He tried to imagine what it might be they were so engrossed in. A picture of a guy. A boyfriend. Maybe she’d caught him with another girl. Maybe they were looking at clothes. On their way to go shopping. Buying for themselves rather than picking up gifts for others.
Maybe he had to quit watching everyone else live their lives and live his own. He had to get back over to Lizzie’s and tell her the truth about himself. He’d known, deep down, the second he’d seen her that he owed her that much.
Because of what they’d been to each other for the short holiday time.
He sat upright and noticed the clock up on the wall. He still had fifteen minutes, at the very least, before the hour was up that Carmela had assured him Lizzie would be home.
Alone. She’d said Lizzie would be home alone.
Which meant she hadn’t had a guy in there, right?
He had to complete the unfinished business between them.
That was the answer.
His subterfuge, his lack of honesty, the way he’d changed his number—none of that was like him. It wasn’t as decent as he needed to be.
That was the problem. Yeah, everything seemed to be coming clear now. Making total sense. It wasn’t Lizzie compelling him; it was his own need to like himself. To be the man he thought himself to be. To live up to his own standards.
He’d never be fully free of her until he came clean. I was...hurt...when you left and I couldn’t get ahold of you...
He felt again the stab her words had brought. Though he’d never meant to, he’d hurt her.
But that was in the past, he told himself.
But the truth wasn’t. The truth was here and now. His to give.
He had to give her that.
Standing, feeling taller than he had in the past year, Nolan tossed his half-full cup into the trash and headed out the door.
* * *
She’d known he’d be back.
After all, she and Nolan had unfinished business. Like the baby he knew nothing about.
Leaving her unused scouring pad in the bathroom when she heard the bell, she went to the door, texting her roommate on the way.
He’s here. Don’t come back until I text the okay.
The rest, the part about her being unhappy with her friend’s manipulation, however well-meaning, would be handled in person.
As before, she met him on the stoop outside her front door. She had some idea that they could walk down the short hill to the parking lot below. Anywhere but inside her apartment.
Her phone buzzed a text and she took a quick look.
Okay and good luck. Love you.
She wasn’t telling him about Stella. Her mind was made up and Carmela’s pressure couldn’t change that. A decision like whether or not to tell the father of her baby that he had a child had to come from her.
“Look, I—I’m not planning to stalk you or anything,” Nolan said, looking so...Nolan as he stood there on the small cement landing that served as their excuse for a porch. For a second there she could feel him again. Feel the warmth. The sense that, with him, she was complete.
Which was ludicrous. She’d known it back then, and she knew it now. They hardly knew each other. It had been the holidays and her being alone that had played with her head. Made her vulnerable to fall hard for the man who’d offered her a romantic fling in place of spending Christmas alone.
Carmela had offered to take her home to her family with her, but Lizzie hadn’t wanted to go. Sometimes being a third wheel was worse than being alone.
Then she’d met Nolan. And had a two-week fairy tale. One she was remembering with too much intensity for her current well-being.
Her eyes lit on his mouth and her thoughts betrayed her as she felt an overwhelming desire to touch those lips with her own. But she was rational enough to know that kissing him would be the worst mistake she could make.
But to taste him one last time...
To be held in his arms...
No.
“I just... I needed to... Can we talk for a second?” he said when she got lost in her thoughts rather than responding. His hesitancy, so unlike the Nolan she’d known, had her curious.
“I kind of thought you’d be back,” she told him. Maybe she shouldn’t have. She didn’t know. The then and now crashing into each other like they were was confusing her. “Neither one of us really got closure. So let’s go ahead and get it and be done.”
If only she could be certain her inner self would agree as readily as she wanted Nolan to do.
Watching her, he squinted, as though taking her mettle. When he nodded, she started to breathe a little easier.
“Can we go inside?”
“No!” She took a quick breath and tempered her response. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she added more gently. “To be honest, I don’t want you in my personal space. Whatever we have to say can be said right out here.”
She glanced toward the parking lot, thinking maybe there’d be a car she didn’t recognize out there, but didn’t see one. The band traveled in a van. Last year he’d walked everywhere. Or she drove them.
“I’m sorry.” He looked her in the eye when he offered the apology.
She believed he meant it. “Accepted,” she said. And then, with an eye to getting rid of him for good this time, before she could be tempted to prolong the inevitable, she said, “Seriously, Nolan. I was upset when I tried to call you and the number was disconnected, but that was months ago. I’m really not harboring any hard feelings toward you, in spite of whatever Carmela might have insinuated.”
“I lied to you.”
She hadn’t expected the outright admission but she said, “Okay.”
“My real name isn’t Nolan Forte.”
Wow. The man was really unloading himself. Carmela must have done some number on him. When she was done chewing her roommate out for butting in someplace that wasn’t her place to butt, she’d tell her how successful she’d been. Where Nolan was concerned only.
“But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
If he was waiting for her to ask who he really was, he was going to be disappointed. She didn’t want to care about that.
“Look, Nolan, or whoever you are, I’ve told you, it’s fine. You’re making much more of a big deal of this than necessary. I appreciate you stopping by. I don’t feel as much like an inconsequential fling, and it’s really fine. I moved on months ago.”
He nodded, pivoted like he was about to leave and then turned back.
She would have liked to have been disappointed that it wasn’t over yet. So why did she have that one-second shot of relief?
Because maybe she did need to know the truth?
To tell her daughter someday.
Or just to find that last bit of peace within herself. Who was this man who’d managed to get past her defenses, the carefully constructed walls and rules that kept her safe out in the big bad world all alone? How had he done so? And how could she be certain that it never happened again, with anyone else?
“The real me isn’t someone you would like.”
“I’m not all that fond of the you I know.” Because he’d been a lie. But what was wrong with her? She didn’t spit mean words at people, no matter how deserving. It just wasn’t her way.
He acknowledged the hit with a bow of his head. It didn’t make her feel good.
“Look, Nolan. It’s not like you owed me anything. I just thought it was rude that you gave me a bogus number. The decent thing would have been to just let it end. Not drag it out with the illusion of possibility.” She turned to go back in. This was done.
“When I left here I was open to the possibility.”
Turning back, she stared at him. Her heart started to pound, constricting her breathing.
But it didn’t matter. “Our entire ti
me together was a lie, based on you being someone you weren’t.”
She’d known. But until he’d acknowledged that truth, there’d been hope that she was wrong. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she’d held on to that hope all these months in some small private recess of her heart.
“I am Nolan Forte,” he said, still meeting her gaze head-on. “On as many weekends as I can manage and for two weeks over the Christmas holiday.”
Confused, she reached behind her for the doorknob, not sure she was going in, but sure that she needed something to hold on to.
“Forte is my stage name.”
She hadn’t been important enough to be privy to anything other than that. So what did that make her, a common groupie? She felt stupid. She’d thought they were so much more than that.
He went on. “My family doesn’t know.”
About her? Or...
“They don’t know you’re Nolan Forte?”
He shook his head. “My oldest brother might suspect, but no, no one knows.”
“You just disappear and they have no idea where you are?”
“Pretty much.”
She had no idea what to do with that. So she focused elsewhere. He’d said “oldest brother.” “How many brothers do you have?”
Her curiosity wasn’t healthy. Still, she waited for his answer. Wondering if he’d answer.
“Three.”
Wow. Four boys. For a second there, she was imagining a nice brick two-story somewhere with trampled grass and a basketball hoop hooked to the garage. Nolan was out there with his brothers, topping a couple of them, showing them how the game was played.
“I’m the youngest of the boys.”
The imaginary video in her mind skidded to a halt and gave an instant replay. A little kid stood there now, watching the big guys play, wanting to play with them, but they wouldn’t let him.
“I also have three sisters.”
The mental video player disappeared. She stared at him. She’d thought they were both virtually alone in the world. Who, with a huge family, would be spending Christmas alone on the road, playing saxophone in a bar?
And then something else horrifying occurred to her. Maybe it should have before. Maybe in the darkest alleys in her mind it had.
“Are you married?”
“What?” His mouth dropped open and he frowned. “Are you kidding? Of course not! I wouldn’t have...” He shook his head.
She felt like smiling. The sensation passed almost immediately.
He wasn’t like her—mostly alone. Distance started to grow between her and the man she’d fallen so hard for the year before.
The man whose baby she’d had.
“My real name is Fortune.” He said the words like they were a death sentence.
Feeling bereft at the loss she’d just suffered, finding out that they were not kindred spirits in the world of those with no family with whom to share the holidays, she shook her head. And then asked, “Is that your first name or your last name?”
“Last.” His brow was still furrowed. She didn’t much care. “You know my first name. It’s Nolan.”
So he’d only half lied on that one. She nodded, wishing that she’d never come out to talk to him a second time. Hoping to God that Carmela didn’t betray her again and bring Stella back before she texted the okay.
Carmela... Her boss, the architect Keaton Fortune Whitfield... “Is your family into architecture?” It couldn’t be. Stella was related to Carmela’s boss?
“My family owns a financial investment firm in New Orleans. I work there.”
She watched his mouth move. Wasn’t sure she was taking in what he was saying.
“So you aren’t related to Keaton Fortune Whitfield, the architect?” She suddenly wanted him to be the architect’s cousin or something. Carmela liked and respected her boss.
Then she remembered... Keaton was an illegitimate son of a billionaire. It had been all over the news.
“No. We aren’t part of the famous Fortune family, but we’re probably as rich. My real life consists of everything you disdain,” he continued. “While I own my own condo I still have my own suite of rooms in the family mansion. I love my luxury car, my hand-tailored suits and my ability to jump on a private plane and head to the Mediterranean for a long weekend. I love my family more than life and value my place among them as much. I take my responsibility to them seriously. As the youngest son, I am constantly having to prove myself. To earn respect. I work horridly long hours in the family business. I am very good at what I do, probably the best at it, but my life, my family, they consume me. And sometimes bore me.”
As she listened to him, Lizzie’s words from the year before came back to her, filling her with a completely new kind of tension.
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.
They were followed by a replay of his words of a moment ago.
My real life consists of everything you disdain.
There was no hope that he didn’t remember her views on the wealthy.
Or that he shared them, either.
Sadness swamped her. Embarrassment. She’d been hanging out with a frickin’ millionaire?
And anger was mixed in there, too. How dare he trick her like that! She went with the anger. It was easier.
“So...what...you were slumming for a couple of weeks, had your fun, and then when you realized that you’d given your number to a plebeian, you had it disconnected?” She’d brought him to her mundane little apartment with carpenter-grade doorknobs and linoleum on the floor.
The look of guilt that slid across his face was unmistakable, even as he said, “It wasn’t like that, Lizzie. Not exactly. I never, ever for a second thought that I was slumming, or that you were any less than remarkable. That time with you, it’s right up there with the best experiences of my life.”
The one thing he didn’t deny was having his number disconnected.
He’d given it to her in the heat of the moment.
And when he’d returned home, he’d regretted having done so. Her heart gave its last little flop for him and went back in its box.
“Nolan Forte is a part of me,” he said now. “I need him just like I need the other aspects of my life. He’s what keeps me from going insane.”
He couldn’t be asking her to be around in the life of a guy who only existed on occasional weekends and a couple of weeks over Christmas, could he?
And was her heart actually feeling a resurgent flutter over that?
“Your family doesn’t get together for Christmas?” she asked. And then reddened when she realized he could be Jewish, or some other faith that didn’t celebrate even a secular form of the holiday.
“Oh, yeah, they do. It’s total pandemonium.”
“How do you get away with not being there?”
“Last year was the first time I even tried. The executive branch at the bank has vacation then, and I’ve always taken off for part of the time, and the fam lets me go my way without question, but I’m also always there for Christmas Day. Until last year. After I met you.”
Oh.
“It didn’t go over well,” he told her.
After I met you. Meeting her had made him decide to diss his family?
“Even though you were playing in the band for the two-week gig, you still planned to go home for the day last year, and changed your mind when you found out I was going to be here all alone.” As truth dawned, the flood of confusing emotions was back.
“I couldn’t lose what little time I had with y
ou.”
What little time he’d had. He’d known from the first moment he’d approached her in the bar the year before that there could never be anything between them except a secret moment in his life.
That might have been okay, if she’d known that, too.
He’d skipped his family Christmas to be with her. Which meant that the moment had meant something to him.
For a blip, that mattered.
And then it didn’t.
Not when she recalled another word he’d uttered. It echoed in her mind. The bank? The “family business” was a bank? Good God, what had she inadvertently walked into? People with that much money had power. Lots of it.
He had power. She had Stella. Fear gripped her. Harder this time. She couldn’t trust him. Nolan and his family, their wealth...could they take Stella from her? At least part-time? Break up her family? The Mahoneys had seemed to expect to get whatever they’d wanted, even when it came to disrupting Liz’s family time. They hadn’t seemed to have any sensitivity to her needs at all.
And they’d gotten exactly what they’d wanted, including her parents. Any time they’d asked.
Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Stella, too.
“I appreciate you telling me the truth,” she said, knowing that if she didn’t end this soon, Carmela might get concerned and come back. Knowing, too, that she might not be thinking rationally. She needed time. And to be alone so she could think, when he wasn’t distracting her. “I mean that. So...we have our closure. And now, I really do have things to do. I wish you the best, Nolan. I really do. And...thank you for...a two-week memory.” She opened the door just enough to slip inside, locking it behind her.
She waited another fifteen minutes, long after she’d peeked out her bedroom window and seen Nolan Fortune walking away, to text her roommate to bring her baby home.
Chapter Five
Thirteen days. Minus Christmas, so twelve days. Twelve days. That was all he had to get through. He had the new arrangements to work on—scores written by Glenn specifically for the Austin gig. Sleep to catch up on.
Some reading to do.
Fortune's Christmas Baby Page 4
