Fortune's Christmas Baby
Tara Taylor Quinn
His Holiday Surprise is a bundle of joy!When Nolan Forte returns to Austin a year after a Christmas tryst, he is shocked to learn he’s a father. He wants to do right by his beautiful baby girl—and her sweet mum, Lizzie Sullivan. But when he reveals his real name is family background, all bets are off…
His holiday surprise...
Is a bundle of joy!
When Nolan Forte returns to Austin a year after a yuletide romance, he is shocked to learn he is a father. He wants to do right by his beautiful baby girl—and her sweet mama, Lizzie Sullivan. But when he reveals his real name is Nolan Fortune, all bets are off. Lizzie doesn’t trust men with money. Maybe some Christmas magic can convince her that she, Nolan and Stella are already rich in what matters!
Having written over eighty-five novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.
Also by Tara Taylor Quinn (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
An Unexpected Christmas BabyHer Lost and Found Baby
His First ChoiceThe Promise He Made HerHer Secret LifeThe Fireman’s SonFor Joy’s SakeA Family for ChristmasFalling for the Brother
For Love or Money
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Fortune’s Christmas Baby
Tara Taylor Quinn
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07851-1
FORTUNE’S CHRISTMAS BABY
© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my own precious Christmas Babies:
Morgan Marie, Baylor Raine and Finley Joseph.
You remind me that life is eternal
and love matters more than anything else.
Contents
Cover (#u93c5a256-f6e8-58d2-a8f6-2ad6e198bdf1)
Back Cover Text (#ucf168cdb-f3b8-5545-8597-718af5126e7a)
About the Author (#uf516dd52-b9cf-5bde-b3d0-4a126de36fd7)
Booklist (#u9c785c62-f209-5950-89f5-e5bab9e2eebf)
Title Page (#u32ef68ed-f742-5154-b061-b68a4688ee11)
Copyright (#ue44436a4-19ea-5281-a162-1196798dc7a6)
Dedication (#u8acad85f-b463-520f-a09c-be3101902758)
Chapter One (#ubd3c8b1b-4ab7-5f5a-b865-f775181dc532)
Chapter Two (#u0e72ab59-58d4-530d-b38e-e085bac716ed)
Chapter Three (#ub7722ae3-0158-534c-b591-92e42e1bf37f)
Chapter Four (#u917ead78-c55b-535b-985e-f191b975b081)
Chapter Five (#u660acdd9-feae-58d6-87ad-b8ba017b13fa)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
He wanted to play.
Just not in Austin.
Weary from a year of major financial gains, youngest son banker in a family of bankers, Nolan Fortune, wanted—badly—to get out of his hometown of New Orleans.
He wanted to tune out the noise, close his eyes and sink deeply into the world where it was him and his saxophone. Making music, not money. Just for the couple weeks that the executives at Fortune Investments, himself included, were off work over the holidays.
He needed to pretend to be someone else. To wear jeans, a bit of stubble on his usually freshly shaven face and a black leather vest if he felt like it. The yearning inside of him had to have a chance to break free for a bit or he was going to get really cranky.
He wanted to be his other self—Nolan Forte.
He wanted to travel with the band he secretly gigged with on weekends—the guys who had no idea he was a millionaire banker in a family of millionaire bankers—and get a little crazy. He wanted to be able to talk to people—women—and believe that he, not his money, was the main attraction.
A little crazy. Nothing harsh enough to land him in any kind of trouble. Or the news.
How spoiled was he that he was getting almost everything he wanted—the break, the time with the band, the stubble and jeans, the anonymity—and he still wasn’t satisfied?
But Austin...damn.
“Sorry you were outvoted, man.” Daly, their lead guitarist turned in the seat he was hogging to look at Nolan, who was stretched out in the seat behind him. The fifteen-passenger van had a lot of seats. The band had four guys.
“You planning to sulk the whole way there?” Daly came again.
He wasn’t sulking. He was contemplating life.
His life.
“The Florida gig could have been good,” he said halfheartedly. Not that anyone knew it, but he’d arranged the Florida offer himself, through a friend of a music shop owner he used to know.
“In a retirement resort? You’re kidding, right?”
With a shrug, he sat up, dropping his feet to the floor. “I hear they have great light displays,” he said, and then grinned. The answer was lame, even for him.
And the Austin gig, a repeat tour at a jazz club by the University of Texas from the year before, paid better than any gig the band had ever had. It made sense to go back.
“Hell, man, lightning might strike your sorry butt twice,” Daly continued, putting a wad of gum in his mouth, as he referred to Nolan’s supposed success with the ladies the year before. Or rather, one lady in particular.
Good thing Daly didn’t need his teeth to play, Nolan thought sourly. At the rate he chewed the sugary crap he was going to lose them all. In truth, Daly’s gifted fingers on any stringed instrument he picked up were being sold way too short with their little part-time band. He belonged in Vegas or LA or New York. On a stage in the serious jazz clubs where the real music lovers went to listen—not just to party.
“What was her name?” Daly prompted. “Emily something?”
It was at least the tenth time the guy had brought up a subject Nolan was trying his best to forget.
Daly just wouldn’t let it rest apparently. It wasn’t like she was the only woman who’d tried to contact one, or all, of them through their website. After checking with Nolan, Branham, who managed the site for them, did what they always did when that happened. He blocked the address.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “Her name was Elizabeth.” And he shut his mouth, wishing he could shut down the slideshow in his brain as easily.
Elizabeth Sullivan.
Lizzie.
God, she’d been a beauty. Not in the usual Texas sense, with high hair and lots of makeup.
Not Lizzie. The first thing he’d noticed about her, besides her straight, long dark hair and natural look, was that she wasn’t drinking. Not that first night. Or the second...
No. He was not going to indulge in another Elizabeth fest. He’d spent the past year getting her out of his system. Thanking his lucky stars that he’d gotten away before he’d done something stupid and ended up ruining his life like his big brother Austin had done.
Or falling in love, telling her who he really was and having her love his money more than she’d ever cared about him.
Nolan closed his eyes. They were still a good five hours out. Time enough to catch up on his sleep.
Because as soon as they got to town, he was hitting a bar. Any bar.
Not to play. They didn’t go on until the next night. Friday to Friday for two weeks. Fourteen nights in a row, except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But tonight he was going to drink. As much as he wanted. As late as he wanted. Whatever he wanted.
So there.
Yeah, that was the plan.
And it was good.
When the phone rang at five thirty Friday morning, twenty-two-year-old Lizzie Sullivan did not want to answer. At all. During the second and third rings she considered closing her eyes right back up and getting what sleep she could. Stella had been up all night, every hour or two, it seemed, and would be wanting to eat again way too soon.
At three months old, the baby should be letting her get at least four hours’ rest at a time. Sometimes she did.
Lizzie’s breasts were sore from too many feedings in the last few hours. Her lower belly muscles—thanks to the emergency cesarean section that had saved her life—still were not right. And she did not want to get out of bed.
She answered on the fourth ring. She had to earn the money when she could, which was why she’d gone back to work just six weeks after giving birth. There’d be no more calls after that morning as the schools where she substitute taught—all she could get since she’d been due to give birth during the first month of the semester—would be on Christmas break for the next two weeks.
Alliant High School needed a sub for freshman English. Classes started in two hours. Telling the automated system “yes” when it asked if she could be there, Lizzie threw off her covers and stumbled for the bathroom.
She’d always hated getting out of bed, but was generally looking forward to the day by the time she was out of the shower. That day was no different. With the extra money, she could get Stella the set of talking books the baby had been fascinated with in the store the week before.
She had Ziploc bags in the freezer filled with pumped milk for Carmela to feed the baby today. Her roommate’s last-year architecture classes were mostly at night to compensate for Lizzie’s daytime work hours—and also because of her internship with the famous Keaton Fortune Whitfield. If Carmela had to leave, she’d take Stella to the grandma-age nanny the two of them had chosen together.
Thank God for Carmela Connors. Getting her as a college roommate had been the second best thing that had ever happened to her. Next in line only to Stella.
She was in her favorite chair in the living room, feeding Stella one last time right before she left, grateful to have the time to bond with her baby girl, when Carmela came in with two cups of tea and handed her one.
“It sucks that you have to work today,” her amber-haired friend said, curling her long legs up under her on the couch and pulling a fleece blanket over her lap. “For you, that is. I’m glad, as always, to get to hang and play mommy with that little one.”
Switching the baby to her other breast, Lizzie kissed the top of Stella’s head and said, “I hate leaving her, but honestly, I’m glad they called. A chance to make some extra money is a good thing. Especially right before the holidays.”
And time away from the baby was good, too. Instead of getting overwrought with the permanent and all-encompassing responsibility of being a single parent, she had time away...and then chafed to get home to her.
“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be great to be independently wealthy? Even for just a day or two? Like, do you ever think about how it’d feel to win the lottery? Oh, no, wait, we’d have to play to do that.”
Carmela’s droll tone made her smile. But she shook her head, too. “I seriously don’t want that kind of money.”
Suddenly serious, Carmela gave her a warm look. “I know, sweetie. And I probably don’t really want it, either.”
Carmela was the only person in her current life who knew why Lizzie shuddered at the idea of being wealthy, the only one who knew how her life had changed when her parents had reconnected with a friend of her mother’s from high school who’d married money. The Mahoneys had been great to them. Always inviting her parents to parties and dinners and charity functions that were way above their means, and paying for it all, too. Buying Lizzie lovely gifts for Christmas. Things her parents could never afford.
She’d been expected to feel grateful. Blessed. And she’d tried so hard. But inside she’d struggled with having her parents gone so much. Somehow, when the Mahoneys had called, a trip out for ice cream was no longer important. The opportunities they offered were better than the three of them home laughing while they made chocolate chip cookies and her father gave himself a cookie dough mustache.
Maybe if the Mahoneys had had children, it would have been better. Or if Lizzie had had siblings. Maybe if they’d done things together as families, rather than Lizzie always being left behind. Maybe if her mom had seemed as peacefully happy as she’d been before Barbara Mahoney had moved home to Chicago. If she hadn’t always constantly been making excuses for their home, or trying to get Lizzie to dress up more, do her hair nice, speak differently when the Mahoneys were around. And getting tense about her own hair, her own clothes. Like their real life embarrassed her.
“Don’t you think, if your parents had lived, that they’d have eventually pulled away from those friends of theirs and returned to normal life?” Carmela’s quiet question broke into her thoughts.
Rubbing Stella’s cheek, silently promising her baby girl that she’d never lose sight of what mattered most, Lizzie glanced over at Carmela, flooded with a bout of happiness, of being right where she was meant to be. “I’m not sure,” she said now. “I like to think so. I just know that the Mahoneys left nothing but money behind, while Mom and Dad had an asset that was priceless. And now I do, too.” She looked at the baby, whose mouth had fallen away from her breast as she went to sleep, and then glanced back at Carmela. “It’s so weird, you know,” she continued as she righted her bra and shirt. “When I first found out I was pregnant and couldn’t get ahold of Nolan, I was so scared and depressed, thinking my life was over. And now I see that everything happened just as it was meant to. We might have an odd little family here—me and her and you—and I might have some struggles ahead, being a single mom, but I love this baby more than I’d ever thought it possible to love anyone.”
“And look at you. Even pregnant, you finished your degree and are now an officially certified music teacher,” Carmela added, holding up her teacup in a mock salute.
“I have to be ready for the day you graduate and get that fabulous job offer,” Lizzie told her friend.
They were a great family, the three of them. But they’d known from the beginning that it wouldn’t last forever.
It was something she made a point to remember so that when the time came for change, she’d be ready and able to deal with it.
Yep. She was going to work. Christmas was coming. And Stella was healthy.
She had this.
Nolan made it to breakfast around noon. Jim Daly and Arnold Branham were off somewhere. Glenn Downing, their drummer, was already at a table when Nolan showed up at the diner next door to their small hotel not far from the club. He joined the fortysomething divorced father of two who never got his kids on Christmas.
They talked about music, as they always did. The four guys had met in a private jazz class when Nolan had been in college. Daly, Branham and Nolan had been students and Glenn their instructor. Glenn, a music scholar, had chosen life on the road over life in the classroom after obtaining his doctorate degree in music theory. He’d toured with various bands for two decades and now hired himself out on the local New Orleans scene and taught private classes. Daly was hoping to get with a full-time touring band. And Branham, the oldest of the three former jazz students, was still in college, taking a couple of classes a semester since he had to work full-time to afford tuition. He wanted to be a veterinarian. But he was damned good with wind instruments, too.
None of them knew Nolan’s real story. And the email address he’d given them had been created specifically and only for them, as was the cell number for the phone he’d purchased when he’d first had the yen to take a jazz music class and had invented Nolan Forte. None of them had any idea he’d learned the sax from some of the greats while still in high school because his parents had been trying to keep him out of trouble. They knew he lived in New Orleans and had a business degree, but he’d told them he worked as a grunt at a desk job. Statistical analysis, which was close enough to banking that he could pull off a conversation, and boring enough that he never had to.
If he had his way—and he usually did—that’s all they’d ever know.
Nolan spent his afternoon doing exactly what he’d told himself he would not do. He walked around familiar spots on campus, visited a coffee shop for a coffee he didn’t want because he’d been there before, stopped in a restaurant just to look at a particular booth in the back corner and even made it by the apartment complex that had tried to steal his life away from him.
Well, the complex hadn’t. The temptation within it had.
Lizzie.
Built into the side of a hill, the one-floor building stood almost a full story above the street.
Looking up at the window of her old apartment, picturing the bedroom beyond, he shook his head and moved on. He’d glorified the entire two-week episode, he was sure.
And he’d made the right choice, too, in breaking things off cold with Lizzie. And in coming back to Austin, too, as it turned out. He’d just wanted to take the walk down memory lane, to find the closure he needed to get her fully out of his system.
There was no way any relationship between them would have worked. She’d been having fun with a not-rich saxophone player. She’d made her views of a wealthy lifestyle quite clear, when she’d told him, after they made love for the first time, that it didn’t matter to her that he was a struggling musician. Unlike most, she didn’t yearn for financial abundance. In fact, she thought that money chained people, not set them free. The yearning inside him had agreed with her, even as warning bells had gone off.
The rest of him, the parts Lizzie didn’t know at all, liked his Ferrari, his home, his ability to take two weeks off worry-free and pretend to be someone else. He loved his family—even when he didn’t like them sometimes. He needed to be a solid, contributing part of the energetic Fortune clan.
He liked eating at the finest restaurants. Having the best seats at the theater. And having a driver at his disposal any time he wanted.
He particularly liked being able to fly off to Greece for a long weekend.
Problem was, he’d liked Lizzie, too. More than any woman he’d ever been with.
He’d liked her too much to challenge the feelings with reality. Better to love and leave, as they’d both planned, than introduce her to his life of wealth and have the money come between them. They were from different worlds and he’d already tried that route with a woman he’d met in college. It had been a disaster all the way around, and they’d both been hurt. Badly. One of Molly’s brothers had tried to cash in on knowing him, by using the Fortune name, and Molly had expected Nolan to let it go, because they were all “family.”
He’d let it go because it hadn’t hurt his family, but he’d also had to let her go.
Whatever love he’d had for her had turned to resentment. And worse. He hadn’t been willing to chance having the same thing happen to him and Lizzie when reality set in.
He’d never thought she’d have used his wealth in that way, but their enormous differences would have torn their love apart. And then there was the fact that he’d been duplicitous with her, even after sleeping with her. A lack of trust was definitely pavement on the road to resentment.
Taking the long way back to the cheesy hotel, Nolan played the whole Lizzie thing in his mind one more time. He checked himself, his choices, and knew he’d done the right thing, cutting himself off from her.
His oldest brother, Austin, Nolan’s mentor from birth, had been down the Lizzie road, too, falling hard for a woman in just two weeks. It had turned into the biggest mistake of his life and it had hurt the family. Austin had been twenty-five when he’d married on the spot, the age Nolan had been when he’d met Lizzie.
Lizzie had been young, too, just like Kelly, Austin’s ex. Twenty-one actually, the same age Kelly had been when she’d hoodwinked Austin.
Added to all that was Nolan’s own habit for getting into mischief. He could see now that it had been a result of him yearning to break free that had sent him down the wrong roads. He’d dealt with that shadowy side his entire life. And paid for it, too.
Like the time he’d thought it would be cool to dare a couple of his sisters, Savannah and Belle, the younger ones, to jump off a cliff into a swimming hole twenty feet below. After he’d already taken the fall himself. Of course, since he’d dared them and was older than them, they’d done it. Though they were both successful, Savannah got sick, with a cold that then went into a bronchial infection, and had to miss the first two weeks of school.
Miles Fortune had been all up for grounding his son for the entire school year. One of his older brothers had talked him down to Nolan being Savannah’s servant for the next month, in charge of collecting and delivering all of her school assignments, too.
And then there’d been the time he’d climbed out his window to meet up with the teenage daughter of one of the ladies who’d cleaned their ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. Austin had covered for him then. Miles had never found out about that one.
But he was an adult now. His brother couldn’t cover for him anymore.
He’d understood what he had to do. And he’d done it. Cut things off at the quick with Lizzie before they went too far. He’d thrown away her number. He’d changed his own. And he’d checked the band’s website to make certain that there was nothing there that could possibly tie Nolan Forte to Nolan Fortune.
And then, like Austin, he’d concentrated on work.
When he and Lizzie had made love, they’d agreed that there’d be no promises. They’d just met and he was only in town a couple of weeks. And while they’d left open the possibility of being in touch after Nolan Forte’s gig was up and he had to leave with the band, they’d never promised to be.
Back at the hotel that Friday afternoon a year later to the day he’d first met Lizzie, Nolan showered, pulled on black jeans and rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt, leaving the top buttons undone. He put on a black leather vest with silver studs, stepped into his black leather cowboy boots and grabbed his sax.
Lizzie was the past.
He was ready to move into his future.
Chapter Two (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
“He’s in town.”
Carmela didn’t say who. But Lizzie knew immediately who her best friend was talking about.
Sitting with Carmela at the used but good-quality wood kitchen table they’d found at an estate sale, Lizzie flitted through the lettuce and veggies in her bowl with her fork. She’d been home from school for an hour, had fed Stella, who was sleeping, and really just wanted to take a nap herself.
If not for the fact that it had been her turn to make dinner, she’d have taken a nap rather than grilling chicken and cutting veggies for the salads they were now eating.
“Hon?” Carmela put fingers on top of Lizzie’s hand.
Lizzie stilled, but didn’t look up. Or over at the baby sleeping in her swing, either. “I heard you.”
She was trying not to let the knowledge seep in. She didn’t want to know. And most certainly didn’t want to care.
She’d told herself—and Carmela, too, three months before—that she wasn’t going anywhere near the jazz club over the holidays. If he was there, he was there. The fact had nothing to do with her.
Not anymore.
So why was her heart pounding in her chest, making it impossible for her to swallow even if she’d managed to get lettuce to her mouth and chew?
“You need to go see him.”
That got her attention. And gave her strength, too. Head shooting upward, she gave her roommate an authoritative stare. “Absolutely not.”
“He has a right to know.”
Putting her bare foot up on her chair, she hugged her knee with both arms. “No.”
Carmela didn’t speak, but Lizzie could feel the other woman’s striking gray stare burning into her, escalating the confusion roaring inside her.
Because as certain as she was that she was not going to see Nolan Forte ever again—in that lifetime or any other as far as she was concerned—she was equally aware that in some universe he had a right to know that he was a father.
Worse, and much more angst-producing, was the fact that Stella had a right for him to know. In case, someday, he wanted to know her.
Or had family that did.
Like her, he’d apparently had no family close enough with whom to spend the holidays the previous year. Aunt Betty, her only living relative, had been on a cruise with Wayne, Betty’s companion of thirty years. Nolan hadn’t mentioned anyone, nor said why he hadn’t been with them.
She hadn’t asked.
There hadn’t been time. Or it had seemed that way. With less than two weeks to spend with him, she’d been far more interested in their shared interests, in just “them,” than she’d been in any peripheral details.
When she’d found out they had a very real repercussion from their time together, she regretted that she knew almost nothing about him.
Funny, when they’d been together she’d felt like she knew him as well as she knew herself. Felt like they’d been connected before birth, destined to find each other.
Instead, she’d found herself pregnant by a ghost.
One who’d disconnected the number he’d given her. Or had given her a false number to begin with, which was more likely.
One who’d never used the number she’d given him. Not once. Ever.
“He made it very clear that he didn’t want to hear anything I might have to say to him ever again,” she dropped into the tense silence that had fallen between her and Carmela.
Her roommate wasn’t eating, either, or sipping from the wine she’d poured. Carmela was worried about her. She got that.
Truth be known, there were days when she was kind of worried about herself. But it had been a rough few months, having her blood pressure shoot so high the day she’d gone into labor that she’d had a seizure, prompting an immediate cesarean section. Trying to take care of her baby on her own as much as she could afterward, worrying when her blood pressure kept spiking and when Stella failed to gain weight. She’d wondered, a time or two, in the dark of the night, if they were both going to die.
They hadn’t. She’d completely recovered from the pregnancy and postpartum-induced blood pressure issues. And Stella was a picture of perfect baby health.
But now Nolan was back in town.
The truth bobbed around in the outskirts of her awareness, as though testing her for reaction. She wasn’t going to react, plain and simple.
“There is no way in hell I’m going back to that club,” she said now. Despite that declaration, she couldn’t help wondering how long he’d been in Austin, in her neighborhood.
He hadn’t bothered to call. Or stop by.
It wasn’t like he’d have forgotten where she lived. Unless he was a moron as well as a jackass.
He’d known she was a virgin. He’d made a big deal about how much it meant to him that he was her first time. Had made her feel so special. Cherished.
And then...he’d discarded her like she meant nothing at all.
Not even enough to deserve a real phone number. Or name.
She and Carmela had both spent months, on and off, searching the internet for any information on Nolan Forte. All roads led back to one place. His band’s website.
At Carmela’s urging, Lizzie had sent messages to the email listed on the site, with no reply.
“If he’d wanted his kid to have his name, he should have given the real one to her mother.”
“I’m not suggesting that you try to hook up with him, hon.” Carmela’s tone was soft. “Just that this might be the only time you have a chance to tell him about Stella.” She rubbed Lizzie’s arm. “I’m not championing him here,” she said. “You know what I think of him.”
In the very beginning, when Lizzie had first started seeing Nolan, Carmela had warned her against hanging out with a band member. Her boss’s wife, Francesca Whitfield, had been in a relationship with a traveling band member for years—a boy she’d loved since high school—and had caught him cheating on her with a groupie.
Lizzie had thought Nolan was different.
“It’s not because I give a rat’s ass about him,” Carmela started in again. “But you never know what the future’s going to hold, sweetie. What if Stella needs him for some medical reason? A kidney match or something? You might need him to save her life and you’d have no way to find him. Or maybe he has family, a mother even, who’d love Stella, and you, too, for that matter? Chances are if she exists, she has a pretty good idea what a creep her son turned out to be.”
She didn’t need Nolan’s mother to love her. Or anyone associated with him, either. She had Aunt Betty. And Carmela.
And the miracle of Stella.
If anyone had told her how her life would change the instant she held her baby in her arms, she’d never have believed them.
The way that baby filled her heart...made her feel strong and capable...and willing to give up her life at the same time, if it would save Stella’s... It was transforming.
“You might be able to get support out of him,” Carmela said.
“I don’t want his money.” She didn’t want anything more from Nolan Forte. He’d given her enough. “And I don’t want him anywhere near Stella. He’s a liar. A fake. If he’d pull a stunt like he did on me, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, giving me an unusable phone number, who knows what he’d do if she was bugging him? Children believe everything they hear. And they expect their parents to be truthful to them. They don’t need a parent they can’t trust, one who will be constantly disappointing them. Besides, who knows, the guy might be a total creep. Could be the universe was watching out for me, keeping me safe, when it worked out like it did.”
She’d had a lot of months to get herself right with the situation.
“Stella’s going to need to know who he is someday. She’s going to have a mind of her own and she’ll need to know who fathered her.”
“I’ll tell her what I know. It’ll be enough.”
“You don’t know that.”
No. She didn’t. The pang of guilt that hit her was unwelcome. As unwanted in her life as she was in Nolan Forte’s.
He was in town and hadn’t bothered to look her up.
“We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said now, standing to clear her plate from the table.
It had been a great night. Two long sets played to a completely full club. Setting his sax down on the stand where he’d leave it long enough to have a beer before packing up for the night, Nolan jumped down from the two-foot-high stage. Glenn would leave his drums set up. The mics would stay. Daly and Branham were already downing a couple of shots of whiskey and talking up the women who’d been flirting with them all night.
An older version of the two women at the bar with his bandmates stood to the side of the stage, talking to Glenn. The way she was smiling, leaning into him, touching his arm, she was doing more than asking about the band’s schedule.
A woman who’d caught Nolan’s eye a couple of times that night—only because he’d been looking over the crowd and she’d been staring at him each time—was lingering not far from the stage. After a couple of years on the road, he knew the probability existed that she was waiting for a chance to talk to him, maybe hang out for a while. And while Nolan Forte wasn’t averse to little weekend flirtations now and then, just plain Nolan needed escape more.
And maybe a trip back to the hotel. He’d had a couple more beers than he should have had last night. Hitting the sack sounded not half-bad.
Now that he’d taken his walk down memory lane and gotten his closure, revisited his decisions and determined they’d been the right ones, concluding he was fully over Lizzie, he’d be out like a log. He’d probably have the best night’s sleep he’d had in...well...a year, maybe.
“Hey.”
The voice called out to him from behind just before he reached a corner of the bar. Swinging around, he felt his throat catch just when he’d begun to breathe easily for the first time all night. The sets were done and there’d been no Lizzie sighting.
He hadn’t expected her to be there. But there’d been a small part of him that had insisted on hanging on to a minute bit of lingering doubt...
“Carmela, Lizzie’s roommate,” the woman said by way of introduction. “Remember me?”
“I didn’t see you out there.” He said the first thing that came to mind. And he forgave himself for not playing it cooler than that, considering the shock he was in seeing Lizzie’s friend—someone who probably knew how she was.
“I timed my arrival for the ending of the last set. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t see me and bolt.” The last was said with obvious derision.
He wasn’t really getting her attitude. “I don’t bolt.”
“No, you just disappear.”
“Look, I don’t know what Lizzie told you, but we clearly said no strings attached. Her idea. She had very definite plans for her life and a struggling musician from out of town didn’t fit them. We knew going in that it was only for two weeks. I was here for a gig, left when it was over. End of story.” No one, not even Lizzie, knew of his inane and very dangerous struggle with his own wayward inner yearnings ever since.
“Not that I didn’t enjoy my time with her,” he was pushed to add. “I did. Very much. She’s special.”
“You gave her a bogus number.”
The woman wouldn’t quit.
“No, I didn’t,” he said, and then added, “I had to change carriers, and the number didn’t convert.”
True, to a point. He’d changed carriers for Nolan Forte’s private phone, which had been the number he’d given her because he couldn’t trust himself not to engage if she called.
“You never called her.”
“Again, no expectation that I’d do so. We exchanged numbers, but made no promises either way. Her idea as much as mine.”
He turned back to pick up his horn and get on out of there. He’d pick up some comfort food on the way, take it back to his room.
Or he’d break his cardinal rule while on the road with the band and order a delivery that Nolan Fortune could easily afford. A thousand times over.
“You need to go see her.”
Carmela’s words at his back were a direct hit. She’d changed her tactics. Or he’d misheard the pleading in her tone now. He turned and looked at her.
“She’s still in Austin?” He’d promised himself that wouldn’t be the case, that she’d be graduated from college there and long gone. He only had two weeks to unwind, to recuperate from a long, hard, successful year of business. He needed the break. Deserved the break.
What he didn’t need was drama from someone he hardly knew. His sisters provided plenty of that back in his real life.
Carmela stood there staring at him like she had a whole lot more to say. He commanded himself not to ask about Lizzie, but didn’t obey.
“Didn’t she graduate?” He’d have bet his entire fortune that she had.
“Yeah.”
He shook his head, confused. “She got a job here in Austin, then? I was under the impression she planned to settle outside of Texas.”
“She got a job, yeah,” Carmela said, staring at him like he was supposed to be getting something more from what she was saying. He wasn’t getting it.
“You two still roommates?” he asked to give himself time to figure out this uncomfortable encounter.
Surely Carmela didn’t think he owed her something because he’d had a fling with her roommate.
“Yeah, we’re still roommates,” the fiery-haired woman said. “I don’t graduate until spring.”
So...wait a minute... “You’re still in the same apartment?”
He’d been staring up at Lizzie’s actual bedroom window that afternoon? He’d been a few feet away from her door? Walking around where he could have been discovered at any moment?
“Yeah,” Carmela said, and then dropped her gaze. She glanced around the club, almost guilty-like. “You really need to go see her.”
He couldn’t. Not for anything. Just...no. He wasn’t going back there again. He’d made it out.
He backed away from the woman.
“I’m serious, Nolan.” Carmela took a step forward.
“If she wants to see me so badly why isn’t she here?”
“I didn’t say she wanted to see you.”
Wait. What?
He shook his head. “Then why would I go see her?”
Once again her eyes met his, her stare like a slap. “I told Lizzie you were nothing special. That you were like all the rest, just out for a good time. She thought you were different. She thought you actually cared.”
“We had a two-week thing.”
“You messed her up, Forte,” Carmela said, turning her back on him now. “If you have any decency in you at all, you need to go see her.”
The woman’s parting had him right back in hell, longing for what he couldn’t have.
Chapter Three (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
When Carmela asked if she could take Stella with her to run errands Saturday morning, Lizzie didn’t think twice. Her friend had taken ownership of the baby like a second parent, was as fiercely protective as any parent would be and was happier just having Stella around. She also knew that sometimes Lizzie needed a little alone time at home.
Time to clean her bathroom, in preparation for maybe taking a bubble bath afterward. Time to pay bills, or answer emails, without having an ear to the monitor and a fifty-fifty chance of being interrupted.
Time to answer the door when the bell rang just fifteen minutes after Carmela had left. She only had an hour or so, was in sweats and the T-shirt she’d pulled on to clean, and wasn’t happy about the interruption.
Scouring pad in hand, blowing upward to move the stray hairs that had fallen from the clip holding up the knot on the top of her head, she looked through the peephole. And froze.
Tremors struck the hand that had automatically reached for the knob. Nolan was staring right at her and she had to remind herself that he couldn’t see her.
But, oh, God, she could see him. That thick dark brown hair that had a tendency to curl just a bit, the jaw that really did jut with strength, the little bit of stubble. If she closed her eyes, which she was doing, she could still feel the rasp of his face against her skin.
Her lids shot open. He was still there. In black jeans and a red plaid button-down shirt visible through the open front of his leather jacket.
Her knees felt like she should sit down. The rest of her hummed with a peculiar energy she’d only ever felt once before in her life. For two weeks the year before.
The warm look in his dark brown gaze made her feel like he was focused right on her. Made her wish he was.
No.
She turned away. There was no law that said she had to open her door just because someone rang the bell. No way for him to know she was in there.
Carmela had taken her car. It had been easier than moving the car seat.
Car seat!
Nolan knew where she lived.
He was in town for two weeks.
Chances were if he wanted to see her—and he must since he was outside her door—then he’d come back if she didn’t answer.
And when he did come back, chances were also good that if he found Lizzie home, Stella would be there, too.
She had to get rid of him now.
Nolan stood outside Lizzie’s door, wanting this over and done with. Standing outside the door of his greatest temptation was not how he’d envisioned spending his Saturday morning. Carmela had said that she’d make sure Lizzie was home. And that she would not be. She was giving them time alone.
Why, he had no idea.
You messed her up, Forte. Carmela’s words the night before had been haunting him ever since.
Open the damn door, Lizzie. Let me see what I did.
So he could fix it and move on.
He was over her. He knew that much.
But he had spent the night trying to envision the damage he might have done. He’d never meant to hurt her. The whole point of leaving it like it had ended was so that neither of them would get hurt. Or resentful. It had been an incredible two weeks. A Christmas fantasy, as she’d once termed it. He’d wanted it to stay that way. For both of them. Instead, he’d messed her up?
How?
She’d graduated. Had a job. She wouldn’t have gotten into drugs or alcohol. Not over a two-week romance. Not over him. The girl had survived the loss of her parents.
She was perfectly capable and comfortable with being alone in the world. Which was far more than he could ever see himself doing. The thought of not having his huge family in the background of his days was worse than any nightmare he’d ever had.
It was part of the reason he’d had to leave Lizzie behind. He couldn’t be Nolan Forte full-time. His family needed Nolan Fortune. A capable, responsible Nolan Fortune, not a guy who was letting something unreliable inside of him drive actions that would point his life in an unsuccessful direction. Not a guy who’d repeat his own mistake by getting involved with someone completely outside their world.
His family wasn’t the only entity that needed Nolan Fortune intact. He did, too. He was already less respected, being the baby boy of the family. He had to try harder, reach success faster, if he ever hoped to be an equal to his three older brothers.
He knocked a second time, hoping that maybe Carmela was wrong. Lizzie wasn’t there. Or messed up, either.
A click sounded on the lock. The knob turned. As if in slow motion Nolan registered the door opening, not breathing as he waited to see her.
“Nolan. Wow. It’s been a long time.”
He backed up a couple of steps as the woman who’d been haunting him for an entire year slid outside, pulling the door closed but not latched behind herself, so that she could push back inside at any second.
She looked...divine. Perfect. His Lizzie, completely real, scouring pad and all. She did her own cleaning, twice a week, he remembered. He’d tried to help, but she’d kept shooing him away so mostly he’d watched. He’d gotten away with wiping the bathroom mirror. The sooner they’d got the bathroom clean, the sooner they’d be together in the garden-size tub...
He was hard. On fire. Having to consciously restrain himself from reaching out to her with both arms.
“Carmela said I messed you up.” If he’d been anywhere near the vicinity of his right mind he’d never have spoken the words aloud.
The thought occurred to him that they could be in on this together. Messing with him. For whatever unknown reason.
The Lizzie he’d known would never have done that. But then, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? He’d only known her for two weeks. The same amount of time Austin had known his wife before he’d married her. And Kelly had turned out to be a gold-digging, divorced, in-debt daughter of jailed con artists, not the debutante she’d presented to him.
He’d never have thought Molly would turn on him, either, taking her brother’s side.
“Carmela?” Lizzie’s confused frown was damned convincing.
“Your roommate? She is still your roommate, right?” So far he was winning the battle with the hands in the front pockets of his jeans. They were staying put.
“Yes. When did you speak to her?”
“Last night.”
“You were here last night?” There was a slight squeak to her voice as she looked around, and then back at him. She was shivering.
It wasn’t all that cold. Sixty or so. She had on a T-shirt. The sun was shining. No need for him to offer her his jacket.
“No, I wasn’t here last night.” Was he really doing this? He had to get out of the craziness. He’d known better.
“So how did you talk to her last night?” Even as she asked, her eyes widened. “She went to the club.” She answered her own question.
He nodded.
The sudden stilling of everything about her, the sharpening of her gaze, struck him as extremely non-Lizzie. And that hint of fear he’d seen cross her expression? He had to have imagined that.
He might have had a fling with her and left, but he’d never, ever given her, or any other woman, any cause to fear him.
“What did she tell you?” The question was sharp, in a tone he’d never heard from her before.
“Nothing,” he said, his frustration growing. “Just that I’d messed you up and needed to come see you.”
The anger that flashed in her eyes wasn’t hard at all to decipher, though the origin of it was not quite so clear. Either he or Carmela were in for it, though.
“She had no business going to see you.”
Deciding the wisest course was to keep quiet until he could figure out what was going on, Nolan didn’t voice his agreement on that one.
“And that’s it?” she asked. “That’s all she said?”
He nodded. He told himself she looked okay, so he could go. Should go.
Instead, he stayed glued to the spot.
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. I’m sorry she bothered you. You can go now.”
There. She confirmed it. Time to turn around and get back to his day. To walk aimlessly around the campus area and forget he’d ever known her.
Or see everything that reminded him of her and know that he’d made the right decision.
Maybe he should take a cab to the other side of the city and look at things he’d never seen before. Or, better yet, call home and get an update on all the drama he was missing. With six siblings, there always was some—a lot of times revolving around twenty-five-year-old Savannah. She was perhaps the smartest one of the bunch, but was way too beautiful for her own good, in Nolan’s opinion, and didn’t take kindly to being told no, which he knew well. Having been born just a year before her, Nolan was the one who’d taken flak the most often when his sister didn’t get her way.
“Please, Nolan, just go.”
Lizzie’s words, the honest pleading in them, brought him back fully to her doorstep. And the fact that he was still standing there.
“What did Carmela mean about you being messed up?” That’s why he couldn’t go. He was a gentleman and he had to know what was going on. To know his own culpability, or lack thereof, and take responsibility so that he could be completely free from what had turned out to be the most unfortunate incident in his life.
“I have no idea,” Lizzie said. “I was...hurt...when you left and I couldn’t get ahold of you. Maybe she wanted to give me a chance to chew you out. Maybe she thinks that would help. And, maybe for some, it would. I had no desire to hold on to any anger and I’m over it. Completely. As you can see, I’m fine.”
Yes, she’d already said that. And she was guarding her door like a member of the Secret Service. It occurred to him then that she might have someone inside. A man would be the most obvious guess.
He turned to go. “Well, let her know I stopped by, will you? So she doesn’t show up at the club again tonight ready to smash my grill.”
She nodded. He took another step toward the parking lot and his escape. “You look good.”
“I look like crap,” she said. “I’m cleaning...” Her voice broke off, and she glanced away, almost as though she was also remembering the time he’d helped her clean the bathroom. That had been a Saturday morning, as well.
“So...Carmela said you graduated and got a job.”
She nodded, and named the school district.
She had to really be all right, then, looking as great as she did and working for the city’s public school system.
“Please, Nolan, I mean it. We had a great holiday. I really want to leave it at that. I’m asking you to leave now. And I’ll talk to Carmela.”
She looked so good.
“We could go for coffee. Just to catch up.” What was he doing?
When she shook her head, he told himself he was relieved.
“Maybe later in the week, then. Come by the club, and we can set something up...just to talk...”
“Maybe. I need to get back inside.” She took a small step back.
He had no more reason to stay then. Not a legitimate one. Wanting to give her a hug definitely wasn’t one. Nor was he ready to just say goodbye. He was in town for a bit longer. They had a little time. With a last long look, he kept his hands in his pockets and headed back the way he’d come, wondering how long he’d wait for her to show up at the club before he’d break down and visit her again.
Chapter Four (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
After she slid back into her apartment, Lizzie bolted the door as though she could keep outside all of the feelings that seeing Nolan had brought back. Keep them in a pool out there. One she could avoid stepping into as she came and went from her home.
And after double-checking that the door was locked, she took her scouring pad back into her en-suite bathroom and sat on the side of the tub.
Just sat.
He’d looked so incredibly good. So good. So incredibly, bone-weakening, blood-heating good. If she was still alone and single, without responsibility, would she have asked him in?
Would she have regretted doing so?
What if he’d come when Stella had been home?
Oh. That was why Carmela had asked to take the baby on her errands that morning. Because it was something she did often enough that Lizzie wouldn’t be curious. And it would also give Lizzie time alone with Nolan.
Her best friend and roommate hadn’t told him about Stella.
She’d wanted Lizzie to do that. Had orchestrated the moment.
She’d overstepped. Lizzie was going to tell her so the second she got home.
In the meantime she recalled the warmth in that man’s eyes. For a second there, it had been like the year before, like she could see clear to his soul. She’d never met a man who she felt such an instant connection to. Like she could trust him forever.
Ha.
The man who’d given her a bogus number. And obviously a fake name, too.
If she really wanted to know who he was she could go to the club. Get the skinny from any of his bandmates.
If she were really ballsy she could ask Nolan to see his driver’s license.
Truth was, she no longer wanted the truth.
She wanted him gone.
He made it around the block. Twice. Two blocks over. Stopping for coffee Nolan sat himself down and looked around the shop at all of the people—mostly students and some professors who must live in the area, he presumed. A guy with glasses and longish, unkempt hair sat in a hoodie, hunched over a laptop that was plugged into the wall behind him.
A couple of girls leaned into each other across a table as they talked, one of them referring repeatedly to something on her phone.
He tried to imagine what it might be they were so engrossed in. A picture of a guy. A boyfriend. Maybe she’d caught him with another girl. Maybe they were looking at clothes. On their way to go shopping. Buying for themselves rather than picking up gifts for others.
Maybe he had to quit watching everyone else live their lives and live his own. He had to get back over to Lizzie’s and tell her the truth about himself. He’d known, deep down, the second he’d seen her that he owed her that much.
Because of what they’d been to each other for the short holiday time.
He sat upright and noticed the clock up on the wall. He still had fifteen minutes, at the very least, before the hour was up that Carmela had assured him Lizzie would be home.
Alone. She’d said Lizzie would be home alone.
Which meant she hadn’t had a guy in there, right?
He had to complete the unfinished business between them.
That was the answer.
His subterfuge, his lack of honesty, the way he’d changed his number—none of that was like him. It wasn’t as decent as he needed to be.
That was the problem. Yeah, everything seemed to be coming clear now. Making total sense. It wasn’t Lizzie compelling him; it was his own need to like himself. To be the man he thought himself to be. To live up to his own standards.
He’d never be fully free of her until he came clean. I was...hurt...when you left and I couldn’t get ahold of you...
He felt again the stab her words had brought. Though he’d never meant to, he’d hurt her.
But that was in the past, he told himself.
But the truth wasn’t. The truth was here and now. His to give.
He had to give her that.
Standing, feeling taller than he had in the past year, Nolan tossed his half-full cup into the trash and headed out the door.
She’d known he’d be back.
After all, she and Nolan had unfinished business. Like the baby he knew nothing about.
Leaving her unused scouring pad in the bathroom when she heard the bell, she went to the door, texting her roommate on the way.
He’s here. Don’t come back until I text the okay.
The rest, the part about her being unhappy with her friend’s manipulation, however well-meaning, would be handled in person.
As before, she met him on the stoop outside her front door. She had some idea that they could walk down the short hill to the parking lot below. Anywhere but inside her apartment.
Her phone buzzed a text and she took a quick look.
Okay and good luck. Love you.
She wasn’t telling him about Stella. Her mind was made up and Carmela’s pressure couldn’t change that. A decision like whether or not to tell the father of her baby that he had a child had to come from her.
“Look, I—I’m not planning to stalk you or anything,” Nolan said, looking so...Nolan as he stood there on the small cement landing that served as their excuse for a porch. For a second there she could feel him again. Feel the warmth. The sense that, with him, she was complete.
Which was ludicrous. She’d known it back then, and she knew it now. They hardly knew each other. It had been the holidays and her being alone that had played with her head. Made her vulnerable to fall hard for the man who’d offered her a romantic fling in place of spending Christmas alone.
Carmela had offered to take her home to her family with her, but Lizzie hadn’t wanted to go. Sometimes being a third wheel was worse than being alone.
Then she’d met Nolan. And had a two-week fairy tale. One she was remembering with too much intensity for her current well-being.
Her eyes lit on his mouth and her thoughts betrayed her as she felt an overwhelming desire to touch those lips with her own. But she was rational enough to know that kissing him would be the worst mistake she could make.
But to taste him one last time...
To be held in his arms...
No.
“I just... I needed to... Can we talk for a second?” he said when she got lost in her thoughts rather than responding. His hesitancy, so unlike the Nolan she’d known, had her curious.
“I kind of thought you’d be back,” she told him. Maybe she shouldn’t have. She didn’t know. The then and now crashing into each other like they were was confusing her. “Neither one of us really got closure. So let’s go ahead and get it and be done.”
If only she could be certain her inner self would agree as readily as she wanted Nolan to do.
Watching her, he squinted, as though taking her mettle. When he nodded, she started to breathe a little easier.
“Can we go inside?”
“No!” She took a quick breath and tempered her response. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she added more gently. “To be honest, I don’t want you in my personal space. Whatever we have to say can be said right out here.”
She glanced toward the parking lot, thinking maybe there’d be a car she didn’t recognize out there, but didn’t see one. The band traveled in a van. Last year he’d walked everywhere. Or she drove them.
“I’m sorry.” He looked her in the eye when he offered the apology.
She believed he meant it. “Accepted,” she said. And then, with an eye to getting rid of him for good this time, before she could be tempted to prolong the inevitable, she said, “Seriously, Nolan. I was upset when I tried to call you and the number was disconnected, but that was months ago. I’m really not harboring any hard feelings toward you, in spite of whatever Carmela might have insinuated.”
“I lied to you.”
She hadn’t expected the outright admission but she said, “Okay.”
“My real name isn’t Nolan Forte.”
Wow. The man was really unloading himself. Carmela must have done some number on him. When she was done chewing her roommate out for butting in someplace that wasn’t her place to butt, she’d tell her how successful she’d been. Where Nolan was concerned only.
“But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
If he was waiting for her to ask who he really was, he was going to be disappointed. She didn’t want to care about that.
“Look, Nolan, or whoever you are, I’ve told you, it’s fine. You’re making much more of a big deal of this than necessary. I appreciate you stopping by. I don’t feel as much like an inconsequential fling, and it’s really fine. I moved on months ago.”
He nodded, pivoted like he was about to leave and then turned back.
She would have liked to have been disappointed that it wasn’t over yet. So why did she have that one-second shot of relief?
Because maybe she did need to know the truth?
To tell her daughter someday.
Or just to find that last bit of peace within herself. Who was this man who’d managed to get past her defenses, the carefully constructed walls and rules that kept her safe out in the big bad world all alone? How had he done so? And how could she be certain that it never happened again, with anyone else?
“The real me isn’t someone you would like.”
“I’m not all that fond of the you I know.” Because he’d been a lie. But what was wrong with her? She didn’t spit mean words at people, no matter how deserving. It just wasn’t her way.
He acknowledged the hit with a bow of his head. It didn’t make her feel good.
“Look, Nolan. It’s not like you owed me anything. I just thought it was rude that you gave me a bogus number. The decent thing would have been to just let it end. Not drag it out with the illusion of possibility.” She turned to go back in. This was done.
“When I left here I was open to the possibility.”
Turning back, she stared at him. Her heart started to pound, constricting her breathing.
But it didn’t matter. “Our entire time together was a lie, based on you being someone you weren’t.”
She’d known. But until he’d acknowledged that truth, there’d been hope that she was wrong. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she’d held on to that hope all these months in some small private recess of her heart.
“I am Nolan Forte,” he said, still meeting her gaze head-on. “On as many weekends as I can manage and for two weeks over the Christmas holiday.”
Confused, she reached behind her for the doorknob, not sure she was going in, but sure that she needed something to hold on to.
“Forte is my stage name.”
She hadn’t been important enough to be privy to anything other than that. So what did that make her, a common groupie? She felt stupid. She’d thought they were so much more than that.
He went on. “My family doesn’t know.”
About her? Or...
“They don’t know you’re Nolan Forte?”
He shook his head. “My oldest brother might suspect, but no, no one knows.”
“You just disappear and they have no idea where you are?”
“Pretty much.”
She had no idea what to do with that. So she focused elsewhere. He’d said “oldest brother.” “How many brothers do you have?”
Her curiosity wasn’t healthy. Still, she waited for his answer. Wondering if he’d answer.
“Three.”
Wow. Four boys. For a second there, she was imagining a nice brick two-story somewhere with trampled grass and a basketball hoop hooked to the garage. Nolan was out there with his brothers, topping a couple of them, showing them how the game was played.
“I’m the youngest of the boys.”
The imaginary video in her mind skidded to a halt and gave an instant replay. A little kid stood there now, watching the big guys play, wanting to play with them, but they wouldn’t let him.
“I also have three sisters.”
The mental video player disappeared. She stared at him. She’d thought they were both virtually alone in the world. Who, with a huge family, would be spending Christmas alone on the road, playing saxophone in a bar?
And then something else horrifying occurred to her. Maybe it should have before. Maybe in the darkest alleys in her mind it had.
“Are you married?”
“What?” His mouth dropped open and he frowned. “Are you kidding? Of course not! I wouldn’t have...” He shook his head.
She felt like smiling. The sensation passed almost immediately.
He wasn’t like her—mostly alone. Distance started to grow between her and the man she’d fallen so hard for the year before.
The man whose baby she’d had.
“My real name is Fortune.” He said the words like they were a death sentence.
Feeling bereft at the loss she’d just suffered, finding out that they were not kindred spirits in the world of those with no family with whom to share the holidays, she shook her head. And then asked, “Is that your first name or your last name?”
“Last.” His brow was still furrowed. She didn’t much care. “You know my first name. It’s Nolan.”
So he’d only half lied on that one. She nodded, wishing that she’d never come out to talk to him a second time. Hoping to God that Carmela didn’t betray her again and bring Stella back before she texted the okay.
Carmela... Her boss, the architect Keaton Fortune Whitfield... “Is your family into architecture?” It couldn’t be. Stella was related to Carmela’s boss?
“My family owns a financial investment firm in New Orleans. I work there.”
She watched his mouth move. Wasn’t sure she was taking in what he was saying.
“So you aren’t related to Keaton Fortune Whitfield, the architect?” She suddenly wanted him to be the architect’s cousin or something. Carmela liked and respected her boss.
Then she remembered... Keaton was an illegitimate son of a billionaire. It had been all over the news.
“No. We aren’t part of the famous Fortune family, but we’re probably as rich. My real life consists of everything you disdain,” he continued. “While I own my own condo I still have my own suite of rooms in the family mansion. I love my luxury car, my hand-tailored suits and my ability to jump on a private plane and head to the Mediterranean for a long weekend. I love my family more than life and value my place among them as much. I take my responsibility to them seriously. As the youngest son, I am constantly having to prove myself. To earn respect. I work horridly long hours in the family business. I am very good at what I do, probably the best at it, but my life, my family, they consume me. And sometimes bore me.”
As she listened to him, Lizzie’s words from the year before came back to her, filling her with a completely new kind of tension.
You’re exactly what I want to be...pursuing a career you love with passion, rather than being driven by wealth. I know not many would agree with me, but I feel sorry for insanely rich people. They’re in a prison from which they’ll never escape, being controlled by money. It exacts everything from you, but will leave you in an instant if you make a wrong move.
They were followed by a replay of his words of a moment ago.
My real life consists of everything you disdain.
There was no hope that he didn’t remember her views on the wealthy.
Or that he shared them, either.
Sadness swamped her. Embarrassment. She’d been hanging out with a frickin’ millionaire?
And anger was mixed in there, too. How dare he trick her like that! She went with the anger. It was easier.
“So...what...you were slumming for a couple of weeks, had your fun, and then when you realized that you’d given your number to a plebeian, you had it disconnected?” She’d brought him to her mundane little apartment with carpenter-grade doorknobs and linoleum on the floor.
The look of guilt that slid across his face was unmistakable, even as he said, “It wasn’t like that, Lizzie. Not exactly. I never, ever for a second thought that I was slumming, or that you were any less than remarkable. That time with you, it’s right up there with the best experiences of my life.”
The one thing he didn’t deny was having his number disconnected.
He’d given it to her in the heat of the moment.
And when he’d returned home, he’d regretted having done so. Her heart gave its last little flop for him and went back in its box.
“Nolan Forte is a part of me,” he said now. “I need him just like I need the other aspects of my life. He’s what keeps me from going insane.”
He couldn’t be asking her to be around in the life of a guy who only existed on occasional weekends and a couple of weeks over Christmas, could he?
And was her heart actually feeling a resurgent flutter over that?
“Your family doesn’t get together for Christmas?” she asked. And then reddened when she realized he could be Jewish, or some other faith that didn’t celebrate even a secular form of the holiday.
“Oh, yeah, they do. It’s total pandemonium.”
“How do you get away with not being there?”
“Last year was the first time I even tried. The executive branch at the bank has vacation then, and I’ve always taken off for part of the time, and the fam lets me go my way without question, but I’m also always there for Christmas Day. Until last year. After I met you.”
Oh.
“It didn’t go over well,” he told her.
After I met you. Meeting her had made him decide to diss his family?
“Even though you were playing in the band for the two-week gig, you still planned to go home for the day last year, and changed your mind when you found out I was going to be here all alone.” As truth dawned, the flood of confusing emotions was back.
“I couldn’t lose what little time I had with you.”
What little time he’d had. He’d known from the first moment he’d approached her in the bar the year before that there could never be anything between them except a secret moment in his life.
That might have been okay, if she’d known that, too.
He’d skipped his family Christmas to be with her. Which meant that the moment had meant something to him.
For a blip, that mattered.
And then it didn’t.
Not when she recalled another word he’d uttered. It echoed in her mind. The bank? The “family business” was a bank? Good God, what had she inadvertently walked into? People with that much money had power. Lots of it.
He had power. She had Stella. Fear gripped her. Harder this time. She couldn’t trust him. Nolan and his family, their wealth...could they take Stella from her? At least part-time? Break up her family? The Mahoneys had seemed to expect to get whatever they’d wanted, even when it came to disrupting Liz’s family time. They hadn’t seemed to have any sensitivity to her needs at all.
And they’d gotten exactly what they’d wanted, including her parents. Any time they’d asked.
Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Stella, too.
“I appreciate you telling me the truth,” she said, knowing that if she didn’t end this soon, Carmela might get concerned and come back. Knowing, too, that she might not be thinking rationally. She needed time. And to be alone so she could think, when he wasn’t distracting her. “I mean that. So...we have our closure. And now, I really do have things to do. I wish you the best, Nolan. I really do. And...thank you for...a two-week memory.” She opened the door just enough to slip inside, locking it behind her.
She waited another fifteen minutes, long after she’d peeked out her bedroom window and seen Nolan Fortune walking away, to text her roommate to bring her baby home.
Chapter Five (#u27d5fe68-8439-5e18-ba1f-20725c2af0c4)
Thirteen days. Minus Christmas, so twelve days. Twelve days. That was all he had to get through. He had the new arrangements to work on—scores written by Glenn specifically for the Austin gig. Sleep to catch up on.
Some reading to do.
He’d passed a couple of gyms between his apartment and Lizzie’s place. He could get some workouts in. Hell, he could walk down to Rainey Street, check things out. He was a little old for party streets, and was working nights when things would really get going, but there’d be good eats among the historical homes turned bars.
What he couldn’t seem to do that Saturday afternoon was get visions of Lizzie out of his mind. Or that...sense of her out of deeper parts of him. That sense...it was like she had some kind of power over him.
He couldn’t have that.
Couldn’t allow it. Or let himself get pulled under by it.
He’d just never have imagined how difficult it was to walk away from her.
Wealth came with privilege. And it came with detriment, too.
Which was why he had his two weeks away every year. And why he’d been so vulnerable to having the companionship of a woman who had no idea that he was rich.
Leaving the bar after an afternoon practice session on Saturday, he forced himself back to the hotel, rather than taking the walk back toward Lizzie’s that his body was ordering him to take.
Just to see...
He’d been honest with her, confessing his lies, but telling her how much he’d cared, too.
He got that she didn’t trust him. But if his leaving her with no way to contact him had bothered her that much, it meant she cared, too, right?
After his lies, he could see her being hesitant, perhaps wondering if he’d lied about other things with her, too. He could see her pulling back, but her sending him away...it wasn’t sitting right. In the first place, if he didn’t matter, if she was truly over “them,” what would it hurt to chat? She’d been in such a hurry to get rid of him.
But it wasn’t even her opposition to hanging out with him that was haunting him. What kept coming back to him, over and over throughout the day, was that odd look of fear that flashed in her eyes a time or two as they’d talked.
In all of his years, all of his relationships, Molly included, the one thing he’d never done was scare a woman. What on earth did she think she had to fear with him?
Carmela had said he’d messed her up. Lizzie had clearly been put out by him disconnecting the phone number he’d left her.
She’d had to have called it to know that.
Was it possible that she’d felt the same strong bond between them that his crazy self was telling him he’d felt? Did such a thing even exist outside the movies?
Had he broken her heart? Was that what she feared? Being hurt again?
Why had Carmela come to see him? What had she expected him to find?
Back at the hotel, his mind still reeled with questions. Almost to the point of obsession. He had to get her out of his system.
He had to know, to understand, what had really gone on between them, or not.
“So?” Carmela’s question shot at Lizzie from the direction of the couch as she came from the bedroom she shared with Stella, having left the baby sleeping in her Pack ’n Play for the fifteen to forty-five minutes she’d stay there.
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