Child by Chance

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 (#ulink_c464e2d1-02d5-5a6d-978c-f7e17db20483)

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.