“It’s my favorite thing to get when I come to New Orleans.” Chance’s large bowl of gumbo was almost half-eaten.
“You’ve been here before?”
“A few times. This is my first time filming here, though.”
“You won’t tell me what we’re doing tomorrow?”
“And ruin the surprise?” he asked with a grin.
“Can you at least promise me we’re not hiking something as intensive as, say, the Grand Canyon?” She lifted a brow. She meant to tease him, but his expression turned contrite.
“I’m really sorry.”
“I’m fine,” she told him, meaning it. Although the hike would have been more enjoyable with better shoes, the destination had been worth the pain. “Really.”
He studied her as if he didn’t quite believe her, but then a huge plate of the donuts arrived at their table and Oliver bounced around in his seat like a kid on Christmas morning. “Are those for us?”
“They sure are!” He winked at Madelyn and slid the plate toward Oliver. There had to be at least twenty of the little donuts on there. More than the three of them could ever eat.
“Can I have one, Mom?” He turned to her, his hands clasped under his chin. “Please.”
She pretended to debate, but then let her smile break free. “Yes. But only a couple, okay?”
“Wait,” Chance said as Oliver picked one up. “There’s an art to eating a beignet.”
“Okay,” Oliver said, drinking in everything Chance said.
“You too, Madelyn.”
“Oh, I’m good.” They looked delicious, but if she’d felt uncomfortable spending Chance’s money, she felt doubly uncomfortable eating the food he’d ordered. It was one thing for Oliver, who she’d always had a hard time saying no to, but for her? It felt too weird.
“Madelyn. You can’t come all the way to the French Quarter in New Orleans and not try the thing they’re most famous for. Please don’t make me eat twenty beignets all by myself.” He held his hand under his chin like Oliver was still doing.
She laughed. “It’s not fair for both of you to gang up on me.”
She took one from the plate, white powder dusting her fingers. Chance took his next. Oliver gave a lot of concentration to holding his beignet between his thumb and forefinger, just like Chance.
“First, there’s really no clean way to eat these, so mentally prepare to get sugar all over you. It’s worth it. And second? Don’t inhale when you bite down. Trust me.”
Madelyn eyed the little treat that required instructions for eating.
“Let’s do it together. On your mark. Get set. Go!”
Madelyn stuck half of hers in her mouth, the white sugar coating her lips and chin. The fried dough was light and fluffy, and the sugar added the perfect amount of sweetness. It was one of the best things she’d ever tasted. She stuck the other half in her mouth and continued to chew.
Oliver, who was in the process of taking a huge bite, started coughing, sending powdered sugar flying into the air in a dusty cloud, his eyes watering.
“You breathed in, didn’t you?” Chance asked, hardly able to talk through his laughter.
“There’s sugar in my nose,” Oliver said, giggling too.
Madelyn joined in, then grabbed her napkin to swipe at Oliver’s face. He had powdered sugar everywhere, even in his hair.
“It’s hopeless, Madelyn,” Chance said, his laughter winding down.
Chance had powdered sugar on his lips as well. He used his napkin to brush at it, but it just sprinkled down into the stubble on his chin and the collar of his shirt. She had a feeling, based on Chance’s amused smile, she hadn’t fared much better with the sugar.
The band struck up their first note, the soulful sound of a saxophone, and all three turned toward the music. Several kids gathered near the band with sidewalk chalk. “Can I go draw?” Oliver asked.
Madelyn hesitated, but he’d only be a few feet away. And it was nice to see him having so much fun. “Sure.”
He ran off with the kids, and she looked up to find Chance watching her. “You’re a good mom,” he said. “I always knew you would be.”
“I got lucky. He’s a great kid. Thanks for letting him come.”
“He’s been fun. I don’t think I have any bigger fans than Oliver.”
Madelyn lifted a brow. “All of your MyChannel numbers might say otherwise.”
He let out a sigh, and it was as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “For now.”
“I heard,” she said quietly. She hadn’t mentioned it in her article like she’d planned, not wanting to bring down the tone.
He grabbed another beignet. “We’ve gone from number one to number ten in only five weeks, which is a significant amount of viewers lost each week.”
“Still in the top ten,” she pointed out, taking another one herself. They were addicting.
“Tell that to the sponsors who are threatening to pull out if we don’t bring our numbers back up. Then there’s the whole mess with the animal rights people about our use of the shark, which isn’t helping things.”
“But the shark doesn’t get hurt,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. They don’t think humans should use animals for entertainment purposes. We’ve debating getting rid of the shark, but it’s my signature stunt. Without it, I think our numbers will plummet even lower.”
“So what are you going to do?” she asked.
He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know.”
On instinct, Madelyn placed her hand over his, stilling his fingers. Real people, people he loved, were affected by what happened to the show. “You’re going to figure this out, Chance.”
He turned his hand around and gently squeezed her fingers. “I sure hope so.”
The soft, jazzy music wafted across the thick, wisteria-scented air, weaving its spell around Madelyn and Chance. Around them, lovers held hands, leaned close to one another across tables, even left lingering kisses on powder-coated lips. The sun had set enough for a few stars to appear in the sky. Madelyn’s gaze connected with Chance’s.
“Dance with me,” he whispered, his voice husky.
Chance took Madelyn’s hand and led her to an open area in front of the band. Oliver waved from where he still colored with chalk a few feet away. She waved back.
“Is it okay to dance?” she whispered to Chance behind her hand.
“This is New Orleans, darlin’,” Chance said in an exaggerated southern accent. He pulled her into him and then spun her out, eliciting a few cheers from people in the crowd. When he tugged her back close, her cheeks felt flushed. “Anything is okay.”
The man on the keyboard turned on his microphone and spoke into it with his low voice. “This one is for the young, dancing lovers.” Madelyn wanted to bury her face, but she let Chance gather her close to him. She kept one hand in his and the other resting behind his neck, while he held her firmly at her waist. The long, sonorous notes of the saxophone began, followed by the low jazzy beats of the drums and bass as they somehow transformed the lush feeling of romance into music.
She absently played with the ends of Chance’s hair as he led her expertly in their dance. Her fingers skimmed the soft skin at the back of his neck. He shivered and pulled her closer.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and she turned to him, recalling her too-casual clothes, her frizzy hair, the sugar still dusting her face. But when he looked at her that way, she believed it.
She rested her head on Chance’s firm chest and listened to his steady heartbeat as they swayed gently to the music. Oliver still drew with the children, happiness lighting his face. She wanted to soak in the pure contentment of the moment.
“Madelyn,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
She lifted her head, and a stray hair flew across her mouth in the warm breeze. He caught it, his knuckles brushing across her lips. Her breath caught and the entire world disappeared. It was just the two of them caught
up in the magic of being.
His head lowered and Madelyn closed her eyes, breathlessly anticipating the kiss.
But the music stopped, and the people around them cheered. Madelyn’s eyes popped open and she stepped out of Chance’s warm embrace, back in the present. Back into reality.
“I’ll go check on Oliver.” She rushed away like a coward, his heated gaze burning every part of her it touched.
She knelt beside Oliver and absently oohed and ahhed over his drawings while her mind remained wrapped in Chance’s embrace.
Oliver yawned and she scooped him up in her arms. “Time to go, bud.”
“Let me,” Chance said, lifting Oliver from her smoothly, before she even had a moment to debate. Oliver wrapped his arms around Chance’s neck and curled into him like he’d been carried like this a million times. Oliver sneakily stuck his thumb in his mouth, a sure sign he was minutes from fading. Her feet still weren’t completely healed from their hike, and even though part of her brain argued for her to remain independent, she decided to just let it be. A sideways glance at the pair proved they were both comfortable.
Madelyn tipped her head up as the warm air swirled around them and the music faded. Had any of her mom’s husbands or boyfriends ever carried her? She only recalled ever being a nuisance to them. She shook her head. This was a dangerous line of thinking. Chance wasn’t her boyfriend, and she wasn’t looking for a man to take care of her.
Even if comfortably strolling together on the moonlit night, their arms bumping against one another occasionally, with Oliver’s quiet, peaceful breathing marking the rhythm of their steps, made her picture the kind of family she’d always longed to have.
Chapter Sixteen
Madelyn stopped dead in her tracks the next morning, gripping Oliver by the shoulder. “Alligators?”
“Seems like a natural thing for me to do. Don’t you agree?” Chance asked Oliver the last part of his question; he nodded his head sagely.
“Chance!” Rog waved him over to a man with a long, full beard who could be anywhere from twenty years old to forty, and Kim, who wore a pencil skirt and oxfords that looked so out of place for the bayou that Madelyn had to wonder if she’d dressed that way for that specific purpose.
At breakfast earlier, the team had all been really cute and friendly with Oliver, which had been a relief to Madelyn. She knew they were still really uncomfortable with the idea of a reporter writing a story about them, but she’d been grateful for how good they’d been with Oliver, who ate up all the Take a Chance trivia he could get.
Having Oliver with her proved to have unexpected benefits; he knew which questions to ask to get some really interesting tidbits she could use in her article.
Chance walked over to Rog and Kim to work out the final details. Hannah had wandered off with her camera, eying the mist over the swamp, and Madelyn’s own blurred vision was drawn to the two boats at the end of the dock. She took out her glasses from her bag and slipped them on to take a second look.
“Wait. Are we going out on the swamp?” Madelyn asked.
“Pontoons,” another bearded man corrected. She turned, startled. Where were they coming from? On closer inspection, this man looked younger than the other, who had strands of gray lining his beard. “I’m Jim. And yep. We’re going to take them out today.”
This was getting even worse. She’d seen the prominent “Watch for Alligator” signs posted everywhere when they’d driven through the lush and marshy area to arrive at the ramshackle shop near the dock. She pulled Oliver closer. “I thought this was going to be safe for five-year-olds.”
“Is he a well-behaved five-year-old, ma’am?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ve been coming on these things since before I could walk. Started driving my first one when I wasn’t much older than him. As long as he doesn’t lean too far over the edge or stick his arms or legs into the water, he’ll be good.”
“I won’t, Mommy.” He linked his pinkie with hers. “Pinkie promise.”
Madelyn looked out into the green and brown swamp, searching for the flat, scaly backs of an alligator. She’d only ever seen them before at the zoo, and there they’d been sedate and sedentary, but she couldn’t get the image of a lunging alligator out of her head.
“Do they jump?” she asked, knowing it was a stupid question the minute Jim looked at her incredulously.
“They’re not acrobats, ma’am. As long as we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.”
“So we’re just going to float around the swamp and look at the alligators?” Somehow, she doubted that. Jim only answered with a smile.
Within a few minutes, they piled onto the larger pontoon together.
“Stay close to me, okay?” Madelyn said to Oliver as they stepped from the dock. The swampy water rose up the sides of the pontoon with the additional weight.
“I will,” he promised, but he pulled her as close to Chance as he could get. She tried to drag her heels to keep the inevitable from happening. The thought of facing Chance after last night made her feel squirrelly inside. The chemistry between them was as strong as ever, but it was making her weak. If she thought she could get away with backing out of today’s adventures, she would have, but she didn’t want to disappoint Oliver.
“Are you ready?” Chance asked, his voice warming her up just as effectively as the mug of hot chocolate she’d had earlier.
“I’m nervous,” she told him.
“Do you trust me?” His voice had dropped, and with him so close, she found herself breathless once again. If she closed her eyes, she’d picture herself in his arms again, his fingers brushing the hair away from her lips as everyone around them disappeared. She coughed and took a step back.
“Yes?” she said, her answer sounding too much like a question to be completely believable.
He gave her a seductive half-smile that made her think he could read her thoughts. “Good. Because I think you’re going to love this.”
Was it her imagination that he lingered on the word love? She absently pushed her glasses up her nose. Then, mortified, she ripped them off and stuck them back in her purse.
“Let’s head out!” Jim called before pushing the pontoon away from the dock.
Madelyn spoke quietly to Chance. “Did you pick these guys because they look like what people expect to see in Louisiana?”
He laughed. “I swear we didn’t. I told Kim to figure out the best alligator tour in Louisiana and this was what she found. They’re the highest rated and they were willing to go on camera, which was a bonus.” He stepped closer, cutting the distance between them in half. “I know it’s hard to believe, but not everyone does well on camera.”
She leveled a bemused glare at him. “Ha ha. Wait until you see Oliver when the camera comes out. He’s a natural.”
“Really? Your son is a natural?”
“Don’t sound so skeptical,” she said. “His father is a performer. Plays in a band.”
“Ahhh,” Chance said, studiously not looking at her. “So how did you two meet?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “He and I had a mutual friend.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t a blind date.”
She kept her mouth closed tightly.
“Madelyn!” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “You’re better than that.”
He’d always had a weird thing against blind dates. “They work out for a lot of people. I married my blind date.”
He was holding something back—probably the urge to point out how well that had worked out—but to her surprise, he didn’t say that. “Well, I may have to amend my blind dating ideas, because if you could get someone as awesome as Oliver because of one, then maybe they’re more successful than I thought.”
Chance squeezed her shoulder gently, and she found the gesture comforting. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but she couldn’t regret the road that had led her to having her son.
Madelyn checked on
Oliver, who stood with Rog as he explained all the parts of a camera to him. “He’s not bugging Rog, is he?”
“Nah. Rog has about a million nieces and nephews. He’s great with kids.”
“Chance?” Hannah walked over to them, her camera slung over her chest. “Ready to get started?”
They’d done some prerecording before Madelyn and Oliver had arrived, but it was still a reminder that Chance was there to do a job.
“Yep, let’s do this.”
He walked to the end of the pontoon, where Rog turned the camera on to record Chance talking about the swamp and the different creatures that made it their home. Madelyn shuddered, and Oliver took her hand. “It’s okay, Mommy. I won’t let them hurt you.”
She kissed the top of his head, touched by his protectiveness, but the words shot a spear of worry through her. Was she raising her son to be too much like her? Who felt too responsible to care for her?
She hadn’t thought so, but seeing how light and kid-like he was on this trip was making her realize how serious he was at home.
She’d made it her goal to never, ever be like her mother. And part of that was to give Oliver a different, more stable childhood than she’d had. And she’d thought she was being mostly successful. But what about the fun? What about the magic of childhood? Those things were important too.
“Look!” Oliver yelled out, pointing toward the swamp. She swiveled to see an alligator swimming beside their pontoon, his body gliding through the smooth water, leaving almost no ripples of movement behind. Chance finished his initial spiel and was chatting with Jim, so Rog came over and trained his camera on her and Oliver. Madelyn stiffened, as usual, even as she tried to tell herself it was just a piece of machinery. She didn’t get weird and unnatural every time someone pulled out a phone or a computer.
She still edged a few inches backward, hoping it took her at least partially out of the frame.
Oliver, on the other hand, saw the camera and smiled. “Hi,” he said with a cute wave.
“Tell us your name,” Rog prompted.
Take a Chance on Me_A My Heart Channel Romance Page 11