Cheating wasn’t his style.
But this time she was right. He was interested in another woman. Very interested.
And he wasn’t going to let her screw up his chance.
Shrugging aside guilt he had no reason to feel, he helped his son down from the truck and followed behind as Levi ran up the walk, climbed the two cement steps without holding on to the rail and rang the bell.
* * *
“YOU WORE YOUR hair down.” Maybe not the best first line for a first date, but as he glanced at Lacey before pulling away from the front of her house, it’s what came out of his mouth.
Her hair being down was significant.
“I’m on a date.” Her smile was mysterious. He kind of liked it.
“You always wear your hair down on dates?”
“No.” He started the car and pulled away from the house, where her sister and his son watched from the window, waving at them. He didn’t want any intruders on this conversation.
“What’s the determining factor?” Might as well get straight to the point.
“There isn’t one.”
“But you have done it before.” Suddenly he felt like they weren’t just talking about her hair.
“Once or twice.” He made a turn. And then another.
“Did it go well?”
“One did, one didn’t.”
He pondered that. Wondered if she knew they were really talking about sex.
“We didn’t talk about where we were going to go,” he said. Wanting badly to go with what he’d mentally termed option B sometime during the past couple of days.
She was in nice quality white capri pants and a red, white and blue crop-sleeved cotton tunic, with blue sandals and a big red, white and blue cloth purse.
If she thought the ensemble in any way hid, or detracted from, the lovely curves she was hiding, she was dead wrong.
“I told you, it doesn’t matter to me.”
So...option B, it was?
“You want to go back to my place? I’ve got a couple of steaks, some potatoes we can put on the grill. And veggies, too. We could sit out at the fish pond, have a glass of wine...”
He’d wired the backyard for music. They’d be alone. His bed was close by. No chance Tressa would find them out and about if she happened to be scouring Santa Raquel eateries.
He didn’t think she’d go that far. Not anymore. She’d learned her lesson on that one.
But he’d be able to relax more if she could see his truck in his driveway in the event she did another drive-by. He knew she was checking up on him, so it just made sense not to rev her engines if he could help it.
“I’d actually prefer that,” Lacey said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not as much into having a lot of people around me as my sister is.”
There it was again...her comparing herself to Kacey. Funny how people couldn’t see themselves as they really were.
* * *
INSTEAD OF THE usual blue jeans and various work shirts she’d seen him in, Jem was wearing black jeans and a white polo shirt for the evening. It looked like he’d shaved, too. The nights he’d come to her house to work he’d had a very definite five-o’clock shadow. His dark hair was as natural looking as always...