His First Choice

“So when he comes to pick up his son, I’m just to give him to him like usual?”

“Yes. If anything different needs to happen, you won’t be the one to police it. You just do your job and leave the rest up to me.”

“Will I hear from you again? I mean, if this turns out to be nothing, will you let me know?”

“Absolutely.” And the fact that the woman was asking told Lacey that Mara was on the up-and-up. Someone making a false report generally didn’t give consideration to the fact that it might be found to be false. Or want to be told if it was.

But she had to ask, “Other than seeing them through day-care-related activities, have you ever associated with either Mr. or Mrs. Bridges?”

“No, ma’am.” Straightforward sincerity—Lacey liked that.

“And will you have a problem handing Levi over to his father?”

“Not if you tell me it’s okay to do so.”

The buck stopped with her. She hadn’t understood, when she’d signed on to this career, that one wrong decision on her part could get a child killed. And still, there wasn’t any other job, any other life, she’d rather have.

“It’s okay,” she said now. But only because she knew she had enough time to intervene, to get to the day care and put other plans in motion, if upon further investigation she decided differently. The day was young yet.

And obviously, since he’d dropped his son off on schedule as usual, Bridges wasn’t currently posing a flight risk. She wanted time to do some searching before he was onto her. “Just one more thing,” she added. “For now, just until I tell you differently, please don’t say anything to anyone, other than possibly a coworker where appropriate, about your conversation with me.”

“Of course not. I don’t want anyone to know it was me.”

Lacey understood. And hung up filled with mother-bear determination, doing her best to ignore the heavy sadness lurking within her.

Chasing down abusive parents, stopping them, was her life.

And she was good at it.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9fb0d1fe-e267-57ef-853b-e2f6fb154aee)

JEM WASN’T IN a great mood. Levi’s cast was putting them a bit off their game, and while he was certainly up to the challenge, his son had not yet mastered the art of dealing with frustration. Or disappointment, either. May in Santa Raquel meant T-ball, and since they’d started a new five-game program for four-year-olds, Levi had been determined to play. Tryouts were happening that very night and his little boy was sitting at the table with a partial plate of spaghetti, wearing it and a frown.

“I wanna go,” Levi said, the sound that curious mixture of baby voice and male determination giving Jem’s heart a bite every time he heard it. Had he ever been that bent on anything when he’d been young? That unwavering? Or that damned cute? Sure didn’t feel like it.

But then his upbringing had been different from Levi’s. He’d been spoiled rotten, loved to distraction by both his parents and raised at home. Not at day care. He’d never had to fight for anything.

Not that Levi didn’t have everything he needed, as far as physical wants went. Difference between him and his son was the constancy of a mother’s love, and growing up at home. Tressa loved Levi every bit as much as Jem’s mother had loved him. She just wasn’t the constant type.

Still, none of that had to do with playing ball.

“You want to go watch other boys play when you know you can’t?” he asked, feeling cruel. But better say the words and stop the train before it crashed. Because taking that young man to a T-ball field and expecting him not to throw a tantrum when he was told he couldn’t play with a cast on his arm—something Jem had been telling him repeatedly since the night before when it had dawned on Levi that there were worse things than the pain in his arm—was definitely a train wreck in the making.

“I can try,” Levi said, his tongue still struggling over his r a little bit. The tiny bit of baby left in him. Jem would miss it when it left, but knew, too, that it had to do so.

“No, you can’t, son,” he said now, taking his son’s pint-size fork and turning it in the spaghetti left on Levi’s plate. If he’d had his way, the pasta would be cut in little pieces, like he’d been doing since he’d first introduced the boy to table food. But part of Levi’s new insistence that he wasn’t a baby anymore and could do everything like Daddy did was an adamant refusal to eat spaghetti cut up in little pieces. Hence the food on his clothes. “You know the rules. You can’t play because your cast puts other kids in danger. You could accidently hit one of them in the head with it.”

Not to mention the fact that he could trip over his feet and fall on his way to first base and do further damage to a very tiny arm that was already broken in two places below the elbow.

Handing the filled fork to his son, Jem clamped down on his own negative emotions where the whole thing was concerned. His weren’t as easy to deal with as his son’s were. Not in his shoes, at any rate. Anger didn’t sit well with him. He’d grown up in a home where talk was the way to resolve issues. Where an open forum of understanding took the stage when there were difficulties. Or time-outs did.

Aggression was for hard work. For athletics where appropriate. For protecting those you loved.

Not for circumstances beyond your control. Or the control of others. It wasn’t Tressa’s fault that Levi had climbed up her bookcase trying to get a video he wanted to watch, or that as she’d grabbed his arm to help him down, he’d slipped and she’d lost her grip.

Just because he’d expect a mother to know that you grabbed a child around his middle, not by the arm, to steady him didn’t meant that Tressa would automatically think to do so.

Taking the fork, Levi ate, but the sustenance didn’t relieve his frown any.

“I thought we’d go for ice cream for dessert,” Jem said, winging it now. “Like we were going to do after tryouts. You can still eat ice cream with a cast, can’t you, buddy?”

Levi shrugged.

“And as soon as the cast comes off, we’ll set up our own tee in the backyard and play every night if you want to.”

He’d been planning the tee and batting net as a present for Levi’s fifth birthday, if his son loved the sport as much as he’d thought he was going to after playing a few games.

“I don’t want to.” The succulent tone took away any validity Jem would have given to those words.

“You want to help me with the boat?” He was, very slowly now that he was a single dad, building a boat out in the second car portion of his garage. Nothing big or fancy. But one that would be seaworthy. If he ever got it done. “We can work on sanding the wood for the bow together.”

Normally he saved boat building for the times when Levi was with his mother. It could be dangerous business, depending on what he was doing. And it helped him pass the time that the boy was away, without pacing a path in his carpet.

“I don’t want to.”

Levi attempted to wrap spaghetti—clearly a work in progress—and raised the fork backward to his mouth, balancing a lone noodle until it nearly reached its goal before sliding off the fork onto his lap—leaving a bit of red sauce on the table as it bounced by.

The boy wrapped again, lowered his head to his plate and slurped up the pasta on his fork, creating a ring of red around his lips.

“Good job, sport,” Jem said, raising his hand in the air for the high five that Levi generally landed with a meaty slap when he accomplished a task. “That was a whole bite!”

The boy shrugged. He didn’t high five. He didn’t even look up.

Sliding from his seat to crouch on the floor by his son’s chair, Jem moved his head until he could look directly into his son’s downcast gaze. “You mad at me, son?”

Levi shook his head.

“You sure seem mad.”

Another shake of the head, and then those big blue eyes—so like his mother’s—filled with tears. “I wanna play T-ballllll,” he wailed and, throwing himself at Jem, started to sob. “You said I could and we been waiting and I wanna play balllll,” he said again, smearing red sauce all over both of them as he clutched Jem with his dinner-caked pudgy little hands, cast slung around the back of Jem’s neck.

“I know you do, son,” Jem said, standing with his son clutched to his chest, wishing he could make the world right for the little boy, and hating the fact that he couldn’t.

And knew that particular pang was probably only just beginning to be a force in his life. One that was going to follow him to the grave, no doubt.

There was a hurricane storm of tears, and then they dried up.

“Is it time for ice cream yet?” the boy asked, pulling away to play with the top button of the now-stained white dress shirt Jem had worn with his jeans to work that day—along with the tie he’d discarded the second he’d climbed into his truck afterward.