Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

“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.