Will her secret tear them apart?

At sixteen, when Talia gave her son up for adoption, she knew she was making the right decision. Now, as an adult, she’s come home to Santa Raquel, California, where she volunteers at the Lemonade Stand and provides art therapy at local schools. One of her students is a troubled boy named Kent—the son she gave up all those years ago!

She meets his widowed father, Sherman, and they develop an intense connection through their shared concern for Kent. But Talia wonders if the secret she’s been keeping might drive away the man she’s starting to love.

Sherman wasn’t his usual self.

Sitting in that conference room with Talia Malone, he couldn’t find the composure that saw him through every aspect of life.

“First,” he began, relying on his notes, “what you said about Kent giving us messages… It fits with what his psychologist says. He thinks Kent’s anger and acting out is his attempt to express some emotion he can’t get across in a healthy way.”

Her accuracy about his son excited him. Or something about her did. Maybe just the idea that at the end of this exercise in art therapy they might find a solution. A way to help Kent.

“I’d suggest that you take whatever you get from our meeting to Kent’s counselor,” she said. “Except for the collage he made. I promised to give it back to him by the end of the week. But you can ask Kent for it. Or take a picture of it here to email to his counselor.”

He nodded.

“The real question is whether Kent should know that you’ve shown it to his psychologist,” she said, frowning. “But keeping secrets, even when you think you’re doing it for someone’s good, can be far more harmful than telling him would’ve been.”

She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about…

Dear Reader,

Once, many years ago, I wrote a story with a heroine who’d been a prostitute—Her Secret, His Child. Back then, I got handwritten fan letters in the mail and I answered every one of them. (I kept them, too, in notebooks that are now filed on a shelf.) After Her Secret, His Child was released, I was astonished to get letters asking me if I’d ever been a prostitute. A resounding no! But parts of me are in all my books. And I look back at that book now and realize some of the feelings—of not being good enough, of being used rather than cared about—resonated with me.

Child by Chance is the story of an ex-stripper. I’m just going to say it right out—No, I have never been a stripper. The closest I got to dancing was ballet class, for five years, three times a week. And I never once, ever, danced onstage.

But I learned to respect the physicality of dance. The athleticism of dancers. I learned about dedication. And I learned about finding my center and “pulling up.” Talia, the heroine in Child by Chance, knows all these things. But this isn’t a story about dance. It’s a story about life’s tough choices. About making mistakes. And making amends. About accepting the lemons life hands you and making lemonade. It’s a story of heart, redemption and the true meaning of love. All kinds of love.

I’d really like to hear what you think about the Lemonade Stand and this series, Where Secrets Are Safe. You can reach me at staff@tarataylorquinn.com. And if you like friendship stories, take a look at The Friendship Pact. I tried something different, and the verdicts are in! I’d be thrilled to hear yours, too.

Tara Taylor Quinn

Child by Chance

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With sixty-eight original novels published in more than twenty languages, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is a winner of the 2008 National Reader’s Choice Award, four-time finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, a finalist for the Reviewer’s Choice Award, the Bookseller’s Best Award and the Holt Medallion, and appears regularly on Amazon bestseller lists. Tara is a supporter of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and she and her husband, Tim, sponsor an annual in-line skating race in Phoenix to benefit the fight against domestic violence. When she’s not at home in Arizona with Tim and their canine owners, Jerry Lee and Taylor Marie, or fulfilling speaking engagements, Tara spends her time traveling and in-line skating. For more information about Tara, visit her website, TaraTaylorQuinn.com.

For Christina.

All children should be so lucky to have someone as devoted to them as you are to Emma, Claire and William. We are blessed to have you in our family and I hope you know how much you’re loved.

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

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SHE’D MOVED WITH confidence on some pretty exclusive Vegas stages. Had entertained moneyed and powerful men. With and without her clothes.

But as she walked down the hushed elementary-school hallway lined with short lockers that Friday afternoon, twenty-seven-year-old Talia Malone had never felt more uncomfortable in her life.

No one at that school was going to know that the ten-year-old boy in the classroom midway down that hall was her son.

She’d given birth once, ten years before, but she’d never been a mother.

Had no idea how to be one.

You were a mother when you were his age. Tanner’s words from earlier that morning played over and over again in her head, much like his words had always done when she’d been growing up and her big brother had been a demigod in her life.

Before she’d grown deaf and dumb to his wisdom, slept with one of her high-school teachers and ended up pregnant.

She slowed her step, eyeing a deserted alcove hosting a water fountain that was so low to the ground she’d have to bend in half to take a sip.

She hadn’t technically been a mother at ten. Tanner, of all people, knew that. But she’d been ten when their baby sister, Tatum, had been born. Between her and Tanner and their brother Thomas they’d managed to make sure that baby girl was protected and loved.

But then Talia had run off. Abandoned the family. Abandoned Tatum. And her sweet baby sister had ended up a victim of domestic violence—drugged and pretty much raped, too—all because she’d been so desperate for love and acceptance that she’d believed the young rich creep who’d told her he loved her more than anyone else ever would.

She’d believed his hitting her had been her own fault...

Deep breath.

Talia didn’t want the water she sipped. And didn’t leave the alcove immediately, either.

Used to waiting in the wings for “showtime,” Talia stood between the fountain and the wall, watching the quiet hallway for signs of life. A janitor crossed the hallway several yards down from her, on his way to a different part of the Santa Raquel, California, elementary school.

She was there to facilitate a class. Not teach.

Her class didn’t start for another half hour. She’d arrived early. On purpose. Kent Paulson, adopted son of widower Sherman Paulson and his late wife, Brooke—who was killed in a car accident, her obituary had said—wasn’t in the sixth-grade art class she’d be visiting. He was only in fourth grade. Two doors down from where she was standing.

All she wanted was a glimpse of him. She wasn’t there to claim him.

She just needed to know that he was okay. Happy. Better off than he would have been growing up the bastard child of a teenage mother, and a drug-addicted, sometimes homeless prostitute grandmother. Or knowing that his biological father, who’d served time in prison for a host of crimes including statutory rape and child endangerment, was a registered sex offender and unable to work any job that would put him in the vicinity of minors.

“I don’t care!” There was no mistaking the very adult anger in the childish voice as a door opened and a small arm pulled away from the larger hand that was holding it.

“Keep your voice down.” A woman reached for the boy’s hand.

“Ouch!” he cried, snatching his hand back before she’d even touched him. “You’re hurting me and that’s against the law. You aren’t allowed to hurt me.”

“Shhh.”

“Why? So that all the other kids don’t figure out that life sucks?”

The words struck a chord. One that hadn’t played inside her in a long time, but was still achingly familiar. Growing up as the mostly destitute offspring of a prostitute, she’d learned quickly that she wasn’t like the other kids. Wasn’t naive. Or innocent.

Retreating farther into the alcove, Talia watched as the middle-aged, short-haired brunette escorted the small-boned, dark-haired boy past her—not even seeming to notice that she was there.

“This makes it four school days in a row that you’ve disrupted class. You’re going to get yourself into some serious trouble here. I’m doing my best to help, but you’re going to tie my hands if you aren’t careful.” The woman’s words were hushed, but brimming with intensity. And, Talia kind of suspected, sincerity, too.

“I don’t care,” the boy said.

“You do, too, care, Kent.”

Kent!

Surely there weren’t two of them in the group of fourth-grade classrooms lining that hallway.

The couple had passed out of hearing range, and Talia stepped out from her alcove far enough to watch them until they turned a corner out of sight.

Had that little, short-haired preppy-looking boy in need of anger management been her kid?

Her son?

Biologically only, of course. She had no parental rights to him.

If he was even Kent Paulson. The Kent Paulson.

She had to find out.

And if he was? If that troubled young man was the one she’d put here on earth? Had she just witnessed that scene for a reason? Her being there, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, right when he was acting out—that couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to be fate, right?

She’d have to figure that out. She wasn’t walking away, though.

Not until she knew for certain that he was getting help. If that boy was hers, the chip on his shoulder could be hereditary.

There was no way any progeny of hers was going to end up like her.

Not while she had a breath left in her body.

* * *

“MRS. BARBOUR IS on line two, Mr. Paulson.”

Not again. “Thanks, Gina.” He waited for the door to close behind his administrative assistant.

Loosening his tie enough to release the top button, Sherman Paulson pondered the blinking button on his phone console for several seconds.

As campaign manager for a couple of up-and-coming voices vying for careers in California politics, he was used to problem solving. Exceled at it, actually.

“Mrs. Barbour? Sherman Paulson here.” As he usually did when faced with adversity, he feigned a cheerful tone.

“I’ve got Kent in my office again, Mr. Paulson.” His son’s principal did not sound at all happy.

Pinching his nose between his eyebrows, Sherman asked, “What has he done this time?” Kent had promised, when Sherman had dropped him off that morning, that there’d be no more trouble.

“He pushed another student into a wall,” the school principal said. “The other boy has a bump on his head.”

“Did you ask him what the other boy did first?”

“I know what he did.” Mrs. Paulson’s tone didn’t change. “The boy cut in front of him in line. Your son didn’t use his words, Mr. Paulson. He didn’t try to resolve the situation in a healthy manner. He went straight into attack mode.”

Sherman wished like hell he couldn’t picture exactly what Mrs. Barbour meant.

“We’re willing to work with you, sir. We understand the difficulty of your situation and we sympathize, wholeheartedly...”

Yada, yada, yada, she might as well have been saying. In the two years since his wife’s sudden and unexpected death due to a drunk driver, Sherman was accustomed to hearing similar sympathetic sentiments. And wasn’t sure what any of them meant in real life where pain was a burning hell that never let up.

“...but my hands are tied on this one,” the woman said, her tone changing, empathy losing out to authority. “I’m afraid that I’ve had to suspend Kent for the next week.”

“But...” What in the hell was he going to do with the boy? He had to work. Had appointments and power lunches, schmoozing calls to make, and only six months to make miracles happen if he wanted a hope in hell of winning the position he sought as a state senate campaign manager. A job that paid far more than his current position working for local politicians.

“I’m sorry, sir, but policies are policies. Kent was the first one to make physical contact and the other boy has a visible wound as a result. I have no choice but to suspend him.”

Sherman wouldn’t have his job for a day if he accepted “no” at face value. “I understand your policies and support them completely,” he began. “I’m not asking or expecting you to make an exception in our case.” He continued the soothing litany he’d learned to employ in situations like this. “I understand that Kent has to be removed from his normal classroom for the requisite number of days...”

Deal with the problem at hand, he reminded himself, his steel-like mental control serving him, as well, as always. One step at a time.

“But I don’t think a week’s vacation from school is the reward my son needs at the moment,” he continued, homing in on the meat of the problem because it was the only way to find a workable solution. “Is there someplace else there he can sit for the five days he’s earned of solitary confinement?” he asked. “A guidance counselor’s office or...”

Your office, he was thinking. He had a goal in mind.

Keep his son at school.

And safe.

In an environment where he couldn’t possibly get into any more trouble. At least for a few days.

“Well...”

“Just a little desk someplace where he won’t have anything to distract him from the schoolwork he’s there to do. If he gets to leave school, he’s going to view this as a win.”

Sherman might not know how to control Kent’s personality change since his mother’s tragic death, but he knew his son well enough to know that Kent wanted out of school more than just about anything else on earth.

Other than knowing that the drunk who’d killed his mother was paying for the crime. They just had to find the guy first.

Sherman was working on that, too. When he could. As he could. However he could. But Kent, in his ten-year-old way, didn’t yet understand that a political science degree didn’t give Sherman the tools to find a killer who’d eluded the police. He had to identify him first, and that was something no one had been able to do as of yet.

All they knew was that he’d been driving a stolen car. And there’d been an almost-empty fifth of whiskey in the vehicle.

The pause on the line had grown in the space of Sherman’s mental wandering.

Big mistake—allowing his mind to wander in the middle of a negotiation.

A bid for help and support.

The principal sighed, relaxing Sherman’s spine just a tad.

“All right, Mr. Paulson. Starting Monday, for one week, I’ll see that Kent gets his education from here, in our office, but I don’t think for one second that his time with me is going to solve his problems.”

Of course it wasn’t. She was just a step.

To provide the way to get to the next step.

Or, in this case, to give him time to figure out what in the hell the next step would be.

CHAPTER TWO

WHILE SHE HAD a joint degree in fashion merchandising and design, Talia still had more than a year of work left on her degree in psychology. She was due to graduate in December and was determined to make that happen. She’d thought maybe she’d teach someday, if she could find a school system that would hire an ex-stripper, but somehow her life had once again redefined itself. Without any conscious direction on her part, she’d become someone new. A collage expert.

The idea had come to her after spending time with some of the residents at the Lemonade Stand, the domestic violence shelter her little sister had lived at the previous year.

Inspired by the notion that she might be able to help some of the women who’d befriended Tatum, she’d designed a program that used collage as a means of self-expression. To her surprise she’d discovered that the same skill that served her well in the fashion industry—an ability to see past the clothes on a body to the person they reflected—was an asset for collage reading, as well. Through her collage work, she’d been hoping to help women find their value within rather than relying on their outer beauty to give them their sense of worth. If victims could let go of their negative self-images and replace them with visuals of things that spoke to them, things that made them feel good, things that they liked, perhaps that would help them on their way to starting a new life. Her hope was that once the women realized their inner beauty they would gain the confidence to express themselves and make positive outward choices. Her work jibed with the Lemonade Stand’s philosophy to give battered women a sense of their value to counteract the damage abuse had done to their psyches.

And somehow, the program had branched out. She was working with kids now, too. Test-running the concept in a total of six elementary schools. Her initial plan had been to present a variation of her Lemonade Stand workshop to high-school girls, with the idea to help them love their inner selves so they didn’t give in to the pressure to feel that their value came from how they looked. So that they could make fashion and life choices that expressed their personalities rather than their sexuality. Such a class might have saved her life in high school.

And could have helped Tatum, too.

But the school board wanted her to start on a smaller scale, with both girls and boys, in elementary-level art classes. She’d been thrilled to win that much support and knew that a reference from her new sister-in-law, Sedona Malone, who was a well-respected lawyer in their community, had gone a long way to making this happen.

Collages were glimpses into the soul of those who made them. Or at least glimpses into their lives, their perspectives.

So what would a collage Kent made look like?

At an isolated desk against the far wall in the outer area of the principal’s office, the little kid from that morning sat up straight with attitude emanating out of every pore of his body. Talia glanced at the woman by her side, Carina Forsythe, the art teacher in whose classes she’d been working all day.

“That’s him,” she said, having told the woman about the disturbing scene she’d witnessed that morning, wondering if maybe she could help. As a professional.

The boy might not even be her Kent. All day she’d wondered, going back and forth in her mind with certainty that he was, and then with just as much certainty that the chance of him having been in the hallway at the exact moment that she’d been wondering about him was little more than nil.

“Kent Paulson.” Carina’s young brow furrowed as she identified the student. Talia noticed the little details of those lines on the woman’s forehead. Focused on them as her lungs squeezed the air out of her body.

He was her boy...her son.

She’d found him.

No one could know.

“...should have seen him a couple of years ago. He was everyone’s favorite—not that we really have favorites—it’s just that he was precocious, smart and so polite, too. But after his mother was killed...”

His adopted mother.

Talia had no idea if Kent knew that Brooke wasn’t his biological mother.

Oh, my God. My son!

She glanced at the boy again. And couldn’t look away. Was it possible that an invisible umbilical cord ran between them? One that hadn’t been severed when she’d picked up that pen ten years ago and signed her name, severing her rights to her own flesh and blood?

She tried to speak but her throat wouldn’t work.

“Anyway, you’d said you wanted to work with troubled kids, and I think it sounds like a good idea. Mrs. B.’s in her office. Why don’t you go talk to her?”

“I...will...” The dryness in her throat choked her, and she coughed. Until she started to choke. Carina led her to a nearby drinking fountain. She sipped. Coughed some more.

And was finally able to suck air into her too-tight lungs.

When she could, she thanked the other woman. Said something about not knowing what the coughing fit was about. Assured the art teacher that she was fine. Waited for Carina to continue about her day. Waited for the lump in her throat to dissipate enough for her to pull off the pretense of her life. And then, careful to avoid another glance at the child sitting along the far wall, she opened the door to the principal’s office.

She wasn’t a mother. She’d just grown a baby once.

* * *

“SO? HOW’D IT GO?” Sixteen-year-old Tatum Malone climbed out of the driver’s seat of their sister-in-law’s Mustang, addressing Talia.

You’d never know by looking at her that the beautiful, vivacious blonde teenager had been a resident at a shelter for victims of domestic violence the previous year.

Talia, who was standing in the driveway of Sedona Malone’s beach house, smiled as she greeted her baby sister, avoiding the hug with which Tatum usually greeted her family members. She never had been a touchy-feely person, always having to keep a barrier up. But now, after the choices she’d made, it was as if she couldn’t let her family get too close to her. Or maybe it was that she was afraid that once they saw the woman she’d become, they’d withdraw. And if she was all-in with them, their rejection would be too much to bear.

That was Talia. Always holding something back just in case.

“It went fine,” she said, pulling out her key as she headed up the back steps to the deck and the French doors that allowed her to sit at the kitchen table and watch the sun set over the beach just yards away. “The kids were great,” she continued as she let them into the borrowed beach house, dropping her keys on the counter and heading to get sodas for both of them. “You should have seen some of the collages they made. I could spend a year analyzing them.”

“Cool,” Tatum said, sliding her slim, jeans-clad body into a seat at the table. “But that’s not what I was talking about.” Those intense gray-blue eyes pinned Talia and, not for the first time in the year she’d been back, Talia felt completely off-kilter. As though her almost ten-year age advantage over Tatum had disappeared and she was the younger of the two.

“Does Tanner know you’re here?” Talia asked, sending a bold and piercing look back.

“Of course. I’ve got Sedona’s car, don’t I?”

Tatum could’ve had her own car, if she’d wanted it. But for now, she was sticking close to home—to Tanner and to Sedona, the lawyer who’d seen through Tatum’s confused attempt to get help the year before, and ended up marrying their big brother.

“He pretty much asked me to come,” Tatum said, her look steady, “or he would have if I hadn’t already said I was coming.”

Still not completely used to having someone on her side, most particularly not someone she actually loved, Talia nodded.

“I saw him,” she said, her fingers curling the edges of the place mat in front of her. Picking up her can, she took a long drink of cola, pretended that it had some magical strengthening power and said, “He’s little. Like Thomas. Smaller boned than Tanner.”

“Is he short like Thomas, too, or tall like you and me and Tanner?”

“I don’t know. He’s a lot shorter than I am, but he’s only ten. How do I know how tall a ten-year-old is supposed to be?”

This was Tatum’s nephew they were talking about. And family meant everything to Tatum. Talia understood. It was just taking some getting used to, this whole support system thing. She’d been alone in a rough world for a long time.

“Did you talk to him?”

Talia shook her head. “He’s in trouble, Tay,” she said. Instincts told her to keep the bad stuff a secret from her little sister, wanting her to only see the good in the world. But they’d all learned how much damage those kinds of secrets, that kind of protection, could do. Most particularly where Tatum was concerned.

Tatum’s eyes shadowed, and her pretty blond hair fell around her shoulders. “What kind of trouble?” Her voice had softened.

“I’m not sure,” Talia said.

Kent was supposed to have had the perfect fairy-tale life. That was why she’d given him up. To protect him from any chance that he’d grow up the way she had.

Then she and Tatum had found out on the internet that Kent’s adopted mother had been killed in an accident. By a drunk driver in a stolen vehicle. He’d fled the scene on foot and there’d been no identifying fingerprints on the car or on the nearly empty bottle they’d found inside it.

Tanner was all for Talia approaching Kent’s father, introducing herself and proposing some kind of arrangement that would allow her to see her son now and then. Tatum understood why Talia couldn’t even think about doing that.

“He’s been suspended from class for the next week.”

“What? Why? It’s kinda hard to get suspended from the fourth grade.”

“No idea. But I didn’t just walk away.”

“I never thought you would.”

Tatum’s grin made her belly flop. She hated that. And loved it, too. All she’d ever wanted was a loving home and family of her own. Before she’d figured out that an open heart hurt too much.

Still, here she was, giving it all another chance. The family part, not the loving-home-of-her-own part. A permanent chance. She wasn’t going back to a world that didn’t see her as a human being. That only saw her as a body others could use for their pleasure. She’d failed Tanner. And worse, she’d been absent when Tatum had needed her most. Her little sister had paid a heavy price for Talia’s easy way out.

Talia would spend the rest of her life paying off that debt.

The decision wasn’t negotiable. But neither did it make the implementation easy. Or in any way comfortable.

“I talked to the principal,” Talia said.

“Mrs. Barbour?” Tatum’s frown was cute, scrunching up her nose in a way that reminded Talia of a time when Tatum had been about three and had walked by the bathroom after someone had just been in there. She’d walked around the house with her nose scrunched up for half an hour after that. When Talia had asked her what she was doing, she’d said she was keeping the bad smell out. She’d been too young to realize that it had only been a temporary thing.

“She was in charge of a spring fling production that involved all the area elementary schools when I was in sixth grade,” Tatum said. “We called her Mrs. B.”

“They still do,” Talia said. “I asked if I could try some collage making with him. She said he was going to be spending the next week in her office and as far as she was concerned I could see him every day.”

“So, you’re planning to work with him all five days, right?” Tatum’s voice was chipper, and her smile hit bone-deep.

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Are you nervous?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re going to spend the entire weekend pretending that you don’t care and that this is really nothing more than making sure he’s okay.”

“It isn’t. And how can I care for a child I’ve never known?”

“You knew him for nine long months. And never stopped loving him...”

Talia couldn’t go there. Not now.

Not ever.

CHAPTER THREE

SHERMAN HAD TICKETS to a basketball game in LA on Friday night. He was sitting in a box with a man who he believed would support his candidate for the county auditor seat, most particularly after Sherman finished explaining to him how his candidate played into what the moneyed gentleman wanted most.

Sherman didn’t really have an opinion on the man’s politics. That wasn’t part of his job. Showing the man how he could help Sherman’s candidate—one of the campaigns Sherman and his team were currently managing—was what he cared most about at the moment.

Apart from his son, of course.

He’d planned to surprise Kent with the tickets and the trip to the city—with an overnight stay in a hotel—when he’d picked him up from school on Friday. He’d known about the game since Tuesday—the first day he’d received a call from Mrs. Barbour that week. He’d hardly been able to reward the boy then.

And not any of the days between then and Friday, either.

But Kent had promised to have a good day at school on Friday. And Sherman had been going to use the tickets as a reward.

He could hardly reward being suspended from class.

Instead, he dropped Kent off at home with his favorite sitters, the childless couple next door who spoiled him rotten, and headed into the city by himself.

* * *

FINDING KENT HADN’T been difficult. His adoption had provided for the eventuality. If either party wanted to seek out the other, contact information could be passed through the agency.

Because Kent was a minor, his contact information had been that of his father. And had included a sentence about his mother being deceased. Talia had found out a few more details on the internet. But very few.

She’d come back from the agency with a name. Knew he was in Santa Raquel. And from his address had found out what school he’d most likely attend. Finding his classroom hadn’t been that difficult once she’d been in the school. The fourth grades were all clustered together.

Seeing him had been so easy.

And had upended her in a way being sold by her husband to his friends hadn’t even done.

She’d given birth to someone else’s child. That was how she looked at her pregnancy and the adoption. She’d been growing a child for someone else to love and cherish because they couldn’t grow one for themselves.

She’d had it all worked out.

Until she saw that little boy strutting his preppy stuff down the hall on Friday.

Friday nights were set aside for online study. Three of her five classes that semester were online. And if she was going to be ready to graduate by December, she had to adhere to her schedule.

Weekends were for work. By the time she drove to LA, worked an eight-hour shift at the high-end retail store at the Beverly Center, a mall in Beverly Hills, and drove back, the day was pretty much done.

Her schedule was tight. She couldn’t afford to be flexible.

So she sat diligently at her computer Friday night. Tried to focus. And kept seeing a little face in place of the text on the screen.

Picking up her laptop she moved from the spare bedroom she was using for an office out to the kitchen table. There were no lights on the private beach, but she knew it was out there. That the ocean beckoned beyond.

A child needs to be touched, to be held, to be nurtured. Scientific studies show that a baby that is not held often or at all is far more prone to exhibiting signs of antisocial personality disorder or sociopathic tendencies.

She read the paragraph three times.

She’d given him up so he’d have a great mother to see him through all of the difficult times of growing up.

He didn’t have a mother anymore.

A child needs boundaries. He will test them. He is doing so, not to have them moved, but to assure himself that they don’t.

Was Kent testing his boundaries?

In part, he finds his security in unmoving boundaries, in the things he can count on.

A kid should be able to count on his mother. On having her be a boundary that didn’t change. Just always there.

Unlike the woman who’d given birth to Tanner, Thomas, Talia and Tatum.

Where had Kent’s mother been driving to, or coming from, that night she’d been killed? Why had she been alone in the car?

Careful. The inner voice that had decided to show up a little late in her life was speaking loud and clear suddenly. She couldn’t cross the boundary she was standing behind. She wouldn’t. Because she’d be hurting someone other than herself.

She’d looked up her son to assure herself he was okay.

She was going to work with him the following week for the same reason.

Anything beyond that was clearly out of her jurisdiction and not her business.

Tonight, child development was her business.

For the rest of the night, she stuck to it.

Mostly.

* * *

“NO, DAD, I don’t want to go putt some balls and get ice cream.”

The knife in Sherman’s hand was in danger of losing its blob of butter as it stilled, suspended over the toast he’d been buttering Saturday morning. “What do you mean you don’t want to go? It’s already planned,” he explained patiently.

The grief counselor had told him to be patient. Two years ago.

“I thought you’d like the surprise,” he added.

“I don’t.” Kent sat at the table, already dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt and a sweater—green today—with his hands in his lap. Awaiting the cold cereal and toast Sherman was in the process of getting for him.

The butter dropped from his knife to the toast, catching the side of his hand, as well. Sherman spread quickly, dropped the toast to the counter and licked the side of his hand.

He poured milk. Added a spoon to the bowl of Kent’s latest choice in sugared cereal, took that and the toast to the table, a smile on his face. “Why not?”

“Where’s your cereal?”

“I’m not having any this morning.” He’d pulled off at a twenty-four-hour diner on his way home from the city and wasn’t hungry.

“What time did you get home?”

“Sometime after midnight.”

“Way after midnight. I got up at 2:00 a.m. to pee and Ben and Sandy were still here, sleeping in the recliners.”

The love seat portion of the leather sectional he and Brooke had purchased the year before she...

Yes, well, he was glad that Ben and Sandy made use of the love seat.

“I was with a client.”

“I don’t care if you’re out screwing someone, Dad.”

Anger burst through him. He very carefully took the space between stimulus and response, to make certain that, for his son’s sake, he didn’t say something he’d regret.

Then he sat. Crossed his hands. Leaned over. And looked his son square in the eyeballs. “There are many things wrong with that comment,” he said slowly, but with no doubt to his seriousness. “First, screwing is an inappropriate way to describe any relationship I might have with a woman. Second, if I was making love with a woman it would be absolutely none of your business. And third, I was with a sixty-year-old man at a basketball game and then we went to a restaurant, where I had a glass of sparkling water and he had a whiskey sour while we discussed Sadie Bishop’s county auditor campaign, after which I got in the BMW and drove home, stopping only for a plate of greasy scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. I have done nothing to deserve your disrespect.”

Kent chewed. Crunching his cereal as if he was set to win a contest. His throat bulged when he swallowed.

“Yes, sir,” he said then. “You’re right. On all three counts. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

Kent crunched some more. And Sherman sought to understand the boy.

Patience was the key. He was certain of that. He just wished he knew what to say sometimes, while he was waiting for patience to work its magic.

“So...how about that trip to the driving range?” he asked, back to his cheery self, when no other words presented themselves. Clark Vanderpohl and his son were meeting them at the course in less than an hour.

“Uh-uh.”

Patience.

“Why not?” His tone was right on cue. Easy and nonthreatening.

“You’re only taking me because you have business to do,” he said.

“That’s not true, son.” He was completely sure about that.

“So we’re not meeting someone who has something to do with one of your precious campaigns?”

Kent’s tone wasn’t easy. Or in any way upbeat or even particularly kind. But then, he was only ten.

Sherman was the adult here. Didn’t matter how much he hurt, too, he had to maintain the order in their lives.

“I didn’t say that,” he said after giving himself the few seconds pause he needed to choose his response.

“Ha! See, I knew it.” Kent slurped his milk.

Brooke would have said something about that. Sherman started to. But pulled himself back.

“What I said,” Sherman continued, his tone as even as ever, “was that I’m not just taking you because I have business to do. It’s the complete opposite, in fact. I invited Mr. Vanderpohl and his son to join us because I’d already planned to take you to the driving range, as I promised last weekend, and I wasn’t going to disappoint you.”

Kent came first. He always had.

“Cole’s going to be there?” Kent’s face lit up as he mentioned the banker’s son.

“Yes.”

“Cool!” Picking up his bowl, Kent put it to his lips, emptied it, licked the spoon and then very carefully wiped his mouth with his napkin, put the spoon in the bowl and carried the ensemble over to the sink.

Some moments he was still pretty much a perfect kid.

* * *

HER PALMS WERE SWEATING. Tanner had said she’d be fine. She’d believed him. He was wrong.

Making a beeline for the teacher’s lounge, Talia made it to the bathroom in time to throw up. And then sat there shaking. She must have the flu.

Her forehead was cool to her touch.

But she definitely felt off.

Emotionally, she was a rock. Could count the number of times she’d cried since she was five.

Maybe it was something she ate.

Did that make you shake?

She could call someone. Sedona.

Pulling out her cell phone she pictured her new sister-in-law in her legal office, all capable and smart, answering her phone. Asking Talia questions that she wouldn’t want to answer.

No, calling wasn’t a good idea.

Kent Paulson, Sherman Paulson’s son, was sitting in the principal’s office, working on his assignments for the week. She was permitted to work with him at any time over the next hour.

The hour was ticking past.

He didn’t need her.

This was about her. Because she wanted to meet him.

No, that wasn’t right. She just needed to make sure he was okay.

And if he wasn’t, she’d do what she could to see that he got the help he needed. From someone else.

As if his artwork was somehow going to give her a glimpse into his little-boy soul and she’d magically know what he needed?

Or maybe she’d know something instinctively because of who he was?

Did a woman still get maternal instincts when she gave up her baby for adoption?

Her stomach roiled and she almost puked again.

God, what was the matter with her? Nothing scared her.

Nothing.

Except maybe when Tatum had been missing. She’d been scared then.

Because she loved that kid.

She didn’t love Kent. She couldn’t. She didn’t even know him.

He wasn’t hers to love.

It was just going to be art.

Pictures in old magazines that she’d thought would be suited to a ten-year-old kid. Okay, magazines that Tatum and Sedona and Tanner had gone with her to buy Sunday night when she’d stopped by their place on the way home from work.

But still, just some pictures. He might not even cooperate.

Or like her.

So, fine. If he didn’t like her, that was fine. He didn’t have to like her.

He just had to pick some damned pictures so she could be sure he was fine.

She gagged again. But didn’t have any stomach contents to lose.

This was ridiculous.

With a good long look at herself in the mirror, Talia bent, rinsed her mouth, pulled a stick of gum out of her mouth and opened the door.

Maybe he’d like her if she gave him a stick of her gum?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE FIRST TIME he’d seen Brooke, Sherman had been walking across campus, mentally rehearsing the debate he was about to win. She’d been in the middle of the lush green quad, in shorts and a tank top, lying on a blanket reading a book.

He’d stumbled. And damned near missed the competition that had ultimately, four years and many debates later, won him a scholarship to graduate school.

A lot had happened between then and now. Running into her at a concert on campus. Being inseparable for the remainder of their four years of undergraduate studies. Convincing her to put her marketing skills to work in his field and joining him as he signed on with one of the nation’s top campaign management firms.

Years of miscarriages. Thousands of dollars spent on failed in vitro attempts.

Seeing Kent for the first time, less than an hour after his birth. They’d decided, long before he was born, to wait until his tenth birthday to tell him he was adopted. They’d wanted him to have grown to take their loving him for granted, to feel a part of them and to make the telling part of the celebration. They were going to tell him about his birth. And about how long they’d waited for him to come into their lives.

If he were the boy’s biological father, would he know what to do with him? How to reach him? Help him? Was there some “fatherly” instinct that he was missing?

He and Brooke had talked it over a lot before his birth. The whole time they’d been preparing his nursery. Their ability to instinctively know what was right for their child even though they didn’t birth him. Like knowing that he shouldn’t know he was adopted. They’d made considered choices, based on weighing all sides of the situation.

Until he was ten, they’d decided not to tell anyone he was adopted. There were a few who knew, of course. People they worked with. But anyone who hadn’t seen them in a while, anyone new to them, just assumed that they’d had him biologically. Kent was all theirs. That was all that mattered. Sherman had no family close enough to know that Brooke hadn’t been pregnant. No one who would care one way or the other about his son’s biological parentage.

Brooke was really the driving force behind the decision. She’d been adopted. To a couple who’d had a biological child a couple of years later. They made such a big deal of finally having a biological daughter. They told everyone about their miracle. By the time she was a teenager she’d been consumed with the need to find her own biological connection—filled with a need to be someone’s miracle.

Her adopted parents had seemed almost relieved to have her do so, as though they were all right with being done with her. Or so it had seemed to the teenage Brooke. They’d continued to support her, both financially and otherwise, after her birth mother had refused to meet her.

Sherman had met them a few times, but with them in New York and him and Brooke in California, the visits had been infrequent. They’d appeared to him to love their daughters equally. But after she’d died, he’d never heard from them again.

Regardless of the fact that Brooke had never told them that Kent wasn’t her biological child. Bottom line to them, he supposed, was that he wasn’t theirs.

With Brooke gone, with Kent being so emotionally vulnerable all of a sudden, he hadn’t known what to do regarding his adoptive status. Logic told him the boy would have to know at some point. You just didn’t keep something like that from a person for their whole life. Shortly before Kent’s tenth birthday he’d talked to Kent’s therapist, Neil Jordon, about telling the boy the truth about his parentage, and had been quite relieved when Dr. Jordon had adamantly advised against breaking the news to him anytime in the near future. Kent was in no state to have his security, his foundation, further rocked.

Of course the fact that Dr. Jordon thought it would have been far easier on all of them to make the adoption a part of their family story from the beginning hadn’t been as welcome a pronouncement.

It was lunchtime on Monday. Or rather, sixty minutes past the lunch hour, but the time that he and Brooke had set aside as sacred. Even if one or the other could only spare fifteen minutes, or five, out of a busy day, assuming they were both in the office, they used to meet at 1:30 p.m. every single day. If neither of them had had a lunch appointment, they’d share whatever they’d brought from home to eat. Sometimes, they’d just fill each other in on the fact that they’d catch up at home that night. More than once they’d locked his office door and made love.

Occasionally, they’d fought.

That last day, the fatal day, they’d fought. She’d made plans to have dinner in north LA with a nationally known reporter, Alan Klasky, from a not-so-reputable online news source—part of a plan the marketing team had come up with for damage control for a candidate who’d been caught on film at a strip club. The plan was to promise the rag exclusives from their office for the remainder of the campaign.

Brooke hadn’t been fond of the plan. Sherman had hated it, preferring to handle the blow they’d been dealt by the man’s penchant for lap dances by flooding the press with the candidate’s good deeds, of which there were hundreds. By getting good family press for him. From reputable sources.

Marketing had preferred to get in bed with a group that wasn’t going to go away. They gave in to the blackmail.

Brooke was the bait. Chosen by their CEO because of her professionalism, her intelligence, her ability to create on a dime and because she was female.

She’d been honored by the recognition. Felt herself up to the task.

Sherman watched the fifteen minutes tick by that he still set aside, every single day that he was in the office, to close his office door and give his heart, mind and soul over to the woman he’d vowed to love forever.

Even though he’d stopped making love to her more than a year before her death.

It was a fine line between honor, decency, integrity—and justification. A line upon which he had to balance every single day of his life.

* * *

“HI.”

In the end, that was all there was. One word. No grand introduction. Nothing at all remarkable.

The little boy looked up at her, and Talia’s throat closed as she recognized not only the blue-gray eyes studying her, but their intensity even more. He was a few years older than Tatum had been when Talia had left home, but that look was very similar.

“Hi,” he said, turning back to the workbook in front of him, the neat rows of pencil-written numbers in the three-digit multiplication problems he’d been solving.

“I’m Ms. Malone.”

The words won her another of those glances. He nodded.

Looking around for a chair, Talia prayed that she wouldn’t throw up again.

Snagging a chair and pulling it close enough to reach his desk, she sat down. Kent pulled back, his eyebrows drawing together and up.

“I’m going to be working with you all week,” she said, wishing she’d taken Mrs. Barbour’s offer to introduce them, after all. The principal had been busy. And she’d wanted the moment to herself.

“What, you’re, like, my monitor or something?” Belligerence, or derision, entered his tone as he gave a half scoff. As though he was too cool for words.

Or too old to need a babysitter.

“No.” I’m your mother. The words flew, unwelcome and without permission into her brain. “I’m working with the sixth-grade art classes and have an hour break each day, and since everyone else here already has jobs to do, I’ll be spending my break time with you.”

“Got stuck with me, you mean.”

“That’s funny, and here I was thinking you were going to figure you were being stuck with me.”

That gave him pause. And then, “So, what, you’re just going to sit there and watch me do my math?”

He eyed the thick satchel she’d set on the floor by her feet. And sounded as if he kind of hoped she had more in store for him.

He was bored. She figured that out quickly enough.

“Nope. I’m here to work, not babysit,” she said, wondering where the words were coming from. Surprised by the ease with which they slid off her tongue. The battered women hadn’t been such a leap for her, but she was still a bit stiff with the kids. Until she pretended they were all little Tatums. Or until they got going on their collages and then she got so engrossed in reading their picture messages, in helping them compose those messages, express themselves, that she forgot to worry about anything else.

But this was...a ten-year-old boy who just happened to have shared her belly for nine months.

Oh, God. She was going to throw up again.

“What, you brought papers to grade?” he asked, his nose scrunched as he glanced at her bag again and then frowned at her.

He wasn’t rejecting her presence beside him. Didn’t seem to dislike her being there.

“No,” she said, reaching down to her bag, thinking about putting her head between her knees while she was at it.

There was a trash can not far off. There if she needed it.

She wasn’t going to need it.

“We’re going to do an art project,” she said instead, and pulled out the stack of magazines. A motorcycle and car one. Travel. Surfing. Boating. Sports—but not the famous one with pictures of girls. Home and Garden. Tatum had laughed at that one, but Talia would bet a week’s groceries that Kent would use it. Maybe he’d home in on some brownies on a plate or a basketball hoop in a backyard display...

“What about my math and sentences for English?” There was no sign of the tough guy as Kent glanced down into her open satchel to see colored papers, markers, glue and a couple of plastic containers of assorted embellishments. She had his attention.

“What you don’t finish at school today you have to do as homework,” she told him.

“Cool.” Closing his book, he turned to her with eagerness in his smile. And Talia had the strangest urge to give him a hug.

* * *

MONDAY’S DINNER PRETTY much summed up Sherman’s day.

He’d had errands to run—a case of flyers to drop off at a candidate’s office, shirts and pants to pick up from the cleaners, and they were out of toothpaste—after picking Kent up from school and was still in his creased gray pants, white button-down and gray-and-white silk tie as his son dropped into his seat at the kitchen table and announced that he was starving.

“You never did tell me how school went today,” Sherman said as he dumped salad from a bag, tossed it with the chicken nuggets he’d just pulled from the oven, added some dressing and put it on plates for him and Kent.

“You never asked.”

The boy had dropped his book bag by the door and sat in his pants, button-down shirt and sweater vest, his hand supporting his head, looking grumpy.

“Yes, I did. When you got in the car.” And his phone had rung. He’d taken the call and...

“Fine. School was fine. Okay?”

His son’s first day of in-school suspension and all he had to say was fine?

“What did you do?”

“Sat.”

“Did you go to the cafeteria to eat your lunch?” Sherman, as he’d been instructed, had packed sandwiches. He’d added celery sticks and a couple of Kent’s favorite cookies, too.

“No.”

He frowned. “What about your juice?”

“Someone got it for me.”

He nodded. Okay. So maybe this was good. Kent was seeing that if he misbehaved, he’d be taken out of society. Such as it was.

Brooke wouldn’t be happy with their son missing lunch with his friends. Hell, he wasn’t happy about it. Kent had been alienated enough from the regular kids, as he called them now, when his mother was killed.

Before the accident, Kent had been such a great kid. That person was still there inside him. Sherman knew it. And the counselor Kent was seeing seemed to think so, too. Somehow they just had to get through the anger stage of the grief process.

“Did Mrs. Barbour have anything special for you to do?” He put a plate of salad in front of his son.

“Nope.”

“Did your teachers come in and give you assignments?” Retrieving foil-wrapped bread from the oven, he dropped it on the table along with some peanut butter and a knife.

“Nope.”

He sat. Opened his napkin on his lap. Picked up his fork. “You just sat there all day and did nothing?”

Not at all what he’d envisioned when he’d asked for his son to spend the week in the principal’s office.

“No.” Kent was attacking his salad as if it was a banana split.

“You did schoolwork, then?”

“Duh, Dad, it’s school.”

The disrespect hurt as much as it irritated. He let it slide. Took a bite of salad. Missing the days when Brooke used to make it with fresh lettuce, cutting up cucumber and onion and celery and broccoli while he grilled fresh chicken for the top.

“So how’d you know what to do?” he asked, chewing.

Kent pushed salad onto his fork with his thumb. “Mrs. Barbour gave me a list.”

Sherman picked up a piece of bread he didn’t want, touching his son’s wrist and motioning with the bread, then used it to push food onto his fork. “You just said she didn’t have anything for you to do,” he said.

“I said she didn’t have anything special for me to do. It’s all just regular stuff that we always do.” The boy picked up a piece of lettuce with his fingers and popped it into his mouth.

Biting back the retort that sprang to his tongue, Sherman took a bite of salad and hoped he didn’t get indigestion.

“Did you get it all done?” he asked a moment or two later. Were they at least going to get to skip homework that night and go straight for the basketball game he wanted to watch? Kent loved basketball—or, really, any sport—and so far, they still bonded over their teams.

“No.”

He stopped chewing. “No?”

“No.”

Picking up a piece of bread, Kent used it to shove a huge bite of salad onto his fork the way Sherman always urged him to.

And now Sherman was worried. Why would the boy purposely do something to please him? Why start following the rules at that exact moment?

“Why not?” he asked. If Kent thought he was going to stop doing his schoolwork altogether, things were going to get a hell of a lot harder on him. While the boy had been acting out a lot, so far he’d maintained excellent grades. And so Sherman had been more willing to go along with the counselor’s recommendation and give Kent some slack on some of the rest of it.

Because Dr. Jordon had recommended a less severe course of action, and because Sherman understood Kent’s anger and had a hard time finding it within himself to be hard on the boy. He’d rather die for him than hurt him.

Kent shrugged. “I got extra to do,” he said. And dunked his bread into his chocolate milk, dripping chocolate on the table as he slurped the mess between his lips.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHAT ARE WE going to do with this?” Kent frowned as he studied his partially completed collection of photos and moved a motorcycle up to a corner of the board—farther away from the center of his life, she noted silently.

“Why do we have to do something with it?” Talia prevaricated—something she was really good at. Better than giving direct answers, for sure.

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “Just seems like we should.”

Shoulds and have-tos seemed to carry weight with the boy. If for no other reason than so he could break the rules. And yet...

“I mean, why do all the work if it’s for nothing?”

“Just for fun.”

“You don’t go to school to have fun,” he said, as though she’d never been a student.

Every day for three days he’d been sitting at his desk when she arrived, dressed in pants—sometimes jeans but always a clean and new-looking pair—and a shirt and sweater or sweater vest. She’d never seen him in tennis shoes.

“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying learning,” she said, watching as he swapped the positions of a backyard grill and a video game character. He had an eye for shape and color. And she itched to intervene, to make suggestions, to take part.

But she couldn’t.

This was his story. His expression. The collage was possibly going to be her only insight into the person who was her son.

She was there to facilitate only. Just like giving birth to him. She hadn’t been a participant in his life. Not since Tanner had had her baby’s father arrested and Talia had made the decision to give him up for adoption. Her role was facilitator.

Still, as he bent over his collage, she longed to touch his hair. To smooth the little piece that wanted to curl just above his ear. Was that why his father kept Kent’s hair so short? Because it had a tendency to curl?

Talia’s hair was straight. And blond. Nothing like Kent’s. Kent’s hair came from Rex. The high-school teacher who’d gone to jail for having sex with his student.

“What do you think should go here?” The boy turned to look at her.

He had Tatum’s eyes. A grayer version of Talia’s blue ones.

“I think you should decide,” she told him. “This is your time to make all the decisions. To use whatever pictures you want to use from these magazines.”

She’d already learned to qualify her statements with him. The day before he’d tried to get away with cutting out letters to form swear words for the middle of his collage.

“What if I want to use a picture that isn’t in the magazine?”

For a second she froze. Did ten-year-old boys look at dirty pictures? Was that what he was implying?

“What picture?”

He reached for his notebook, thumbed through some papers in the back of it, fumbled around in a plastic pocket and pulled out a photo.

“This one,” he said.

Oddly, it was a picture of him. Dressed very similar to the way he was now. Obviously a school photo. Maybe a year or two old.

What kid carried around a picture of himself tucked in his notebook?

“Sure, you can use it,” she said, while her mind wrapped itself around the newest piece of the puzzle she so desperately wanted to see complete. To know that it was a good picture. A healthy one. The picture she needed to have with her as she traversed the roads of her solitary life.

He dropped the picture in a space he’d left after she’d made him remove the curse words. “You never said what’s going to happen to this.”

Why did it matter so much?

“What do you want to happen to it?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

She wished she could believe that. Because she wanted to keep it more than just about anything. To hang it in her home. To have it to look at for the rest of her days.

“I’ll need to keep it for a week or two,” she said. Her program trial included written reports from her on every collage made, to show the board of education what she gleaned from the collages and how that information, that insight, could be used to help the kids. “But after that it’s up to you.”

The collages she was having the kids make in class were on sixteen-by-eleven-inch pieces of poster board. Kent’s was on a full-size piece of poster board.

Picking up the scissors, Kent reached for a magazine. “I guess I could take it home. I mean, if we have to do something with it,” he said.

His tough-guy armor had some definite chinks.

“I’ll make sure you get it back, then,” she told him. Wondering if it was against professional ethics if she took a photo of Kent’s finished work to have blown up and framed for her wall.

* * *

SHERMAN TOOK KENT into LA for a basketball game Thursday night. The tickets were a gift from one of his clients, the seats located in a private suite with a full buffet spread. Kent was grinning and talking the entire way there, throwing out statistics and asking Sherman’s opinion on scores and strategies. A banker and his family were supposed to be there, as well. One that Sherman was counting on for a sizable contribution. But when their passes got them on the elevator and then into the suite, it turned out that they were sharing the box with just the banker and his twelve-year-old daughter, who knew absolutely nothing about basketball. And who seemed to think entirely in rapid-fire questions.

Sherman tried to involve Kent in the conversation. To ask his opinion on answers to some of the more thoughtful questions, but his son was having none of it. Five minutes into the game, or the constant chatter depending upon one’s perspective, Kent got up, helped himself to a plate of finger food and reseated himself in the farthest corner of the booth away from the rest of them, planting his face at the glass separating them from the rest of the stadium.

Sherman called out to him a few times. All but once Kent appeared not to hear. And Sherman, who had business to tend to, couldn’t call his son to task. He probably wouldn’t have even if he could. He didn’t blame Kent for being disappointed.

“Quite the game, huh?” he asked as soon as the two of them were alone in their car, pulling out of the parking garage. Their team had won in the last seconds of the game with a three-point shot from midcourt.

“You wouldn’t know,” Kent practically spat. “You hardly saw any of it.” In his jeans and team jersey, Kent looked about as cute as any little guy ever had, but Sherman didn’t figure his son would want to hear him say so.

“I saw all of it,” he said now. “I just didn’t get to listen to as much of it as you did.” Their suite had had the announcers’ voices piped in.

“Yeah, well, you could’ve told me it was going to be business.”

He’d hoped it was going to be a couple of families spending an enjoyable evening, with the dads having a chance to spend some relaxation time together before discussing business over lunch Friday.

At least his lunch appointment for the next day was still on.

“What about that spread, though?” he asked, pulling onto the highway that would take them to their home over an hour down the road, way past Kent’s bedtime. The boy was going to be tired in the morning, not that Sherman was all that worried about it, considering his son was only going to be sitting in the principal’s office all day. “Chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks, brownies, chocolate chip cookies...”

There’d been healthy foods, too, but he named Kent’s favorites.

“I had carrot sticks,” the boy said. He had, too. Kent had always loved carrots. Even as a baby. His favorite baby food had been jarred carrots.

“You also had two brownies, a plate of nuggets and some cheese sticks,” Sherman told him. If Kent thought his father was ignoring him, he needed to know that wasn’t the case.

“So?” Arms folded, the boy looked out his window.

“So...I was just talking about the spread. You liked it.”

“Whatever.”

God, he hated that word. Wished it had never been invented. If he had a dollar for every time he came up against that word in a week, he’d be a damned millionaire. Damned because the word was a reminder, every single time, that he was failing his son.

No matter how hard he tried. He just hadn’t found the way to get it right yet. To make Kent’s world right.

But he would. Sooner or later, they were going to beat this thing.

And be happy together again.

* * *

FRIDAY WAS GLUE DAY. She’d covered the board with a tacky substance on Monday night as she’d prepared it to take to Kent on Tuesday. Enough to hold pictures in place temporarily, but allowing for removal and switching positions without damaging the photos. Each day she’d carefully covered and carried the board back and forth from the trunk of her car—which she’d cleared to allow the collage to lie flat—to the principal’s office. Each day her son had seemed more eager, watching for her as she’d come around the corner. Each day since the first, he’d used up every second allotted to them, searching out pictures, cutting and, later, as she’d shown him, tearing them into the shape he wanted and placing them on the board.

Friday, when she’d turned the corner into the office, he’d been grinning and rubbing his hands together.

She’d dressed up that day. Working at a department store required that she have expensive-looking professional clothes and while she spent most of her time in jeans these days, she had a decent wardrobe.

Emphasis being on decent. The slinky leggings and revealing tops she used to wear were packed away under her bed.

“Wow, you look pretty!” Kent said, and then ducked his head.

“Why, thank you,” Talia said, acting as though she’d heard the same from every kid she’d passed in the hallway. “I’ve got an appointment this afternoon,” she told him, not bothering to mention that the appointment was him.

She’d worn the black slacks, black-and-white silk shirt and black-and-white tweed and silk jacket to honor their last meeting.

Today she would say goodbye to her son. And she would be fine.

If anything came of the collage, if she studied it and felt certain that Kent was crying out for help in some way, she’d approach Mrs. Barbour. Or Kent’s teacher. Someone.

“You don’t have to leave early, do ya?” Kent raised his arms up so she could place the board on his desk.

“No.” If she had her way, she wouldn’t leave at all.

But Talia knew she wasn’t going to have her way this time. She’d given up that right knowingly, of her own accord, ten years before.

She handed him the glue. Showed him how to best apply it so as not to damage the magazine photos. “Be sure you’re positive of your positioning before you glue,” she told him. “Once they’re set, we can’t get them back off or change them around anymore.”

She’d been positive when she’d given this child away that it had been the best thing for him.

Some thought she’d taken the easy way out. Well, Rex had. He’d wanted her to have his son, for them to have that between them while he rotted away in jail. But she couldn’t do that to her boy. It hadn’t been easy giving up her baby.

It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Way harder than taking off her clothes and walking onto stage for the first time, wearing only a couple of pasties, a G-string and stiletto heels. Though she’d wanted to die that night, too.

Giving up Kent had been the hardest thing she’d ever done until today. Saying goodbye a second time, after spending a whole week’s worth of sessions alone with him, in their little glass room in full view of the principal’s desk and that of her secretary, too, was going to knock the breath out of her permanently.

“I can’t decide if I should put the gun here, or the microscope.”

That gun bothered her. It was innocuous enough. A toy cap gun. When there’d been other, much more deadly choices. He’d picked a toy.

And he was a smart boy. Smart enough to know that if he’d cut an Uzi out of a magazine someone might have asked why.

She wanted to pick the microscope. To advise him that maybe the gun didn’t really go with the rest of the poster. But she couldn’t color his story with her own brush.

Besides, it was with other boy things—a computer, a tablet, the microscope...

“It’ll show up better here, don’t you think?” He was frowning, his lips pursed as he pondered his dilemma. None of her students to date had taken the project so seriously. Not even the adult ones who knew that there was a purpose to the activity.

Then again, she’d never spent one-on-one time with any of them, either.

“I think you’re right—it has more prominence,” she said as much as she could. “But only because of the grouping around it,” she finished. “Change anything in the group and you could change the prominence. Put the gun on top and it would have prominence. Put it below and it might still steal the show.” He had it pointed upward, and the shape of it drew the eye.

After some deliberation he set it aside. “I’ll come back to that part,” he said, and picked up a birthday cake. It had six candles. He pasted it on a picnic table that was already glued to the board.

The rest of their time together flew by in kind. Kent’s independent work was amazing for a kid his age. At least Talia thought so. And yet, he involved her in every step of the process, as well. He knew his own mind, but he also asked for her opinion.

All in all, without studying his collage or knowing that he’d been expelled from class, she’d say that his parents had done about the best job parents could hope to do raising a child.

Or a mother would hope that someone else would do when raising her child.

“What do you think?” Her son held up the top edges of his poster.

His work with her was done.

She had to blink. Pretended to need to scratch her nose.

“I think you’ve got the makings of a talented artist.” They weren’t any of the words raging through her. They were the ones she could say.

And they were the truth.

Her son might not have her hair. Or her nose. But he had her artistic ability, and then some.

He nodded. “I like it.”

“Good.”

Oh, my God. This was it.

“How soon can I have it back?” He was looking at her. She couldn’t just sit there and stare at him. Or cry.

“Within the week,” she told him.

“Cool.”

Talia stood. There was no other choice. She collected her things just as she’d done the other four days she’d been there. Packed them into her bag.

Kent helped her cover the poster board, his smaller fingers brushing her hand, and she almost lost it. And then a look of horror crossed his face.

Because he somehow knew that he’d touched a fraud? A woman who was far too dirty to even breathe the same air he breathed?

Boys his age had to stay as far away as possible from the type of woman she’d been.

But she wasn’t that woman anymore. By choice. It had been her actions that got her away from that life.

“You aren’t going to show anyone else, are you?”

His question finally registered.

“I can’t promise that, Kent,” she told him. She gave him one thing she’d always promised herself she’d give to everyone. Her honesty. For the most part she’d kept that promise. “I can promise you that I won’t show any other students, though. And it’s not going to be hung on display.”

His features relaxed. “Okay, then. No kids.”

Why didn’t he want anyone else to see his collage?

The questions attacked her, as they’d been doing all week, and she wondered if she was up to this task. This time. Could she even hope to give Kent’s collage a fair read?

Not that it really mattered in the end. He was being cared for by professionals. Mrs. Barbour had told her that Kent saw a counselor on a regular basis. And his teachers and father were watching out for him, too.

Her little collage experiment was just a school art exercise at this point.

Her bag was on her shoulder. His poster under her arm. And Kent had his math book open. “Okay, then,” she said, turning toward the door. “See ya.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

Talia let herself out. She made it to her car.

And then she fell apart.

CHAPTER SIX

SHERMAN DIDN’T MAKE Kent go to bed early. He’d told his son on his tenth birthday that he could stay up until ten from then on if he wanted to. But the boy still held to his nine o’clock bedtime anytime that they were home.

He got himself up at six in the morning, too. Brooke used to wake him every day. Sherman had taken over for her right after the accident, but every morning Kent had already been on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair before getting dressed for school. But he still presented himself at his son’s bedroom door every day. To say good-morning.

On Saturday at 6:05, Kent was still asleep. With his heart in his throat, Sherman stood frozen until he saw the soft rise and fall of his son’s chest. And realized that he was falling back into the debilitating habit that had practically suffocated him—and his son, too—after Brooke’s death. He’d attended a grief counseling group, but it had been Dr. Jordon, Kent’s counselor, who helped him see that he was in a state of almost-constant panic—fearing that he was going to lose Kent, too.

Kent was healthy. Robust. Perfectly fine. He wasn’t going to lose him. What he was going to do was take advantage of his boy’s sleeping in and get some work done on the computer.

Noncampaign work.

For two years he’d been surfing the internet for any mention of anyone who’d gone missing around the time of Brooke’s death. Or of anyone spotted around the neighborhood where the car her killer had been driving had been stolen. He was active on social networks. Trolled Facebook pages of anyone who said they were from that area. Same for Twitter. YouTube and Tumblr, too, in case someone posted a video or photo he might recognize from the crash scene.

The police had done what they could. They’d retrieved the surveillance cameras from a convenience store in the stolen car’s neighborhood. They’d talked to folks who lived within a half-mile radius of the crime scene. The guy had been driving the wrong way down the freeway on a very deserted stretch of California highway.

Law enforcement was convinced that the crash had been the result of drunk driving, period.

Sherman wasn’t so sure. More paranoia? Maybe. But the stretch of road Brooke had been on had been long and straight—the crash happening in the middle of the stretch where someone could have seen cars for a long distance in both directions. Even if he’d been drunk surely she’d have seen him in enough time to at least swerve. But she hadn’t done so.

The man she’d been meeting in the city that night—Alan Klasky—had said Brooke had only had one glass of wine and had ordered coffee to go for the ride home. Investigators had determined that she’d been holding the half-empty cup when she’d been hit head-on. Something about the splatter of the coffee on the air bag—her right wrist and her face had been a clear indication that the cup had been upright. She hadn’t fallen asleep. Couldn’t have or the cup would have fallen out of her grasp. Or tipped, at the very least.

He ran over the details in his mind. Arranging and rearranging had become a habit for him, too. Always looking for another angle, for anything they missed. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t let it go.

Brooke had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver who’d stolen a car. His wife was gone. Kent’s mother was gone. The only thing left was making whoever had done this pay for what they’d done.

Important, yes. But enough to hang the rest of his life on? Or to occupy so much of his time and brain power?

He’d probably be better served using that energy to figure out his son. But then, he struggled with everything he knew about Kent, and about grief and kids going through grief, and kids who lost their mothers, and boys’ relationships with their mothers, and ten-year-olds in fourth grade on an almost hourly basis, too.

Wonder was that he got anything else done.

Must be like Brooke had always said— laughingly in the beginning and then, later, not—he was the master of multitasking. He worked on a campaign and his mind also germinated other issues at the same time.

He slept and seemed to work out solutions to problems, she’d once said to him. She’d begun to take offense at the way he always seemed to have plans for them, to know what they should do in any given situation. She’d begun to feel as if she was losing herself little by little to him.

Shaking his head, Sherman moved from one social networking site to another and swore when his computer froze up on him.

His time on the case was limited by the fact that he didn’t ever work on it when Kent was awake. Brooke’s death had changed their son. Clearly, he wasn’t recovering as well as they’d all hoped. Wasn’t adjusting at all as Dr. Jordon had first predicted he would. Sherman wasn’t going to make matters worse by bringing up evidence in the case for his precocious son to grind in that busy mind of his.

While the cursor turned over and over on his screen as the web page loaded, he moved to the computer on the next wall in the office he and Brooke used to share and he and Kent now shared. Using his mom’s computer had been important to the boy.

Signing on, he opened the internet browser, typed what he wanted and, while he waited for the screen to open, perused the list of recently accessed folders that had flashed on the screen when he’d put his cursor in the search bar. He’d pulled off all of Brooke’s files, storing them on an external hard drive in his room, before he’d turned the computer over to Kent.

Mostly it was school stuff. Kent regularly showed Sherman his computer work. Making everything accessible to his dad had been one of the prerequisites of his son’s having his own computer. There were dangers out there that Kent might not be aware of. And he’d readily agreed to Sherman’s rules.

Sherman didn’t exercise his right to search very often. It wasn’t as if Kent had a lot of time at the computer without Sherman present in the room. But when he saw a folder he didn’t recognize— triq3tra—he investigated. The folder was three-deep in last year’s math folder. He’d never have found it if it hadn’t been in the recently used list. Heart beating uncomfortably, he clicked on it, hoping to God he and Kent didn’t have worse problems than he thought.

The file was password protected.

No matter what he tried, Sherman couldn’t open it.

* * *

TALIA WAS IN the shower Saturday morning, trying not to worry about the fact that she hadn’t even started her homework for the coming week and was working eight-hour shifts at the mall in Beverly Hills both Saturday and Sunday. She’d always been a night owl, even before her previous profession. And she had no social life—completely her choice. She knew she’d get the work done.

She just preferred to keep to her schedule.

“Tal?”

At first she thought she’d imagined the voice. Her inner self calling her to task, no doubt.

“Talia?”

“Oh!” Through the glass door of the master bathroom shower, Talia saw Tatum round the corner. She turned her back and instinctively covered herself, then realized what an idiotic thing that was to do.

“Sorry,” Tatum said, sitting on the stool in the separate room across from the shower. “But it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before,” she said.

When Tatum was small, more often than not she’d showered with Talia. Someone had to help the little girl bathe, make sure that she got the soap out of her hair.

“I’m not used to have someone walking around my house while I’m showering,” Talia said.

She didn’t want her sister to see the body that had rocked the stage more nights than she could count. She knew she’d get over it in time—time took care of everything, didn’t it?—but right now, her naked body shamed her. Illogical though that was.

“Sorry,” Tatum said again. “You’re usually heading out the door by eight. It’s five to, and when I saw your car but you didn’t answer my knock, I got worried.”

And Tatum, like Sedona and Tanner, had a key to the place. At Talia’s insistence, not theirs. She wanted her little sister to have a place to hang out, or hide out, at any time for any reason. “I was up late last night,” she said, finishing her shower and reaching for a towel at the same time she shut off the water.

“Doing homework?” Her sister’s voice came through the open door. Talia could see her denim-clad knees bobbing up and down.

Tatum knew her schedule.

“No.”

“You spent the night with his collage, didn’t you?”

An adult might have been too polite to ask. Tanner would have been too cautious around her to push.

“Yep.”

As Talia wrapped a towel around her body and another one around her head, Tatum left her perch on the stool and followed her to the bedroom. “And?”

All of Talia’s underwear was still pretty much the unmentionable kind. She just couldn’t afford to replace them and had no intention of anyone seeing them.

“Pick me out something to wear, would you?” she asked, pointing to the walk-in closet opposite the regular closet on the far side of the room. Her stuff would have fit easily in her regular closet, but she’d never had a walk-in before. She liked getting dressed in it. It was like a private dressing room.

At the moment, it gave her the privacy to grab a thong and a scrap of lace with underwire and get them on before pulling on a robe and heading back into the bathroom to semidry her hair. Just enough to get it up in a twist. Any more than that would dry it out.

“How often do you wash your hair?” Tatum asked, coming in to sit on the counter and watch as Talia expertly flipped the long blond strands up and around her hand. Hooker’s hair, she thought, knowing full well that it had made her a lot of money over the years. She should cut it. Dye it.

But she’d always loved her hair. Even as a little kid.

“Three times a week,” she said.

“I only do two.” Tatum picked up her can of hairspray, read the label. “Otherwise, it gets too dry.”

“Have you been using the hydrating conditioner I gave you?”

“Yeah. And the detangler, too.”

“It’s only been a couple of months. Give it time. Your hair will be soft as a baby’s by summer.”

She liked to dress before applying her makeup—so as not to smear anything on her clothes. But Tatum was sitting there. Watching her.

“I wish I could do that as quickly as you,” she said, watching at Talia applied a coat of face cream to her skin, topped it with foundation and then began applying three shades of eye shadow, liner and mascara to her eyes. All to have the end result look as if she wasn’t wearing much makeup at all.

And she didn’t want Tatum to ever be as quick as she was at the artifice. Going from lap dance back to the stage in five minutes hadn’t left her with much time for touching up her makeup. Leaving a bedroom where she’d just been slapped in the face by her husband, to go out and meet his guests, hadn’t left much time for covering up, either.

But she’d managed.

“How about getting me some coffee?” she asked as she added a bit of blush to finish.

“Sure, mocha or dark roast?” She and Tatum had shopped together for the little cups of coffee that went with Sedona’s one-cup machine. She’d said she didn’t need it at Tanner’s house as they’d never just drink one cup of coffee there.

“Dark roast.”

As soon as Tatum slid off the counter, Talia threw on the light purple blouse and beige silk-lined pants her sister had chosen for her. Before she was in the wedged sandals Tatum had also chosen, her sister was back, placing a cup of coffee on the bathroom counter.

“Wear this,” she said, pulling her favorite pendant out of Talia’s jewelry box. It was an inch-long hand, decorated with colorful little stones, and on a fairly short gold chain. Tatum found the matching earrings and laid them out, as well.

The sisters had ordered the ensemble off a home shopping television network to commemorate the first time Tatum spent the night with her in the beach house. Tatum had picked a piece, too. Talia was still paying them both off.

“You never told me why you’re here,” Talia said as she gave herself one last glance in the mirror.

“I just wanted to see you,” Tatum said. Then added, “I’m on my way to the Stand for a session and...I’d hoped you’d stop by last night...”

Oh, God, she was failing her little sister again. “You should have called,” she said, not bothering to hide the sorrow on her face as she faced the beautiful young woman Tatum had become. “I’d have been there in a heartbeat if I’d known you needed me.”

“Chill, big sis,” Tatum said, touching Talia’s wrist lightly. “It wasn’t me I was concerned about. It’s you. And I didn’t call because I didn’t want to bother you, but I worried about you all night. Yesterday was your last day with Kent.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to worry. I’m fine.”

“That’s why you spent the night with his collage?”

Talia meant to brush past her sister, down the hall and out the door. She was going to be late for work if she didn’t get a move on. Instead, she stood there helplessly, her eyes filling with tears.

“He’s...” She shook her head. “No, never mind. I’m fine.”

“You can see him again, Tal,” Tatum said, following her through the house and out the door, double-checking that Talia had locked it.

“No.”

“It was in your adoption agreement. You can contact his father and at least ask if—”

“No.” Talia was okay now, her purse in hand on her way to work. Where expensive clothes and good jewelry were the only things she’d have to worry about. That and trying to help women whose bodies weren’t perfect look good.

“Just...think about it, okay?” Tatum asked, standing in between Talia and the driver’s-side car door.

“It would be a selfish thing to do.” She said out loud what she’d been telling herself all night long.

She had to contact someone, though. The more she’d studied Kent’s finished product, without the boy there to distract her, the more things she’d seen that concerned her.

He hadn’t been overt, of course. He was too smart for that. But somehow those bad words had made it from the trash to his poster. Not the exact letters, of course. These were much smaller. And partially hidden. He’d used letters as borders on a number of pictures and she’d thought him creative. Until she’d seen the ones she’d prohibited earlier in the week. He must have pieced them together from magazines at home and slipped them onto the collage without her noticing.

“Not if you’re doing it for me,” Tatum said. “And him. Did you ever think that maybe he’d like to know he has an aunt? Or maybe I could be a friend to him now that his mom’s gone? Kind of like a big sister.”

There were things she should say. A right way to handle this. Talia stood silently.

“Well, anyway, just think about it,” Tatum said, stepping back from the door.

Talia nodded. Tatum backed up a few more steps.

“I love you, Tal.” Her sweet voice carried across the driveway.

“I love you, too, Baby Tay.” She wanted more than anything to make things right with Tatum. Needed to do so if she was ever going to be right with her soul.

Tatum’s frown turned into a huge grin, and Talia figured she’d done okay. This time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHERMAN PACED. BECAUSE what he wanted to do was haul his son out of bed, into the office and stand there while Kent opened the restricted file folder on his mother’s computer.

His computer.

Dr. Jordon had told him the key to reaching Kent was patience. If he came on strong, the boy was just going to clam up, get defensive. Kent was pushing Sherman away. He needed to know that he was loved, no matter how much he acted out. He was testing Sherman, to see if he could make Sherman leave him, too.

Or some such thing.

It made sense. Sherman got it, logically. And he was beside himself with worry, disappointment and a bit of anger, too, as he stood there locked out of a computer in his own home, and waited.

As it turned out, Kent slept until eight. In spite of the vacuuming Sherman had done. And in spite of the number of times he’d let the screen door slam shut behind him after spotting a weed in the juniper tree bed from the living-room window, or checking on the mail in case he’d missed it the night before, or making sure the hose was wound up.

Maybe he’d wanted to let the door slam a number of times to get his son up and out of bed. That was possible, too.

Sherman had a bowl of sugared cereal sitting on the counter, ready for milk, and pushed the button down on the toaster to cook the bread he’d had waiting there.

He poured milk over his own oat cereal and joined Kent at the table. He talked about their plans to go to the batting cages later that afternoon. About a game they were going to watch that night. He asked his son if hot dogs sounded good for dinner.

He made it until Kent came out of his room in jeans that were too pristine to belong to a little boy and a game-day jersey tucked into them before calling his son into the office.

“Log on for me,” he said, pointing to Kent’s computer.

Without hesitating, the boy did just that. And then plopped down into his chair.

“Show me what’s new,” Sherman said next.

Kent took him through a couple of new homework folders. Showed him a new level he’d reached on a downloaded video game. A cartoon game where he had to figure out increasingly difficult puzzles to move from one level to the next. Nothing to do with death, dying or killing. The boy was not allowed to do any online gaming at all. Sherman wasn’t chancing what he might come across or be asked to do during the game chats. But Kent didn’t seem to mind.

Leaning forward in his own chair, which he’d pulled over, Sherman followed Kent’s explanations, praising him where praise had been earned. And slowly started to crumble a bit inside.

Kent wasn’t going to show him the folder. He knew it as surely as he knew he was sitting there. The boy had just accessed the folder that week, though Sherman had been able to ascertain earlier by clicking on its properties that it had existed for almost a year.

“That’s it,” Kent finally said, dropping back in the chair that was too big for him. His head was resting against the back of the chair, which meant that his back nearly covered the seat of it.

“You sure?” Sherman asked. He’d have crossed his fingers behind his back if he’d been his son’s age.

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t done anything else on this computer this week.”

“Nope.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

Kent’s heel tapped on the floor, his expression placid.

“You know what happens if I find out you’re lying to me.” Just checking. Or reminding.

“I lose my right to my own computer. I have to do homework on the laptop that’s offline and empty of all games.”

“Right.” He waited. Giving Kent the chance to think on it and come clean.

The boy had to know he was going to bust him. He knew the folder was there. And he’d also know that Sherman knew something. He’d never grilled him before.

And maybe he should have.

Or...

Maybe he should leave Kent to his privacy. The idea was tempting. It couldn’t be a permanent condition. He was going to have to know what was going on. But maybe he should speak with Dr. Jordon first. Maybe he’d like a good, relaxing weekend with his son before they got up Monday morning and had to slay dragons again.

Yeah, maybe. He could keep an eye on Kent all weekend. Make sure that the boy didn’t access whatever was in the troubling folder.

Or maybe he should give Kent time alone in the office and wait for him to think it was safe to open the folder. Maybe he should bust him then, with the evidence on the screen...

Duplicity had never been his way. He wasn’t usually a coward, either.

And since when did he need a psychologist telling him how to discipline his son?

He amended that last thought. He’d needed it since Brooke’s death, of course. But no matter how much Kent was struggling...

“I can’t abide lying in this house, Kent,” he said aloud. There was no attack here. Nothing to push Kent into defensive mode. There was only impenetrable fact.

“I’m not lying.” His son looked him straight in the eye.

And left Sherman no choice but to lean forward, take the boy’s mouse and find the incriminating folder. Kent, still leaning back as though he hadn’t a care in the world, watched him. Sherman clicked to open the folder and got the password protection screen.

“Open it,” he told his son.

Sitting up, Kent did so, quickly enough that even though he was watching, Sherman didn’t catch the password. Clearly, it was one they’d never used before. He’d tried everything he could think of while his son slept in.

The folder opened, and Sherman blinked. “There’s nothing there.”

“I know.”

Could Kent have come across some elaborate program that allowed him to erase the contents of a folder upon opening it with some password keystroke?

There was no other way the boy could have emptied that folder. Unless he’d done it earlier that week and that was why he’d accessed it.

But then why leave it there at all, if he was going to empty it?

“What was in there?”

“Nothing.”

“The folder’s been there almost a year.”

“Yeah.”

If he wasn’t mistaken his son was hiding a grin. But not a fun one. No, his eyes took on almost a sly look. A knowing look. If a ten-year-old could manage such a thing.

“Did you create it?” Kent seemed willing to answer anything, so he was going to ask everything he could think of.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To see if you were really checking up on me like you said you were going to do. I created a password-protected folder just to see if you’d find it and ask me about it. It took you almost a year. Good going, Dad.”

Sherman sat back, his fingers on either side of his chin. He’d shaved in a hurry. Missed some spots. He ran a hand through his hair. He wore his longer than Kent’s now that Brooke was gone. She’d liked it short. He liked it more casual and...

“You were testing me,” he said to the boy, just to clarify.

“Yeah.”

“How’d I do?” Had Kent wanted him to find the folder? Or just the opposite? Had he needed to know his father trusted him enough not to look?

Kent shrugged. “Not bad,” he said. “Took you a while to find it, but you grilled me as soon as you did.”

As if that was a good thing?

“You did just find it this morning, right?” For the first time since the inquisition had begun, Kent showed a sign of...fear?

“Yes.” He sat there, taking it in, finding no concrete thoughts. “How often have you accessed it?”

“I dunno. Maybe eight times.”

“I guess I’ve been a little lax, huh?”

“Nah. You did fine, Dad. Can we go to the batting cages now?”

“What did we agree to at breakfast?”

“I’d clean my room and help with the bathroom first.”

“Right, and have we done that?”

“Nooo.” Kent’s grin was all little-boy then, and it struck Sherman’s heart clear through. “I was just hoping you were feeling bad enough that we could skip the cleaning part.”

“You want to live in a pigsty?”

“No.”

“You got money to pay a cleaning lady?”

The boy’s sigh was long. “No, Dad. You know I don’t.”

“Guess that means it’s up to us to get the cleaning done, doesn’t it?” Sherman stood, both hands on his son’s shoulders as Kent did, too. “At least you got out of vacuuming this week.”

Kent threw another killer grin over his shoulder. “Why do you think I stayed in bed?” he asked. “I waited until I heard it in every room before I got up.”

Sherman’s burst of laughter surprised the hell out of him.

* * *

SHE COULD LEAVE a written report with Mrs. Barbour and walk away. Professionally, anyway.

Doing so would be appropriate.

Late Sunday night, after stopping after work to see her family—adamantly avoiding any mention of Kent Paulson—and then finishing the last of her online homework, Talia pulled a jacket on over her sweats, took her laptop out to the deck on the back of her borrowed beach cottage and sat down with the ocean she could hear but not see.

She saw a couple of lights bobbing in the far distance. Ships out to sea? There was nothing but blackness where she knew the beach to be—the stretch of space between her deck and the water.

It fit her, this little cottage. Alone, she didn’t need a lot of space. And yet, she never truly felt lonely here. How could you when all of life was spread before you just by sitting on your back deck?

Maybe someday she’d actually be able to afford a place like this. And not have to rely on handouts from the family she’d let down so badly.

As she sat there, not yet opening the laptop, Talia stared out into the darkness and replayed a scene from earlier that day. She’d just finished ringing up a fifteen-hundred-dollar sale—a couple of outfits with the highest quality costume jewelry embellishments—when the store’s manager approached her.

“Have you got a minute?” Mirabelle had asked.

“Of course.” Even if you didn’t, you found one when the head boss sought you out.

“You’ve been working here for well over a year now,” the savvy, middle-aged woman said, as though Talia didn’t know the length of her employment.

“Yes.”

“Since your first month you’ve been one of our top earning associates.”

She nodded. Helping people look good wasn’t all that tough. Getting them to spend their money on looking good hadn’t been her doing. That was human nature coming into play. Their own, not hers.

“While finishing up a four-year college degree in three years.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I hear that you’re in school again, adding psychology to your major?”

“That’s right.” Though her original employment had been granted partially on the basis of her performance in the fashion area of study, surely the store wouldn’t have a problem with her continued education. She had her fashion merchandising degree with a dual in fashion design. And her work wasn’t suffering.

“What’s the starting salary for fashion design grads who are psychology students in California these days?” Mirabelle, decked out to the nines in a red suit with black trim, gave her an assessing look.

As far as she knew she’d have to have a doctorate in psychology to actually work in the field of psychology. She was only going for a master’s degree. She told the woman a little bit about her collage program—starting with the experience with collage that she’d received as part of her fashion design degree. And then she admitted that, so far, her collage work was all done on a volunteer basis.

The older woman nodded. Talia held her gaze. She needed this job. The store paid the highest sales commission by far. With only two days a week to work, Talia had to make those hours count.

“Good,” Mirabelle said after several seconds, a small smile forming on her face. “I’d like to offer you an opportunity to do far better than that,” she said. “I have an opening for a full-time buyer for women’s fashions and accessories. You’d have full purchasing privilege in all of the best houses around the world. I’ll pay your travel expenses and a small salary. In addition, you’ll get a percentage of each of your items that sell in our store.”

Mirabelle named an amount she could expect to make that astounded her.

“I...” She was tempted. She could buy a beach cottage. Be able to help her family if they ever had need...

She’d get to travel the world without selling her soul. She’d have respectability.

And she’d be spending a good part of her life traveling. She knew what being a buyer meant. Her nights would be largely spent in hotel rooms. Far away.

“What would the small salary be?”

“Twenty thousand a year. But if you do half as well as the woman you’re replacing you’ll make more than I’ve just told you to expect.”

After her items arrived and starting selling, of course.

Twenty thousand was less than she’d made at eighteen.

But the commission was more than she could hope to make anytime in the near future.

Still, she’d be gone most of the time. Away.

Mirabelle had given her two months to think about the offer. The position wouldn’t be available for another three months.

She had time to weigh the pros and cons. But her gut was telling her that she couldn’t take the job. She wasn’t going anywhere until Tatum had graduated from high school and was settled in college. And then she still wasn’t leaving. She’d learned that in her life family came first, and for her, because of her past, that meant that she had to be where they were. In case they needed her.

So that they knew she was there for them.

She opened her laptop. Opened a blank word processing document and started to type.

About a little boy who was hiding things. Who had thoughts about violence. And a gentle heart. A boy who was angry, and who loved to read and have family picnics. Who wanted to lash out and liked puppies. A boy who was smart enough to keep his true feelings hidden, talented enough to mask his feelings with an artistic presentation, tender enough to see the value in doing the project at all and young enough to put his frustrations right there for all to see. If they looked.

She was telling the story that she saw when she looked at Kent Paulson’s collage. She might be right. Or not. She could be reading him spot-on, or be a bit off the mark.

But she knew she wasn’t completely off. Talia had a special talent for interpreting people’s collage work. Her instructors in college had seen it. The psychologist who supervised her master’s thesis work, a project involving the use of collage in assessing children, saw it.

She finished the report. Sent it to Sedona’s home printer. Only one light bobbed on the ocean now. Didn’t mean it was the only boat out there. Inevitably there were others. But it looked like the only one. Looked starkly alone.

Like her. She wasn’t alone. She had family who loved her. Really and truly loved her. They’d have to really love her to see the real her in spite of her past.

Yet as she sat there, contemplating the report she would deliver in the morning, she had never felt so starkly alone.

For one week, she’d almost felt like a mother. From a distance. On the outside looking in. But still...

And now, she’d see Mrs. Barbour in the morning and then just be Talia again. A woman who’d given up her son for adoption seconds after his birth.

Not if you’re doing it for me. And him.

Tatum’s words had been playing in her head all weekend. Her little sister wanted to meet her nephew. Her only nephew as far as any of them knew. Tatum needed family almost as bad as Talia did.

And what about Kent? She’d abandoned him once. Was it right or wrong to do so again? He’d seemed to like her.

Maybe he’d just liked her art project.

His “see ya” hadn’t sounded particularly...anything. Just polite. It certainly hadn’t seemed to faze the boy that they were never going to see each other again.

If ten-year-olds even thought that way. She had. But then, she’d been an adult at five.

What if he thought she’d still be around the school? That he’d be seeing her just like he saw all of his other former teachers?

Was she really thinking about seeing him again?

Could she keep pretending she wasn’t looking for a way?

But it had to be for the right reasons. She had to do it for others. Not just for herself. Not to give her a sense of self-worth or because it felt good in the moment.

The thought was followed by another. She wasn’t in a position to determine what was best for Kent.

She should just let it be. Deliver her report to the principal and leave well enough alone.

Unless she really believed she could help him.

What if he looked her up as an adult and she found out that he’d suffered something she could have prevented?

She had a plan. Not that she’d told anyone. But she knew about a program that might help Kent Paulson.

If she dared take this any further.

If she dared... Because she might get hurt? Or because someone else might?

The truthful answer to that was both.

One o’clock passed. Then two. Talia sat on the back porch, watching the bobbing light become two again. And then three. Ships passing in the night.

She held her coat close, shivering. Because she couldn’t do anything else. She was frozen on the precipice of making a new life with better choices, or remaining in the old one in a new city with the same old mistakes.

How did she trust herself to know the difference?

She’d thought, when she’d run away at sixteen, and then again at eighteen, that she was doing the right thing. Not all women grew up innocent. Not all were mother material...

She sat there until her mind quieted and there was only resolution left. She stood, just before three, and went inside to go to bed. She would have to get up in a few hours, but she knew what she was going to do when she did.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BY TEN O’CLOCK Monday morning Sherman had already chaired a couple of productive meetings. His staff was scurrying about the office, making things happen. He’d suffused the air with a positive energy that would make him a mint if he could sell it.

And every time the phone rang his stomach lurched. Kent was back in class today. They’d had a fairly decent weekend. If you didn’t count the rudeness at the table when he’d taken him to meet the representative of an animal rights coalition for lunch on Sunday. He’d thought Kent would enjoy hearing about the animals. Had even contemplated the idea of adopting a pet, if Kent asked him.

But his son had put on the headphones to the video game Sherman hadn’t even known he’d brought along and ignored every attempt he made to quietly get Kent to put the thing away.

At eleven, when Gina stuck her head into his office, announcing that Kent’s principal was on the phone, he was almost relieved to get it over with. The principal had mentioned a private school to him a couple of times, a place where troubled boys went. He was not sending Kent to one of those places.

But he might have to find an alternative. A private school that he could afford. So that Kent could get himself kicked out of there, too?

“This is Sherman,” he said into the phone, his eyes closed as though he could block what was coming.

“I’m sorry to bother you...” Sherman leaned as far back as his chair would go, throwing an ankle up over his knee, as Mrs. Barbour rattled on about another teacher, one he hadn’t yet heard of, who’d come to her about Kent. Eyes still closed to the rest of the world, he let her prattle on, knowing that somehow they were going to get through this.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. His old man’s words to him before he’d left with his army unit for the overseas mission that had killed him. Remember that, son. His father’s last words to him.

“I’ve read the report, Mr. Paulson, and I think it would be in Kent’s best interest if you at least met with her.”

Wait. What? Foot landing on the ground with a thud, he sat up. Opened his eyes and said, “Why does she want to meet with me?” An art teacher had found signs of anger in Kent’s work. Unfortunately, this wasn’t groundbreaking news to him.

“She’d like to tell you that herself, sir.”

“Who is this woman?”

“Her name’s Talia Malone.”

“And you said she took time out of her day to work with my son every day last week?”

“Yes, sir. Her collage program, which is also part of her master’s thesis, has been tentatively approved by the school board and she was in our building, anyway. I didn’t feel there was any harm in giving Kent an opportunity for some one-on-one time with her. You told me you trusted me to make appropriate decisions for him during school hours and—”

“Yes, yes...” he cut in. “I’m...grateful for all that you’re doing. And of course I’ll meet with anyone who thinks they can help Kent. I’m sorry. I thought... I expected...”

“You thought I was calling because Kent was in trouble again. I understand.” Mrs. Barbour’s soft tone reminded him of his mother. Anita Paulson had remarried a couple of years after his father passed away. Another military man. Sherman had been in high school then. Unwilling to be uprooted yet again by military life. His mother had reluctantly allowed him to stay with a friend’s family while he finished high school. From there it had been college. And Brooke. His mother, on the other hand, had lived in four different states and was currently in Belgium where her husband, a full colonel now, was serving his last term before retirement. She’d seen Kent a handful of times. Brief visits that always ended with promises for more time soon.

Mrs. Barbour was listing off times when this Talia Malone would be available to meet with him.

“Whatever works best for her,” he said, not making note of any of them. Didn’t matter to him when it was. As long as it happened. “As soon as possible, whatever’s best for her,” he amended. If he had something on the calendar he’d switch it.

“Tomorrow, then? Just after lunch? Which would be one o’clock. I can give you the conference room down the hall for as long as you need it,” she said, all business as usual.

Grabbing a pen, Sherman took down the pertinent details. An appointment for a new lease on life.

That was right up his alley.

* * *

TALIA DIDN’T HUG a water fountain for comfort. She didn’t throw up. She also didn’t tell anyone, most particularly Tatum, that she was meeting her biological son’s father that Tuesday afternoon. She dressed in conservative black pants, a white blouse and her tweed blazer, twisted her hair back into a bun, glued the wayward tendrils down with professional-quality freeze spray and walked into that meeting with her big-girl panties firmly in place.

She hadn’t set out to do any of this. Had only wanted a glimpse of her son, to assure herself he was fine before she went on with her life and left him to his. She’d needed the closure of the life she was leaving behind.

But he’d been in trouble, and she’d been able to help. Not as his mother. As the person she was becoming in her new life—the professional Talia.

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