She was alone for five years after that, and concentrated on her work and her daughter. She had no desire to try marriage again. And she’d been startled when she met Hunter Lloyd, a successful producer, and they started dating. There was nothing wrong with him, he wasn’t a cheater, a liar, or a drunk. He’d had his own bad experiences with two failed marriages that had cost him a fortune too. They had started dating four years before, and lived together for the last three. He had moved in with her after a year, and had given up his own house, a palatial home in Bel Air, to his last wife. And for both of them, the arrangement worked. Tallie and Hunt loved each other, Max loved him too, and he was great to her.

Hunt was a big, kind teddy bear of a man, and the picture Tallie was making was the second one she had produced with him. The first one had been a record-breaking box-office hit. Together they were even more successful than either of them had been alone. And Tallie was happier than she’d been in years. She didn’t want anything more than they had. Hunt Lloyd and the solid, quiet, stable relationship they shared were perfect for her. She was a modest person, despite her vast success, and liked leading a quiet life. She had no time to go out anyway, she was either shooting, preparing a film, or in post-production. There was rarely a time when she wasn’t working.

At twenty-one, after she had Max, Tallie had been “discovered” by a Hollywood agent, in a supermarket. He had gotten her a screen test and into a film. She had only done it for the memory of her mother, and because she knew what it would have meant to her. She did fine, and the film did well, but she had hated every minute as an actress. It wasn’t for her, nor anything that went with it. Much to her agent’s annoyance, she turned down all the offers she got after that, and there had been several.