Yet somehow, they had reconnected the way a former boyfriend and girlfriend might, distinctly aware of rekindled chemistry, deliberately keeping the conversation light and rooted in the present.
As they ate-or rather, he ate, and she toyed with her toast-he told her about the various places he had lived and about his business. He deliberately downplayed the scope of his success, having realized that she didn’t know, after all. She had called him for a specific reason-that much was obvious from her preoccupied air-but as far as he could tell, his newfound wealth had nothing to do with it.
They made their way from the bustling, pedestrian-and-traffic-clogged corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue into the comparative solitude of Central Park.
The warm, brilliant morning sunlight gave way to cooler dappled shade, and he shoved his sunglasses high over his forehead. No real reason to wear them here.
And no real reason to hide. Not anymore.
Birds chirped from leafy overhead branches, bikers and joggers whizzed past, and strangers strolled in their midst…yet essentially, they found themselves alone together.
It was time for Wyatt to find out why Lindsay had reached out to him today.
He looked over his shoulder. There was no one remotely in earshot other than a plump woman pushing an expensive-looking baby carriage along, maybe a hundred feet behind on the path.
She was probably a nanny, he found himself noting idly. The sleek buggy was stereotypical for an Upper East Side family, but the woman pushing it was not your average upscale Manhattan mom. She was too overweight, sloppy looking, unsophisticated.
And you’re stalling, speculating about random strangers instead of focusing on why you’re here with Lindsay.
Breaking the silence that had settled between them, he turned to her at last and said, “So…tell me.”
Her head jerked toward him and he saw that she was startled-and dismayed.
“Tell you what?” she asked slowly.
“Why you called. You don’t want a car from me, I’m assuming…So what is it that you do want?”
She didn’t answer.
Their footsteps crunched on the gravel.
Behind them, he could hear the nanny strolling along, her footsteps padding along the path, the cushy rubber tires of the baby’s buggy almost soundless.
In the distance was the faint sound of street traffic, along with the distinct clopping of a horse’s hoofs and the rumble of the carriage it was pulling, undoubtedly occupied by romantic tourists.
Wyatt found himself picturing himself riding in one with Lindsay snuggled beside him. In his fantasy it was night, and winter, and they were a couple.
Then Lindsay spoke, shattering the image-a good thing, because he wasn’t back in high school, daydreaming about a girl he couldn’t have. He was a grown man, for God’s sake…
Right. Daydreaming about a woman you can’t have.
Or could he?
When he heard what she was saying, hope came to life within him.
“It’s something I should have told you years ago. I should have said it as soon as I knew, but…I couldn’t.”
As soon as she knew? Knew what?
Oh.
Whoa.
All at once, he realized what she was going to say.
She was about to tell him that the feeling he had assumed was one-sided twenty years ago was, in fact, mutual. That she had figured out after they slept together that she was falling in love, just as he had. But she, like he, chose not to reveal her feelings.
His pulse quickened in anticipation.
Say it, Lindsay. Just say it.
But she was in no hurry to play her hand.
He did his best to coax her along. “It’s okay that you couldn’t say it back then. I mean, you can still say it now.”
He tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. She stared straight ahead, inhaled deeply, exhaled audibly, her nerves palpable.
He waited, fighting the urge to touch her fingers, take her hand, guide her along.
“It’s not easy.” She sounded almost…distraught.
“I know. Would it help if I told you I felt the same way?”
“What…?”
“I should have told you, too. But I didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I felt the same way, Lindsay. My God, I mean…I never expected that to happen that night. And when you took off afterward, I figured you weren’t interested in someone like me. So I kept it all to myself.”
“What?” she asked again, turning to look at him at last.
That was when he saw the utter confusion in her eyes, and his heart sank.
“Wyatt…I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing here.”
“I guess we’re not.” He shook his head. Fool!
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
She knows. She knows what I was talking about, even if I have no idea what she was talking about.
Terrific.
He had gone and let his guard down for an instant, spilled his guts, and all for nothing.
“For a second there,” she said slowly, “I thought you might have known all along…and that would have made this so much easier.”
“Made what so much easier? What the hell are you talking about, Lindsay?” he demanded, his patience fraying fast.
“That night-the night we-Wyatt, I got pregnant,” she blurted.
Her words swept through him like a tsunami.
Above the roar that consumed him, body and soul, he heard the rest. “I had a baby. The baby. Your baby.”
Keeping a careful distance, she watched Wyatt Goddard abruptly stop walking and rake a hand through his hair.
The motion knocked his sunglasses to the ground. He appeared not to notice.
Her hands tightened on the handle of the empty baby carriage she had just stolen from its vulnerable sidewalk parking spot outside a deli on a nearby side street.
She slowed her footsteps, not wanting to overtake them.
A breeze rustled the branches overhead, so that it was impossible for her to hear.
Lindsay faltered, touched Wyatt’s shoulder, then leapt back as if she had been burned when he appeared to brush her off with a brusque comment.
Lindsay seemed to be pulling herself together for a moment, then she said something else to him.
The breeze stopped and a snatch of conversation reached her ears.
She stopped pushing the buggy altogether and bent over it as if adjusting the nonexistent baby’s blanket.
“…so sorry, I just didn’t know what to…”
That came from Lindsay.
So, louder and more clearly, did, “Please, Wyatt, don’t-”
The wind gusted again, dammit.
Wyatt was talking, she saw, sneaking a glance in her direction as she fussed over the imaginary occupant of the buggy.
Then a couple of phrases reached her ears even though the leaves overhead were still stirring. They were separated by unintelligible comments, or protests, from Lindsay.
“How could you?”
“Dammit, Lindsay, I had a right to know.”
And finally, “So he’s in Queens?”
I was right, she thought triumphantly.
Wyatt Goddard had fathered Lindsay Farrell’s baby.
She only wished Jake Marcott were alive to know about his girlfriend’s shocking betrayal.
Ex-girlfriend, she amended.
Still, even when it was over between Jake and Lindsay that December of their senior year, people assumed it wasn’t over. You didn’t forget a longtime relationship just like that. Unfinished business still seemed to linger between them. Jake still loved Lindsay; Lindsay still loved Jake. Everyone figured that was the case, including Kristen Daniels, who dated Jake next-and last.
The rumor was that Jake dumped Lindsay because she wouldn’t sleep with him.
She had heard it many times during the two years they were dating.
When she realized Lindsay was pregnant, she assumed the rumor was obviously false.
Now, all at once, it was viable again.
Lindsay might not have been sleeping with Jake, but she was sleeping with Wyatt Goddard behind his back. How scandalous of her. How daring. And how cunning.