* * *
LEVI CHATTERED ABOUT building a sand castle while they waited for the burgers and fries Jem had ordered. Not only were they by the big sandbox, the hostess had seated them at a table with a view of the beach.
Jem would have loved to spend the day out there. Playing in the sand with his son. Building castles. Or surfing the waves like he used to do. Before he’d met Tressa, become a husband—and then a father.
“What’s a twin?” Levi’s foot, swinging beneath the table, caught Jem on the knee. The boy’s chin barely reached the top of the table, but he’d been pretty particular about not wanting a booster seat.
He was a big boy and not a baby, at least that day.
“A twin?” he asked, giving his son his full focus.
“Mmm-hmm.” Levi’s chin lifted. “Lacey said she has a twin. What’s a twin?”
An immediate vision sprang to mind. Not one but two of the beautiful blondes, hair down, of course...
What in the hell was it with him? He was bordering on disrespectful the way he kept picturing the woman.
The next second he was shrugging off his propensity for doing so. He was a guy. It was what guys did.
Not that he could remember the last time he’d mentally undressed a woman he’d just met...
“A twin is someone who has a brother or sister who was born at the same time they were,” he said.
“With a different mommy and daddy?” the boy asked, screwing up his nose like he did when he wasn’t understanding something.
“Nope. With the same mommy and daddy.”
“You said I came out of Mommy’s tummy.” Technically, he hadn’t offered up that technical tidbit to a four-year-old child. Tressa had, one night when she’d been explaining to Levi why he was hers and why he should want to spend more time with her. Jem had been left to explain, as best he could, what she’d meant.
“That’s right,” he said now.
“Does everyone come out of a mommy’s tummy?”
Obviously his lesson had lacked some pertinent details. “Yes.” He waited. The last time they’d dealt with this topic, he’d answered Levi’s questions and left the rest for when the boy wanted to know more.
Thanks to Lacey Hamilton needing to tell his son about her birth situation, now was apparently the time for more. As if the day wasn’t already challenging enough.
Both little feet beneath the table were swinging now and softly kicking him. Jem thought about reaching down to stop them, but chose to take the blows instead. If Levi didn’t expunge his energy one way, he’d find another.
Levi’s gaze followed a waiter with a tray full of ice cream sundaes and Jem was pretty sure they were done with the topic. He was ready to ask his son if he wanted a sundae for dessert, in spite of the fact that they didn’t do dessert at lunchtime, when Levi turned back to him.
“Lacey’s mom had two babies in her tummy at one time?”
“Yep.”
“How come my mommy didn’t have two babies at one time?”
Levi had talked a time or two about having a baby brother or sister. So far Jem had avoided the hows and why that couldn’t happen, saying only that mommies and daddies had to be married to have babies. A weak excuse if ever there was one.
“Because you took up so much room, silly,” he said now and grinned for real when he saw their waitress heading toward them with two burgers. One big and one small.
As expected, Levi moved on from the whole twin thing as he ate. Talking about playing in the sand again. And about cars. He wanted a blue one with turbo twin spoilers like the one he’d played with that morning.
“It was really cool, Dad.”
Jem promised him the car. Knowing that on any other day he’d have given Levi some task to complete to earn the toy that he wanted.
Levi seemed to have shaken any of the trepidation he’d had after his encounter in Lacey’s playroom.
But Jem couldn’t shake his awareness of Lacey Hamilton from his mind quite as easily.
And wondered what it had been like for her, growing up with a built-in best friend. Wondered if her twin was a brother or a sister.
Wondered, too, why he gave a damn.
LACEY’S LIFE WAS her work. She didn’t try to hide the fact or apologize for it. She’d made choices and was at peace with them. She liked her life.
She hadn’t grown up thinking she’d be a career woman. She’d gone to college more because it was expected of her than because she had career goals to pursue. But time, experience, clarified things.
As she drove through the streets of Santa Raquel on Tuesday, mingling with rush-hour traffic, Lacey followed the instructions from her GPS.
She hadn’t known, until the summer before her sophomore year in college, when she’d had to declare a major, that she was even going into social work. She’d always had a way with children. And her aptitude test had scored measurably higher for a career that involved working primarily with children. Science and math weren’t her thing, so that had ruled out anything in medicine.
“In zero point two miles you will be arriving at your destination. On the right.” The slightly accented female voice came through her sound system.
When she’d been little, Lacey had assumed she’d just grow up and be a mom someday. That thought had never really changed. It, like so much in her life, had just slowly drifted apart from her. There’d been nothing that stood out as a conscious realization of what her life would be. She’d just become what she was.
A woman married to her career.
One who was fulfilled, satisfied. One who contributed to society in a positive way.
And who was financially secure, too.
Really, if one had a choice, who wouldn’t want to be her?
Pulling up in front of the little cottage that would have looked more in place on the beach than on the nondescript street in an older neighborhood on the outskirts of town, Lacey picked up her tablet, turned it on and opened the file she’d created the day before. And then opened the document that was, as of yet, mostly blank.
The next half hour would be critical. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes as she met the woman who quite possibly was abusing Levi Bridges.
* * *
“SOMEONE’S HERE, JEM, I gotta go.”
Heart
