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