Fortune's Christmas Baby. Tara Quinn Taylor
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Four
After she slid back into her apartment, Lizzie bolted the door as though she could keep outside all of the feelings that seeing Nolan had brought back. Keep them in a pool out there. One she could avoid stepping into as she came and went from her home.
And after double-checking that the door was locked, she took her scouring pad back into her en-suite bathroom and sat on the side of the tub.
Just sat.
He’d looked so incredibly good. So good. So incredibly, bone-weakening, blood-heating good. If she was still alone and single, without responsibility, would she have asked him in?
Would she have regretted doing so?
What if he’d come when Stella had been home?
Oh. That was why Carmela had asked to take the baby on her errands that morning. Because it was something she did often enough that Lizzie wouldn’t be curious. And it would also give Lizzie time alone with Nolan.
Her best friend and roommate hadn’t told him about Stella.
She’d wanted Lizzie to do that. Had orchestrated the moment.
She’d overstepped. Lizzie was going to tell her so the second she got home.
In the meantime she recalled the warmth in that man’s eyes. For a second there, it had been like the year before, like she could see clear to his soul. She’d never met a man who she felt such an instant connection to. Like she could trust him forever.
Ha.
The man who’d given her a bogus number. And obviously a fake name, too.
If she really wanted to know who he was she could go to the club. Get the skinny from any of his bandmates.
If she were really ballsy she could ask Nolan to see his driver’s license.
Truth was, she no longer wanted the truth.
She wanted him gone.
He made it around the block. Twice. Two blocks over. Stopping for coffee Nolan sat himself down and looked around the shop at all of the people—mostly students and some professors who must live in the area, he presumed. A guy with glasses and longish, unkempt hair sat in a hoodie, hunched over a laptop that was plugged into the wall behind him.
A couple of girls leaned into each other across a table as they talked, one of them referring repeatedly to something on her phone.
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