know—her sister’s love life.
“It’s...true.” She stared back at him.
The light turned green. He pushed the accelerator.
And her heart sped up.
&nb
sp; CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY FRIDAY JEM had a building permit in hand and was looking forward to the project at Lacey’s like he used to look forward to working on his boat. He’d be doing the work mostly by himself. He hadn’t put labor in the bid.
Which meant he was going to have to work after hours.
It also meant that Lacey would be home while he was there. He’d like things just to have worked out that way, but couldn’t kid himself. He’d planned the entire venture, down to starting while Lacey’s sister was still in town. Kacey seemed hell-bent on spending time with Levi.
That left Lacey to Jem. It was only going to take him a couple of weeks to get the work on her room done. Which gave him that long to get her to go out with him.
For some reason the goal—which generally took him seconds to accomplish when he met someone he wanted to date—seemed out of reach.
He showed up unannounced Friday night, just to tape the clear plastic envelope containing the permit to the front of the house.
Levi stood beside him as he stuck the envelope to the front window, where he was required to leave it displayed from before the job began until after it was complete and inspected by the city.
Before Jem could stop him, Levi reached up on tiptoe and pushed the doorbell. He didn’t even know the kid could reach that high.
“Levi!” he said. “We aren’t here for a visit.”
“I wanna see Kacey and Lacey. And they want to see me.” He stood there, arms folded against his chest, staring at the door.
It didn’t open.
“They’re not home.” He stated the obvious, his mind filling with an immediate picture of the two beauties walking side by side on the beach just blocks away. That gave him an almost undeniable need to get his ass down there before any of the hundreds of summer visitors—of the male beach-bum variety—hit on them.
“But I wanna see them!” Levi’s wobbly voice gave warning to a brewing storm.
“They aren’t home, son. There’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Why did we come now?” Instead of when the sisters were home, Jem filled in the blank.
“Because we had to drop off this permit so I can start work tomorrow morning...”
He knew as soon as he said the words that they were a mistake. He walked down one of the two steps from Lacey’s small porch to the paved walkway leading up to her house from the tree-lined street. Arms still firmly crossed, Levi stood his ground.
“I wanna come with you.”
He’d known what was coming as soon as he’d mentioned the next day’s work. And was now picturing two beautiful blondes coming home to a helpless construction worker on their front porch being worked over by an unhappy four-year-old in the throes of a tantrum.
Not a pretty sight.
Or something he needed his ex-caseworker to witness.
“Let’s go get some hamburgers for dinner and talk about that.” He cringed as he heard the bribe come out of his mouth. Levi loved burgers. And was allowed only one a week. He’d already had two, counting the one he’d had the previous Saturday at Uncle Bob’s.
“No.” Levi didn’t yell. He just shook his head and stood firm.
Jem considered picking him up at the waist like a sack of potatoes and carrying him kicking to the truck. Anything to get him out of that neighborhood before he caused a scene.
“Look, Levi. You know there are some things that I can’t change. No matter how much you want me to. Like having to go to the doctor once in a while for checkups.”
“He gave me a shot.” The boy’s opinion of that move was clear in both the tone of his voice and the way his nose scrunched and his chin got hard.
“And going to school is another one. You have to go even if we both want to stay home.”
“You have to go to work,” Levi said. Jem fell in love with the boy all over again. Levi was repeating the lesson Jem had given him when they’d had the tantrum about going to school. Everyone, no matter what their age, had to do their jobs. Either work or school. No one was allowed to just stay home, because then there would be people who needed help and no one to help them. And there would be no money to buy food for families.
“That’s right.”
“’Cause people die if they don’t eat.”
Close enough. “Right.”
“But Kacey and Lacey have food.”
“Kacey and Lacey aren’t home, Levi. That’s what I can’t change right now.”
“But I wanna see them.”
“They don’t know that. And they’re busy somewhere else.” He took Levi’s noncasted hand and gave it a gentle tug, breathing a silent but very big sigh of relief when the boy didn’t snatch it back.
“Where?” Levi joined him on his step.
“I don’t know.” He and his son took the next step together.
“We can find them.”
“Can we discuss this in the truck?”
“I want a hamburger.”
Of course.
“Then we’ll discuss it over hamburgers.”
Walking with purpose the rest of the way to the truck, Levi climbed into his seat as soon as Jem had the back door open.
“Dad?” he said as Jem climbed into the front seat, dreading the possibility of Kacey’s car coming around a corner. It hadn’t been parked in the drive. He’d known when he’d stopped that the women weren’t home.
“Yeah?” Jem asked, not sure he was going to like whatever had put the serious look on his son’s baby face again.
“Can you tell them not to put the pickles?”
He always did. Every single time.
“Yep.”
“’Cause I don’t like the pickles,” Levi stated emphatically, as though Jem didn’t already know, in great detail, every single one of Levi’s likes and dislikes.
Jem knew, which was why he could also expect—when Levi found out this was his weekend with his mother and that he was going there after dinner—the full-blown tantrum he’d just avoided.
* * *
“ARE YOU SURE?” Lacey walked beside her sister on the beach, staring at the sand their bare toes were kicking up. Her sandals hung from the fingers of her right hand. Her left hand was clenched.
“He said exactly those words.” Kacey’s tone was as subdued as it ever got. “‘Mommy shook me up and I throwed up.’”
Feeling the heat rising to her face, Lacey moved to the left and let the water wash over her feet as she walked. “Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”
“Remember that time on our birthday when Dad was whirling us around in the yard by our feet and you threw up?”
She did. Of course she did. Her stomach settled.
“And then right after Jem left last night, he called, remember? Because he’d had a message from the permit people and they needed an exact color match for the siding before they could approve the permit...”
And they’d talked for an hour. She’d felt bad about the fact that he was planning to work through his weekend. He’d told her he’d have been working, anyway. Then she’d felt bad for taking him from someone else’s job and he’d told her about the boat in his garage.
She’d wanted to know if it was a ski boat. He’d said it was a catamaran—so he could take it on the ocean—but told her that his family had had a ski boat when he was growing up.
Which had led to where he was from, and from there to the fact that he had a close-knit family back in Georgia. It painted a picture of him that she liked. But was way too much information.
“You were asleep when I got off the phone,” she said now, remembering. Kacey had had a headache the day before. Lacey hadn’t been surprised to see her sister in bed early.
“Then today, I remembered something he’d been talking
about earlier in the week and it’s clear that the two go together.”
Lacey made a mental reach to find her professional self. “What did he say earlier in the week?”
“He asked me if I’m mean when I wake people up. I said no, of course not! He’d been talking about that show he’s so into. We really need to see that at some point, by the way. He’s got me curious. Anyway, I thought that was why he was asking. Then he says that Mommy shakes him awake when he has bad dreams. But Whyatt on Super Why! didn’t do that when someone had a bad dream...”
Levi thought his mother’s actions were mean? And he’d been looking to Kacey for confirmation?
“You think he had a bad dream and she shook him until he threw up?” She had to call Jem.
She couldn’t call Jem.
There was conflict of interest written all over that one.
She had to call Sydney, the social worker she shared cases with most often. They had the same philosophy, and Sydney was a newly added member of the High Risk Team started by the Lemonade Stand and would have access to immediate high-risk assistance from all professionals who could possibly be needed. Doctors, psychiatrists, police, hospital records.
If Lacey had screwed up and put that little boy at risk...
She’d called Ella Ackerman, the High Risk representative from the children’s hospital, too.
But Tressa could have taken Levi to other hospitals.
Or Jem could have.
She’d met Tressa.
There was no way that kind, gentle, self-deprecating woman would hurt her son. She’d given him up so her penchant for drama didn’t negatively affect his emotional stability...
People prone to drama were also prone to overreaction. Tressa had said she overreacted. To everything. Which made Jem crazy. Or something to that effect...
“We have to get back,” she said now, spinning around so quickly she almost lost her balance in the sand. “I have to make some calls.”
“I could just be overreacting here. This isn’t my business and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. But it’s been bothering me all day and Jem said Levi’s spending the weekend with his mother.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 63