Paper Moon, page 16
“If I can pull it off.” Dating was good. Hard for a guy who recognized a good deal and grabbed it off the table before anyone else had the chance, but good. “And I need to talk to Karen—” Blaine hadn’t finished before Annie broke away and tapped Karen on the shoulder with more boldness than she’d ever exhibited to date.
“Mind if we cut in?” Without waiting for an answer, she edged John away from Karen.
He chuckled to himself. At least one of them was decisive.
“What’s gotten into her?” Karen complained as Blaine claimed her for a partner.
“I think the love bugs are out.”
“Annie and John?” Karen’s head pivoted around. “But he’s my date.”
“Your date?”
She quickly backtracked. “What I mean is that he likes me, not her. I mean, she’s his friend and all …”
“And you are … ?”
“Dad.” Karen glared at him in exasperation. “I am sixteen. I am not a little girl. Is it so beyond you that a boy like John could be interested in me?”
“Not at all. But you are my little girl. When you are sixty-six, you will still be my little girl. And I will still want to protect you, as I do now.”
“Protect me. You want me in a convent.”
“No, I want you to be hap—”
“Then leave me—”
“—py and safe.”
“—alone.”
“But maybe I’m going about it the wrong way.”
“What?”
For the first time in ages, Blaine had Karen’s complete attention.
“I said, maybe I’m too protective in some ways and not enough in others.” He sighed. “If you’d come with a manual like a car, I’d know exactly what to do, but you didn’t. So I’m just trying the best I know how. Obviously, I’m a failure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you more than anything on earth.”
Karen’s rebellion softened. “I know you do, Daddy. You just don’t understand women.”
“Show me any man who does,” Blaine lamented. “Which is why I’ve appreciated Caroline’s input on this trip.”
“She is so cool. I mean, she doesn’t let us get away with everything, but she doesn’t stroke out on the little things like you do.”
Stroke out? The exaggeration pricked at him, but now was not the time to debate the issue.
“A man isn’t meant to raise a little girl alone.” Blaine let the words sink in, watching for his daughter’s reaction. “All I know is how a guy feels when he sees someone as pretty as you, and it spooks me to know some guy might be feeling that way about my daughter. A woman knows how her daughter will react or what’s going through her head. I guess every girl needs a woman’s input to keep her father in line.”
Karen gave him a pointed look. “Like Miz C?”
“Maybe.”
Karen’s squeal drew the attention of those nearby. “I think you should be dancing with her, not me.” Reaching up, she straightened his tie with a motherly tug. “And I think you’ve just made me one of the happiest girls in the world.”
CHAPTER 17
“You older guys get some rest.” Clad in a new swimsuit, Annie gave Caroline a bear hug and turned to see if Blaine was ready to go to the pool.
Older guys. Caroline held her tongue but exchanged a glance with Blaine. At Annie’s age, she’d have said the same thing.
“Enjoy,” she called out, leaning against the door.
After dinner and playing Prince Charming with her and the girls on the dance floor, Blaine turned to walk the girls toward the pool area in the moonlit pass between the guest villas. It had warmed her heart to watch Annie’s awkward nervousness give way to confidence and laughter under Blaine’s practiced lead.
And when Caroline was in his arms, more than her heart was warmed.
A dreamy sigh turned into a yawn, giving her second thoughts about Annie’s comment. Okay, maybe she was an “older guy.” Since the bus would leave early for a tour of some nearby caverns tomorrow morning, she’d best take advantage of the unoccupied bathroom and quiet. A few curlers in her hair tonight, she thought, retreating to the bathroom, would save the curling iron versus blow-dryer competition for the vanity’s single electric socket in the morning, while a mint mask would do wonders for the bags beneath her eyes.
Before Caroline could make it to the bathroom, the phone rang.
“Buenas noches,” she answered.
“It’s me, you shoulder-baring hussy,” Dana teased from the other end.
“Got caught, didn’t ya?” It served her buddy right, trying to embarrass Caroline in front of her escort.
“He was clueless,” Dana insisted. “But look, if I come over, will you let me borrow your shell necklace for tomorrow? I’m trying to get things in order while the guys are at the pool.”
“Sure.” Caroline turned to the closet where her zippered jewelry bag hung, and took out the piece. “I have it right here. Come on over.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” her friend answered, hanging up with a click.
Just enough time to get comfy, Caroline thought, shedding her dress for her nightshirt. At the tiled sink, she gave her face a critical examination. Was that age or fatigue sagging beneath her eyes?
With the tips of her fingers, she tried lifting the skin, and sighed.
“Sweetie, only a skilled scalpel could help these babies,” she said to her reflection.
Part of her wanted to age gracefully, but a more rebellious nature preferred to fight tooth and nail—or face-lift and tummy tuck.
Since she was afraid of needles and her purse trembled at the prospect of a surgeon’s bill, Caroline opted for better living through chemistry—the mint green mask she smeared on her face and foam curlers for her perm-shocked locks.
Annie’s and Karen’s clothes were scattered around the room, so while the mask dried and lifted, Caroline straightened up. “I can pick up the panties,” she sang, “toss ’em into the drawer.” Jamming the discarded underwear into the designated dirty clothes hamper in the closet, she turned and kicked the closet door closed. “Till this mom can wash ’em,” she ground out, hands on swinging hips, “so they can wear ’em some more, ’cause I’m a woman, a W—O—M—”
A sharp knock on the entry door cut Caroline off. Grabbing up the necklace and skipping childlike to the door, she cracked it open. “Here you go, dear—”
It wasn’t Dana Gearhardt standing in the hallway, but Blaine Madison. In one arm he held a bottle of some sort and in the other, a rose.
But he couldn’t possibly be standing here, she reasoned, because he was at the pool.
Oh yes, he is, her senses insisted, in the gorgeous flesh.
Unable to close her gaping mouth, Caroline inhaled again, her last breath still waiting release.
“I knew you didn’t do mornings, but in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a beautiful starlit evening.” He smiled.
My, what a wonderful smile he has …
“And I’d hate to waste it alone on the rooftop.”
Which was a miracle, considering he was gazing upon Cinderella in after-midnight disarray. Squash indeed.
His smile faded at her continued stupor, and concern dominated his expression. “Are you all right, Caroline?”
All right? She had pink foam in her hair, green gunk on her face, and she was gaping like a large-mouth bass with lockjaw.
“Maybe I should go,” he said, uncertain.
Go? Let Prince Charming go?
Caroline shoved a restraining hand through the crack, shaking her head. “Yes! No, no, no!” At least the babble tripped the brake release on her tongue. “I mean, yes, go away, but come back in five minutes.” Five minutes? “Make that fifteen.”
Without waiting for his reply, she slammed the door and shrank against it. Fifteen minutes. Tearing rollers from her hair and letting them fall where they may, she rushed to the bathroom.
One step blurring into the next, she slapped on makeup, blew dry the damp hair she’d just rolled, styled it with frantic fingers, and tugged her dress back on. She was breathless and on the verge of heart failure, but she was at least presentable.
“Coming,” she called out in response to his knock. Shoving one shoe on, she hobbled with the other in her hand across the tiled floor to the door, scattering handwoven area rugs in her wake.
“Why, Blaine,” she gasped as she tangled with the door and a rumpled mat. “What a surprise.”
“Milady … ” With a cavalier air, he took the shoe from her hand and replaced it with the rose.
Dumbfounded, enchanted, or both, Caroline stood speechless as he knelt and eased the practical pump onto her foot as if it were a glass slipper.
“I’d have sent for a carriage, but maneuvering the steps to the rooftop patio could be tricky.”
Caroline laughed outright. This couldn’t possibly be happening to a Sunday school teacher, nursery school administrator, and mother of a sixteen-year-old. Yet, it was.
“You are full of surprises. I thought you were going to stay with the girls and their dads at the pool.”
“And waste a night like this without my señora?”
His purr of my señora ran Caroline straight through, tickling more than her fancy. Butterflies took flight from sensation, making her giddy as … as a sixteen-year-old. So who needed a face-lift when one walked on air?
Boy, had he blown it. He had asked Dana to call her room to make certain that Caroline would be there when he came. It never crossed his mind that she’d do whatever it was that she’d done to herself before he could get back from the pool. But like all the speed bumps they’d hit on the trip, the lady seemed to take it in good stride and recover like a trouper.
He glanced at the way the moonlight toyed with the red-gold highlights of her hair. A very lovely trouper, he amended, his gaze drawn to her shoulders. Ivory and silken, they almost beckoned his lips with a voice of their own. He could imagine how they’d feel to the nuzzle of his cheek, how the light jasmine scent she wore would tantalize his nostrils with images that evoked feelings he’d shut out for years. Inevitably, Ellie had made him regret those feelings, demon alcohol twisting something right between a man and a woman into ammunition to destroy the feelings he’d once vowed to keep forever.
But this was Caroline, high on her love of life, not her attempt to escape it.
“Blaine.” Caroline’s breathless exclamation as they emerged from the stairwell to the roof snuffed out the harsh recollection. The knot in his stomach eased. “What have you done?”
The four words that once rang with admonition sounded in delight. Pulling away from him, she rushed like a child to the tree on Christmas morning to where two glasses of sangria sat next to a three-wick candle surrounded by roses. The candle and flowers were Annie’s idea. On a side table by the love seat sat a hotel ice bucket keeping the bottle cold.
“I can’t take full credit for this. The girls helped.”
Caroline turned. The rose she twirled beneath her nose stopped.
“The girls?”
“They seem to be in favor of this romance.” Blaine handed her one of the glasses. “I’m inclined to agree with them. What do you think?”
“Romance.”
Blaine held his breath. Usually he could read a client like a book, but Caroline’s echo cried neither yea nor nay.
Finally, the corner of her mouth turned upward in welcome absolution. “I think we’ve all been moonstruck,” she demurred, sniffing the sangria.
“It’s nonalcoholic,” he said.
“If I were any higher, I’d need wings.”
Blaine chuckled as she sipped the sangria. But he was not about to let her escape with that irrepressible humor of hers. “I’m trying to be serious, Caroline.” He took her glass and set it down.
Business first, then … whatever transpired as a result. “You haven’t answered my question. What do you think … about us?”
Her shoulders were as soft as he’d imagined to the palm of his hands. He waited, his breath lodged in his chest.
Caroline closed her eyes. “I think I’m dreaming.” Opening them, she delved into his gaze with her own. “On the one hand, I think you are too good to be true.”
Wariness nipped at Blaine’s voice. “And on the other?”
She stepped closer to him. “It’s been so long since I’ve felt like this and …” She moistened her lips. “And I’m a little afraid because of it.”
Relief flooded through him. “My thoughts exactly.” Blaine kissed her, tentatively at first.
When she didn’t run, he set about assuring her with all he knew that this magic kindling between them was real, not the result of a fickle moon. The sway of her body against his fired reactions that threatened to consume him. He wanted this woman, not just in body, but in heart and spirit.
One step at a time. Reluctantly Blaine heeded reason, pulling away. He’d planned on courtship, not the ravishment that beat double-time in his veins. “Would you like to dance?” he asked, huskiness infecting his voice.
Caroline leaned back in his arms, a dazed expression on her face.
“But there’s no music.”
With a grin, he rested his forehead against hers. “Sure there is.”
He kissed her on the tip of the nose. “It’s in here,” he said, pressing her hands against the beating of his heart. “Hear it?”
With a sigh, she laid her head against his chest. Blaine tucked her arms around his neck and began to lead her to the primal music.
“Yes,” she whispered into the lapel of his jacket. “I hear it.”
One—beat, two-beat, three—beat, four-beat.
Over and over, step by step, beat by beat, they moved to the order of the heart, sharing the moment, the moon, and surrounding hillsides that twinkled as though inhabited by fairies. Blaine nuzzled Caroline’s hair, his left brain giving way to sensations bombarding the overactive right. They filled him with a conviction that had no scientific basis whatsoever. It couldn’t be measured or quantified. It either was or it wasn’t. In this case, it was love—or the closest thing to it that he’d known in years.
CHAPTER 18
“So, did Dad say anything about Caroline when he turned in last night?” Karen asked as the tour group followed a path between papaya trees to a bridge at the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa in the early morning sunlight.
“I don’t think your dad likes me enough to confide that kind of thing.” John Chandler looked up at the top of the tall steep steps leading to the cavern entrance where a guide awaited. The first group, including the girls’ parents, had already gone in.
Because the girls had lingered at the jewelry counter in the snack shop, John, Karen, and Annie wound up with Kurt, Wally, and Wally’s parents.
Or maybe it was by design, John thought. It was kind of cute, the way Karen and Annie had taken up the Cupid role where their parents were concerned. It reminded him of how his little sister had been all for love and happily-ever-after too. Thankfully, for Penny’s sake, it had worked out. Their stepdad didn’t have a little girl, and who couldn’t love John’s baby sister? On the contrary, John was the spare part of the family.
“He did kind of hum this morning while shaving,” he ventured in an attempt to lift the disappointment on Karen’s face. “Usually he stalks around in silence—like an assassin with his eye on a vic.”
He grinned. “Me.”
Karen gave him a chiding look. “Don’t be silly. If he hated you that much, he’d have sent you packing.”
John shrugged. “Maybe he hated upsetting you more than putting up with me.”
Karen gave him the elbow. “Not!”
“Hey, you’re lucky to have a dad who loves you so much,” Annie reminded her from a few steps behind them.
“So you think Miz C and Mr. Madison are really an item?” Kurt steadied Annie as she leaned against the railing to snap a picture.
Annie snorted. “If Mom’s voice hadn’t been normal when she came in last night, I’d have sworn she’d been sniffing helium.”
“Yeah.” Karen chuckled. “She tried to act like there was nothing in the works, but she was practically floating … and everything was funny.”
“You’re both lucky. Let it go at that.” John didn’t mean to be curt. But what had begun as a lark, spending time with these goody-goody people, struck a chord of envy that was tightening about his throat like a garrote. Besides, he’d outgrown wishing things were different. They weren’t. They’d never be. And who wanted to take over his old man’s insurance office anyway? His stepbrother could have it. John just wished it was his stepfather’s company footing the loss of the stolen stamp.
Walking into the caverns gave him the sense of being swallowed by the earth. John never ceased to be impressed by the Star Wars–like setting. The concrete staircase wound down and down past huge, craggy formations through some twenty caverns, many as big as a football stadium. Despite the balmy temperature of the cavern, Karen huddled close to him. John obliged her, slipping his arm around her shoulders, but annoyance grated at his nerves.
She was too young to be involved with him, much less with Jorge Rocha. If that ponytail of hers swatted him one more time in the mouth, he would be sorely pressed not to snap at it.
“It does look like a red-eyed wolf,” she marveled at one of the natural pictures carved in relief by crags and swirls in the rock walls.
Ahead, the tour guide did a trick with two flashlights that made rock silhouettes look like a man and woman moving closer and closer until they appeared to kiss.
“It’s my mom and your dad,” Annie snickered nearby.
“Then who’s the old hag sneaking up on them with a club?”
Kurt countered, indicating the shadow of what appeared to be just that—a crone with a raised club.
“Nobody we can’t take out with another flashlight, right?”
Karen looked at John as though he could conjure the light right there.
John was noncommittal. “I guess.”
“These caverns were once used by banditos,” the guide informed the tourists, “as a hideout and place to stash their loot.
