Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

“Why wouldn’t she be?” she asked, rocking back and forth on her feet with a wide-awake baby in her arms. Stella was going to need to eat again soon, which meant she was going back to her bedroom. She wanted Nolan fully occupied with enough to keep him busy for the half hour it could take if their daughter chose to lollygag.

“I don’t know...it might fall over,” he said, coming out with the largest of the green-lidded bins. The one with the tree.

“I’m not planning to lay her under it,” she told his way too cute butt as he bent over to access the storage area again.

Pushing a smaller bin out and placing another one on top of it, he paused to glance over at Lizzie and the baby.

“Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

“She’s little and fragile, Nolan, but at the same time, she’s a lot more durable than you’d think,” she told him, breaking into a smile that felt free. Natural.

Better than she’d been in just about...a year.

Just because she’d bought herself a week before she really had to worry. And because she’d always felt magic in the air when the Christmas bins came out. Like miracles were possible.

She really wanted to believe that it had nothing to do with Nolan being back.

The baby turned her head, opening her mouth over Lizzie’s T-shirted breast. Of course Nolan would look at them right then. And stand there and stare.

“Um, I’ll just go back and feed her,” she said, figuring it would be best to get it started before Stella cried. “If you want, you can start on the tree. It goes under the window.” There was only one of them in the living area. A big, double window looking out at a lovely landscaped courtyard. Her bedroom, down the hall and on the other side of the apartment, looked at the parking lot.

A good dose of reality for her, she figured as she turned her back abruptly and started down the hall.

Should she close her door? She and Carmela never closed doors unless one or the other of them had a guy in the apartment. Which was pretty much never, other than Nolan the previous year, and Carmela had been gone for a lot of that time.

She pushed it mostly closed. If he didn’t glance down the hall, he’d never know she’d deliberately shut him out. Nolan might be Stella’s father, but that didn’t mean Lizzie had to invite him into their intimacies. Neither did she trust him to stay in the living room if she didn’t make it clear he wasn’t wanted.

Didn’t trust herself to set boundaries if he strayed...

Taking her breast out, helping her daughter latch on, she couldn’t help a surge of completely confusing and unwanted emotion. Feeding Stella was private and beautiful. Precious to the two of them. Having the baby’s father in the house should make no difference to that.

But it did.

Ten minutes on one side and Stella was ready for the other breast. By that time Lizzie was ready to hide herself in the bathroom with the door locked.

Nolan knew what she was doing. Was probably picturing her and Stella right now. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her breasts before, she tried telling herself, to no avail.

Five minutes into the second half of her lunch Stella put her hand on the side of Lizzie’s jaw. Of course Lizzie knew the action was purely accidental. The baby had no idea. And yet, the touch felt comforting. Like her daughter was reassuring her that all was well.

That she was enough.

“Liz?” Nolan’s voice sounded like a ghost, whispering from the past. Except he was right outside her door. Her gaze shot in that direction, but the door was still resting against the jamb. He probably had a Christmas question.

“Yeah?”

“May I come in?”

“No!”

He didn’t say anything else. She assumed he walked away. Maybe even out of the apartment.

She’d done the right thing, she assured herself as she wiped away tears.

Chapter Eleven

Nolan was just plugging in the lights he’d strung on the tree when Lizzie, carrying a wide-awake Stella, came back out to the living room. Almost as though he’d planned it, the colorful lights popped on just as they entered and Stella’s gaze went immediately to the tree. The baby stared at it, while Nolan stared at them, the lights glistening in Stella’s eyes, and Lizzie’s, too.

It was a sight he’d never forget. A picture in a mental frame, the beautiful, natural-looking dark-haired woman holding the little pink bundle with big brown eyes. They were his responsibility forevermore. Whether Lizzie kicked him out of their lives, remarried, moved to Antarctica, it didn’t matter. He owed her.