Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

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.

There’d been no time to talk earlier that day. The second Carmela had pulled up, Lizzie had taken the keys from Carmela and left. She’d run her own errands, going across town to get toothpaste and other incidentals so that she had no chance of running into Nolan Fortune. She’d thought about just keeping right on driving, into the next town, the next state.

“So, what?” she asked now, not even trying to hide her defensiveness. Carmela had stabbed her in the back, going behind her back as she had. She wanted to stay mad about that.

Anger was easier than the other debilitating emotions that had been threatening to suffocate her on and off all day. Not the least of which was a desire to see Nolan again. To find out what parts of him were real. To find out if he’d really cared.

“What did Nolan say when you told him about Stella?”

“I didn’t tell him.” And now came the really hard part. “You had no right to send him here, Carm. Or really to go see him at all. Not to talk about me. Stella is my daughter. The choices made on her behalf are mine to make. Period.”

Every nerve in her body was shaking. She’d never talked to Carmela like that in her life and didn’t want to be doing so now. In fact, she wouldn’t have been if she didn’t feel like a rat trapped in a corner, fighting for the right to breathe.

Expecting to see shock, and possibly hurt, on her best friend’s face, telling herself she was ready for the fight, Lizzie was shocked when Carmela looked down at the architectural tome of a book she’d been reading, and said, “I know.”

The beautiful amber-haired woman turned those gray eyes back on Lizzie with contrition, not the authoritative stare Lizzie had been expecting. “That’s why I took her with me this morning,” she said. “That and because just being with her makes me feel good. But...I worried all last night, and knew that I couldn’t just let you open the door to him with Stella right there.”

Lizzie sat down in the corner of the couch, turning toward her friend. “You could have told me this morning that you’d invited him over and let me decide whether or not to be here.”

Carmela nodded, her brow furrowed. “I know. I thought about that, too. I just really thought, once you saw him, or he saw you, things would work out. I really thought that, deep down, you wanted to see him. Until you took Stella and left like that. I’ve been sick ever since. Please forgive me, Liz? It’s just... I care so much...for both you and the baby. I see how much you’re struggling—to pay bills, to find energy some days—and...it’s not right. The guy might be a starving artist, but he should at least be helping you pay some of her expenses. How are you ever going to get ahead, or find happiness, if you’re always running to catch up?”

Anger didn’t have a chance with the love pouring out of Carmela. Truth was, it probably hadn’t had a chance, anyway. She’d known that Carmela had only done what she did out of caring so much for her and Stella.

“I am happy, Carm,” she said, speaking the truth that came from the very depths of her. “Stella gives me a joy I didn’t even suspect existed. Yeah, I get tired, but I smile a lot, too.”

“I know.” Carmela smiled, and Lizzie grinned, as well, glad to have her friend back. Aunt Betty loved her. Lizzie and Stella would always have a home in Chicago in her old room in her aunt’s apartment if she wanted to move back. But her aunt had a full life with someone else. Had a right to that life. Especially after being saddled with Lizzie without warning when her parents had been killed.

Ever since Lizzie had left for college, and met her freshman roommate, Carmela, she’d leaned on her aunt less. And Aunt Betty’s life choices had included Lizzie less and less.

“Tell me what happened with him,” Carmela said when Lizzie continued to just sit there.

“He told me the truth,” she said, scared to death to say more. To make it more real. It was as if, once someone else knew, there’d be no going back.

What panicked her most was the fear that there was already no going back. Even if Nolan stayed away for the next thirteen days, or decided to ditch his holiday runaway hobby and hightail it home immediately, for fear that Carmela would spend the next two weeks hounding him, she could no longer be the woman she’d been before he’d knocked on her door.

Stella’s father was tangible now.

It didn’t change their day-to-day lives. She was praying that it didn’t change anything for them. But she couldn’t shake the fear.

“I know his real name. Where he’s from,” she said slowly as Carmela sat, completely silent for once. And then it occurred to her. “Did you already know? Did he tell you?”

“No.” Carmela’s head shake was definitive. “We didn’t chat,” she said now, her tone making clear that if there were sides to be drawn, Carmela and Nolan weren’t on the same one. “I simply told him he needed to

come see you and gave him a window of time in which you’d be home this morning.” That last was said with a pleading look.

“He’s ungodly rich, Carm. Like in, probably famous among moneyed people. I’ve never heard of him, but his family owns a frickin’ investment bank!”

“What bank?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I didn’t ask. I haven’t Googled him yet.” She clamored around, looking for a way out. She didn’t want to know which bank. Didn’t want any of it to become more horrifyingly real.

Money meant power.