Fortune's Christmas Baby. Tara Quinn Taylor

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      “No. We aren’t part of the famous Fortune family, but we’re probably as rich. My real life consists of everything you disdain,” he continued. “While I own my own condo I still have my own suite of rooms in the family mansion. I love my luxury car, my hand-tailored suits and my ability to jump on a private plane and head to the Mediterranean for a long weekend. I love my family more than life and value my place among them as much. I take my responsibility to them seriously. As the youngest son, I am constantly having to prove myself. To earn respect. I work horridly long hours in the family business. I am very good at what I do, probably the best at it, but my life, my family, they consume me. And sometimes bore me.”

      As she listened to him, Lizzie’s words from the year before came back to her, filling her with a completely new kind of tension.

       You’re exactly what I want to be...pursuing a career you love with passion, rather than being driven by wealth. I know not many would agree with me, but I feel sorry for insanely rich people. They’re in a prison from which they’ll never escape, being controlled by money. It exacts everything from you, but will leave you in an instant if you make a wrong move.

      They were followed by a replay of his words of a moment ago.

       My real life consists of everything you disdain.

      There was no hope that he didn’t remember her views on the wealthy.

      Or that he shared them, either.

      Sadness swamped her. Embarrassment. She’d been hanging out with a frickin’ millionaire?

      And anger was mixed in there, too. How dare he trick her like that! She went with the anger. It was easier.

      “So...what...you were slumming for a couple of weeks, had your fun, and then when you realized that you’d given your number to a plebeian, you had it disconnected?” She’d brought him to her mundane little apartment with carpenter-grade doorknobs and linoleum on the floor.

      The look of guilt that slid across his face was unmistakable, even as he said, “It wasn’t like that, Lizzie. Not exactly. I never, ever for a second thought that I was slumming, or that you were any less than remarkable. That time with you, it’s right up there with the best experiences of my life.”

      The one thing he didn’t deny was having his number disconnected.

      He’d given it to her in the heat of the moment.

      And when he’d returned home, he’d regretted having done so. Her heart gave its last little flop for him and went back in its box.

      “Nolan Forte is a part of me,” he said now. “I need him just like I need the other aspects of my life. He’s what keeps me from going insane.”

      He couldn’t be asking her to be around in the life of a guy who only existed on occasional weekends and a couple of weeks over Christmas, could he?

      And was her heart actually feeling a resurgent flutter over that?

      “Your family doesn’t get together for Christmas?” she asked. And then reddened when she realized he could be Jewish, or some other faith that didn’t celebrate even a secular form of the holiday.

      “Oh, yeah, they do. It’s total pandemonium.”

      “How do you get away with not being there?”

      “Last year was the first time I even tried. The executive branch at the bank has vacation then, and I’ve always taken off for part of the time, and the fam lets me go my way without question, but I’m also always there for Christmas Day. Until last year. After I met you.”

      Oh.

      “It didn’t go over well,” he told her.

      After I met you. Meeting her had made him decide to diss his family?

      “Even though you were playing in the band for the two-week gig, you still planned to go home for the day last year, and changed your mind when you found out I was going to be here all alone.” As truth dawned, the flood of confusing emotions was back.

      “I couldn’t lose what little time I had with you.”

      What little time he’d had. He’d known from the first moment he’d approached her in the bar the year before that there could never be anything between them except a secret moment in his life.

      That might have been okay, if she’d known that, too.

      He’d skipped his family Christmas to be with her. Which meant that the moment had meant something to him.

      For a blip, that mattered.

      And then it didn’t.

      Not when she recalled another word he’d uttered. It echoed in her mind. The bank? The “family business” was a bank? Good God, what had she inadvertently walked into? People with that much money had power. Lots of it.

      He had power. She had Stella. Fear gripped her. Harder this time. She couldn’t trust him. Nolan and his family, their wealth...could they take Stella from her? At least part-time? Break up her family? The Mahoneys had seemed to expect to get whatever they’d wanted, even when it came to disrupting Liz’s family time. They hadn’t seemed to have any sensitivity to her needs at all.

      And they’d gotten exactly what they’d wanted, including her parents. Any time they’d asked.

      Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Stella, too.

      “I appreciate you telling me the truth,” she said, knowing that if she didn’t end this soon, Carmela might get concerned and come back. Knowing, too, that she might not be thinking rationally. She needed time. And to be alone so she could think, when he wasn’t distracting her. “I mean that. So...we have our closure. And now, I really do have things to do. I wish you the best, Nolan. I really do. And...thank you for...a two-week memory.” She opened the door just enough to slip inside, locking it behind her.

      She waited another fifteen minutes, long after she’d peeked out her bedroom window and seen Nolan Fortune walking away, to text her roommate to bring her baby home.

       Chapter Five

      Thirteen days. Minus Christmas, so twelve days. Twelve days. That was all he had to get through. He had the new arrangements to work on—scores written by Glenn specifically for the Austin gig. Sleep to catch up on.

      Some reading to do.

      He’d passed a couple of gyms between his apartment and Lizzie’s place. He could get some workouts in. Hell, he could walk down to Rainey Street, check things out. He was a little old for party streets, and was working nights when things would really get going, but there’d be good eats among the historical homes turned bars.

      What he couldn’t seem to do that Saturday afternoon was get visions of Lizzie out of his mind. Or that...sense of her out of deeper parts of him. That sense...it was like she had some kind of power over him.

      He couldn’t have that.

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