Fortune's Christmas Baby (Fortunes of Texas)
No. Really. He didn’t.
“I meant what I said, Nolan. You don’t have to do anything here.”
“I think I do.”
Okay, it was going bad fast. She had to stop it somehow.
“What is it you think you have to do?” She had to know what she was defending against before she’d know how to do it.
“I have no idea.”
Good. Somehow she had to keep it that way. Still, her wayward heart cried for him. Reached out to him. She hadn’t meant for him to be hurt.
She hadn’t meant to be pregnant in the first place. They’d used
condoms. Every time.
“She doesn’t need you to do anything, Nolan,” she said, trying to soften her words enough to make them sound as kind as she intended. They were just fine without him.
So why did she feel a sudden stab of guilt as she felt her daughter sigh against her again, so trustingly.
What if Stella wanted Nolan to do something? What if she needed more than Lizzie could give her as a single schoolteacher mom?
What if his family had a wealth of love, in addition to an overflowing bank of money, to offer her?
“Can I touch her?” He stood and approached her chair, so Lizzie stood, too.
“What do you mean?”
He reached out a hand. “I just want to...touch her.” His hand stopped inches from the baby’s back. “Can I?”
He was her father! “Of course,” she said, because there was no other option.
His hand came closer, and then stopped again. Nolan looked at Lizzie. “She’s so small. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her heart taking over as she lifted her own hand to his and placed it gently on Stella’s tiny back. “She likes to have her back rubbed,” she said softly, moving his fingers in a slow circular motion. “Gently, like that,” she said, then dropped her hand.
His movement stopped for a second and then started again. Rubbing gently in the same exact circle Lizzie had started him with. Over and over. Just rubbing.
Maybe he wasn’t ever going to stop.
The thought was ludicrous, but the man seemed so engrossed. So completely lost to his endeavor.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t mean them to. Didn’t want them to. And yet, there they were, blurring her vision, and she knew, life had just changed.
Irrevocably.
Again.
Chapter Nine
He’d made Lizzie cry. And made the baby cry, too, apparently, as she’d started to squirm and wail right when he was rubbing her back. Having taken that as his clue to excuse himself, he’d hightailed it out of the apartment.
Lizzie had said Stella needed to eat.
He needed time to think.
He didn’t get more than a couple of blocks away from the apartment before he was bombarded by his own questions. When was she born? How old was she? Oh, right. Lizzie had said she was three months. Quickly counting the months since their last night together, he came up with that same answer. Three months, give or take a week or two.