Fortune's Christmas Baby

Chapter Two

“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

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.