Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

“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.