Valentine's Secret Child

“No kidding. Not there.”

“All right, all right. I’m coming…” Shaking her curly head, Renata got up and followed Carol out.

There was no one else in the breakroom. Kelly had never been so grateful to be left alone in her life.

Ordering her hands to stop shaking, she folded the paper with Michael’s picture on it, grabbed her coffee and stood on shaky legs. Once upright, she raced out the door and down the hall, sloshing coffee as she went.

At last, she reached her corner office. She darted inside, then stuck the paper under her arm to free a hand so she could close the door and turn the lock.

The lock clicked shut. She leaned her forehead against the doorframe and whispered desperately, “It can’t be him, no way it’s him….”

Her heart was galloping like a hundred wild horses. She sucked in a long breath, let it out with agonized slowness and ordered her pulse to stop pounding so loud she couldn’t hear herself think.

God. Her whole body was shaking. She’d splashed coffee on the back of her hand—and her shoes, as well.

With another deep breath, she pushed off from the door, turned and made herself walk to her desk. She set her coffee cup on the stone coaster, where her nine-year-old daughter, DeDe, had personally painted a stick-figure deer along with the words Mommy, you’re a dear in shiny pink letters.

The newspaper slid out from under her arm and flopped to the floor. Swearing under her breath, she grabbed it up, slapped it down on the desk and whipped out a few tissues from the box by her computer monitor.

She wiped the coffee off the back of her hand and then slipped off one tan suede shoe and then the other, to try and get the coffee off of them. Were they ruined? She’d take a brush to them when she got home. But at the moment, a wrecked pair of shoes was the least of her problems.

Michael. Oh, God. Michael…

Her phone rang. She punched Hold without picking up, then buzzed the receptionist. “Melinda, I’m in the middle of something here.” Well, it was true. And it was something big—even if it wasn’t the least work-related. “Could you take that call for me and get a message? And hold my calls until further notice… Yes. Terrific. Thanks.” She hung up and dropped into her swivel chair.

The section of paper was right there on the desk pad in front of her, folded and folded again, the pages slightly disarranged now….

Gripping the chair arms in white-knuckled hands and glaring at the folded paper, Kelly swung the chair sharply back and forth. Such a seemingly harmless thing. The Sacramento Bee for Tuesday, February 13th. Innocuous. Mundane.

Yet it threatened to change her life and the life of her only child. Forever.

DeDe, in pink tights and a tutu, beamed at her from the picture on the corner of her desk. That one had been taken at one of her dance recitals last fall. Next to it, there was one of DeDe and Candy, the ancient black mutt that had showed up on their doorstep five years before and swiftly become one of the family. DeDe, seven at the time the picture was taken, had her arms around the dog’s neck. She was smiling wide, proudly displaying the gap where she’d lost two front baby teeth. There were others pictures of DeDe, on the bookcase, as well as on the credenza. Two of them showed Kelly and DeDe together, one was of DeDe with her uncle Tanner and another of DeDe, Kelly, Tanner—and Hayley, who was Kelly and Tanner’s long-lost sister. They’d found Hayley just that previous June….

Kelly closed her eyes, sucked air through her nose. She could look at all her office pictures again. And again. A thousand times. But eventually, she’d have to open that paper. There was, in the end, no escaping the image there. The truth had to be faced.

With swift, determined movements, she hauled her chair in close to the desk and spread the paper wide.

And there he was again. Michael.

Older, bigger, stronger, more confident, more…everything. But still. It was Michael. She was certain.

She touched the face in the picture, closed her eyes, whispered fervently, like a prayer, “I tried, I swear. I tried to find you. I knew I would find you. At first. But I never did. And somehow, over the years… Oh, God. I’m so sorry. But I had started to think it was never going to happen….”

She was sagging again, kind of crumpling into herself. Not good. She needed to sit tall. Once more, she drew herself up. She reached for the phone and dialed her brother’s cell.

Tanner answered on the second ring. “Tanner Bravo.” Tanner was a private investigator. He owned his own detective service, Dark Horse Investigations. He’d been looking for Michael all along, with no luck.

“It’s me.” Her voice came out sounding absurdly small.

“Kell. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sound—”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Look. I was wondering. Do you think you could come over tonight, keep an eye on DeDe for a couple of hours?”

“Got a hot date?” Tanner was forever teasing her about her dateless state. As a rule, she teased him right back, razzed him that he ought to find someone nice and settle down.

Right now, though, she didn’t feel much like teasing. “Har-har. And no. It’s not a date. There’s this guy speaking at Valley U.A motivational thing…”

“You need motivating?”

“One of the counselors here at the center recommended him.” Well. Renata had recommended him. Though not exactly for his skills as a speaker.

“Do I get a free meal out of it?”

“Slow-cooker pot roast. Biscuits. For dessert, vanilla ice cream and oatmeal-raisin cookies.”

“Right answer. You’re in luck. I don’t have anything going on after five. What time d’you need me?”

She scanned the article in front of her, looking for a time. “Uh, the program starts at seven-thirty. Come at six. We’ll eat before I go. I should be home by ten at the latest.”

He agreed he’d be there and they said goodbye.

She hung up feeling guilty for not telling him that the motivational speaker just happened to be Michael.

But no. She wasn’t absolutely sure the man was Michael, not yet. She needed to see him in person first, needed to be beyond-a-doubt certain about this before she got everyone all stirred up.

Mitch Valentine was speaking in the sociology center, an auditorium called Delta Hall. The hall had theater-style seating for at least a thousand and when Kelly arrived at twenty after seven, a good half of the seats were taken.

Quite a crowd for a self-help speaker on a Tuesday night. Was Renata here somewhere? Kelly hoped not. The situation was tough enough. She didn’t need the added stress of trying to behave normally for one of her colleagues.

Kelly dithered—upstairs or down? Front, center or at the rear? More people filed in around her.

Finally, frazzled to no end, a bundle of nerves at the prospect that Michael might be in the same building with her and in ten minutes she would see him in the flesh, she chose a seat about a third of the way up from the stage. Close enough that she should be able to tell if the man named Mitch Valentine was actually Michael.

And far enough back that she doubted he would pick her out of the crowd—again, if he did turn out to be Michael. And if he remembered her.

It was possible, after all, that he was Michael and he’d totally forgotten he was ever passionately, possessively in love with a girl named Kelly. He’d clearly moved on. And he didn’t know about DeDe. Yet.

What was there to hold him to the memory of those long-ago days?

Next to her, a college-age girl wearing a shearling jacket and boots that looked as if they belonged on an Eskimo, giggled and turned to the girl on her other side. “Hottie. I’m so not kidding. Fully doable. You should have gone to the reception before. He shook my hand. God. Those eyes. That voice. I think I came. And you know how I feel about the damn required lectures. But here I am. And you don’t hear me complaining….”

Her girlfriend was not impressed. “I’ll wait ’til I see him. And I still hate these lectures.”

“Trust me,” said the girl in the Eskimo boots. “You get a look at him, you’ll change your mind.”