Fortune's Christmas Baby

She didn’t need Nolan’s mother to love her. Or anyone associated with him, either. She had Aunt Betty. And Carmela.

And the miracle of Stella.

If anyone had told her how her life would change the instant she held her baby in her arms, she’d never have believed them.

The way that baby filled her heart...made her feel strong and capable...and willing to give up her life at the same time, if it would save Stella’s... It was transforming.

“You might be able to get support out of him,” Carmela said.

“I don’t want his money.” She didn’t want anything more from Nolan Forte. He’d given her enough. “And I don’t want him anywhere near Stella. He’s a liar. A fake. If he’d pull a stunt like he did on me, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, giving me an unusable phone number, who knows what he’d do if she was bugging him? Children believe everything they hear. And they expect their parents to be truthful to them. They don’t need a parent they can’t trust, one who will be constantly disappointing them. Besides, who knows, the guy might be a total creep. Could be the universe was watching out for me, keeping me safe, when it worked out like it did.”

She’d had a lot of months to get herself right with the situation.

“Stella’s going to need to know who he is someday. She’s going to have a mind of her own and she’ll need to know who fathered her.”

“I’ll tell her what I know. It’ll be enough.”

“You don’t know that.”

No. She didn’t. The pang of guilt that hit her was unwelcome. As unwanted in her life as she was in Nolan Forte’s.

He was in town and hadn’t bothered to look her up.

“We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said now, standing to clear her plate from the table.

It had been a great night. Two long sets played to a completely full club. Setting his sax down on the stand where he’d leave it long enough to have a beer before packing up for the night, Nolan jumped down from the two-foot-high stage. Glenn would leave his drums set up. The mics would stay. Daly and Branham were already downing a couple of shots of whiskey and talking up the women who’d been flirting with them all night.

An older version of the two women at the bar with his bandmates stood to the side of the stage, talking to Glenn. The way she was smiling, leaning into him, touching his arm, she was doing more than asking about the band’s schedule.

A woman who’d caught Nolan’s eye a couple of times that night—only because he’d been looking over the crowd and she’d been staring at him each time—was lingering not far from the stage. After a couple of years on the road, he knew the probability existed that she was waiting for a chance to talk to him, maybe hang out for a while. And while Nolan Forte wasn’t averse to little weekend flirtations now and then, just plain Nolan needed escape more.

And maybe a trip back to the hotel. He’d had a couple more beers than he should have had last night. Hitting the sack sounded not half-bad.

Now that he’d taken his walk down memory lane and gotten his closure, revisited his decisions and determined they’d been the right ones, concluding he was fully over Lizzie, he’d be out like a log. He’d probably have the best night’s sleep he’d had in...well...a year, maybe.

“Hey.”

The voice called out to him from behind just before he reached a corner of the bar. Swinging around, he felt his throat catch just when he’d begun to breathe easily for the first time all night. The sets were done and there’d been no Lizzie sighting.

He hadn’t expected her to be there. But there’d been a small part of him that had insisted on hanging on to a minute bit of lingering doubt...

“Carmela, Lizzie’s roommate,” the woman said by way of introduction. “Remember me?”

“I didn’t see you out there.” He said the first thing that came to mind. And he forgave himself for not playing it cooler than that, considering the shock he was in seeing Lizzie’s friend—someone who probably knew how she was.

“I timed my arrival for the ending of the last set. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t see me and bolt.” The last was said with obvious derision.

He wasn’t really getting her attitude. “I don’t bolt.”

“No, you just disappear.”

“Look, I don’t know what Lizzie told you, but we clearly said no strings attached. Her idea. She had very definite plans for her life and a struggling musician from out of town didn’t fit them. We knew going in that it was only for two weeks. I was here for a gig, left when it was over. End of story.” No one, not even Lizzie, knew of his inane and very dangerous struggle with his own wayward inner yearnings ever since.

“Not that I didn’t enjoy my time with her,” he was pushed to add. “I did. Very much. She’s special.”

“You gave her a bogus number.”

The woman wouldn’t quit.

“No, I didn’t,” he said, and then added, “I had to change carriers, and the number didn’t convert.”

True, to a point. He’d changed carriers for Nolan Forte’s private phone, which had been the number he’d given her because he couldn’t trust himself not to engage if she called.

“You never called her.”

“Again, no expectation that I’d do so. We exchanged numbers, but made no promises either way. Her idea as much as mine.”

He turned back to pick up his horn and get on out of there. He’d pick up some comfort food on the way, take it back to his room.

Or he’d break his cardinal rule while on the road with the band and order a delivery that Nolan Fortune could easily afford. A thousand times over.

“You need to go see her.”

Carmela’s words at his back were a direct hit. She’d changed her tactics. Or he’d misheard the pleading in her tone now. He turned and looked at her.

“She’s still in Austin?” He’d promised himself that wouldn’t be the case, that she’d be graduated from college there and long gone. He only had two weeks to unwind, to recuperate from a long, hard, successful year of business. He needed the break. Deserved the break.

What he didn’t need was drama from someone he hardly knew. His sisters provided plenty of that back in his real life.

Carmela stood there staring at him like she had a whole lot more to say. He commanded himself not to ask about Lizzie, but didn’t obey.

“Didn’t she graduate?” He’d have bet his entire fortune that she had.

“Yeah.”

He shook his head, confused. “She got a job here in Austin, then? I was under the impression she planned to settle outside of Texas.”

“She got a job, yeah,” Carmela said, staring at him like he was supposed to be getting something more from what she was saying. He wasn’t getting it.

“You two still roommates?” he asked to give himself time to figure out this uncomfortable encounter.

Surely Carmela didn’t think he owed her something because he’d had a fling with her roommate.

“Yeah, we’re still roommates,” the fiery-haired woman said. “I don’t graduate until spring.”

So...wait a minute... “You’re still in the same apartment?”

He’d been staring up at Lizzie’s actual bedroom window that afternoon? He’d been a few feet away from her door? Walking around where he could have been discovered at any moment?