Child by Chance Read online

  To his credit, his stare didn’t travel any farther down, though her unfettered breasts were delineated pretty clearly through the thin T-shirt she wore.

  She’d been alone. And she’d wanted to be comfortable.

  “It’s okay, Sherman,” she said. She couldn’t do this to him, put him through something that he’d replay in his mind with regret. “I knew when you first asked me out that you were asking the woman you thought I was, not who I really was. The reverse of that is that I didn’t let you know, too. Your shock is completely understandable. And expected. As is the fact that me having been a stripper changes things for you.”

  It was probably the longest speech she’d made to him. At least it felt that way.

  “I have some questions.”

  She waited.

  “You said you were like your mother. But the job you described didn’t sound that way.”

  Still waiting for the question...

  “Were you a hooker, too?”

  She didn’t see why that mattered at this point. Her life was hers. Not connected to his. Unless...he was still going to let her drive her son to the Stand. Give her another few months with him before he disappeared from her life again.

  Permanently this time.

  “Not by choice.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I met a guy, an older gentleman who made me laugh. He was a widower and needed a woman to play hostess for him at some very upscale functions. He asked me to marry him. It was a business arrangement. A marriage of convenience.”

  As seasoned—and life weary—as she’d been, she’d bought his story hook, line and sinker.

  And boy, did it sink her.

  Sherman’s jaw tightened, but as he had the night before, he allowed her to continue in her own time, without interrupting.

  She tried not to look at him, not to allow herself to be distracted by what-might-have-beens. Or could-have-beens.

  They wouldn’t have been. Couldn’t have been. Because back when she’d made her mistakes, she’d still been a child. An underage teenager. And the man who’d had sex with her had gone to jail for it.

  Of course, if she’d turned toward the college world that Tanner had offered her instead of running away to Vegas, the what-might-have-beens would have stood a chance. In the present.

  “When you work in the sex world, there is no desire,” she said baldly. “I hadn’t been turned on since I was a kid in high school and even then it was more curiosity and a craving for love than it was any physical drive.”

  It was as close to Rex, Kent’s biological father, as she was going to go.

  “I was also completely aware that I was not the type of girl a decent man took home to meet Mom. I wasn’t ever going to marry for love, raise a family and live happily ever after. I was my mother’s daughter.”

  Talia had accepted her past. It was her present that she struggled with.

  “The marriage proposal was a sound business arrangement that would provide security for my future when my body was no longer tempting enough to make money at the pole.”

  He took a sharp breath. And continued to study her, gaze for gaze, as she spoke, giving away none of what he was thinking.

  “We were married in a chapel in Vegas. For the first couple of weeks things were actually nice. He had his room. I had mine. We met for dinner every night. He was intelligent and witty. I enjoyed our conversations.”

  And then she hadn’t enjoyed anything about the man. Looking at Sherman, seeing the decency shining from his eyes, feeling the heart of him, she almost couldn’t continue.

  “He sold me to his friends,” she blurted. “And if I didn’t do as he asked, just private lap dances at first, he’d beat me so badly I couldn’t work. Who wants to gape at a woman with bruises all over, you know?”

  The ugliness brought bile to her throat. And in that moment she realized how far she’d come. When she’d been in that life, things had happened one step at a time, baby steps, so going from one thing to something a little bit worse hadn’t been so traumatic. When her husband had sold her out she’d been angry. But not all that shocked.

  Tonight, reliving it, she was shocked.

  And devastated for that girl she was talking about.

  “The one line I drew was that no one was going to have sex with me without protection,” she said. “I’d rather be beaten to death than die of a disease some jerk gave to me.

  “And I wouldn’t kiss. No exchange of bodily fluids. Period.”

  This distinction, which had, in her mind, been huge, seemed insignificant now.

  “I made it about a month before I knew that the life was killing me,” she said. “I tried to get away from him, to divorce him, and that’s when I found out how powerful he really was. And how deep I was in. If it hadn’t been for Tanner...”

  Her brother had shown up like the damned knight in shining armor she’d always thought him to be. “He paid to have me for a night and then whisked me into a woman’s shelter where I stayed long enough for him to win my freedom. I’m not sure what else was said or done, but the next thing I knew I had a divorce and was free to do whatever I wanted.”

  “And that’s when you came home?”

  Of course not. She was her mother’s daughter, after all.

  “No. It was another couple of years before that,” she said. “I enrolled in college, and went back to work at the club—at the pole only—until last year when Tatum disappeared.”

  That was when she’d come home. When she and Tanner had finally been forced to be honest with each other. When everyone found out the secrets—and burdens—her older brother had been carrying on his own.

  And all because their lies and secrets had left Tatum ripe for, and vulnerable to, the manipulation of an abusive rich boy.

  Talia had gone into her marriage willingly. Walked on stage willingly.

  Tatum had been raped. “You’d needed to make your own way, not be reliant on Tanner.”

  Sherman’s words were not at all what she’d been expecting.

  But they were true.

  “Because you aren’t your mother’s daughter.”

  That was when her tears fell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HE’D NEVER MET a woman like her. He’d been to a strip club once. For a bachelor party when he was in college. He and his friends had whooped and hollered and made crude jokes about what they’d like to do to the girls onstage.

  The tears welling in Talia’s eyes made him feel a little sick at the memory. Strangely her tears didn’t fall.

  Just as the woman didn’t ever seem to fall. She was soft and feminine and hard as a rock at the same time. Sexy, vulnerable and completely capable.

  He wanted her so bad he hurt with it. And would feel safer with her in a tough situation than anyone else he could think of.

  She was wild and unpredictable and completely reliable.

  “You’re staring.”

  He was.

  “You confuse the hell out of me.”

  Her chuckle broke some of the tension in the room. “Join the club.”

  “Seriously? You seem to have a pretty good handle on things.”

  “I’m a showgirl, remember?” Her smile was still there, but it was the slight hint of loneliness in her gaze that captured him.

  “Dressed like that?” He brought it back to her body. Her looks. Anything deeper was going to sink him. He couldn’t care about this woman. Not now. Not anymore.

  When she glanced down at her simple but revealing T-shirt, her long, blond hair brushed her breasts and he wished he could brush them with his fingers.

  So maybe focusing on her body, her looks, hadn’t been such a good idea. Maybe leaving was his only option.

  “
Why are you here?”

  “We have unresolved issues.” Clearly, that much was obvious.

  “You could have phoned.”

  He’d called Sandy and Ben over again, leaving Kent with a sitter two nights in a row. A first for him.

  “You deserved better than that.” She’d been honest with him. She’d tried to tell him from the beginning that he didn’t know her. She’d clearly fought with herself about seeing him at all.

  And what had she owed him? She’d been there to help his son. Period. And in that capacity she’d pretty much worked a miracle.

  Her past was none of his business. Nothing to do with what had originally brought them together.

  He’d pushed her into more.

  “So what do you want?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye. Talia didn’t waste time.

  It was another reason he appreciated her so much.

  “I want to take you to bed and make love to you until the world goes away.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if you did, you’d be doing it.”

  Eyes narrowed, he stared at those big blue eyes, at the hardened nipples visible beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. Had she just told him she was willing?

  His penis pushed against the fly of his jeans.

  The darkness outside was a stark contrast to the bright light shining down on her at the kitchen table.

  He should go. He wanted to stay but couldn’t do it right. “My job, my career...powerful public figures trust their reputations with me.”

  He could have been speaking a foreign language for all the reaction she gave him.

  “If it ever became known that I was spending my time with an ex-stripper, I could lose everything.”

  The fact stood between them.

  “For every campaign there’s another side that’s constantly looking for dirt to use to take our votes. Politics should be about the issues, but so often, during a campaign, it’s more about perceived reputation. I can see the potential PR nightmare of a headline that reads Campaign Manager in Bed with a Stripper.”

  The words were cruel, and yet he guessed that they were exactly what Talia Malone would want. The complete truth. “If I do my job right, I’m invisible. When that changes I’m no longer of value.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  He knew. And had a feeling she did, too.

  It wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair. But it was why he was there and they both knew it.

  * * *

  “YOU WANT TO hire me?”

  Talia knew better. The question was pure defense.

  “No.”

  “You just want the goods for free?” She could tell him to leave. She had absolutely no doubt he’d do so.

  “No.”

  “So what is it?” If they were going to do this...obliterate this...this sex thing...she had to know where she stood.

  She needed him to know.

  He took her hand, turned it over, ran his thumb along her palm and then raised it to his lips. That soft kiss sent shock waves through her body. Looking at her, with her hand still at his lips, he said, “I want to spend what will probably be the most incredible night of my life making love with a woman who has me enthralled.”

  Wow. “You’re good.”

  “Stop it, Talia.”

  What? Stop getting turned on by every breath he took? Stop wishing things could be different?

  Stop liking the man so damned much?

  “We’re calling it like it is, right? What guy hasn’t fantasized about bedding that girl up onstage?”

  “I’m fantasizing about the woman standing right here, right now. I’m picturing her naked in my arms because from the second I met her I’ve been unable to get the thought of her out of my mind.”

  “You have to face facts, Sherman. I deserve that. If you’re going to take me to bed, take me knowing what I was.”

  “I don’t see you on a stage. I’m sorry.”

  “If you could see me there, if this was just a strip club fantasy, would it stop it from happening?” She was scared to death, couldn’t he see that? Scared that it wouldn’t happen. And that it would. Scared that it would be too good. Scared that she couldn’t ever be good enough to make up for her past.

  “Probably not.”

  If she was actually going to embark on a sexual odyssey with this man, she had to be sure that she had no illusions. No hope that some miracle could happen and they could all live happily ever after. Her. Sherman. And their son.

  He sat there with his elbow on the arm of the wooden kitchen chair, propping his chin on his hand, his pants tight enough that she could see how badly he wanted her. “If we’re going to call this like it is, then it’s a matter of me being mesmerized by the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met and need desperately to know in every possible way there is to know a woman.”

  A pithy response didn’t spring immediately to mind. She was too busy trying not to be mesmerized right back.

  She was going to have sex with him. Going to have that one night of joy. And find out if she could actually have an orgasm. There was nothing holding her back now. She had nothing to lose.

  Except maybe her heart.

  “If you don’t mind, I need to adjust a bit here,” Sherman said, watching her face while he unbuttoned his waistband. Her gaze flew to his hands.

  Very deliberately he unzipped his fly, and pulled back the corners of his jeans to expose the head of his penis protruding from the top of a pair of black briefs.

  And then he stopped.

  Sitting there exposed to her gaze. She looked up at him and read the message there loud and clear.

  The next move was up to her.

  * * *

  TALIA LIFTED HER T-SHIRT. She didn’t pull it off. Just lifted it up past her breasts and let him see them.

  Sherman almost came right then and there. She was every man’s fantasy. Or maybe just his, but God, she was hot. Her breasts were full and tight, the nipples large enough to satisfy a man’s sucking urges, and as hard as his penis.

  She was art, sitting there. Beautiful. Every man’s dream. Art.

  He pulled off his shirt. And waited.

  Staring at him, she untied the pajama bottoms she was wearing. He couldn’t tell if she was wearing panties or not. And wanted to know. Bad.

  Neither of them spoke any words. They weren’t needed. They were perfection, sitting at that kitchen table together. Just him and her and an attraction that was bigger than either of them.

  Or a world that was going to have them spend their lives apart.

  He’d kill for her.

  Not to have her but to protect her.

  Kicking off one sandal, he dared her to take her turn.

  She took an arm out of the sleeve of her gray T-shirt.

  He lost his other sandal.

  She wore her shirt around her neck.

  And he was no closer to knowing whether there were panties under her thin cotton black-and-gray-striped pants.

  So he showed her his. Still sitting, he pulled his pants down to his knees, exposing the black cotton briefs in their entirety, caressing her breasts with his gaze. First one, then the other, paying particular attention to those nipples. Needing to know how sensitive they’d be to his touch.

  Talia pulled her T-shirt over her head, letting it trail down her long hair as she parted her hair in the back and pulled it forward to cover her breasts.

  He pulled his feet out of his jeans and spread his legs.

  And waited. She was going to have to show him now.

  Soon he would see her feminine beauty in its entirety. He’d be able to worship her there, to show her how a man touche
d a woman when he cared about her.

  He’d show that gorgeous body reverence. Coax more pleasure from her than she’d ever known before.

  And then he’d claim her as his own.

  Just as soon as she showed him whether or not she was wearing any panties.

  * * *

  TALIA KNEW HOW to tease. But she had no idea how to make love. Her few experiences with actual intercourse had been strictly mechanical. And quick. A man using her for his own pleasure. No communication between them.

  Without words, Sherman was saying so much she could hardly take it all in. He was stripping for her and allowing her to give him whatever she chose.

  He was everything she’d once longed for. A real man.

  One who was willing to be a partner to her, not a boss.

  One who would give, not take.

  But tonight she didn’t dare allow herself to long for anything. Neither could she extricate herself from the most exquisite experience of her life.

  Standing, she held the tops of her pajama pants in place and, looking back over her naked shoulder at him, walked slowly toward her bedroom. As soon as she knew he was following her, she let the pants drop.

  The thong she was wearing was a turn-on in itself as she felt the thin piece of fabric move against parts of her that were so sensitive she didn’t even recognize them as her own.

  He kept a good two feet behind her. Still watching over her shoulder, she purposely enticed him as he matched her, slow step for slow step, following her into the moonlit darkness of the master bedroom, his gaze glued on the tight backside she was rather proud of.

  When they were both in the room, leaving everything but the anticipation of what they were about to do outside, she turned around to face him.

  He gaped hungrily at the V of fabric covering her.

  “You first,” she said, hoping she sounded sexy.

  Naked females were a dime a dozen in her life. Naked men were not. Men who wanted to be naked, yeah. Men who actually got the chance...never with her permission.

  With one thumb, he hooked the waistband of his briefs, lifted them out and away from his protrusion, shoved them down and stepped out of them.

  Overcome by an incredible urge to spread her legs, Talia stood still, more alive than she could ever remember feeling, and laughed out loud.