His First Choice

He didn’t answer. His hand stilled on the truck, but he didn’t let go of it.

“You don’t lie, remember?” she said.

He sat there.

“Has someone told you that?”

The next time he glanced up, there were tears in his eyes. She had her answer.

“Levi...”

“Do I gotta tell?” His lower lip trembled.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “But you don’t have to tell me what you can’t tell. Just who told you not to.”

He didn’t say anything more. So she tried to make it easier on him.

“Was it your daddy?”

Chin on his knee, he shook his head.

“Was it Mara at school?”

Another shake of his head.

“Someone else at school?”

He shook his head again.

She thought about that broken arm. About where he’d been when it had happened. About a mother who never dropped her son off or picked him up from school.

“Was it your mommy?”

He didn’t respond. Not even a shake of the head.

Lacey had her answer.

* * *

THERE WERE SOME days a guy just needed a burger. The biggest, juiciest patty of beef he could find. And when a guy had a pint-size sidekick, it had to be at a place that served pint-size versions of the same.

Instead of taking Levi straight to preschool after their meeting at social services, Jem turned their truck in the opposite direction and drove until they landed at the beach. At Uncle Bob’s—one of his and Levi’s favorite spots.

Lacey Hamilton had told him basically nothing when she’d come into her office alone less than twenty minutes before. He’d been about to say a whole lot, until she’d explained that Levi was with a coworker of hers, looking at her goldfish, and would be along in a second.

“Can I play in the sand?” the boy asked as he unhooked his seat belt.

“Yep.”

Levi climbed out of his car seat in the back and made his way to the front of the truck to get out with Jem.

Jem had been thinking about making the little guy wait until he opened the back door to get him out, but figured Levi would be opening doors on his own—exiting them without wanting his father close—soon enough. He swung the boy up on his hip and carried him toward the entrance.

It was a testimony to their dual state of mind when Levi put his arms around Jem’s neck and rode the whole way in. Most days he’d have been pushing his feet against Jem’s thighs, eager to be down and on his own.

“I don’t have school today, do I?” Levi asked as they waited to be shown to their table. He’d requested one by the big sandbox play area. Tuesday before noon and the place was already crowded.

“Yeah, you do,” he said. He wouldn’t have if Jem wasn’t feeling overly paranoid about having his every move watched. He didn’t want someone thinking that he was suddenly changing his schedule, afraid to take his son to day care, for fear of what someone might report.

Not that he thought, for one second, that Mara or any of the ladies at the day care would report him for abuse. No, he’d pretty much figured out it was either the hospital, because they had to report frequent hospital visits, as he’d learned last night during his reading—Levi had been to the emergency room six times—or Tressa.

She’d wanted to have sex the previous weekend. He hadn’t been interested enough to pull off the pretense, but had thought he’d made a pretty good excuse. She’d seemed to roll with it at the time.

But his ex-wife had a tendency to be vindictive where he was concerned. Someone had to take the blame for the things that hadn’t gone right in her life. Might as well be him.

* * *

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?”