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“And so she doesn’t pee on you,” Lizzie said, grinning at him. Her lips were so close, her beautiful brown eyes glowing and meeting his.
“A...huh.” The tiny sound wasn’t a wail. But it was a warning he’d already grown to recognize.
“It’s okay, baby girl, Mommy’s right here.” Lizzie’s attention was instantly fully back on the baby. “Just be patient a little bit longer while Daddy gets you snapped up,” she said in the higher tone she often used with Stella. And then, while Nolan’s heart tripped over and skipped beats, Lizzie entertained the baby, poking her belly and making faces and sounds, as he worked one snap at a time on the baby’s bottom half.
Daddy.
Daddy!
Daddy...
Any way it sounded in his head, he wasn’t ever going to be the same.
Chapter Seventeen
Nolan didn’t play well Sunday night. He didn’t sleep much, either. If he’d been sick, he could have taken a pill or something. His aches came from a place much deeper than bones and flesh. He was trapped between two lives that were pulling at him with equal force. Each of them filled with heart and soul, with a substance that couldn’t be denied.
To be a good family member in one life meant he had to be a bad one in the other.
He’d given in to yearnings the year before, to the unreliable buzz of energy inside him, and had created a hell for himself. He saw no way out.
He and Lizzie and Carmela were supposed to take Stella to get her Christmas pictures with Santa that day before having lunch together—the four of them. His request. Carmela was family to Lizzie and Stella, not biologically, but in any way that counted to Lizzie.
Nolan thought it important that he and Carmela find a way to be comfortable around each other, too.
How could he expect the woman who seemed to see only the worst in him to be comfortable with him, when he couldn’t find a peaceful place with himself?
They were going to get Christmas pictures and he hadn’t even told Lizzie that he wouldn’t be with them for Christmas yet. That he’d booked a flight for himself for the next afternoon, to have himself home in time for his parents’ annual gathering. While not as big as the New Year’s bash, by a whole lot, the Christmas Eve thing was far more important. It was a get-together with loved ones, trusted ones, not the showy party that included everyone the Fortunes had to invite.
He hadn’t told Lizzie he was going because he still wasn’t sure he was going to do so. He knew he should. He needed his family on his side, ready to accept the huge news he had to lay on them. And it wasn’t like Stella would even be aware that it was any other day. His parents would probably be more hurt by his absence than Lizzie would be. And yet...
Monday morning, early, when he knew his older brother would be at work, he dialed Austin.
He’d told Lizzie he wouldn’t say anything to anyone, but he needed answers and wasn’t finding them on his own. He’d swear Austin to secrecy, but he had to talk to someone.
Somehow, even with the best of intentions and his eyes seemingly wide open, he’d mucked up his life.
“To what do I owe the privilege of a call from the one who has to escape us all?” Austin’s voice replaced the phone ringing in Nolan’s ear.
“Yeah, right, like you weren’t the first one who couldn’t wait for a little time away once upon a time,” he said. Austin might be his unknowing mentor, the sibling he felt closest to, but the man didn’t have to know that. And Nolan had ceased being intimidated by him about the time he’d started making notable amounts of money at the firm. Nolan had ceased acting intimidating long before that.
“So what’s up? I’ve got an early meeting.”
“We’re on vacation,” Nolan reminded him.
“Yeah, well, Brighton’s in town.”
He knew the guy. A foreign businessman who used their bank for his North American funds, to broker North American deals and to finance a multitude of North American businesses.
“Let me guess, you invited him,” Nolan said. Austin’s silence was his response, one that Nolan translated in the affirmative.
“Seriously, what’s up?” Austin asked, his tone evincing true interest.
“I’ve mucked up,” Nolan said. “Take your worst moment, double it and I’m there.”
“You got married? What the hell? When?” The alarm coming over the phone shot straight through Nolan, mincing with his own. Compounding his own. In dark dress pants and white business shirt, minus the red tie he’d planned to wear to the mall, he paced his hotel room. Irritated by the brushing sound his stocking feet made against the carpet, he’d never felt weaker in his life.
He should have put on his new wingtips before he made the call.
