Andrew looked flustered as he strode into the West Village steakhouse where he and I were grabbing lunch. He plopped into the seat, his polished LA charm seeming somewhat out of sorts back on the East Coast. His sun-blond hair was straggly over his forehead, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.

“Hey, darling?” he asked, getting the attention of a nearby waitress. “One vodka-something, please. Strong, and get it to me as fast as you can.”

He slipped his sunglasses off and tucked them into his front shirt pocket, revealing tired, dull eyes.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s the story?”

“The story?” he asked. “The story is what I told you over the phone. Emma, our girl for the show, pulled out.”

That’s what he’d said, but I still had a hard time believing it. I’d met the girl they’d picked out. She was a brunette, slim and with big green eyes. Pretty, but not too pretty, like they’d wanted. She was from Missouri, if I remembered correctly. A cute, small-town girl with an adorable seven-month-old baby.

“How can she pull out like that?” I asked. “Aren’t there contracts to prevent this kind of thing from happening?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “But there was more to the story than she let on. Turns out her baby’s daddy wasn’t some All-American guy who died overseas in combat, like she said.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That right?”

The waitress arrived with Andrew’s cocktail. He took a deep drink as soon as it was on the table.

“Yep,” he said, running his hand through his hair and slicking it back. “The dad was some rich guy’s kid. His dad paid Emma off to keep the baby a secret—figured that it wouldn’t look good for his kid to have a baby out of wedlock with a mother who wasn’t a suitable match.”

Andrew shook his head as if still in disbelief. “Naturally, when it got back to the dad’s parents that she was planning on putting this baby in the national spotlight, they weren’t too happy about it. They told Sam and me that if we didn’t cancel the contract with Emma, they’d drag us into a legal dogfight.”

“So that’s that,” I said.

“More or less,” said Andrew. “No way we’re going to the mat this close to when we’re supposed to start production. What a freaking mess.” He took another long sip of his drink.

“Does that mean the show’s off?” I asked. I hated to admit it, but part of me had been looking forward to production starting. Not only because of the great publicity, but because doing something like this was so different than anything I’d ever done before. And who knows? Maybe it’d be my foray into what would be a new media enterprise. If the show was a hit, it might be something worth looking into.

Maybe even think about starting a production company in LA, poach some talent like Andrew, have Sam’s company bought out…

“No, the show’s not off,” Andrew said, interrupting my reverie. “But this is a hell of a monkey wrench to throw into the gears at the last minute.”

“Can’t you just get one of the other girls we looked at?”

“Yeah, that’s what we’re going to have to do. But we’ll have to do another round of auditions, and that’s assuming they’re all still available for work.”

More head-shaking.

“Shoot,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“No, man,” he said. “This is all my crap to sort out. All you need to worry about is looking good for the cameras, being that loving daddy we’re hoping you’ll be. This behind-the-scenes stuff is my problem—I shouldn’t even be bothering you with the details.”

“No,” I said, taking a piece of toasted bread from the basket in front of me and ripping it in half. “I’m a CEO, remember? I like to be informed.”

Andrew smirked. “Good thing I’m working with a guy who knows how sideways things can go.”

“That, I most certainly know,” I said, popping one of the pieces of bread into my mouth.

“Well, if you really wanted to help, you’d find me a hot-but-not-too-hot girl for the show. One who’s telegenic and has a well-behaved seven-month-old kid. You got one of those lying around?”

I chuckled. But then I remembered Heather.

Right on cue, Andrew spoke up.

“What about that girl you showed us during the meeting?”

“You remember her?” I asked.

“You kidding?” he asked. “Girl like that, face like that—it’d be hard not to.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not really the Hollywood type.”

“But that’s exactly what we’re looking for,” he said. “If we wanted an actress, that’s who we’d get.”

“And there’s more,” I said.

Andrew raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to go on.

“She and I didn’t really part on the best terms.”

He nodded in a knowing way. “Ah,” he said. “She was another notch on the bedpost and thought she was something more?”

I shook my head. “Not that, exactly.” I didn’t want to go into the exact reason—that she was a mom and I didn’t want to deal with it. Thankfully, Andrew raised his palms in a “sure, sure” gesture.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Don’t need to know all the messy details. The real issue is whether or not we can get her on board for this thing.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “She’d probably throw a damn drink in my face if she saw me again.”

“You say that, but let me ask you this—is this girl loaded?”

“Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because if she’s some struggling single mom living in the big city, she might be very, very intrigued by the contract we’re offering.”

“Good point,” I said. I thought back to Heather’s cramped apartment. She wasn’t living in poverty, but they were far-from-ideal circumstances.

“We’ll look for a new girl, but give it a shot,” Andrew said. “I can already feel like you and she would be a winning pair for this project.”

We ordered our food and ate our lunch as Andrew went through a few more of the details about what to expect during the first few weeks before production. Before too long we were done, and he was back off to his hotel.

“Give her a call, J!” he said as he flagged down a cab. “Worst she can do is say no.”

Once he was gone, I decided to walk the rest of the way back to my penthouse. I lived in the neighborhood, only a few blocks away.

I thought about what I’d said to Andrew. Were things really so bitter between Heather and me that she’d say no to something like this? I mean, it’s not like I’d seen her reaction to me leaving. For all I knew there was no bad blood between the two of us, and she didn’t mind one bit.

Sure, it was wishful thinking. But deep down I wanted to see her again. A month had gone by, and I was still thinking of her constantly. The girl wouldn’t leave my mind, and the more I thought about it as I walked, the more I realized that it was because I hadn’t gotten any closure.

If I saw her again, even if she slapped me or threw a drink in my face or called me an asshole, I’d have an answer one way or another about how she felt toward me.

And what if she said yes? That’d mean that Heather would be back in my life, and that, who knows, maybe something would happen between us again.

Then again, there was still the issue of her being a single mom.

As I approached my building, I resolved to see her again. A big smile on my face, I was ready to make this collaboration happen.