His First Choice. Tara Taylor Quinn

Чтение книги онлайн.

       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. СКАЧАТЬ