Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

Holy hell. He was sliding right back to the past, agreeing to spend Sunday afternoon sipping coffee with Lizzie. The hours that had to pass before then taunted him with anticipation versus responsibility. He walked, and then ran some, expending energy that continued to produce inside him at alarming rates.

Lizzie and him! Drinking coffee.

It couldn’t be the past. And there was no future.

That thought firmly in mind, Nolan found a high-end clothing store open on Sunday, and while the gray suit, white shirt and blue silk tie he ended up with wasn’t tailor-made to fit him, it was going to make him stand out among the college students, professors and general coffee-shop-goers by campus.

His jeans would have been more to his liking.

But he was a Fortune. He was going to feel like one. To act like one. To look like one.

He was not going to forget, even for a second, that Nolan Forte existed only in his deepest, unreliable yearnings. The man owned jeans, but he wasn’t real.

He had to give Lizzie real.

Staring at the shiny toes of his brand-new black leather dress shoes, he waited for her outside the shop, his thumb rapping a beat against his thigh.

He had nothing to be nervous about.

She’d only wanted to talk.

He owed her that.

And then he’d walk away. It was the only choice he could live with.

In jeans and a purple loose-fitting T-shirt, Lizzie looked him right in the eye as she walked up to him. Her dark hair, down and straight, as usual, caught the sun’s reflection and glinted like gold. Or the little white lights on a Christmas tree.

Giving himself a mental shake, he calmly held open the door for Lizzie to pass through before him. She gave no outward reaction to his changed appearance, and he had no reason to feel disappointed.

He was there to listen, not to get her attention.

Forte wanted to know what Lizzie thought of Fortune’s looks. Just like a fantasy, to think about things that didn’t matter.

She ordered tea, not the caramel latte she’d preferred the year before, and he allowed himself a small black coffee—laced with nothing—staying away from the espresso he’d have preferred. No surges of adrenaline or energy necessary at the moment. When he turned from paying at the counter, to notice the high-top table in the corner they’d shared several times the previous year, he’d expected her to head in that direction.

She chose instead an upholstered armchair, across from another, with a square brown table in the center. Applauding her decision to put more distance between them than other tables would have done, he took the seat she’d left him, and sipped his coffee.

He tried not to notice that everything about her, from the backside he’d followed across the room, to the way she held her shoulders, matched perfectly the image he carried daily in his memory. He’d have preferred the real thing not to live up to fantasy.

What did a guy have to do to catch a break?

“So what’s up?” He’d opened this door by giving her his number. And it felt wrong, too. Like he was breaking some kind of “good man” rule.

He had to be there, wanted to be there, and had nothing to offer that she’d want or need.

Her shrug didn’t bode well for his quick finale. “I just...wanted to talk,” she said slowly, as if just now figuring out a purpose for the meeting. “It plays with your head, you know, to think you had...something...and then find out that it wasn’t real. I mean, I knew it wasn’t permanent or anything. We made no commitments, but I really trusted you. I thought we were honestly special. Different from a usual hookup. When I first figured out that you’d been lying to me all along—you know, when your number was disconnected and there was no Nolan Forte on the internet, and my email sent to the band address got no response—I was hurt. And shocked. But I came to terms with it, you know?”

She’d been running her finger around the rim of her cup, but glanced up at him as she asked the question.

Nolan swallowed.

He forced himself to say nothing, and she glanced down again. “Then you showed up yesterday, and told me the truth, and that just confused everything. Like...who are you?” Her gaze met his again. “You’re making me not trust my own mind, my judgment, my heart, and that’s not cool.”

Oh, God. He should have stayed in New Orleans. He wasn’t man enough to do this. To leave her in this state.

He saw now why Carmela had come to him. He’d taken a sweet, innocent woman and, in his own selfish need to preserve himself, had victimized her.

Or...he was falling prey to feelings that prompted him to think irrationally. Was he reading more into what she was saying, into what he’d done, as a justification to himself to see her again? To spend whatever time he could with her?