Lindsay forced a smile. “Good idea. And I have just the topic. I got those Jersey Boys tickets you and Tina wanted. A matinee tomorrow afternoon.”

“Ooh!” Aurora hugged her across the table. “You’re the best, Lindsay. How can I ever repay you?”

“You don’t have to. What are friends for?”

“This is Lindsay. I’m not in; please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Wyatt disconnected the call in the midst of the answering machine’s beep.

A message?

What was he supposed to say?

If you don’t know, then why did you call her?

That was a good question.

He didn’t know the answer. He had simply found himself walking restlessly around the house with his cell phone in hand; her number was programmed into it.

He still didn’t even know why he had done that. Why not just keep it jotted on a slip of paper tucked into the kitchen drawer where he kept stray business cards and receipts and order numbers? That was what he did with most women’s phone numbers. Very few were eventually programmed into his phone. And those he did program in were always eventually removed.

Allison’s was the most recent.

He hadn’t heard from her since she’d moved out; he didn’t expect to.

As for Lindsay…

After tomorrow, he wouldn’t be in touch with her again. There would be no reason to.

In fact, if he had any way of meeting his son without her present, he would have arranged to do so.

Oh, come on, Wyatt, who are you kidding?

You don’t need her here tomorrow. You could have just gotten the kid’s contact info from her and met him on your own.

So why didn’t he?

Why had he gone ahead and arranged this little family reunion?

Anyone would be furious with Lindsay for what she’d done.

And he was. Absolutely.

But there was a part of him, deep down, that was also, maybe, just a little…

Grateful.

If she had come to him, pregnant, twenty years ago, what would he have done?

He knew exactly what he’d have done.

He’d have convinced her to have the baby and marry him.

He was in love with her; knowing she was carrying his child would have put him over the moon.

And she would have either walked away from him-again-had the baby, and given it up just as she wound up doing…

Or she would have married him, and they would have tried to raise their son together.

Tried.

There wasn’t a doubt in Wyatt’s mind that if they had married and become parents at eighteen, they couldn’t have made it work. The odds would have been stacked tremendously against them. Yes, he’d loved Lindsay back then, but was he really equipped to be a husband and father?

Not in the least.

So, being Catholic, they would have ended up either bitterly married, merely sticking it out, as his parents had…

Or divorced, and riddled with guilt-Catholic and otherwise. And their son would have come from a broken home-which he does anyway, Wyatt reminded himself. But still, that wasn’t Wyatt’s fault. It was some other man who had walked out on his wife and kid.

My kid.

Every single time he thought of it-the miraculous fact that he had a son-his stomach was consumed by a flurry of Christmas-morning butterflies.

Yes, Lindsay’s decision had denied him the option of being a part of his son’s life until now…

But she had also denied him the chance to screw it up. And he would have.

Back then, he was ill equipped, emotionally and financially, for the responsibility.

Now?

Bring it on.

He was more than ready. He was going to wholeheartedly support his son emotionally and financially, give him whatever he needed-hell, whatever he wanted. He was going to spoil the kid rotten if he felt like it, and there was no reason not to.

What about Lindsay, though? a nagging voice intruded. What are you going to do about her?

He was going to try to forgive her for what she had done, knowing, intellectually, that it was probably the wisest, most selfless decision she could have made in her situation.

That was the mature and logical thing to do.

Then he was going to maturely and logically move on. Try to forget her.

Right. Just like he had before.

And look how well that turned out.

All she had to do was call and you went running to her, no questions asked. All she had to do was look at you and twenty years fell away, and you were like a teenaged boy with a one-track mind again.

Yes, and now you’re calling her number and hanging up. Perfect.

With a scowl, Wyatt tossed his cell phone onto the granite countertop and headed up to his gym to work out-and thus, work her out of his system-so that he could get a good night’s sleep in preparation for what lay ahead tomorrow.

Forty-Fourth Street was bright with neon lights and packed with people when Lindsay and Aurora emerged from Sardi’s after a long, leisurely meal. They’d had dessert at the table followed by after-dinner drinks in the upstairs bar. The time flew by, and the conversation flowed.

Now it was getting late, and the post-theater crowd packed the sidewalks.

“Uh-oh-it’s going to be hard for me to get a cab back to the hotel, isn’t it?” Aurora observed, gazing at the street clogged with honking taxis, town cars, and limousines. They were forced to creep along far more slowly than the pedestrians who moved along the sidewalks.

“It won’t be hard to get a cab. It will be impossible,” Lindsay replied. “But you’re staying right at the Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central Station, aren’t you? It’s an easy walk from here. Just a few blocks.”

“Ha, that’s what the doorman said when he told me I could walk here. I didn’t know he meant a few of those really long, long crosstown blocks,” Aurora said ruefully. “I thought he meant the short uptown-downtown kind. I can’t make it back.”

“Sure you can. It won’t be so bad. Come on, I’ll walk you there.”

“Is it on your way home?”

“More or less,” Lindsay told her.

Aurora seemed to consider her offer, but only for a minute.

“No, thanks, my feet are killing me. I did way too much walking today. I can take the subway instead.”

“The subway?” Lindsay asked dubiously, wondering if her friend could possibly negotiate the complicated network of train lines that ran beneath the city streets.

Then again, if she got on right here at Times Square, she’d only have to take the crosstown shuttle two stops to Grand Central and walk right upstairs to her hotel. Or she could take the number seven train, which traveled the same route before heading beneath the East River out to Queens.

Queens.

That made Lindsay think of Leo. And Wyatt. Again.

This time, she couldn’t seem to push them back out of her head.

“I’ve always wanted to ride the subway,” Aurora said cheerfully as they made their way across Broadway toward the station. “I’ve seen it in so many movies and TV shows. I can’t believe I actually get to ride it.”

Lindsay grinned at her friend’s giddy enthusiasm. She remembered feeling the same way when she first moved to New York. Not right away, though. She didn’t get out into the city until after the baby had been born and she had gone on to college, getting on with her life.

“Where do I get my token?” Aurora asked as they descended from the noisy neon glare of the street to the dank depths of the station below.

“We don’t use those anymore. We use Metrocards,” Lindsay told her. “I’ll help you get one before I go.”

“You’re not taking the subway home too?”

“No, I’m going to walk,” she said, anxious to be alone with her thoughts now that the evening with Aurora was drawing to a close.

Yes, it was time to try to prepare herself for what she faced tomorrow.

Standing beneath a large wall map, pretending to be studying the network of subway lines, she watched Lindsay remove a fare card from the automated machine and hand it to Aurora.