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.

He never expected her to say yes.

He never expected her to agree to go to his house, where his parents were out, of course. Not just because it was New Year’s Eve, but because they went out all the time. He was usually alone when he was home. For once, he was glad of it.

When he took Lindsay in his arms, he never expected her to kiss him back. He’d imagined it, of course-so many times that the sensation of her lips beneath his almost seemed familiar.

There she was, just like he had dreamed: running her hands over his bare shoulders beneath his T-shirt, wantonly pressing her soft flesh against his hard angles, throwing her head back when he kissed her neck, kissed her collarbone, found his way to her bare breast.

At first he thought she might have forgotten that it was him, and not Jake.

But he looked up to find her gazing at him, staring tenderly into his eyes, and that was all the encouragement he needed. He dared to keep going, further and further, lost in the familiar, overwhelming throes of teenaged passion.

But that night, in his boyhood bedroom, he found himself venturing into uncharted territory.

Lindsay Farrell was different from the other girls he’d had. She made him feel different. She made him feel, period.

It wasn’t his first time. Far from it.

But it was his first time with emotion-real emotion, as powerful as physical sensation, and then some.

When his body joined with hers, their eyes locked, he nearly cried at the intensity of it.

But of course, he held back.

Boys didn’t cry. His father had reminded him of that fact often enough through the years.

You have to toughen up, his father used to say when he was very young, at the mercy of Shane and Devin, his two bullying older brothers. Toughen up, son, or the world will eat you alive.

Boys didn’t cry.

Men didn’t cry, either.

Looking back at that New Year’s Eve, he always knew that was the night he became a man. The night he first fell in love.

January 1 was the day he realized that some things weren’t meant to be.

She left in the wee hours of the new year, whispering that she had to get home. She didn’t look at him when she said it.