Paper Moon (18 page)

Caroline sighed outwardly while the inner voices squared off.

Way to go, Caroline. Talking about your ex-husband really ices the
Valentine moment.
Although that was what she wanted, wasn't it?

“Yes. He's remarried and living in California now.”

“He must have had a screw loose to leave someone like you.”

Caroline seized on humor to escape. “You know, that's
exactly
what I thought.” And now she was lying.

Sorry, Lord. I can't say I'm myself at the moment.

With a chuckle, Blaine stopped Caroline, turning her toward him. “Well, that moon is the real thing . . . and almost close enough to touch.” He ran warm hands down her sleeveless arms and scowled. “You're cold.”

Before she could siphon an answer through the thoughts scrambling her brain, he shrugged off his jacket and wrapped her in it—and consequently, in his arms.

Oh, God, I'm thinking You chose the wrong “me” to bail out. I'm
going down with this ship fast.
“Thanks,” she managed, taking her panicked heart into her own hands and moving away with it before it was lost to the allure of a very real perfect moon with a perfect man. Of course, she knew that there was no such thing as a perfect man, even if her other willy-nilly self didn't.

“And don't be in such a hurry. I don't bite,” he called after her.

No, but in her state of mind, she might. Caroline gave herself a mental smack, slowing her gait. “It's the downhill factor, I think.”

Not the fact that his coat was filled with his warmth and scent, both delicious. No matter how steep the mountain was, she couldn't outrun the woman within. The fatigue she'd started to feel after the meal was consumed by the acute awareness of him . . . and a lovely floral scent that enveloped them as if Cupid carried a can of it just for the occasion.

“What is that smell?”

The moment the question was out, Caroline wanted to swallow it, but it was too late. “Some kind of flower?” she added, hoping to head off any insinuation that she referred to him.

“Laurel, roses, bougainvillaea . . .” He guided her to where a flowering vine spilled over a stucco wall. “We're surrounded by exotic flowers,” he said, plucking a small blossom and placing it under her nose.

In the periphery of her vision, she could see that the others had moved down the street ahead of them, meandering to the beat of their own drums. And here she was, a romantic schizophrenic alone with this man in a setting where the senses ruled.

The flower smelled sweet. Her companion was warm. His gaze caressed her face. Her pulse thundered in her ear. The lips she moistened with her tongue held traces of the sugared confections she'd had for dessert.

“Hey, Mom!” Annie shouted from somewhere beyond Neverland. “Ya want me to take a picture of you two?”

Caroline looked away from the flower Blaine held to see her daughter running back up the hill, the little red dot on her camera shining like Rudolph's nose in the dark.

“It would probably take better in the daylight,” Caroline managed, her logical self pulling her moonstruck side out of the spell.

“Although the moon is doing its best.”

Annie backed away, focusing the camera lens on them. “Almost like a cloudy day. Now smile.”

Blaine moved closer to Caroline. Or did she move against him?

Senses scrimmaged with reason in Caroline's divided mind.
Smile.

She repeated the order as a mental command. Her mouth responded obediently and froze as Blaine's words tickled her ear.

“There's definitely a lot to be said for waiting awhile after marriage for kids.”

In that one sentence, Caroline's worst fear and brightest hope were confirmed. The moonstruck madness that had addled her had infected Blaine too. She hoped a good night's sleep and a healthy dose of daylight would cure them both.

CHAPTER
13

Nothing went to waste at Hogar de los Niños. While the men assembled the brightly colored playground equipment, the ladies cut the cardboard boxes into sheets to be used for future projects.

After the women's work was done, Caroline entertained the children with the help of one of the aides. Songs accompanied with hand and foot motions were a big hit, even when they didn't translate well. The favorite was the “Hokey Pokey.”

With each step, Berto was right under Caroline's feet, shaking for all his little body was worth. At one point, Caroline thought the boy's drawstring trousers were going to drop off his nonexistent hips. He cackled in delight at her Spanish, although she wasn't certain the words he tried to teach her were not corrupted by a childish lisp.

By lunchtime most of the equipment was up and ready for use.

Too excited to eat, the children played, the ones too big to use the new acquisitions keeping watch on the zealous little ones. The adults enjoyed a simple but delicious meal of beans and rice tortillas prepared by the cook, while savoring the fruit of the men's labor—the ecstatic squeals and laughter of the beautiful brown-eyed children.

“So what do we do this afternoon?” John Chandler asked Blaine, after the tables had been cleared to drag in the youngsters from their new toys.

Seemingly indebted to the group for taking him in, the young man spent the entire morning with the men, either helping with the assembly or acting as a gopher. Yet, eager as he was to please, he seemed to bring out the wary, just short of irritable, side of Blaine Madison. In Caroline's mind, there was more to Blaine's reaction to the boy than fatherly protectiveness, although what it was, she couldn't imagine.

“Some of us are going to try to shore up the old jungle gym,”

Blaine replied. “Father Menasco ordered the hardware but doesn't have the hands and know-how to do the job. Then I'm going to walk up to the hacienda with Randy Gearhardt and have a look a the possibilities regarding the mission.”

Couldn't Blaine see the boy was anxious for male company?

Caroline wondered what John's relationship with his father was like. Distant, she'd guess, based on the young man's efforts to please the adults, especially Blaine.

“Maybe you'd like to join us?” She couldn't help herself. If Blaine couldn't see the boy's need, then maybe she could open his eyes.

They were open, she realized, and drilling her. “Us?” he repeated.

“I've always wanted to see a haunted hacienda.” Caroline grinned, squirming inwardly. She never thought of herself as manipulative, but her impish answer disarmed the loaded gun in Blaine's gaze.

His hackles fell with a sigh of resignation. “I guess the more the merrier.”

By the time lunch was over, Blaine surely regretted his glib remark. Aside from him, Father Menasco, Randy, Caroline, and John, most of the kids wanted to go as well. With a distinguished leather-bound notebook, complete with calculator, Blaine looked as ready for work as the students were ready for adventure. He quizzed the priest on the way up, taking notes all along the naturally terraced, grassy slope, dotted here and there by clusters of trees. The closer they came to the hacienda, the thicker the trees and bushes became, obscuring all but an arched wall that towered overhead, housing a large bell.

“While the Señora Ortiz's passion was for children, her husband's was for raising Andalusian horses,” Father Menasco informed them.

“At one time, this was a working ranch, but much of the land has been sold off over the years.”

Caroline imagined how it would feel to race one of those beautiful horses up and down the slopes now occupied by goats, chickens, and little patches of garden. She could almost see their manes and tails flying in the wind the way her hair would—if it would grow past her shoulders without developing a mind of its own.

And if she could ride more than a carousel horse. There was just something about this place that sparked the fanciful side of her.

“That is what remains of an arbor that led to the stables from the
casa principal.”

It looked more like an overgrown hedge of vine and weed, affording an occasional glimpse of what remained of the wooden skeleton.

Extending from the cluster of high growth around the hacienda, it led to nothing. Still, Caroline could envision it in pristine condition— a high, grilled arbor with flowering vines weaving their way through it—thick enough to ward off rain from those walking to the barn . . . or hide sweethearts long enough to steal a kiss.

“The barn was destroyed in a fire ten years ago,” the priest told them. “Since then I have kept a set of keys to the hacienda for the last two owners, and now, for the realtors . . . in case the authorities or someone needs access,” he explained.

With an energy reserved for youth, the students raced ahead and waited outside the arched entrance to the walled courtyard of Villa Mexicalli for the adults to catch up. Maybe the exertion would curtail Annie and Karen's chatter sessions at midnight. It was one thing if the girls kept the conversation to themselves, but they kept dragging Caroline out of her exhausted stupor for comment. Dana said she should be honored they even wanted her opinion on anything, and Caroline was. She just dreaded getting up the next morning.

Unlike some fanatics who got up at the crack of dawn to jog up and down the mountainside. Maybe that's why it was hard to tell that Blaine had a desk job. He didn't have quite the spread that she had in the rearview mirror. On her, a jogging suit added ten pounds. Blaine, on the other hand, looked good in one.

“All right, listen up,” Blaine annouced, oblivious to Caroline's observation.

“We are looking at the hacienda for business purposes,” Blaine went on with a no-nonsense authority that quelled the teen frolic in front of the heavy, iron-hinged gate. “This is not a romp. I expect you kids to behave as if you were on a tour of private property. No touching, just looking. Walk, don't run. Are we understood?”

“Unless we see a ghost,” Wally Peterman proposed. “Then we can run, right?”

Blaine gave a sharp look. “Are we understood?” he repeated, military sergeant at the core. “You act up, you wait out here for the rest of us.”

After an inventory of somber nods, he gave the go-ahead to Father Menasco. The priest opened one of the huge arched oak doors with a nail-on-a-chalkboard creak that all but shouted “Beware” to the active imagination. Beyond lay a stone-paved courtyard surrounded by a beamed, arched portico, reminiscent of an overgrown, rectangular Stonehenge of the tropics. A collective intake of breath resulted at the sight of a voluptuous water nymph, as weathered and cracked as the fountain into which she'd emptied the last drop of water from her vase years earlier.

“Your ghost, Wally,” Blaine said, laconic.

Christie rubbed her arms as she stepped into the cool interior yard of the sprawling mountain villa. The boys had cajoled her into going. “She gives me the creeps.”

“Nothing a ton of face cream won't fix,” Wally quipped.

“Or a bucket of plaster,” Kurt added.

“Don't be too hard on her, boys. Clean her up and she'd be one classy lady . . . like Miz C.”

Caroline winced as John clapped her on the back. “Thank you, John.” She cast a dubious look at the green stuff growing under the half-dressed statue's armpits. “I think.”

“
Don't be too hard on her, boys,
” Kurt mimicked under his breath as John draped a protective arm over Karen's shoulder, moving in ahead of the others. “Like bein' a couple of years older makes him the authority on women or somethin'.”

The house was built in an L-shape around the courtyard with a veranda running its full length. Wide granite steps with detailed iron railing led up to the front door at the juncture of the two-story wings.

“There is a dancing room or, how do you say—” Father Menasco broke off.

“Great room, or ballroom?” Blaine suggested.