Child by Chance

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “No...she said she was going to stay back. She’d never get in the way of official police business. But if she saw something...if Kent was in danger...she’d have stopped at nothing.”

  Sherman’s blood froze in his veins. She’d risk her life for his son because she loved them. Just as he loved her. Something was finally making sense and he didn’t want it to.

  Not if it meant Talia was in danger.

  “Why would Talia even go there?” Sara’s frown was deepening. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t she just come here and wait with the rest of us?”

  “Because he’s her son!” Tatum’s words split through the room. Conversations stopped. People looked over at the three of them sitting on the couch. And Tatum started to babble. “He’s my nephew! I love him. No one was telling me anything, but I figured out what was going on and called Talia. I knew, no matter what, she’d want to be there and...”

  The girl kept talking, but Sherman didn’t hear anything she said. He sat there, but couldn’t feel the couch beneath him.

  Talia Malone was Kent’s mother?

  Could it be true?

  Was it even possible?

  She’d had sex at sixteen. With a teacher who’d gone to prison. About eleven years before. Kent had been conceived close to eleven years before.

  The math worked.

  Nothing else did.

  * * *

  WHEN THE EXPLOSION SOUNDED, Talia felt it clear to her bones. Emotionally. She wasn’t physically hurt, but she was in pain. More afraid than she’d ever been. And couldn’t continue to hide in the bushes like an onlooker to her life.

  She ran for the street first, and then moved up it toward the house that still looked intact. Nothing was burning. She saw no smoke.

  A band of police officers saw her.

  “Please,” she said, crying now. “Kent Paulson—he’s in there. Do you know if he’s okay?”

  They’d been standing there in a group, talking. As if they were waiting. Just like her.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ll have to step back...” A woman broke away from the other officers and took Talia by the arm, leading her across the street, away from the house. “I didn’t catch your name,” the woman said, clearly trying to calm the situation.

  Talia looked over her shoulder, not letting the house out of her sight.

  “Ms. Malone?” She heard his voice. And thought she was imagining it.

  “You know this woman?” The police officer spoke, and Talia knew it was real. Glancing over, she saw Kent with police officers on both sides of him, getting out of a car.

  “I’m in trouble, huh?” the boy said, looking up at her with tears starting to fill his eyes.

  He was fine. It was all she could comprehend at the moment. Kent was fine.

  Forgetting everything that stood in the way, she ran to him, grabbed him up into her arms and hugged him as if she’d never let him go.

  * * *

  SHERMAN HEARD ABOUT the small homemade device that Jason’s father had set off as a warning to police.

  Other than to know that Jason was still alive, and as fine as he could be still in his father’s custody, he was hardly aware.

  “You’re Talia’s sister,” he said, finally sitting alone with the blonde teenager.

  She nodded. “And you’re Sherman. I know. I’ve seen you pick up Kent.”

  Nothing in life had prepared him for this moment.

  “Talia’s going to kill me,” the girl said, having calmed down once she heard that Kent was out of danger. If anyone had realized the stake she had in the situation they’d have told her much sooner.

  She’d been among them all morning, but suffering on her own.

  She reminded him of her sister.

  Kent’s mother.

  He shook his head. Angry. Hurt. And unable to leave the emotional teenager until her brother arrived to care for her.

  Lila had told them Tanner was on his way.

  “She’s probably going to leave again and never come back,” Tatum said.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because I told you her secret. She didn’t want anyone to know. Ever. Kent most of all. She thinks that knowing she’s his mother will somehow ruin him. I think he’s lucky. No one will ever love him more than she does...”

  The girl broke off and looked up at Sherman, her eyes widening. Eyes that reminded him of someone else.

  Someone close to him. A little boy who’d looked at him just like that on many occasions. Pretty much every time he was in trouble.

  He saw the truth there.

  And he wasn’t ready to deal with it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said now, still staring at him. “Other than you, of course. You love him more than anyone.”

  As backtracking went, the attempt failed. Sherman wanted to throw something. To scream at a world that was careering so far out of control in spite of his playing by the rules every single second of every day.

  But he couldn’t blame this young woman. Her heart was in her eyes.

  “She’s his mother,” he said, half to himself. Still not able to accept what was staring right at him. The way she’d taken to Kent from the first. Had been able to read him like a book when no one else could.

  Her eagerness to drive a virtual stranger to counseling every afternoon. Sherman had thought it was because of the compelling attraction between the two of them.

  The attraction between them, the sex...had that all been an act just to get closer to her son?

  “She was at Kent’s school, helping him, because she was his mother?”

  “No!” Talia said. “Well, only in part.”

  He heard how Talia had started helping the women at the Lemonade Stand. How she’d developed a program for high-school girls, only the school board had voted for a trial program with sixth graders first. How Talia had just needed to know that her son was okay so she could leave the past behind and move on with her new life. And how she’d witnessed him going off on a teacher the day he’d been expelled.

  It all made sense. Sickening sense.

  All but the part where she’d seemed to love him. He’d thought she was “the one.”

  The rest he could understand. Maybe even someday forgive.

  But having sex with him? Pretending to return his feelings?

  That he couldn’t accept.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  KENT WANTED TO ride back to the Lemonade Stand with Talia. He’d started to cry, to cling to her, when the officer tried to lead him back to the car that was to take him to his father.

  The officer made a phone call. Presumably to Sherman. So Talia wasn’t all that surprised when she was given temporary custody of the little boy. She’d been driving Kent for weeks. Of course his father would trust her with him.

  He talked to his son for a moment, and then asked to speak with her.

  At which point she panicked. How was she going to explain being there? At a crime scene she should know nothing about?

  She wasn’t going to involve Tatum, she knew that much. But wasn’t enough Tammy’s daughter to come up with an alternative feasible explanation. “Is Kent right there?” was the first thing he said when the officer handed her the phone. Thinking that he wanted to tell her something about Jason, something he didn’t want his son to know, she stepped away, watching to make certain that the officer had Kent firmly within her sight.

  “No.”

  “I know that he’s your biological son.” The voice on the other end was not the man she knew. Not one she’d ever met before. “That doesn’t concern me at the moment. What concerns me is that he’s been through a traumatic experience and right now his emotional health is the only concern.”

  He knew? But how
? And...oh, no. Please, no. Just no.

  “To that end, I am allowing him to ride with you because he thinks he knows you. He’s comfortable with you. And because the officer suggested, based on Kent’s agitation, that riding with you is what’s best for him.”

  Wow. “Okay.”

  She deserved his anger. His mistrust. She just...

  “Further, I need your word that you will not, in any way, speak to him about his adoption or about your part in it.”

  And she understood. She was going to be out of their lives. Permanently. As soon as she delivered Kent to his father. One more time.

  “Per our agreement, I am legally bound to leave any telling to you.” Where she found the voice, or the courage to say the words, she didn’t know.

  His silence, in light of how much he’d had to say seconds before, confused her.

  “It’s really true, isn’t it?”

  Had her mention of the agreement confirmed it? Had he only been guessing before? But how could he have made such a leap on his own?

  At the moment, it didn’t matter. Their son did. And getting him home.

  “Yes,” she said. “But don’t worry, Sherman, I have no intention of telling him. Ever.”

  “Just get him home to me safely.”

  “I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up before she could reply.

  Not that she had any response to give him.

  * * *

  OTHER THAN WHEN he was on the phone with Talia, he sat with Tatum until her brother arrived. He wasn’t obligated to speak to her at all.

  And yet, he felt as though his place was there.

  Not because she was family. In any way. He couldn’t consider the ramifications of the announcement she’d made. Wasn’t sure anyone could, based on the way the few who heard the news were looking over at them.

  Sara, who’d been watching them, left Belinda to come over.

  “You two okay?”

  “Fine,” Sherman assured her.

  “I screwed up, didn’t I?” Tatum asked her.

  “If you did, it wasn’t on purpose,” the other woman assured her. She was looking at him.

  When he didn’t respond, she said, “Talia was in a no-win situation.”

  Maybe.

  “She had no intention of getting involved with Kent or even meeting you. She just needed to know that he was okay.”

  He nodded.

  “She doesn’t believe she’s worthy of him...” Tatum started in.

  “Tatum,” Sara interrupted. “Whatever else remains to be said has to be between your sister and Sherman.”

  Tatum, looking like Kent in trouble, nodded.

  Right about then, a tall, dark-haired man entered, perusing the room in one glance with a clear objective in mind. Sherman noticed him first.

  “I’m guessing that’s Tanner?” he asked as he stood.

  “Tanner!” Jumping up, Tatum ran to him, throwing her arms around her brother and burying her face in his shoulder. “I told him, Tanner. I’m so sorry. I...just... I thought she’d been hurt, and all because I’d told her where he was and...I’ve made a mess of everything.”

  The man held his little sister as though he’d never let her go. He whispered something Sherman couldn’t hear, all the while studying Sherman.

  “I’m Tanner Malone,” he said, holding out a hand to him, while he still held his sister against him with the other. A woman appeared beside him then. Someone else new to the room.

  “Tatum, sweetie? Let’s go get some cold water for your face.” Letting go of her brother, Tatum allowed herself to be led away.

  “My wife, Sedona,” Tanner said, watching the two of them leave the room. “She’s a lawyer.”

  Was the man giving him a warning? Asserting his power?

  “She volunteers here,” Sherman said, letting him know that Talia had told him all about them.

  “Talia...she’s had a hard time.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I hope you’ll go easy on her.”

  He couldn’t make any promises. But he had to know something. “Have you seen him, too?”

  Did this biological family of Kent’s have designs on him?

  “No.”

  He processed that for a moment.

  “You aren’t curious about him? He is, after all, your nephew.” Why he’d said that he had no idea.

  “Of course I’m curious. More than curious. I also know what’s right. He’s your son. You gave him a home, love, a life. If I meet him, it will be when you bring him and introduce him.”

  Sherman didn’t know what to make of that. Of any of them.

  “My sister did what she thought best,” Tanner said.

  “I’m sure she did.”

  “For the boy,” Tanner clarified, his eyes narrowed. “Not for herself.”

  She’d been sixteen. Betrayed by a man who was supposed to protect her. Teach her.

  “She was petrified of bringing a child into the world we’d grown up in.” The words didn’t come easily from the other man. Sherman saw the struggle on his face. Heard it in his voice.

  “She was afraid she was like our mother. She chose to break her own heart to give her son a chance at a better life.”

  He had one. The words sprang to Sherman’s tongue. He didn’t give them release. Because he wasn’t sure they were true.

  At the moment he wasn’t sure of anything. Except that he needed to see his son. To hold him like Tanner had just held Tatum. And take him home.

  To their home. Where it would be just the two of them living happily ever after.

  * * *

  THE SECOND HARDEST thing Talia had ever done was walk her son into the Lemonade Stand that afternoon. She knew she was seeing him for the last time.

  The hardest had been to give birth at sixteen and let them take the baby from her body and out of the room in the same breath.

  But she’d done it for him then and would do it again. For the same reason.

  Sherman Paulson was a great father. The best. He was everything she’d hoped for her son. And more.

  Getting this over and done with was for the best, too.

  “Let’s go,” she said, walking him down the hall to the room she’d been told to take him to.

  The second she walked in she saw Sherman. Standing and talking to another man. A familiar man.

  The other man turned.

  Tanner.

  Everything happened at once after that. Kent ran to his father, crying as Sherman picked him up, and Kent threw his arms around his father’s neck, holding on for dear life.

  Tatum came out of nowhere, running over to Talia. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”

  And she knew how Sherman knew that she was Kent’s mother.

  “Shh.” She comforted her sister automatically, pulling her close. “It’s okay, Baby Tay. It’s okay.”

  She said the words. But she believed them, too.

  She’d lost the man she loved. The boy who would always be a part of her.

  But she was glad that her secret was out.

  Sherman was talking to Lila and then left through another door without a backward glance.

  She watched them go. Waiting for either of them to look back at her. To wave goodbye perhaps.

  “Let’s go home.” Tanner had his arm around her waist. Sedona came up on her other side.

  “What about Jason?” Talia was fine. But the day wasn’t over yet. A little boy...

  Tanner said something about a negotiator going in unarmed after the explosion. They couldn’t take a chance on another, more deadly blast.

  “His father surrendered to the police shortly
after you left. Jason’s unharmed.”

  So it was over.

  So much was over.

  Maybe everything.

  She’d done what she had to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “WE DIDN’T SAY goodbye to Ms. Malone.” Kent put his club in his bag, slung the junior-size gear over his shoulder and walked beside Sherman.

  They’d missed their foursome the day before, heading straight to Dr. Jordon’s office from the Lemonade Stand.

  “I’m sure she understood.” Estimating the distance between his ball and the green, Sherman chose a five iron. It was just the two of them today. He liked playing golf alone with his son.

  “Why do you think she was there? I mean, how did she know where I’d be?”

  He wasn’t ready for the questions. They’d talked about Kent’s adoption in Dr. Jordon’s office the day before. He’d told his son the story of his birth, and his and Brooke’s reasoning behind the choice to celebrate the adoption as part of his tenth birthday.

  Kent had cried a little bit, telling his dad how alone and lied to he’d felt when he’d first found out. But mostly, they were discussing old news. Kent, through all of his counseling, but mostly through his friendship with Jason, had figured out how very much his father loved him.

  His son had largely dealt with the news without him. So much for his and Brooke’s careful plan.

  They’d also talked about Brooke’s affair. Kent had felt that double whammy—the fact that his mother had lied to his father, that even his adoptive family hadn’t been what it had seemed—more deeply than Sherman had realized. He was certain now that they’d solved the acting-out problem, although he still hadn’t told Kent that Brooke’s accident was most likely being ruled a suicide. There’d be time for that in the future. If the ruling became official. And only then. The rest was speculation that a ten-year-old boy didn’t need to be concerned about. If he figured it out for himself in the future, Sherman would trust that it happened because he was ready.

  “Tatum called her. She was on her way home from work so she stopped to see if she could help.” He’d told Dr. Jordon, in private, that Talia was Kent’s birth mother. He’d wanted—no, needed—validation that his choice to keep the information from his son was the correct one.