Valentine's Secret Child

The two put their heads together and started whispering.

Kelly tuned them out. Michael had always had a fine, deep voice and beautiful eyes. Most people hadn’t noticed, back then. They saw a skinny, withdrawn teenager and never looked beyond that.

So was that more proof that she’d found him, at last?

Wait, the voice of caution warned. Get a look at him. You’ll know soon enough.

It was warm in the hall and her nerves weren’t helping her cool down any. She wiggled out of her winter coat and draped it over the back of her chair.

By the time she faced front again, the lights were dimming over the seats—and getting brighter on the stage, brightest of all on the podium, center stage. A man came striding out of the wings: tall, thin, gray hair…

Not Michael. Or even the man she suspected might be Michael.

The gray-haired man stepped up to the podium to polite applause. He introduced himself as the head of the sociology department and then launched into a glowing introduction of the evening’s guest speaker.

Most of it had been in the paper that morning.

“Mitch Valentine is living, breathing proof that the American Dream really can come true. At nineteen, he designed his first video game. How many of you ever played DeathKnot or Midnight Destroyer?” Hands went up all over the hall. The professor smiled. “From there, he moved into software development, then created a job-search engine for students. Many of you here tonight have or will use FirstJob.com before you send out those resumes. From there, Mitch moved into desktop publishing. Now, at twenty-eight, he owns two publicly traded companies with headquarters in Dallas and in Los Angeles. And he’s written a book about how he did it.”

Her heart was beating too fast again. Michael would be twenty-eight now….

And the video games. They hadn’t mentioned the video games in the paper, had they?

The department head was still talking. About how Mitch Valentine had started from nothing, lived on the streets of Dallas, turned his life around. How he had no formal education beyond a high-school diploma, and yet…look at the man today.

And then, at last, he said, “And now, it’s with great pleasure and sincere admiration that I introduce to you…Mitch Valentine.”

There was a roar. It was partly the applause and it was partly the blood spurting so fast through her veins, it made a rushing in her ears.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit with a snow-white shirt and a lustrous blue tie strode confidently across the stage. She thought, Chestnut-brown hair, like Michael’s…

He stepped up to the podium under the hard gleam of the spotlight. And he spoke.

“Thank you, Dr. Benson. I’ll do my best to live up to that glowing introduction….”

He spoke.

She’d known for certain in her mind when he faced the audience, but when he spoke, she knew in her heart.

The final shreds of her doubt unraveled and dropped away.

Kelly knew.

He was Michael. She had found her daughter’s father, at last.

Chapter Two

Mitch Valentine, who had once been Michael Vakulic, talked for over an hour, without notes. He rarely stood still. Instead, he paced back and forth in front of the podium, pausing now and then to turn his arresting gaze on the audience as he emphasized a certain point. He wore one of those little portable mikes that hooked over his right ear, with a thin mouthpiece curving over his cheek, so his voice was crystal clear even though he spoke in a conversational tone.

He talked about starting from nothing. About never giving up. About making the impossible into the possible. About translating dreams into reality, about goals, about what gets in the way of getting what we want.

He was funny and he was brilliant and he was inspiring. And he had that audience in the palm of his hand. Even Kelly, though hardly in a receptive frame of mind, was impressed. Hey, she just might have learned something under different circumstances.

That night, though, she sat there wide-eyed, her heart in her throat, images of the Michael she had known back then popping in and out of her stunned mind, warring with the reality of Mitch Valentine now.

Up on the stage, the broad-shouldered man in the designer suit said, “Set yourself up in opposition, and where does all your energy go? Exactly. Into the fight—into opposing. But set yourself up in cooperation, and something altogether different occurs….”

In her mind’s eye, she saw Michael, her Michael, in a cheap white T-shirt and battered, sagging jeans, his arms like two sticks, his hair shoulder length and stringy. His dark, hazel eyes were shining and his thin face seemed to glow from within.

He said, “I love you, Kelly. You’re everything to me. I’ll always take care of you. It’s you and me against the rest of them….”

Mitch Valentine said, “Ultimatums? I believe they’re the simplest way to sabotage yourself, to make certain you get the short end of the stick instead of what you want….”

And she remembered Michael the day he made her choose. “Me and you, Kelly. Don’t you remember? It was supposed to be me and you, always. If you leave with him, it’s over. So make a choice. Him. Or me.”

“But Michael, he’s my brother….”

“Him or me, damn you. Just make a choice.”

And so it went the whole time Mitch Valentine spoke.

She tried to put aside her fears as to how finding Michael would change her life—and her daughter’s life—irrevocably. She tried to focus her attention on the man Michael had become. And then that man would say something else to send her spinning back in time.

Past. Present. Future: what had happened, what was happening this moment, what might happen next…

The present was unbearable, the past so hard to face. And the unknowable future? It seemed to bear down on her like an avalanche, like an asteroid on a collision course with the world she had created for herself and her child….

When the speech ended, Mitch Valentine took questions.

That went on for half an hour.

Finally, he thanked everyone and said he’d be signing his new book at the campus bookstore the next day, between three and five. The applause was protracted and enthusiastic. The house lights got brighter as the stage lights dimmed. Most of the audience headed for the exits, but fifty or sixty of them rushed onstage.

Another twenty minutes dragged by as Michael—correction: Mitch—accepted praise and shook hands. Kelly waited in her seat until only a few students remained.

When all but those last stragglers had headed for the doors, she made herself rise and put on her coat. Her heart hammering in her ears as it had been doing for most of the night, she slid out into the aisle and strode purposefully down front. There were stairs leading up to the stage on either side. She took the set to the left.

Once up there, she hung back, until the final student had finished gushing and shaking the speaker’s hand.

The student turned to go. The man who had once been Michael glanced toward Kelly where she hovered on the edge of the stage. He smiled.

Her heart stopped racing. It seemed to expand in her chest. A shiver went through her at the same time as heat bloomed in her midsection. This was really happening, the impossible moment was upon her, at last.

He asked, “Kelly?”

Sweet relief poured through her. It mattered a whole lot, that he remembered. That he recognized her. She gulped and nodded.

He started toward her, so big and strong and…imposing. Imagine. Her Michael had grown up to be imposing.