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And Stella. He was going to support her. One way or another.
“I was thinking maybe we could go get some lunch,” he said, the idea just occurring to him as he fought the urge to cross to his girls and take them both in his arms, beg their forgiveness and promise to never leave them again.
He couldn’t do that. His life was in New Orleans. And that family was vital to him, as well. He was going to leave Austin. “Maybe at that pita place...”
Lizzie had loved it, even though she’d lamented, all three times they’d gone, that it was too expensive.
Looking from him to the tree and back, she nodded.
“Then, when we get back, I’ll help you with the rest of the decorations.” They’d done that the year before, too,
with her painting wonderfully cheerful mental images of memories of decorating the tree when she was a kid and her parents were still alive, down to the green and red candy-coated chocolate in the bowl on the coffee table.
He wasn’t there to think about the past. Or to notice the lack of a candy-filled bowl in Lizzie’s present.
She let him carry the oversize purse she used as a diaper bag out to her car. Everything else she handled herself, from strapping the baby into her car seat to driving to and from the restaurant. She held Stella the entire time they ate. And though she answered questions about feeding and sleeping schedules, about the babysitting arrangements she and Carmela had worked out, about the health insurance she carried on herself and the baby, provided in part by the school system, she gave him nothing unless he knew to ask for it.
She didn’t offer to let him hold the baby. That first day, he didn’t ask. He wasn’t ready. He hung with them until he had to get back for a short rehearsal and the gig. He helped her finish her Christmas decorations, wanting to tell her about his own traditions at home—the way his siblings, every one of them, were home the day after Thanksgiving every year to help decorate the big tree in the living room of the family home. It was only one tree among many throughout the mansion, but that one big tree off the front foyer, that one they all did together. Still.
He didn’t think Lizzie was open to stories about his family yet. She wasn’t open to him at all.
Throughout that first afternoon he took photos of the baby on his phone, after asking permission and assuring Lizzie that they’d go nowhere but his own personal gallery.
That night, after the last set, he grabbed a beer from the market by the hotel, then went straight back to his hotel room and started scrolling through the pictures on his phone.
He couldn’t seem to get enough. Of looking at her. Just knowing she was out in the world. Watching her. Being in the same room. Hearing her little baby sounds.
He’d recorded her crying shortly before he left. He was that far gone. Crying was her way of communicating, Lizzie had told him, and he’d just needed to have a record of the sound of her. Halfway through his beer, he played back the recording, over and over, and sat there grinning like a fool.
He had to swallow back unwanted emotion.
He was Stella’s father.
But would he ever be her daddy?
* * *
Lizzie was playing a very risky game.
Regardless of Carmela telling her she was doing the right thing—giving Nolan time to become a father if he chose to do so and giving herself a chance to get to know the real Nolan Fortune so she could prepare herself for a future with him on the outskirts of her life—she barely slept Monday night.
She laid there, fighting memories of Nolan Forte. Of Christmas the year before.
She’d opened the door to his nearly constant presence in her life over the holiday this year, too. He’d said he wanted to spend every free minute he had with them. And the trouble was, she knew just how the ten days could look.
How she’d dreamed they could look.
A replica of the year before, but with their child as an added player. She’d fallen for him so completely before—let herself be convinced that the feelings he evoked in her were real. She’d believed in true love and the possibility of happily-ever-after.
And here they were, a year later, parents celebrating the holiday together with their infant daughter. If she wasn’t careful, the picture was going to suck her in.
Because she couldn’t quite convince herself that true love didn’t exist.
What if...?
No. She had to keep reminding herself he’d already tried to make a Forte relationship work with the Fortunes. With Molly something or other. And look at how that turned out.
On Tuesday she insisted on shopping, figuring the safer bet was to be out in public. No more chances for intimate moments in her bedroom. Or anywhere else in her house.
