Fortune's Christmas Baby

What he couldn’t seem to do that Saturday afternoon was get visions of Lizzie out of his mind. Or that...sense of her out of deeper parts of him. That sense...it was like she had some kind of power over him.

He couldn’t have that.

Couldn’t allow it. Or let himself get pulled under by it.

He’d just never have imagined how difficult it was to walk away from her.

Wealth came with privilege. And it came with detriment, too.

Which was why he had his two weeks away every year. And why he’d been so vulnerable to having the companionship of a woman who had no idea that he was rich.

Leaving the bar after an afternoon practice session on Saturday, he forced himself back to the hotel, rather than taking the walk back toward Lizzie’s that his body was ordering him to take.

Just to see...

He’d been honest with her, confessing his lies, but telling her how much he’d cared, too.

He got that she didn’t trust him. But if his leaving her with no way to contact him had bothered her that much, it meant she cared, too, right?

After his lies, he could see her being hesitant, perhaps wondering if he’d lied about other things with her, too. He could see her pulling back, but her sending him away...it wasn’t sitting right. In the first place, if he didn’t matter, if she was truly over “them,” what would it hurt to chat? She’d been in such a hurry to get rid of him.

But it wasn’t even her opposition to hanging out with him that was haunting him. What kept coming back to him, over and over throughout the day, was that odd look of fear that flashed in her eyes a time or two as they’d talked.

In all of his years, all of his relationships, Molly included, the one thing he’d never done was scare a woman. What on earth did she think she had to fear with him?

Carmela had said he’d messed her up. Lizzie had clearly been put out by him disconnecting the phone number he’d left her.

She’d had to have called it to know that.

Was it possible that she’d felt the same strong bond between them that his crazy self was telling him he’d felt? Did such a thing even exist outside the movies?

Had he broken her heart? Was that what she feared? Being hurt again?

Why had Carmela come to see him? What had she expected him to find?

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.