Then, “I’m sorry.”
“I always thought-I mean, since I found out I was adopted a few years ago-I thought that maybe…” Leo trailed off.
“What?”
“Forget it. It’s stupid.”
“No, tell me. What were you thinking?”
“I had this fantasy of finding my dad…you know, my birth dad. And he would be this great guy. And he would be in my life. For good, you know? But that’s not going to happen now, so…it’s stupid.”
No reply.
“I mean, he’s dead,” Leo continued, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “And my other father is as good as dead. So there go all my options. I guess I’m on my own, where dads are concerned.”
Again, silence.
Until she said, so faintly that he could barely hear her, “Maybe not.”
Lindsay hung up the phone with a trembling hand and a wildly beating heart.
Why did I say it?
Why to him, of all people?
Why now, of all times?
But the answer was clear, really.
Because he, of all people, deserved to know the truth.
And because now, of all times, he was reaching out to her.
That was either a monumental coincidence or a monumental sign that somebody was manipulating fate.
Leo said he didn’t know who sent the e-mail that led him to her.
But when he mentioned the screen name, it made her blood run cold.
Cupid 21486.
Jake had been felled by an arrow through the heart, on Valentine’s Day. 2-14-86.
That screen name couldn’t be a coincidence.
Nor could the timing of the e-mails sent to Leo.
The only saving grace, as far as Lindsay was concerned, was that the mysterious person behind them believed Jake was the father of her child.
Still, whoever it was had found out, somehow, about the pregnancy. It might be only a matter of time before they also found out the truth about the father and contacted him as well.
I’d rather he heard it directly from me. He deserves that.
He deserved a lot of things she hadn’t given him.
Because I couldn’t.
Not back then.
Who knew where he was now? Probably married, with a family.
Or maybe not.
Probably not.
He never did seem like he’d turn out to be the marrying type, she thought, remembering his rakish grin…his rakish ways.
Kind of like Jake-only Jake was darker beneath the surface. Much.
But he hid it well. People thought Jake Marcott was this great guy beneath that devil-may-care attitude.
I even convinced myself of that, for the longest time. But I knew, deep down, there was more to that bad-boy demeanor than just image…
Just as she knew that there was more-much more-to the other bad boy in her past-the one who stole her heart on that long-ago New Year’s Eve, then vanished from her life.
Whose fault was that? an inner voice demanded.
Both of ours, she told it stubbornly.
Then she amended, maybe it was mostly mine.
She just couldn’t handle what she’d done. She wasn’t the kind of girl who had a one-night stand with a guy she barely knew. And she had no excuse, other than the fact that she was feeling down that night, still trying to get over Jake, knowing he’d be there, probably with somebody else.
It was just a rebound thing. At least, that was what she’d told herself then. That was her excuse.
Yet she still remembered every detail about that night. She remembered looking up, and there he was. They talked, and she was wildly attracted to him…and she sensed that it was mutual. And she left the party with him.
For once in her life, she allowed herself to do exactly what she wanted to do.
Then guilt-good old-fashioned Catholic guilt-took over.
She couldn’t deal, so she walked away.
Of course, the next time she spotted him, he was with another girl. That wasn’t surprising. He was a ladies’ man. Everyone knew that.
For all she knew, he still was.
Or maybe happily married with a bunch of kids.
But after all these years of wondering about him, she was going to find him. She was going to drag him back into her life.
She had no choice.
The tide had turned. Another classmate had been murdered.
Maybe it was random-it probably was-but maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe the phone calls were just a prank-but maybe they weren’t.
Lindsay was no longer frightened just for herself and for her friends back home. She was frightened for her child.
It made no difference that she hadn’t seen him since the day he was born, that he was somebody else’s responsibility.
Leo’s adoptive mother didn’t know what she knew.
Leo’s adoptive mother didn’t know that her child might be in danger.
Only I know that.
The time had come at last for Lindsay to unburden herself of the weighty secret she had carried for twenty years.
Of course, she hadn’t told Leo the whole truth on the phone just now. She’d only revealed that Jake Marcott hadn’t been his father.
“Who was he, then?” Leo asked breathlessly.
“I can’t tell you…not yet. Not until I tell him.”
“He doesn’t know about me?”
“No,” she admitted around a lump in her throat. “He doesn’t. I’m sorry.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“I have no idea.”
Now, with a trembling finger, she pushed three numbers on the telephone pad. 4-1-1.
But I’m about to find out.
“Telephone.” Allison held out the receiver in a manicured hand.
“For me?”
“For you.” She smiled briefly, coldly, then returned to the bedroom where, presumably, she was packing the last of her things. She had been up at five a.m. to get it done.
She was moving from his four-bedroom Colonial in a gated shore community to a small garden apartment in Stamford. The complex had a pool and a gym, she had told him, as if she were trying to convince him-and herself-that she couldn’t wait to get there.
He didn’t believe that for a minute.
He just wished he believed she was as disappointed to be leaving their failed relationship behind as she was to be leaving his house, which had a beautifully landscaped private pool off the back terrace and a home gym on the third floor.
He had been trying to stay out of Allison’s way, puttering around his well-equipped gourmet kitchen throwing together a spinach and goat cheese omelet, pretending-to himself, and to her-that he was sorry she was moving out.
But he wasn’t.
The day she’d moved in with him in January, he’d known it was a mistake.
Maybe if it had been a different day-any other day of the year, really-he wouldn’t have felt that way.
But it was January 1. Like some cosmic coincidence.
Oh, come on…people always moved on the first, didn’t they? It was the first day of the month, when new leases kicked in. Besides, January 1 was the beginning of the year. Traditionally the day to make a fresh start.
How ironic, then, that twenty years ago, January 1 marked the end of something that held so much promise for him.
The end?
It had barely begun.
He and Lindsay Farrell had merely spent a couple of hours together, ducking out of that New Year’s Eve party long before midnight.
Nobody saw them leave.
And nobody would have guessed they’d left together, heading out into the icy rain hand in hand.
He, the womanizing bad boy, and Lindsay, the beautiful heiress whose heart had belonged to Jake Marcott for as long as anyone could remember.
The two of them had broken up just before Christmas. He had assumed she was still licking her wounds, that his private fantasies about her could never become a reality.
But their eyes met that night, and for the first time ever, she seemed to really see him-and not just that. She seemed to see beyond what everyone else saw.
And something just…clicked between them. Across a crowded basement rec room. It was like something out of an old John Hughes movie.
They didn’t even spend all that much time talking before he asked her if she wanted to get out of there.