Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)

She nodded, but didn’t look as horrified as she should have. “So that’s where I fell into your life...the no-responsibility part.”

Yep. He nodded, knowing he should be relieved that she fully got it now. But he felt compelled to add, “You were special to me, Lizzie. Our time was...the best vacation I’ve ever had. I don’t want you to ever think that you were just one of a bunch, or that I’ve ever had any relationship like the one we shared last year.”

“But you knew all along that there was no chance it would be more than that.”

He nodded again.

“So why give me a phone number?”

“I was caught up in the moment...not thinking clearly.”

“So wait a minute. The number you left...it was a real one?”

He couldn’t let the hope on her face take root. “I have a cell that I use only for band contact. That’s the number I gave you. And the number I changed.”

“Nolan Forte’s number.”

“Right.”

“You never intended me to know, even for a second last year, even when you gave me that number, that you were Nolan Fortune. If I’d seen you again, it would have been as Nolan Forte.”

He let his shameful truth lay there between them.

* * *

Lizzie’s stomach was in knots. Her heart felt as if it was on a roller-coaster ride, and she couldn’t seem to catch up with herself. Sitting there with Nolan, it was like a force inside of her was trying to grasp for something that was just out of reach.

He’d intended to deceive her all along.

But the man she’d fallen for seemed to exist. Sort of.

He’d come back when Carmela compelled him to do so. Because he’d thought Lizzie needed him. Nolan Forte had been a man of integrity.

He’d also changed his phone number, leaving her no way to contact him. Nolan Fortune put his wealthy family, his position in that family, first.

From that she quickly guessed two things. If Nolan Forte found out about Stella, he would insist on taking responsibility. And Nolan Fortune could very well sue her for custody.

He had a fortune. She did not.

How could she possibly hope to fight high-priced lawyers and a family who could so obviously provide her daughter with so much more than she could? At least by worldly standards.

They couldn’t take her baby away from her. There were no grounds. She was a good mother.

But they could probably force her to keep Stella close to them, to let them have her half the time. And what kid would rather be in a two-bedroom apartment with the bare minimum rather than in a princess room in a palace?

They could use what they had to turn her head away from what mattered most in life. Just as Nolan’s head had been turned. If what he’d told her was true, he’d been as much in love with her as she’d been with him the year before. But the family money had won out.

Visions of home in Chicago, of being alone with sitters while her parents flitted about with the Mahoneys, sprang to mind. The crushing sense of loneliness filled her.

You’re exactly what I want to be...pursuing a career you love with passion, rather than being driven by wealth. I know not many would agree with me, but I feel sorry for insanely rich people. They’re in a prison from which they’ll never escape, being controlled by money. It exacts everything from you, but will leave you in an instant if you make a wrong move.

Her words from the year before came back to her. They’d described Nolan Forte. Little did she know they also described Nolan Fortune. He was in that prison.

Could she bear to allow that to happen to her sweet Stella?

One thing she knew for certain: she couldn’t trust Nolan Fortune to do what was best for either her or Stella. He’d do what was best for the Fortunes.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said, suddenly in a prison of her own in that coffeehouse, trapped in a chair across from the father of her baby, the probable love of her life and a man she neither knew well nor respected all that much. She was trying to decide her daughter’s entire future in a split second.