Take a Chance on Me_A My Heart Channel Romance

by Kaylee Baldwin

  “Do you think this will help? With the ratings?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t seem too concerned.”

  “I’m a little distracted lately.” His stare burned heat into her belly. His fingers twisted around hers, and she found herself leaning closer to him, until only the small drift of smoke from their candle separated them.

  “Oh, really. What’s distracting you?” Her words were breathy, her heart racing.

  “Just some girl.”

  She feigned indignation. “Just some girl? Doesn’t sound too important.”

  He slid the candle to the side and closed the distance between them with a soft kiss on the lips. His words breathed against her mouth when he pulled away. “Funny, because she’s the most important thing in my life.”

  She pulled back, her heart racing, not playing anymore. “You can’t say things like that.”

  “Why not? It’s true.” He leaned back against his seat casually.

  “No, it’s not. You have Take a Chance.”

  “In the end, it’s a job. A really cool, fun job, but not more important than you.”

  She looked down at the tablecloth, unable to meet his eyes. She’d never ranked above anyone’s passion before, and didn’t quite know what to do with that, other than convince him that he had his priorities wrong. She was just Madelyn Stewart: single mom, diner worker, failed journalist. Definitely not someone worth turning a life around for.

  The waiter arrived with their appetizer. Madelyn sliced some baked Brie and apricot compote on the still-steaming chunk of French bread she tore from the loaf. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten food this good in years. Chance followed suit.

  “Have any more sponsors dropped out?” she asked once she’d swallowed her food down and taken another sip of her sparkling water.

  The relaxed lines around his mouth deepened into worry, and she kicked herself for bringing up the clearly stressful topic. He set down his food like he couldn’t eat and talk about this at the same time.

  “One more,” he said. “And another one threatened. We’re still bringing in great numbers, comparatively speaking, but in a lot of ways, we’re like a sinking ship.”

  “What can you do to fix it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m out of ideas.”

  She stared at him. This was the boy who had remained quiet all his life so someone else could shine, when he’d dreamed of shining, too. This was the young man who had spent hours rehearsing and performing on stage to tiny college audiences that his parents were never once a part of. This was the man who looked like he’d shed the weight of the world while filming in the Grand Canyon, who lit up with happiness while they floated through the swamps outside of New Orleans.

  This was his moment, and he was about to lose it. “Chance, you need to fight for Take a Chance. Not just for your team, but for you, too.”

  He shrugged, and she could tell he was about to say something dismissive, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Your show is incredible. You are totally in your element out there—and it’s more than just being in front of the camera. It’s how you direct Rog and Hannah, how well you talk with all of your guests, the outlining of each episode. It’s brilliant, and I don’t know why your viewership is dropping, but I honestly believe you’re going to figure out a way to fix this.”

  “You make a very compelling argument, Madelyn,” he said, a soft smile spreading across his face.

  “And if it’s not enough to do it for you,” she said earnestly, “then do it for kids like Oliver who need the escape from the cares life has handed him at such a young age. He’s had to mature quickly, but when he watches your show, he acts like a regular five-year-old.”

  “Okay.” He sat back in his chair and relaxed.

  She blinked. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know you’ll come up with something.” She leaned back in her chair with a satisfied smile.

  “So much confidence in me,” he said teasingly, but she could tell he was trying to cover up how much he was touched. “What about you? Are you going to keep writing articles or let one mistake make you give up your dream?”

  As a veteran subject-changer, she could spot one a mile away, but she let it happen, knowing she’d pressed him hard enough. “It was more than just a simple mistake.”

  “No one even remembers.”

  She leveled him a look. “It will always exist out there somewhere, thanks to the Internet.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t have to let it define you. Come on, Madelyn.” He winked at her. “Take a chance.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” She laughed, and he joined in with her.

  “It’s my catch phrase.” He gave her his tooth-glinting camera smile, and she dissolved into more laughter. It felt good to laugh like this again.

  The waiter came with their meal, and their conversation shifted to less serious topics, but Madelyn’s thoughts never strayed too far from Chance’s dilemma.

  She wished there was something she could do.

  She paused.

  Maybe there was. The article.

  Tonight, she committed to herself. She was going to figure out how to put heart into her article, and hopefully it would get enough hits to drive up Chance’s numbers, at least long enough for him to come up with a more permanent solution. She couldn’t bear to think of a world without Take a Chance in it. Especially since it meant so much to this man who she realized she was falling for all over again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chance held Madelyn’s hand as they walked along the beach together. The full moon hung over the softly lapping ocean, and millions of sparking stars hung in the sky overhead. If Chance was directing a movie, he couldn’t have picked a more romantic setting than this.

  “It’s hard to believe this isn’t all just a dream,” Madelyn said.

  “I know.” He brought their entwined hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Do you ever wonder where we’d be if we hadn’t broken up?” He had. He imagined that perhaps they would have gotten married, had a few children of their own. He might be an accountant, or he might have eventually accepted that his love was in acting. When they’d been together in college, things had been different. They were young, playful, perhaps more desperate. The time hadn’t been right for them then, but it could be now.

  Madelyn stared straight ahead, the moonlight illuminating their profile. “I don’t regret leaving you in college, Chance.”

  The words were like a bucketful of ocean water to his face.

  “But,” she continued carefully, as though she was thinking through every word, “I do regret the way I left. I should have never walked out without a word. It was awful and immature.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I knew you could convince me to stay. And I knew the best thing for both of us was for me to go.”

  “And now?”

  She didn’t respond right away.

  His bare feet dug into the cold sand step by step, but he held tightly onto her hand, knowing at any moment she could let go. “You don’t have to answer—”

  She squeezed his hand, and he stopped talking. “We’re both in different places in our lives than we were.”

  “Which isn’t a bad thing.” He couldn’t hide the desperation in his voice.

  “No. It’s not.” She tugged him closer and rested her head on his arm for a moment. He breathed in her floral-scented hair, and gave in to the urge to kiss the top of her head. “Do you believe in second chances?” she asked.

  “If they’re with you, then yes, I do.” He pulled her to a stop and faced her. “Madelyn, I love you. I don’t think I ever stopped. And I know this is crazy fast and I’m probably going to scare you off again, but I want you to know where I stand. We don’t need to rush things. I’m not trying to pressure you into moving faster than you’re comfortable with. I just—”

  Made
lyn pressed her fingers over his lips. He always rambled when he got nervous, and silence had a way of making him more nervous than it should. This silence felt charged, like an electrical current moments from sparking.

  His heart pounded as her gentle fingers slid across his lips. He gave in to the urge to kiss her fingertips.

  Emotion flashed through her eyes. Desire, and maybe fear? “I’ve never felt like this toward anyone.”

  “Like what?”

  She motioned back and forth between them as if that answered the question. “What if it doesn’t work out? What if you realize that my life is more work than it’s worth? I have a lot of people who count on me, and it’s not easy, Chance. What if we get into this and you decide it’s not for you?”

  He gently ran his fingers through her hair, and she tilted her head up to look at him. She seemed to be searching his expression for a promise that everything would work out. “And what if you walk away from what could be the very best thing to happen to us because of fear?”

  She started to shake her head, but stopped when he took both of her arms in his.

  “We’ve been given a gift, Madelyn. To find each other after all this time. I’m willing to be a part of everything in your life—to help you with Oliver and your mom, to support you in your work, to love you every day. Are you willing to let me?”

  His words hung in the air between them, her shallow breath loud even over the sound of the soft waves crashing onto the beach.

  “I’m willing to try,” she whispered.

  He let out a loud whoop and pulled her into him. “That’s all I ask.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The drive home was quiet as Madelyn stared at their entwined hands, nervousness and elation warring inside of her. She’d agreed to try out a relationship. She could be in a healthy relationship; she wasn’t her mom.

  “I have a question,” she said.

  His fingers squeezed hers. “Sure.”

  “Why did you call me back? When I left the message about the interview.”

  “I told myself it was because I wanted to get answers. Why you left. Why you did it the way you did.” He stared out the windshield into the dark night, the streetlights flashing periodically over his serene face. “When I saw you after my live show, it was all I could think about. I thought if I finally knew the answers, I could shut down that part of my life for good. Instead, seeing you again cracked it wide open and I realized all those feelings for you were still there.”

  She watched his profile. How his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, the way he absently ran his hand along the back of his neck when he was saying things that left him vulnerable. She wanted to learn every tic, every dream, disappointment, and motivation. The strength of her want nearly overwhelmed her.

  Chance Risk was more than the man who expertly executed a MyChannel show. He was the conglomeration of all the hurts and loves, disappointments and successes that make up a person. If only people could see that, maybe it would make them take a second look at the show.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, sitting up straight.

  “What’s wrong?” Chance asked, alarmed. He darted glances at her between looking at the road.

  “I just got an idea for my article!”

  “The one about me? I thought you turned it in.”

  “I did. But they didn’t like it, so I have to redo it.”

  “How could they not love it?” he asked, indignant. “I’ll call down there and tell them to run it.”

  “No,” she said, alarmed. “This is my problem to deal with.”

  He hesitated, and then the anger dropped from his face into chagrin. “Sorry. It’s going to be difficult to get used to not stepping in all the time. What’s your new idea?”

  Her heart warmed at his attempt to respect her independence. “That, Chance, is going to be a surprise. I promise I’ll leave out anything about your brother and anything about Kim, but do you mind if I get a little more personal with it?”

  His mouth slid into a seductive grin. “I’m willing to get as personal as you’d like.”

  She smacked him playfully on the arm, even as her stomach flipped. “I mean, can I shift the focus away from how the show works, and more toward you?”

  He pulled his hand closer to him. “Sure. I thought that’s what I was signing up for all along.”

  And that’s what she’d intended to do. But as she thought through each rendition of her article, she knew she’d avoided getting too in-depth about Chance, not wanting to tangle her thoughts up in him more than they already were.

  She’d always found herself and her truths through writing, and with these articles, she’d been afraid to see what she might find if she really dug deep.

  She had the courage to tell him she was willing to try a relationship with him. Did she have the courage to set aside the barriers she’d erected in her writing, see what really lay in the corners of her heart? Leave herself vulnerable to the rejection she’d come to dread, from the reviews that might tear up the real parts of her, to the possibility her very best writing just wasn’t good enough?

  Chance walked her up to her apartment and gave her a long, lingering kiss. She grabbed the sides of his shirt before he could leave and kissed him again, trying to find the courage to approach her article in a whole new way.

  This was different for her. Finding strength in someone instead of being drained by them.

  “If you keep kissing me like that, it’s going to be impossible to leave,” Chance said, his voice hoarse.

  Madelyn reluctantly let go of his shirt and left one more tingle-inducing kiss on his lips before slipping into her apartment and closing the door on his retreating back. She leaned against the door, wanting to hold on to the feelings of the night for a little longer. But the anticipation of writing tugged at her before too long.

  She changed into her comfortable pajamas and sat on the couch with her laptop. First, she pulled up Take a Chance on her phone to play in the background while she jotted down a few notes about each of their trips. Instead of only focusing on the logistics of the trip and dynamics of the team, like she had before, she wanted to think about the feelings, the hidden things, the parts viewers couldn’t just glean from watching the show or following Hannah’s behind-the-scenes photo series on the website.

  “The Havasupai nation …” his voice said from the screen, and Madelyn paused in her thinking to watch. It was the video of their first trip! She hadn’t realized it was up yet, but it had been uploaded three days before. Her heart warmed, watching him walk backwards down the trail, talking about the history of the people and the various sites they might see. Madelyn was only briefly shown, all in the background: near the waterfall, getting checked into the lodge, as she climbed onto the helicopter.

  She hadn’t wanted to admit it then, but she had been slowly giving Chance pieces of her heart one by one, even as she refused to acknowledge it.

  Chance lived life to the fullest, had made an entire brand of taking risks. While Madelyn had let fear dictate her actions for far too long.

  With a deep breath, she placed her fingers on the keyboard and started with her first sentence, everything flowing like it never had before.

  The first thing you need to know about Chance Risk is that he’s only afraid of two things: spiders and ghosts. The second thing you need to know? He’s very easy to fall in love with.

  Madelyn opened her eyes at the sunlight streaming through the window. She sat up in the kitchen chair and glanced at the clock.

  Almost nine! She had to be at work in less than an hour.

  Her back screamed as she straightened. She’d been up half the night writing her article about Chance, and had sent it in at three in the morning, filled with a sense of euphoria.

  Euphoria that had ebbed in the harsh light of day. It had seemed like such a good idea to pour her heart out into her article, to help Chance, to work through her own feelings. But what if it was rejected? What if they hated
it?

  Then you’ve done your best, Madelyn.

  Still, she scrambled to log into her email account, her heart racing when she realized there was a new email from Trent at Verity.

  Madelyn,

  Brilliant! Find a photo and we’ll run it later today.

  Anita Phillips/co Trent

  PS. I’ve never seen her smile like that when accepting a submission.

  Madelyn collapsed back in her chair, a strange mixture of fear and giddiness swirling through her. It was done. Out of her hands.

  Since her email was open, she shot a quick message to Hannah, linking a picture from the website and asking how much it would cost for Verity to run the picture with her article.

  She stood and grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, surprised when her computer beeped a minute later with a return email.

  It was from Hannah. Do you have a minute to chat?

  Nerves turned the yogurt in Madelyn’s stomach. Sure. She emailed her phone number back to Hannah, and raced to get dressed in her diner uniform while she waited for her phone to ring, which it did a few minutes later.

  “Hi, Hannah,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.

  “Hi, Madelyn.”

  Madelyn waited for her to say something more, and when she didn’t, Madelyn asked, “What’s up?”

  “Chance told you about how our ratings have been dropping, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I got the article turned in this morning. I’m hoping it helps give at least a little bump.” At the mention of the article, some of her excitement resurfaced.

  “Thank you. I hope it helps.” At this, she paused. Madelyn knew they were finally coming to the reason for the call. “So you and Chance …”

  Madelyn bit back her grin, but the happiness showed in her voice. “Yeah.”

  “Listen, Madelyn. I like you. You’re nothing like I expected.”

  “Thank you?” Was that a compliment?

  Hannah’s voice turned less friendly. “But I was there eight years ago after you broke his heart. I saw how it destroyed him. He’s got too much right now to be distracted. This show is everything.”