“So now you see, no one in my family would ever, ever take Stella from her mother. They just don’t want her to be separated from her father, either.”
She didn’t want that, either, but...
“And now you know that you don’t have to agree to anything else in order to keep her,” he added.
She was reeling from his revelation, and could only imagine how shocked he was. His entire family was. And yet, his siblings had made presents for her...
“The gifts...”
“My siblings are trying to show you—all except the peas, maybe—that I’m a good guy. I was talking to my dad, making arrangements to get back here, and I didn’t know what they were doing until they were done, but they made me swear that I’d give them to you first. Insurance, maybe. Or they were afraid I’d blow it.”
“Blow what?”
“I want you to marry me, Lizzie. To come to New Orleans with me, find the house you want to live in there and be my family. You and Stella.”
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
She couldn’t breathe. She’d told Carmela multiple times that if he asked, she’d say no.
“At least come back for Christmas dinner. Mom and Dad are going to call you and ask if I can’t get you to say yes.”
“That’s tomorrow!” she said. “We can’t possibly get a flight in so little time and—”
She couldn’t quit shaking.
“The plane’s ready and waiting whenever we are,” he was saying. “Carmela said you were opening gifts in the morning and then she was going to catch a flight out to see her family. I was thinking we could leave when she does. It’s only an hour-and-a-half flight...”
She was hearing more white noise than him. “What plane?”
“The family plane,” he told her. “Russell, our pilot, will head back home tonight and be here tomorrow at whatever time we need. His ex has their kids over Christmas this year and he was at a loose end...”
That was it. The end.
“I...can’t,” Lizzie said, standing, and then when she was hit with a swoosh of light-headedness, she sat again. “I can’t go. I can’t do this.”
“Just come for a visit. Meet everyone. See New Orleans.”
“I can’t, Nolan.”
He took her hand again. Rubbed the top of it with his thumb. “Can we talk about it?”
She shook her head, crying in earnest now.
“Can you tell me why not?”
“Money.” As soon as she said the word, more came rolling out, one on top of the other, like an avalanche. “It makes people crazy, Nolan. Makes them forget what really matters.” The memories assailed her then and she was powerless to ignore them. They took her back over a decade ago. “The weather had been so bad that day,” she told him, reliving the moment her life changed so drastically. “So bad. The sky was almost black, the kind where you get scared and just want to stay inside with the curtains closed and all the lights on. But when Barbara Mahoney called to say that the trip was still on, that the plane could go up, my parents didn’t even think twice. They’d been planning the ski trip for weeks. Some famous actor was going to be there. Anyone who was anyone was going to be there. I’d heard my Mom talking about it on the phone to Aunt Betty. I begged them not to go. Begged them. I held on to my mom’s arm, crying, trying to get her not to walk out that door, but she went, anyway. Because she was so driven by the temptation of being rich, she couldn’t see the danger. Or she didn’t see how the lure of money was changing her. She went right out that door and never came back...”
* * *
Nolan had suspected he’d been in love with Lizzie the year before. He’d been certain of it since his initial return to Austin.
Sitting on that couch with her on Christmas Eve, holding her while she shed what he guessed was over a decade of grief, he knew that the love was real. His throat grew tight and he cried a little bit, too, as he lived through the pain with her, felt her anguish.
A young girl, with no brothers and sisters, left an orphan, and she blamed wealth.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked several minutes after her sobs had died off. She’d been lying against him, her head on his shoulder, picking at a string on the back label of his tie.
“Real wealth has nothing to do with money.” He was winging this one, speaking as it came to him. And yet, he’d never been more certain of anything. “My father...he could have forced a paternity test and tapped into his father’s wealth, but he didn’t want to be associated with someone who’d turn his back on the mother of his child, on his own child. So instead, he took the name, and made his own kind of wealth.”
Her hand stilled on his chest.
“He had his father’s acumen for numbers, his gift for making money, but he wasn’t like him. My father’s true wealth was in that dining room tonight. My mother—she sits right beside him so they can touch and talk—along the rest of us. Growing up, it wasn’t my dad’s money that made my life great—though I’m not going to kid you, I enjoy what I can buy. But all of my memories as a kid...they revolve around my brothers and sisters.”
He sat her up, held her shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. “That’s what I have to share with you in New Orleans, Lizzie. Brothers and sisters. Parents. A real family. They’re a pain in the ass a lot of the time. And they run around and box up crazy stuff and wrap gifts.
“And Austin...giving you those old pants, it was his way of saying he trusts you with the family fortune. The intimate at-home stuff. Which, for him, is about as huge as it gets. He also said that if you don’t bring it back—meaning, you don’t come home with me—I lose my corner office with the windows. He wanted it, but I’d called it first.”
“Can he do that?”
“No. But he can probably make my life a little more hellish at work if he really wanted to. Volunteer me to entertain the difficult clients.”
When she smiled, his world flipped. He smiled back at her. And for a moment, it was a miracle.
“I don’t like a lot of attention,” she said, growing serious again. “I’m not the type of woman who is into wearing fancy clothes, and I’ve never gone to big society events. You move in a different world, Nolan, and I wouldn’t want any of that to reflect badly on you and—”
“I am the one who screwed up,” he interrupted. “I brought a child into the world, left her mother completely alone to deal with a life-threatening complication, all because I was too weak to face the challenge of falling in love.”
Her expression changed again, a light shining in her eyes he hadn’t seen in a year. “You fell in love?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So...we love each other.”
“Yes.”
“Then that means you should come to New Orleans with me and meet the rest of my family.”
Her hesitation worried him, but not unduly so. He understood now why she hated money so acutely. And he looked forward to showing her the good sides to being financially blessed. She’d worked so hard to be all right and make something of her life—and even harder to provide security and love and happiness to their daughter. Now it was time for her to be taken care of.
“They have modest-size homes in New Orleans, too,” he told her. He thought of the home in Austin he’d offered on. He was going to lose his thousand dollars on that one—forfeit it to the owners for backing out of the deal. But he didn’t care one bit.
“I thought you had a fancy condo there.”
“I do, and rooms at my folks’ house, too. But I want you to choose your house. Be comfortable in it. And, you know, there are those Forte weekends. I’ve been doing them for years...and now we both can shed the wealth and just be...well, whatever we want to be.”
“Oh, Nolan...”
“Just say you’ll come. No, wai
t. I have an idea...”
He pulled out his phone, dialed and pushed to bring up a video call.
“Hey!”
“Bro!”
“Nolan!”
He made out the first three greetings; the rest were a mash of hellos.
“You there with her, son?” That was his father.
“Let me see her.” His mother’s face showed up on the screen. And Nolan moved over to put his face against Lizzie’s.
“This is Lizzie, everyone. I made her cry.”
She might hate him for the call, but his family was his best shot. They were the best part of him. And they always helped each other out of jams. That’s what families were for.
A chorus of hellos followed as the screen filled with bunched-together faces. And then his mother was there again.
“Hi, Lizzie. I’m Sarah, but you can call me Mom, or whatever you’d like. You’ll join us for lunch tomorrow, won’t you? I can’t wait to meet you. And to hold my very first grandchild.” Sarah teared up then. “I can’t believe I’ve missed the first three months of her life, and you... We’d have been there with you during the hard times, you know...”
“Give that to me.” Miles’s face filled the screen and then they could only see the back of his head as he turned to look at the rest of them. “Don’t overwhelm her or Nolan will have to fight this one on his own,” he warned. Then he turned back. “Welcome to our family, young lady. I hope to God you’ll marry my son, but even if you don’t, you’re family now.”
“Thank you,” Lizzie said, sounding...good. Better than good. For Miles she found her voice. Didn’t surprise Nolan at all. His dad was one special guy.
“So...you going to marry him?”
As she looked at Nolan, he pulled one more box out of his pocket. “This was the present my mom and dad sent me with,” he said, holding the phone with one hand, while giving her the small box with the other. “It belonged to my Grandma Melton’s mom and was to go to the mother of the first Fortune grandchild. And I thought maybe... Elizabeth Sullivan, will you marry me?”
Opening the box, she stared at the string of diamonds on the ring. It was more band than engagement ring, but he had a feeling Lizzie wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Yes,” she said, crying again, but her sniffles couldn’t be heard over the whoops and hollers coming from his phone.
And from the hallway of the apartment, too.
In pj’s and with a sleeping baby in her arms, Carmela stood there, tears streaming down her face.
Handing Lizzie the phone, Nolan walked over to her, took Stella and then led Carmela back to the living room with him, waiting until she sat down before he moved back to the phone. He owed her everything—having been there for his family when he was not. She was family now, too, and he’d do whatever he could to ease her way.
“Hey, everyone, meet the newest Fortune!” He scooted right up to Lizzie, placed Stella carefully half on him and half on her and turned the phone so his family could watch her sleep.
In the midst of softly spoken oohs and ahhs and even something about Stella having someone’s nose, he could see what they saw, in the corner of his screen. A thumbnail of him and Lizzie and their daughter—Stella sleeping peacefully, secure, healthy and happy. And Lizzie, grinning like he’d never seen her grin before. She was happy, too. You could see it in her eyes. Truly happy. Maybe happier than she’d ever been.
His family, on-screen with his family.
It was a picture he was never going to forget.
* * *
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Bring Me a Maverick for Christmas!
by Brenda Harlen
Chapter One
“No way in ho-ho-hell,” Bailey Stockton said, his response to his brother’s request firm and definitive.
“Hear me out,” Dan urged.
“No,” he said again. He’d been conscripted to help with far too much Christmas stuff already. Such as helping Luke decorate Sunshine Farm for the holidays and sampling a new Christmas cookie recipe that Eva was trying out (okay, that one hadn’t been much of a hardship—the cookies, like everything she made, were delicious). His youngest brother, Jamie, had even asked him to babysit—yes, babysit!—so that he could take his wife into Kalispell to do some shopping for their triplets and enjoy a holiday show.
In fact, Bailey had been enlisted for so many tasks, he’d begun to suspect that his siblings had collectively made it their personal mission to revive his holiday spirit. Because he couldn’t seem to make them understand that his holiday spirit was too far gone to be resurrected. They’d have better luck planning the burial and just letting him pretend the holidays didn’t exist.
“But it’s for Janie’s scout troop,” Dan implored.
Janie was Dan and Annie’s daughter—the child his brother had only found out about when he returned to Rust Creek Falls not quite eighteen months earlier. Since then, his brother had been doing everything he could to make up
for lost time. Which Bailey absolutely understood and respected; he just didn’t want to be conscripted toward the effort.
“Then you do it,” he said.
“I was planning to do it,” Dan told him. “And I was looking forward to it, but I’m in bed now with some kind of bug.”
“Is that a pet name for Annie?”
“Ha ha,” his brother said, not sounding amused.
“Well, you don’t sound very sick to me,” Bailey noted.
“That’s because you haven’t heard me puking.”
“And I don’t mind missing out on that,” he assured his brother.
“I need your help,” Dan said again.
“I’m sorry you’re not up to putting on the red suit, but there’s got to be someone else who can do it.”
“You don’t think I tried to find someone else?” Dan asked. “I mean, no offense, big brother, but when I think of Christmas spirit, yours is not the first name that springs to mind.”
Bailey took no offense to his brother speaking the truth. But he was curious: “Who else did you ask?”
“Luke, Jamie, Dallas Traub, Russ Campbell, Anderson Dalton, even Old Gene. No one else is available. You’re my last resort, Bailey, and if you don’t come through—”
“Don’t worry,” Annie interrupted, obviously having taken the phone from her husband. “He’ll come through. Won’t you, Bailey?”
He hated to let them down, but what they were asking was beyond his abilities. And way outside his comfort zone. “I wish I could, but—”
That was as far as he got in formulating a response before his sister-in-law interjected again.
“You can,” she said. “You just need to stop being such a Grooge.”
“A what?”
“A Grooge,” she said again. “Since you have even less Christmas spirit than either the Grinch or Scrooge, I’ve decided you’re a Grooge.”
“Definitely not Santa Claus material,” he felt compelled to point out.
Fortune's Christmas Baby Page 18
