Did I believe in luck?
I believed in hard work. I believed in keeping my head down and being a good example to my son.
But I also knew that it was only chance that had made me a mother in the first place. When I found out I was pregnant, my former bar friends winced. "Ooh, bad luck, " they'd say, glancing down at my swelling stomach like it was a contagious disease.
But my mother, never the most stable force in my life, took the moment of my pregnancy to step up for me in ways she never had before. And then Malcolm was born and everything in the universe narrowed down to that moment when I looked into his sleepy little eyes and knew that he was the only thing that mattered was being his mom.
And wasn't that lucky?
And then that morning a few days ago when my foot slipped off the brake and I rolled into traffic and literally collided with the man now kissing my hand. It was pure chance that I ran into him and not into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler. It was total luck that he didn't want to exchange info and go after me for insurance.
It was total luck that he turned out to be the one thing that I needed most.
Wasn't that lucky too?
Jameson opened his mouth like he was going to say something more, but I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his. "I'm super glad I ran into you," I said with a wink.
His grin was slow and triumphant. "So you admit it. You hit me."
"I did," I nodded, looking down and laughing. "But, you know, I've been trying to make it up to you."
He grinned and brushed his fingers along my cheek. "You're doing an okay job of it."
"Just okay?"
He shrugged and grinned, letting his eyes drift down. "Well, I mean you're wearing clothes..."
I socked him in the arm and he laughed and then clapped his hand over his mouth when it came out too loud.
Malcolm looked like he was finally finished gorging himself on night-cheese. "Come on, Little Prince," I told him, as I stood up from my chair and lifted him into my arms. "Party time is over. Honestly, you're spoiled rotten."
He responded by reaching up and grabbing my nose. Off to the side, I heard Jameson chuckle and say something about kids these days.
"Uncle Jameson's right," I told Malcolm. "It's the middle of the night, and you need to get back to sleep."
"No," Malcolm said in a petulant little grunt.
"Yes," I said. "Come on little boy, I don't care if you don't go to sleep, you're going back in your crib."
I hefted him onto my hip and turned to mount the stairs, waiting for Jameson to follow back in step with me. But when I didn't hear him get up, I turned and looked back over the railing into the kitchen. "Are you coming?" I called.
He sprang up from the chair as if I lit a match underneath him. "You want me to?" he asked eagerly.
I took a deep breath. There was something so endearingly boyish about him. For all his manly confidence, for all his swagger and his prowess in bed, there was something just like a wounded little boy inside of him. And maybe it was the maternal side of me that was falling, and falling hard, maybe even harder than the horny, insatiable part of me. "I mean," I teased, cocking out my hip and striking of supermodel pose with my son jamming his finger in my nose. "If you want to."
The slow spread of his grin was like the sun first rising over the mountain. "Yeah," he drawled in a voice filled with dangerous promise. "I want to."
I looked on my son. "Okay kiddo," I said. "Time for bed for real."
This time, Jameson's step fell in behind me, and I could hear him chuckling the whole way up the stairs.
"Here we are," I whispered as I pushed the door open to the tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs. Inside, Malcolm's nightlight glowed in a pattern of stars on the ceiling and the noise machine whirred its white static. "You feel better now that your tummy is full?"
"School bus," he replied, settled down onto the crib mattress.
"The school bus will go by in the morning. You can watch it with MomMom." The thought of the morning made a faint rush of panic flash through my veins. Jameson had to leave in the morning. It was all going to be over soon.
"Mama loves you," I told Malcolm in strangled voice, then bent over to kiss his downy head. "You have sweet dreams about that school bus."
"School bus," he muttered sleepily and then rolled over and jammed his thumb into his mouth.
"Wow," I heard Jameson say softly from the doorway.
I stood back up again. "What?" I whispered.
He shook his head as if to clear it. "Come here," he said in a strangled whisper.