His First Choice

The best decision they’ll ever make

Lacey Hamilton is used to living in the background. Overshadowed her entire life, she stepped out of the Hollywood limelight and into the role she’s meant to play: a counselor, part of the High Risk Team started by The Lemonade Stand women’s shelter in Santa Raquel.

Her caseload leads her to the doorstep of Jeremiah “Jem” Bridges to rescue a little boy. She’s not supposed to fall in love with the rugged construction worker and his adorable son. Love and duty, though, don’t always agree. Especially when a truth is uncovered that neither she nor Jem is prepared to face.

“I want to see you in a bad mood.”

That didn’t come out the way Jem meant it to...

“What? Why?”

The look Lacey was giving him could have made him feel awkward. Except that it seemed warm. Maybe he needed to slow down on the wine.

“They say you don’t truly know someone until you’ve seen them at their worst. I want to really know you.” Now, that had come out right.

“So...you show me your worst and I’ll show you mine.”

He grinned. “I don’t think I can find it right now.”

“Me, either.”

Leaning forward, he reached for her. Pulled her toward him. She stood. And so did he. And they were just standing there, looking at each other.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

She shook her head. “You’ve seen...”

With a finger to her lips he tried to silence her.

“But it’s true, Jem,” she continued softly, her gaze imploring him to understand. “Life’s hard enough without hiding from the truth.”

Dear Reader,

This book is...not ordinary. I think it’s powerful. And emotionally compelling. And I hope so much you give it a chance. I can tell you why I think this, and hope this. I can describe Jem to you. He’s the hero of my heart. But I’m afraid if I say too much, you’ll move on without giving him a chance.

Jem’s a construction worker. Okay, yeah, he owns the business, and wears a shirt and tie to work every day. But he wears them with jeans. And he learned the business with his hands before he ever considered being the brains behind it all.

He’s alpha all the way. And he’s a single dad to a four-year-old I wish I could hug. He’s a good dad. Involved. Aware. And firm, too, when he needs to be.

And...Jem is...well... I hope you’ll give him a chance. I can’t imagine a romance reader not being glad they did.

Then there’s Lacey. Sometimes I wanted to just do her hair and makeup, force her into an attention-getting outfit and push her out the door. But she has Kacey for that. My job was to be patient. To listen. And tell her story. Her story touched me deeply. So here it is...

I love to hear from readers! You can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/tarataylorquinn and on Twitter, @tarataylorquinn. Or join my Friendship board, Pinterest.com/tarataylorquinn/friendship.

All the best,

Tara

www.TaraTaylorQuinn.com

His First Choice
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

An author of more than seventy novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering emotional and psychologically astute novels of suspense and romance. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America. She has won a Readers’ Choice Award and is a five-time finalist for an RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for a Reviewer’s Choice Award and a Booksellers’ Best Award. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you or someone you know might be a victim of domestic violence in the United States, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

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This book is dedicated to Tim Barney, who is Jem to me in so many ways...

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“MS. HAMILTON? THIS is Mara Noble calling from Busy Little Minds preschool...”

“Yes, Mara.” As a social worker employed by California Social Services in the child welfare department, Lacey Hamilton had familiarized herself with the reputations and locations of all of the child care facilities and schools in her district of Santa Raquel. Busy Little Minds was one of the best rated for both intellectual and emotional development. “What can I do for you?” While there was kindness in her words, there was no smile attached. If Busy Little Minds was calling her, chances were a serious issue was at hand.

With her phone on speaker behind the closed door of her private office, she opened a new document on her word-processing program.

“I have a little boy,” Mara said. “He’s four, and I suspect abuse...”

The woman knew her stuff. Issuing silent points to Little Minds for employee training, Lacey asked, “Is he there with you now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is he in need of medical attention?”

“No. He’s already had medical attention. His father took him to the emergency room at the Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital over the weekend.”

Call the hospital. And Ella. Ella Ackerman was the hospital’s representative to the High Risk Team, a group comprised of professionals from various fields that fought to prevent domestic violence deaths. Lacey was the team’s child protective services member.

“So right now he’s not in any immediate danger.” She went back to the checklist she knew by heart. Determine the immediate safety and medical condition of the child first.

“Not at the moment.”

Could the child be in imminent danger?

“Do you suspect the abuse took place in or outside the home?”

“It’s not here,” Mara said, her voice solemn and low, as though making sure she wasn’t overheard. “And as far as I can tell, he doesn’t have babysitters and is not in any other activities outside of ours.”

Parents? Lacey typed onto the blank page. Many of her colleagues still took notes by hand. She always took them electronically, even if she had only her smartphone with her at the time. As if engaging with technology gave her a tiny bit of the distance she had to maintain to be emotionally capable of doing her job.

“What about siblings?” she asked. “Are you aware of anyone in the home other than his parents?”

She had to assess the situation to determine which course of action to take: an immediate trip to Little Minds to secure the child within her care while she investigated, or the more preferred, less harsh approach of a call to his parents.

“No. He’s an only child. And...his parents are divorced.”

She wrote that word with a capital D. Sadly it showed up in more than 50 percent of her reports.

“Who has custody?”

“Our records indicate that they have shared parenting. Dad is the one who always drops him off and picks him up.”

She typed Father controlling? and then a few notes to herself, to be used later when she made an official report.

Now for the hardest part.

“Why do you suspect abuse?” Thousands of kids went to emergency rooms every day, because kids were naturally inquisitive, adventurous, without the wherewithal to calculate danger, making them prone to accidents.

“This morning he showed up with a cast on his arm. He says he fell, but he mumbles and looks down when he says it. We asked him what he was doing when he fell. He shrugged. No matter what we ask, he shrugs.”

“What did his father have to say when he dropped him off?”

“That he fell down.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s it. Mr. Bridges isn’t the chatty sort.”

More typing, ending with Father evasive?

Still, kids and broken arms went hand in hand. This one could have fallen off a bike, or from a tree. Not that many four-year-olds were climbing trees or riding bikes. But some did. And some fell from bunk beds, too.

“Anything else?” she asked, wanting to know why the woman thought this broken arm was different from the norm. A kid not talking about the incident wasn’t all that unusual. He very likely could have been into some kind of mischief and knew he was in trouble. If he’d climbed on a cupboard to sneak a cookie, for instance, or...

“Yes, Ms. Hamilton, I’m sorry. This is very difficult for me. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to make a call like this and...”

“I understand,” Lacey filled in, softening her tone, when the woman paused. Abused children were her business. Sometimes she lost sight of the world outside of her small circle, where coming face-to-face with the monstrous fact that heinous people abused children was an anomaly.

“We’ve had Levi since he was three months old. He started out in day care and then moved to preschool when he was two, which is a year earlier than we usually move them. He’s a precocious little guy. What I’m trying to say is that we know him. And in the past six months, he’s changed. A lot.”

She needed to know if there were other signs of physical abuse. But listened patiently. She didn’t want to lead her caller into saying something she might not have mentioned, giving it more weight than it deserved.

Lacey had been at this awhile. Going on ten years. She knew her business. And had given up hoping it would ever get any easier.

“He’s withdrawn, to the point of not playing well with others. He cries easily, rarely smiles. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh. He seems fearful. And...a couple of other times, he’s had bruises. Once on his torso. It had fingertip marks on it.”

She was pounding the keys hard, her lips pressed together. It could be nothing. Kids went through phases...

“Do you know if there’s been any changes at home? You said his parents are divorced. Do you know for how long?”

She’d ask the question again—and more—of the mother and father. Separately. She already knew, just from the little she’d heard, that she was going to have to interview them.

“Levi was one when his folks split. I remember because we had his first birthday party here with both parents present, at the request of his mother.”

“So you have met her?”

“Of course. I know her. She’s just never been the one to drop him off or pick him up on a regular basis. And I haven’t seen or heard from her in at least six months. I could check our sign-in records to tell you the last time she dropped off or picked up.”

“I would appreciate that.” Lacey typed as she talked. Was Mom isolated from the boy? Had she been threatened? Was she afraid to get help?

She’d seen it enough to expect such an outcome, but had certainly had many, many calls that, upon investigation, had turned out to be false reports.

“Where do Mr. and Mrs. Bridges work?” She needed as much information as she could gather, as quickly as she could gather it.

“He owns a contracting company. It’s a small one, but they build houses. Last I knew she was working at an investment firm, but I don’t think she’s doing that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“A while back Levi made a comment about his mother being the boss of a money place. I meant to ask Mr. Bridges about it, but I’m not always out front when parents pick up. I guess I just forgot.”

“Don’t you need work numbers of all of your parents?”

“Yes, but Mr. and Mrs. Bridges...they both asked that we always call him. They said because she dealt with money and couldn’t always take calls, but being the boss, he could get away for a few if he had to. We have a cell number for her in case of emergency when we can’t reach him.”

Control. Control. Control. She typed on.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to know?” she asked, her fingers pausing over the keyboard.

“It’s just... I notice a pattern. Levi isn’t an accident-prone kind of kid. He used to be boisterous, like a miniature version of one of those guys who’s confident and goes through life getting it right, you know? He almost had a swagger about him. He’d try anything, usually master it, assuming it was age appropriate, but with a certain kind of...grace. He focuses more than most kids his age. But every couple of weeks or so now, he shows up with skinned knees, or a scab on his chin. All explained by play. But...why doesn’t he ever fall down here? And why is it only every couple of weeks?”

Lacey’s fingers pounded. If she’d been playing the piano she’d grown up mastering, she’d have been bellowing out a crescendo.

“Do you know his shared parenting schedule?” she asked, careful to keep her tone neutral. With a lifetime of hiding hurt feelings, it was a part of the job that came naturally to her.

“No.”

Did Dad pick the boy up and take him to his mother? And then pick him up from her, as well? Had he threatened to take her to court for full custody if she balked at his rules?

She wondered. Maybe even suspected. But she didn’t know.

Which meant there was room for another explanation. A better scenario.

“There’s another thing,” the woman said. “His schoolwork is faltering. He did better last year, as the baby of the class, than he’s doing this year...” She talked about numbers and letters, pre-reading and easy reading. Following directions. Shapes and colors that had been mastered the year before seemed to be giving Levi some difficulty now.

“I guess maybe I’m overreacting,” Mara Noble said next. “But in all my years working in child care, I’ve never had the feeling I get about Levi. There’s something odd about that broken arm of his. He can’t tell me any details. He’s a smart kid, Ms. Hamilton. He’d know what he was doing when he broke his arm.”

“Sometimes trauma can wipe out immediate memory,” she said slowly. She typed Smart little boy, suspicious break.

“So you think I’m overreacting?”

“I think you did exactly as you are supposed to do. You suspect, you report. It’s the law.” There could be no doubt about that. Second-guessing could cost a child’s life. “You don’t have to be right, Mara,” she said, softening her tone more. “You just need to have reasonable suspicion, which you do. You did the right thing here. Thank you.”

“So...what happens next? Is Mr. Bridges going to know that I called? Because if he is...”

“Does he frighten you?”

“He never has before.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m just... I love this kid, you know? We aren’t supposed to have favorites, and I care for all my kids. I don’t play favorites. But this little guy stole my heart the first day he was here.”

Lacey couldn’t afford to love her kids that way. Couldn’t let emotion cloud her judgment. Though to do her job she did have to care. Be aware. And sensitive...

“In answer to your question—no, Mr. Bridges will not know, at least not immediately, where the report came from. It could just as easily have come from the hospital.”

Which was the first call she was going to make, to find out why a report hadn’t been made and if there’d been any other trips to the ER for little Levi.

“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

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.

“Let’s see how much of this spaghetti you can eat first,” he said, setting the boy gently back in his booster seat and scooting him up to the table. “The more we eat, the less we have to put away for later.”

Levi twirled, slurped and chewed, wiping his dripping chin with the back of his hand as often as with the napkin Jem kept reminding him of.

When Jem burped, Levi laughed, mocked the sound deep in his chest and laughed again. T-ball tryouts, and the Great Disappointment, apparently a thing of the past.

Jem went with the flow. Oh, to be young again. Able to cry away the hurt in a blast of snot and tears, and then move on.

He’d do well to take a lesson from his son. Minus the snot and tears, of course.

* * *

ONE OF THE things that suited Lacey was that her lifestyle complemented her job. No family waiting for her to come home to, expecting dinner on the table and numerous other things. No, she was free to work the hours required of her—hours that also included time when most people weren’t at work, as that was when she could observe them at home—without taking flack for it like some of her coworkers had to do.

Ella Ackerman had officially stepped down from her position as Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital’s representative to the High Risk Team when she’d found out she was pregnant, but still two months away from delivery, she was filling in for her temporary replacement while the other woman was on vacation. She fully intended to take up the position again when she was back to work full-time after the baby’s birth.

A neonatal charge nurse, Ella, like Lacey, was another one who couldn’t walk away from the little ones who weren’t fortunate enough to be born to the safe and healthy life most assumed to be a given. Ella’s cause was more encompassing than the children, though. Married to the founder of the Lemonade Stand, a unique domestic violence shelter hidden within Santa Raquel boundaries, Ella seemed to live and breathe the fight against abuse. She and her husband, Brett, the Stand’s founder, dedicated much of their spare time to the women and children who’d been displaced from their homes due to the violence enacted upon them by family members.

She was always ready to help and never seemed to run out of energy or hope.

Yet even Ella had sounded a bit downhearted when she’d called back that afternoon to let Lacey know that Levi Bridges had been in the emergency room a total of six times in four years. He hadn’t been flagged as a potential victim of abuse because none of the incidents looked at individually had appeared as anything more than accidents that might befall a young child.

His parents were educated, employed and, from chart notes, were appropriately attentive, concerned, aware and loving with the little boy. There’d never been any noted substance abuse or smell of alcohol on anyone’s breath when the boy had been brought in.

The first time was for a cut on his head when he’d been six months old. He had scooted himself off his blanket on the floor and over to a wall, where he’d pulled on a cord plugged into a socket. He’d yanked a lamp off the table and down on himself, where the base had cut his forehead, leaving a wound that had required six stitches.

The second time he’d had a pea up his nose. Third had been a serious laceration to his foot. It hadn’t required stitches, but the father, who—it had been charted—was visibly distraught, had also requested an X-ray, wanting to make certain that the foot wasn’t broken. He’d had his son strapped into a seat on the back of his bike and the little boy’s foot had come loose and had been caught in the spokes. The fourth time he’d stepped on a hot coal that had fallen out of a backyard pig-roasting pit. And fifth had been for a high fever for which they’d never found an explanation. His temperature had come down quickly after medication; lab work showed a healthy toddler and a follow-up doctor’s appointment had been a well-child visit.

Possible scenarios of misconduct ran through Lacey’s mind as she turned her midclass black sedan into the neighborhood of the address she had for Jeremiah Bridges—Levi’s father.

Six hospital visits, followed by a call of suspected abuse. A home visit was going to happen. Immediately.

And would have whether she’d had a family to go home to or not.

* * *

THANKING THE FATES that had seen to it to deliver such a great kid to him, Jem lingered over dinner, giving Levi all the time he wanted to invest in mastering the art of spaghetti rolling. While tear streaks still showed in the tomato sauce smeared on the little guy’s cheeks, you’d never know that they’d just come through a major crisis.