A Chance in the Night

by Kimberly Van Meter

  Nico lit up at the prospect of ice cream but he looked to Skye first. “Can I, Mama? I’ll be good. I promise. Please, please, please.”

  Skye looked at Thomas and Cassi, uncertain of what to do and Christian didn’t want to pressure her so he just waited for her decision but he couldn’t say he wasn’t sending a silent prayer that she’d agree.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked Thomas.

  “It’s good practice,” Cassi interjected, grinning at his brother and he almost laughed at Thomas’s expression. It was somewhere between willing to do anything for Cassi and fear at becoming a father. Not that Christian was worried. Thomas would make a great dad. He just had some personal demons to work over before he could take that step with confidence. Christian knew without a doubt he was going to be an uncle soon given how Cassi was pushing. And he liked the idea. Kids were great. He even wanted a few of his own eventually.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” Skye said, delighting in her son’s happiness over such a small thing. “Promise you’ll be good and you’ll remember your manners?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Nico promised fervently.

  “All right,” she said, and then added to Thomas and Cassi, “Thank you so much. This is very kind of you.”

  “No problem. We’re going to have fun,” Cassi said, extending her hand to Nico who eagerly slipped his hand into hers. “When you return just pass the horses over to the groom and he’ll take care of them for you.”

  “Thanks,” Skye said, watching as they left the barn with her son in tow. He could tell she rarely did something like this and it wasn’t easy for her. It only cemented his belief that she was an amazing mother. Unfortunately, it also made him wonder who Nico’s father was and why he wasn’t in the picture any longer. Hopefully, he’d get the answer to that question and a few more running around in his head before long.

  “Let’s get going, the sun will be gone if we wait much longer,” he said, helping Skye into her saddle and ensuring she was secure and ready before swinging onto his own horse. He gave her some pointers and then they took the horses out of the enclosure and onto the trail.

  The trail meandered in an easy loop through a canopy of green, leafy trees and curved alongside a creek that was quite swollen and moving swiftly due to the recent storms. The sound, coupled with the natural calls of the birds, made for a peaceful ambiance that immediately soothed the ragged edges created by living fast and hard in the city.

  “I’ve missed this,” he admitted wistfully, drawing in a deep breath of the pine-scented air. “Not the horseback riding, per se, but this place. Home. I love the city, don’t get me wrong but there’s nothing like the place where you grew up.”

  “It’s a beautiful place,” she agreed, an appreciative smile wreathing her face as she surveyed the area, delighting in the tiny, early wildflowers popping from the earth in their eagerness for sunshine.

  “You moved as far from the Bible Belt as possible, to Manhattan to dance, right?” he said, remembering the small detail from a previous conversation.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she confirmed, though her lips had compressed. There was something she didn’t want to share. He figured it had something to do with how she ended up as an escort. Well, everyone had skeletons, so he wouldn’t press too hard on that nerve just yet. Besides, he had her talking and that was something. She parceled out information like a miser with money and her reluctance to share only fired up his need for more.

  “So aside from dance, what did you enjoy doing?”

  She sighed, frowning slightly as she considered the question, then answered with a shrug, “I was pretty focused. Obsessive even about making it to be a prima ballerina. Although my sophomore year in high school I was named Corn Queen for the Harvest Festival. I remember thinking at the time it was a big deal. Now it seems kind of silly.”

  “Not silly at all. I think it’s still cool. And since it’s confession time, I was named Prom King my senior year.”

  She laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me at all. You have the kind of looks that stop girls in their tracks. You probably broke a lot of hearts throughout your high school career.”

  “I hope not,” he murmured with a self-deprecating grin. “I never took myself that seriously and I really hate being labeled. I went out of my way to be uncool but it backfired and suddenly I was cooler than before.”

  She cocked her head at him. “How exactly does one go about being uncool, I wonder?”

  “Oh, well, in my case I purposefully didn’t wash my hair for a week and wore the same clothes every day, then I found this perfectly awful bowler hat in a thrift store and wore it to school, too.”

  “A bowler hat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I see how that could totally ruin your street cred.”

  He barked a short laugh. “The next thing I know guys are walking around with their version of the funky hat. Some pulled it off better than others. I never set out to be a trendsetter but it happened anyway so I just stopped resisting it.”

  “You poor thing,” she said, fighting laughter. “Forced into coolness. The horror.”

  “Listen to you, Corn Queen, I know you probably took your share of hearts, too.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I was too busy dancing to pay attention.”

  “No high school boyfriend?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she answered coyly.

  “Ohh, the lady of mystery returns. Okay, so what was his name and what made you turn your head his way?”

  “It was a long time ago, I hardly remember.”

  He wasn’t buying that line of bull. “I happen to have it on good authority that girls always remember their first crush, their first kiss and all sorts of other firsts. So out with it, if you please.”

  “Nosey.” She sniffed playfully before relenting. “If you must know, his name was Bobby and I first noticed him in English class. He was a football player and so I hardly paid attention at first but then I saw him totally immersed in a book that wasn’t required reading and it made me wonder what else about him was a contradiction.”

  His brow arched. “Okay, you were way more mature than me at that age. I expected you to say something like, he had a great ass or something like that.”

  She bobbed her head in earnest. “Oh, he did have a great ass, and amazing abs and the most—”

  “I get the picture,” he cut in as she giggled. “I know, I asked. It’s my fault for going there.” An easy silence followed and Christian was tempted to keep things light for the sake of continuing a great afternoon but as much as he enjoyed the playful banter, there were real questions swirling around in his brain that were becoming more insistent.

  “What happened with Nico’s father? Why isn’t he around?” he asked, holding his breath for an answer. As he expected she withdrew and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut but it was already out there. “I’m sorry if it’s a painful situation, I just wondered why anyone would walk away from such a great kid, but equally, why the hell would someone walk away from you?”

  SKYE’S GOOD MOOD FADED like sunshine behind a cloud but she tried to keep a neutral expression for appearances. She didn’t fault him; he was only asking questions any normal person might ask of someone they were helping out, but she wished they could just skip over all those details and just stick to the stuff that felt good and pure. However, it’d been a long time since she’d lived in a place like that so she drew a deep breath and smiled with a slight shrug. “Things happen and not the way we envision,” she answered, hoping her answer would satisfy his curiosity. But it didn’t.

  “You don’t like to talk about it,” he observed.

  “Not really,” she agreed, almost cheerfully. “It’s just not a time period in my life that brings me any joy to remember, aside from Nico’s birth. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” But the price was steep, she added privately. She couldn’t imagine life without Nico but sometimes she felt crippled by the weight of her choice
s. “And besides, like I said, Nico’s father isn’t in his life so what’s the point of talking about it?”

  “But Nico’s father has a responsibility to the child he created,” Christian insisted, refusing to let it go. “He doesn’t pay you child support at the very least?”

  “Christian, I can support my child just fine. I don’t need him. I’d rather do it on my own than have him interfering anyway,” she said, only partly lying. “Please, can we talk about something else?”

  “Not yet. Why doesn’t Nico live with you?” he asked.

  “Christian…please.”

  His mouth tightened as his gaze darted away, clearly unhappy with her request but he was too much of a good guy to press her when she’d given him the back-off signal. She appreciated that about him. She wished she could tell him the truth of things but they didn’t know each other well enough for her to even consider burdening him with her problems. Her problems were too much for her to bear—she couldn’t expect someone else to willingly shoulder them.

  Which begged the question…What the hell was she going to do? She was very nearly penniless. The amount in her bank account would only pay for food for about a week before she ran out.

  “I’ve ruined the mood,” he said with a grimace.

  “No, they were legitimate questions,” she said. “I might ask the same if I were you.”

  He nodded and although his mouth had lost some of its tension, she could almost hear the questions running through his head at her evasion. They came upon a grassy clearing where the creek widened out and he slowed his horse before swinging down and tying the mare to a tree. “Let’s rest a minute,” he suggested, stretching his back before coming to help her from her horse.

  “Sounds good,” she said, grateful. Her thighs were beginning to ache from the unaccustomed position. She twisted her back and stretched, gazing past the glinting waters of the creek to the lush, verdant foliage beyond. “This place is breathtaking,” she admitted, soaking up the beauty to remember later. “Everything is so green and alive. When I moved to New York I remember being overwhelmed by the sheer number of buildings everywhere. It was a real concrete jungle and something I wasn’t used to. Central Park is beautiful in its own way but it’s not the same.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” he said, his voice wistful.

  She turned her gaze to him. “If you miss home so much why do you stay away?” she asked.

  He smiled, saying, “You sound just like Mama Jo.”

  “It’s a fair question, right?”

  Christian nodded. “Sure. I do love it here. A piece of my heart always stays behind when I leave, but Bridgeport is a little too sleepy for me in the long run. I want to own an upscale nightclub. I can’t really do that successfully here. And—” He paused, as if afraid to reveal this part of himself to someone. She held her breath, desperately wanting to catch a glimpse of that private place even if she wasn’t willing to reciprocrate. “It’s hard for me to stay still too long.”

  “Still?”

  He chewed his bottom lip in a distinctly vulnerable gesture, his gaze stretching out to see events from his childhood only he could remember. “My biological mom…she had problems.”

  She assumed so given he was raised by a foster mother but Skye simply nodded in understanding, hoping he would continue. She was irresistibly drawn to this side of Christian, where he dropped the mask of the mischievous joker.

  “Like I said earlier, she tried,” he said, almost defensively before continuing with a sigh. “But she wasn’t the best mother. We moved around a lot, stayed in seedy motels most of the time. Or slept on friends’ couches. I can’t remember a time when we had our own place. School was hard but I was smart so I managed to keep up but…it was a struggle.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, remembering her own childhood and how she’d taken for granted simple things such as a soft bed and security. “So, what did your mom do for a living?” she asked, guessing he’d say something like waitress or maid. The hesitation in his gaze struck a chord. He was ashamed, she realized. She tried to soften his fear. “I’m sure she loved you very much no matter what she did.”

  “She was a prostitute and a drug addict.”

  Christian’s quiet admission sucked the air from her lungs. She hadn’t expected that answer and the shock of it nearly caused her to lose her composure. A pain so fresh and cruel it nearly drove her to her knees made her heart beat harder at the thought of Nico saying that to a woman someday. Momentarily stunned, she couldn’t answer quick enough. He searched her gaze. “Now you know why…my head is a mess when it comes to you.”

  Yes. She understood. But it didn’t lessen the shock or the heartache from the knowledge that their pasts would always be an issue no matter if she managed to break away from Belleni for good.

  “When you’re a kid, you love your parents even if they’re not great. That’s how it was with my mom. There were times when she was loving and funny. And I tried to remember those times when she wasn’t.”

  She pictured a young, bereft Christian, lost in the world without his only family and sorrow for him replaced her own heartache. “How’d she die?”

  He didn’t answer right away, glancing toward the horses where they ripped at the fresh green grass sprouting from the soft ground and chuckled mirthlessly. “We were staying at some old, rent-by-the-hour motel. The place was disgusting but at least the door had a good lock and the beds were relatively clean. I woke up to get ready for school and saw my mom slumped over in the bed next to me. The needle was still stuck in her arm.”

  “Your mom died of a drug overdose,” she surmised.

  He nodded. “Heroin.”

  “Oh, God, Christian, that’s horrible. How awful for you.”

  “It’s frightening how easily kids adapt,” he said, almost conversationally, as if removed. “The prostitution, the drug use, the transient nature of our lives, it was all normal to me. It was just our life. I never really considered the idea that it might kill her. And then it did. My life was never the same after that. I was scared to tell anyone at first. I just left the motel and wandered the streets, eating from the garbage can at school because I didn’t have any money and I was starving. A teacher caught me digging for something to eat and it was discovered what had happened to my mom.”

  “That’s when you came to Mama Jo?”

  “Oh, no, I spent a year in foster care before I found my way into her home. I was beaten, starved, kicked around, touched…more bad stuff happened to me in the one year of foster care than my entire life with my mom. By the time I came to Mama, I was pretty messed up.”

  “Wow,” she breathed out. “I can only imagine.”

  “Mama Jo helped make me human again.”

  She swallowed the lump growing in her throat. Such tragedy hidden by that disarming, dimpled grin. She’d never have imagined, which was likely the point. She suspected that Christian didn’t share that part of his life with anyone aside from who was in his tight circle. It warmed her heart that he’d trusted her with his story. Moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes again, only this time for a different reason.

  She went to him and gently clasped her hands around his, allowing him to draw her into the enclosure of his arms. She didn’t know what to say, or how to say what she felt in her heart. It was all too fresh and raw to even put into words but she felt something and it was profound.

  She met his stare and he answered what was in her eyes with a slow brush of his lips against hers. The sweetness nearly broke her into a million pieces.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE SUN WAS SINKING FAST and by the time they returned to the house, it was all but gone. Skye hurried inside, concerned about leaving Nico so long with strangers but she needn’t have worried. Her son was having a grand time playing dominoes with Thomas, setting the tiles up to knock them down again with a peal of laughter. His eyes lit up when he saw her.

  “I’m learning how to play dominoes,” he exclaimed with f
our-year-old enthusiasm. “What took you so long? I was waiting for a long time.”

  “We went a little farther down the trail than we had planned. Sorry, sweetheart. We didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “I wasn’t worried. I just wondered is all. Can we get dominoes when we go home?”

  “Sure, honey. Why don’t you help Thomas clean up so we get back to Mama Jo’s. It’s probably dinnertime.” Nico ran to help put the dominoes away and Skye thanked Cassi and offered an apology but Cassi waved it away.

  “That kid is awesome. If all our kids are that great, I think we’ll have ten,” Cassi said, eliciting a short laugh from Thomas. “No seriously, he was great. You’re doing a good job.”

  Skye accepted the unexpected praise and held it to her heart. She’d never heard anything but criticism from Vivian about her parenting skills and it felt good to hear that she was doing something right. “Thank you,” she replied, then added impulsively, “I think you’re going to make a great mother, too.”

  Cassi grinned. “I hope so. Thanks.” They walked to the door and as they were leaving, Cassi looked meaningfully at both Christian and Skye and said, “Don’t be strangers, okay? You’re welcome anytime.”

  They said some more goodbyes and then climbed into the car. Nico yawned loudly and Skye knew right away he wouldn’t make it out of the driveway before crashing. Chances were he’d miss dinner but that was okay. He’d had a great day and no doubt Mama Jo would have a full spread for breakfast. She settled into the seat and allowed herself a smile as they pulled away.

  “WHAT THE HELL…”

  Christian’s puzzled expletive drew her gaze from the passing scenery to the driveway where a long, sleek black limousine was parked.

  Skye’s fingers dug into the leather seat as panic followed.

  “Who could that be?” Christian asked, mostly to himself, though Skye already knew the answer and her stomach was churning from fear. She didn’t respond but the urge to scream “keep driving” ran through her mind. She turned wide eyes to Christian, her mouth dry but he was already stepping out of the car, concern for Mama Jo overriding all else. She had no choice but to grab Nico and follow, though her instincts were telling her to run like hell.