No matter what he tried, Sherman couldn’t open it.

      * * *

      TALIA WAS IN the shower Saturday morning, trying not to worry about the fact that she hadn’t even started her homework for the coming week and was working eight-hour shifts at the mall in Beverly Hills both Saturday and Sunday. She’d always been a night owl, even before her previous profession. And she had no social life—completely her choice. She knew she’d get the work done.

      She just preferred to keep to her schedule.

      “Tal?”

      At first she thought she’d imagined the voice. Her inner self calling her to task, no doubt.

      “Talia?”

      “Oh!” Through the glass door of the master bathroom shower, Talia saw Tatum round the corner. She turned her back and instinctively covered herself, then realized what an idiotic thing that was to do.

      “Sorry,” Tatum said, sitting on the stool in the separate room across from the shower. “But it’s not like I haven’t seen it all before,” she said.

      When Tatum was small, more often than not she’d showered with Talia. Someone had to help the little girl bathe, make sure that she got the soap out of her hair.

      “I’m not used to have someone walking around my house while I’m showering,” Talia said.

      She didn’t want her sister to see the body that had rocked the stage more nights than she could count. She knew she’d get over it in time—time took care of everything, didn’t it?—but right now, her naked body shamed her. Illogical though that was.

      “Sorry,” Tatum said again. “You’re usually heading out the door by eight. It’s five to, and when I saw your car but you didn’t answer my knock, I got worried.”

      And Tatum, like Sedona and Tanner, had a key to the place. At Talia’s insistence, not theirs. She wanted her little sister to have a place to hang out, or hide out, at any time for any reason. “I was up late last night,” she said, finishing her shower and reaching for a towel at the same time she shut off the water.

      “Doing homework?” Her sister’s voice came through the open door. Talia could see her denim-clad knees bobbing up and down.

      Tatum knew her schedule.

      “No.”

      “You spent the night with his collage, didn’t you?”

      An adult might have been too polite to ask. Tanner would have been too cautious around her to push.

      “Yep.”

      As Talia wrapped a towel around her body and another one around her head, Tatum left her perch on the stool and followed her to the bedroom. “And?”

      All of Talia’s underwear was still pretty much the unmentionable kind. She just couldn’t afford to replace them and had no intention of anyone seeing them.

      “Pick me out something to wear, would you?” she asked, pointing to the walk-in closet opposite the regular closet on the far side of the room. Her stuff would have fit easily in her regular closet, but she’d never had a walk-in before. She liked getting dressed in it. It was like a private dressing room.

      At the moment, it gave her the privacy to grab a thong and a scrap of lace with underwire and get them on before pulling on a robe and heading back into the bathroom to semidry her hair. Just enough to get it up in a twist. Any more than that would dry it out.

      “How often do you wash your hair?” Tatum asked, coming in to sit on the counter and watch as Talia expertly flipped the long blond strands up and around her hand. Hooker’s hair, she thought, knowing full well that it had made her a lot of money over the years. She should cut it. Dye it.

      But she’d always loved her hair. Even as a little kid.

      “Three times a week,” she said.

      “I only do two.” Tatum picked up her can of hairspray, read the label. “Otherwise, it gets too dry.”

      “Have you been using the hydrating conditioner I gave you?”

      “Yeah. And the detangler, too.”

      “It’s only been a couple of months. Give it time. Your hair will be soft as a baby’s by summer.”

      She liked to dress before applying her makeup—so as not to smear anything on her clothes. But Tatum was sitting there. Watching her.

      “I wish I could do that as quickly as you,” she said, watching at Talia applied a coat of face cream to her skin, topped it with foundation and then began applying three shades of eye shadow, liner and mascara to her eyes. All to have the end result look as if she wasn’t wearing much makeup at all.

      And she didn’t want Tatum to ever be as quick as she was at the artifice. Going from lap dance back to the stage in five minutes hadn’t left her with much time for touching up her makeup. Leaving a bedroom where she’d just been slapped in the face by her husband, to go out and meet his guests, hadn’t left much time for covering up, either.

      But she’d managed.

      “How about getting me some coffee?” she asked as she added a bit of blush to finish.

      “Sure, mocha or dark roast?” She and Tatum had shopped together for the little cups of coffee that went with Sedona’s one-cup machine. She’d said she didn’t need it at Tanner’s house as they’d never just drink one cup of coffee there.

      “Dark roast.”

      As soon as Tatum slid off the counter, Talia threw on the light purple blouse and beige silk-lined pants her sister had chosen for her. Before she was in the wedged sandals Tatum had also chosen, her sister was back, placing a cup of coffee on the bathroom counter.

      “Wear this,” she said, pulling her favorite pendant out of Talia’s jewelry box. It was an inch-long hand, decorated with colorful little stones, and on a fairly short gold chain. Tatum found the matching earrings and laid them out, as well.

      The sisters had ordered the ensemble off a home shopping television network to commemorate the first time Tatum spent the night with her in the beach house. Tatum had picked a piece, too. Talia was still paying them both off.

      “You never told me why you’re here,” Talia said as she gave herself one last glance in the mirror.

      “I just wanted to see you,” Tatum said. Then added, “I’m on my way to the Stand for a session and...I’d hoped you’d stop by last night...”

      Oh, God, she was failing her little sister again. “You should have called,” she said, not bothering to hide the sorrow on her face as she faced the beautiful young woman Tatum had become. “I’d have been there in a heartbeat if I’d known you needed me.”

      “Chill, big sis,” Tatum said, touching Talia’s wrist lightly. “It wasn’t me I was concerned about. It’s you. And I didn’t call because I didn’t want to bother you, but I worried about you all night. Yesterday was your last day with Kent.”

      “Yeah, but you don’t need to worry. I’m fine.”

      “That’s why you spent the night with his collage?”

      Talia meant to brush past her sister, down the hall and out the door. She was going to be late for work if she didn’t get a move on. Instead, she stood there helplessly, her eyes filling with tears.

      “He’s...” She shook her head. “No, never mind. I’m fine.”

      “You can see him again, Tal,” Tatum said, following her through the house and out the door, double-checking that Talia had locked it.

      “No.”

      “It was in your adoption agreement. You can contact his father and at least ask if—”

      “No.”