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“What do you want from me?” he finally asked.
“For you to let me live my life with Stella, just as I planned.”
We don’t need you. He heard the words she didn’t say.
“Two weekends a month is all I’m suggesting,” he said. “They can be like this, like today. Or you can take time to do things on your own, for yourself, while I spend time with Stella.”
Visitation. That’s what he’d managed to come up with. A concept as old as divorce.
“You suggested that I live in your place.”
Okay, so she didn’t like the idea of him buying a place for them. She hadn’t objected to the visitation. To seeing him twice a month. That was the biggie. Humming with anticipation, he could hardly sit still. He focused on the green-and-yellow blanket draped over the top handle of the carrier, protecting his daughter from the air blowing in on them from outside the slow-moving train.
“I was just being practical,” he tried to assure her. “It’s cheaper for me to invest in real estate than to rent and the place would be vacant most of the time. I intend to pay support for Stella, and was thinking I could do so with the same money I was spending on my own visits.” He’d been thinking like the money man he was, if he’d been thinking at all. He’d thrown the idea out as soon as it occurred to him.
“It would make sense, too, in that she wouldn’t have to be shuffled between your home and wherever I’m staying every time I come see her.”
He was sweating—with angst, and with sweet anticipation, too. Could he really make this work? Could it be this simple?
Lizzie wasn’t immediately shaking her head or saying no, which increased his adrenaline rush.
“What’s going to happen when I start dating? I’m going to bring my boyfriend into your home?”
His good mood flew out with the open air. But he quickly adjusted. Tried to see the new picture she’d presented.
“It would be your home, Lizzie,” he told her. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was feeling—he was still sorting things out. He only knew that he had to keep Lizzie and Stella in his life.
Chapter Twelve
Lizzie told herself not to get too excited. There was no happily-ever-after for her and Stella and Nolan. She knew that.
But if he was truly thinking about getting a place in Austin, giving up his “band time” over to “Stella time,” did that mean that he was planning not to tell his family about them, ever?
Why? she wondered. Weren’t they good enough?
As hurt as she was by that—for Stella’s sake more than her own—she was also relieved. If he’d leave her with uncontested custody and the freedom to raise Stella full-time, she’d agree to live in a thatch hut on the prairie. Stella would have the benefit of knowing her father—of having a biological relative in the background in case something ever happened to Lizzie—and they could all just get on with their lives.
It was a near-perfect plan.
And it left her feeling...flat. Used.
Nolan Fortune—if she was truly spending time with the millionaire, not his alter ego—had spent the past couple of days showing her he was a good man. Aware. Considerate. Conscientious. For a guy who said he spent his days wheeling and dealing high finance, he was sure aware of the feelings of those around him. Or her feelings at least. He was doing everything he could to respect her wishes, to give her what she needed. Maybe that was what made him good at his job. It also made him a companion that hung around in your heart even after he was gone.
A companion a girl would fall in love with if she spent too much time around
him.
She couldn’t go that route again. She hadn’t been enough for him the year before—enough to compel him to give her a way to stay in touch, or enough to be driven at least to be honest with her.
And she wasn’t enough for him now, either. Stella was. And that was what she had to remember.
“Will you at least think about letting me provide a home for you and Stella here in Austin? With a room for me to stay in twice a month or so?”
She’d bet it would be nicer than a thatched hut if he was planning to stay there, too.
“Before I even agree to think about it there’d need to be some clear understandings,” she said as they rounded the last corner that would take them out of the hills and onto the last long stretch through a lovely state park to the train station. Clinging to the carrier with both arms, she told herself she had no reason to feel so alone. So insecure.
She was Stella’s mother. Nolan was respecting her position completely, letting her set their pace, their boundaries. She was hogging the baby. She knew that. He’d rubbed Stella’s back a time or two more when Lizzie had been holding her, but that was all. It was wrong, the way she was hoarding their daughter. Yet she couldn’t seem to let go, even a tiny bit.
