There was a quality of belonging here, and as she walked through the winter morning with him, it encompassed her like a vast embrace. She heard herself singing along with the carolers and laughing at a family playing with a frisky new puppy with a bow around its neck. Everything warm and real bubbled up inside her and spilled over and, at last, after the long, strange night, she knew what it was. And it was so simple, so very simple. It was happiness, pure and unpretentious and more real than the fresh snow squeaking beneath her feet.

“‘I am as merry as a schoolboy’,” she said with a laugh, quoting half-remembered lines from Dickens. “‘As giddy as a drunken man!’”

Tony laughed with her and pulled her close. “Good thing you smell better.”

The sweet yearning she had felt for him all those years ago had never gone away. It had only grown, nurtured in the dark, secret places of her heart. The things that truly mattered had been buried under the smothering press of ambition and expectation and all the other business that had taken over her life when she wasn’t paying attention. But she was free now, and she could tell her joy shone in her face when she looked up at him, because she could see an answering joy reflected in his eyes.

They didn’t speak as they walked the next few blocks to the classic Prospect Park West townhouse where he’d grown up. Finally, as they stood on the sidewalk in front of the handsome, blocky building, she couldn’t stay silent any longer. “You wouldn’t believe how nervous I am.”

He stopped walking and turned to face her, seemingly oblivious to the pedestrians who had to go around them. “Hey, do you know how long my family’s been waiting for me to bring home the love of my life?”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She had never, ever felt this way before, but somehow she recognized the emotion. It was the feeling of a dream coming to life. Her dream. The time stretching out before her was her own. It was up to her to decide how to spend it. She could forge ahead, fueled by ambition, toward the shadowy fate she’d glimpsed in Bobbi’s desperate eyes as she’d hovered on the edge of the bridge. Or she could choose a different path to a new and unexpected destination.

“About as long,” she said, “as I’ve been waiting to meet them.”

Tony’s smile turned slightly shy. “Before we go in, I need to give you something.”

She frowned. “What?”

He rummaged in his pocket. “I meant to give it to you last night.”

Her heart quickened. “So why don’t you give it to me now?”