Paper Moon (22 page)

No one should be. But someone—or something—was in there.

As he eased the door open, he heard a closing click of yet another door. Tossing caution aside, Blaine hurried into the room.

There was no sign that anyone but some women in a hurry to change clothes had been there. Racing to the outside exit, he pulled the door open and stepped through to the stone landing opposite the one to his room.

There were guests and staff in the compound, each moving about with the solitary purpose of work or play. No one seemed hurried or looked as if they'd been in a rush. If it had been room service, he'd heard no knock. Shaking his head at his tourist paranoia, he glanced around, telling himself that nothing was wrong, there was nothing to worry about.

To his left another set of steps wound their way to the roof through a small arched entrance. More out of curiosity than suspicion, Blaine climbed the steep rise to find a lovely courtyard on the roof that overlooked a green slope of mountain dotted with white houses like a pasture with sheep. One didn't have to be a scholar in architecture to appreciate the beauty.

Just as he didn't need a degree in psychology to know that Caroline was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. Through her eyes, everything was suddenly new and exciting.

She gave him new energy, uncovered hope in the ashes of what had been. Blaine wanted to do something special for her. He wanted to be her hero . . . and he'd not felt like hero material in years. His mind churning with possibilities, he tripped down the steps like a kid and went back to his room.

A siesta later, Blaine was showered, shaved, and on the phone with Señor Aquino before a rustle of packages and laughter heralded the approach of the ladies next door. Aquino
was
handling the Ortiz property and promised to get the information to Blaine's office within the week.

As Blaine made the notation on his electronic organizer, John came in with a bag.

“Something new?” Blaine asked.

“Miz C bought it for me.” The boy dumped a black silk shirt out on the bed. With
Taxco
embroidered neatly on the pocket, it was a souvenir special, but the material made it costlier than most.

“I saved the ladies a bundle, and—”

“They spent the savings on you.”

“Guess so. Never thought of it like that,” he said, heading for the shower.

Blaine grabbed a tie from his garment bag. He didn't doubt that much was true. Mark never saw his exploitation for what it was either.

John was back in such a short time that, but for his dripping hair, Blaine would have questioned that he'd even gotten wet.

“So, was that the dude who owns the hacienda in Mexicalli?” the youth asked from under the towel as he dried his hair.

“Yes. It is for sale and it may go cheap, since the owner is in some financial straits.”

“Cool. It's like . . . like the lady I saw was psychic or something.”

Blaine's curiosity was piqued. “Caroline?”

“No man, this lady in front of the church . . . a tourist, I think.”

He rubbed some sort of styling gel that he'd borrowed from Karen through his short locks. “Out of the blue, she turns to me and says, ‘All things are possible. Remember, God loves you.' Like, I didn't know her from beans.” He made a little snorting noise and paused, as though replaying the words in his mind. “But after you and I talked about it last night and then this . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Weird, man.”

“Speaking of weird,” Blaine said, “I could have sworn someone was in the room next door when I came back to the hotel.”

John stopped pulling his hair up in little peaks and stared at Blaine in the mirror. “Did you see anyone?”

“I was on the phone when I heard someone moving around, but by the time I went in there, whoever it was had left.” Blaine dismissed the topic. “Probably maid service or someone in the rooms adjoining the back of ours.”

“Yeah, probably.” John didn't sound quite convinced.

Blaine watched him wipe his hands free of the lotion. “Weird, huh?”

The youth folded the towel and hung it on the rack. “This whole trip's been weird for me.”

But then, John was a kid, even if he was in college, and kids tended to be melodramatic.

A while later, Blaine waited on the roof of the villa for the others to join him. The same team of anxiety and excitement that he'd known while waiting for Ellie during their dating years skipped around and tripped over male logic and maturity. At the sound of footfalls on the steps, Blaine turned to where Karen emerged on John's arm.

Fancy fled, replaced by a mix of alarm and awe. His daughter was so . . . so beautiful. Instead of a ponytail, Karen wore her hair down, curled slightly toward her face, which was a blend of Ellie's high cheekbones and Blaine's dimpled chin. With makeup accentuating her dark eyes and the fullness of her lips, she looked like a woman, not his little girl. And the colorfully embroidered red dress that exposed her white shoulders underscored her feminine appeal just a little too much for his fatherly taste.

“You look beautiful,” he said, getting up and crossing to where Karen turned to show off her new purchase. The full skirt swirled around her legs, brushing just above her knees.

“Real fine,” John agreed.

“But this won't do.” Blaine pulled the ruffled elastic top of the dress up onto her shoulders. “It makes you look like a . . .”

“Like a what?” Caroline asked from the stairwell.

Blaine took a mental spill. Clad in the same dress, but in black, she joined them. It was souvenir shop fashion, but on Caroline it could have been Dior. She was the most gorgeous
señora
he'd ever seen. And he'd painted himself into an uncomfortable corner with his quick comment.

“A what, Blaine?”

Caroline not only knew what he'd been about to say; she was having fun with him over it.

The heat of resentment cleared his mind for recovery. He gave his daughter a peck on the nose and tugged up her ruffled bodice again from where she'd rearranged it. “You are not a woman . . . yet.”

He nodded at Caroline. “She is.”

“But—” Karen started.

“Hey, you look hot, no matter how you wear it,” John told her.

Blaine drilled the boy with a “hands off ” glance. The last thing he needed was the wolf's help with his little lamb.

“Baby,” he said to his daughter, “you look as good in the passenger seat as you do in the driver's seat, but you aren't ready to drive yet.” The hasty illustration earned him a collective expression of “What?” on the faces turning his way.

“I wouldn't think of letting you drive a car if you were . . . ten,” he said, realizing that his little girl was just a month away from getting her driver's permit. “Because even though you might know how to put it in gear and steer it, you wouldn't be ready physically to reach the pedals or mature enough to handle it in a responsible fashion on the highway. Understand?”

Karen lifted her lip in a curl of doubt. “Wearing a dress is like driving a car?”

His failed analogy burned rubber up Blaine's neck. If he'd only kept his mouth shut to start with. “Some dresses are.”

He readjusted the ruffle halfway between Karen's idea of decency and his, balanced at the shoulder joint, favoring the neck.

“How about we compromise?”

Between the disgusted look in his daughter's gaze and the mischievous one in Caroline's, he was drowning anyway, so he might as well say what he meant. He braced himself with a deep breath.

“It's just that when I first saw you come up here, you were so beautiful that the daddy in me didn't like it. He's afraid someone is going to pick his little rose and take her away . . . and I can't bear the thought of losing you.”

Karen's grudging look melted. She threw her arms about Blaine's neck. “Oh, Daddy, you will never lose me.” She gave him a hard squeeze. “You may annoy me, but you will never, ever lose me.”

She turned with a bounce and linked arms with John. “Come on, let's go see if Annie's made up her mind which dress she's going to wear.”

As they disappeared, Caroline slipped her arm through his. “I think you handled that wonderfully,
Daddy
. You almost made me cry in front of the kids.” The reflection of the setting sunlight swimming in her eyes confirmed her words. “Wanna come with me to check out
my
little girl?”

“Sure.” He would go anywhere with Caroline the way she looked at him right then. Letting reservation fly with the evening breeze, he leaned down to do what had been on his mind from the moment he'd seen her emerge from the stairwell in that dress, but checked himself just short of the kiss he'd intended to plant upon her shoulder. Her shock from this afternoon's impetuous peck on the cheek told him slow was the better course, if not the most desirable. Instead, he inhaled the clean scent of her perfume, his voice taut from his restraint.

CHAPTER
16

“Pretty in pink,” Blaine said as Annie came out on the stoop in front of her villa room.

“Thanks.”

He could imagine Annie's freckles fading in a blush the way her mother's did.

“I was going to save this for Banditos in Acapulco, but I changed my mind at the last minute, so I sent John and Karen ahead. I mean, why not go like rainbow triplets?” she finished in one breath.

Annie sported the same dress as the other ladies, but the pastel shade was more suited to her fairer complexion. Although she also wore hers off the shoulder, Blaine had learned his lesson and kept his mouth shut. Besides, with her hair pulled back in a cluster of matching ribbon, she still looked girlish. If John was as affected by Karen as Blaine was by Caroline, he'd wring the boy's neck.

Caroline tugged her daughter's ruffled neckline up to the same level as Karen's. “Just to avoid embarrassing Blaine any more,” she explained at Annie's disconcerted look.

Her playful wink dissolved any resulting miff on Blaine's part.

He held up his hands in surrender, but turnabout
was
fair play.

“Okay, I admit it. I don't want our daughters leading some innocent young man into temptation the way your mom is doing with me.”

Annie dissolved into a sigh. “That is so sweet.” She rose on tiptoe and gave him a big hug. “Karen doesn't know how lucky she is to have a dad like you.”

“Thank you, Annie,” he stammered in surprise. What he wouldn't give for his own daughter to feel that way one more time.

“And as for you,” the teen said, turning to Caroline. “Shame on you.” With a grin she adjusted Caroline's ruffle just a little. “Just one notch above red hot chili pepper ought to snag you a husband instead of a . . .” She searched for a word. “A fling.”

“Annie—” Caroline broke off, speechless.

Delighted, not just by the exchange but by Annie's implication of acceptance, Blaine gathered the precocious Annie under one arm and her mom under the other. “All I can say is, like mother, like daughter.”

Electric lanterns styled in the Spanish mission period softly lit the way to the hotel lobby and restaurant complex. Since both ladies wore heels, Blaine kept them from slipping or stumbling over the stones in the walk that ranged in size from jelly bean to baseball. On the left—and downhill—was a glow from the pool area where the students planned to meet after the meal.

Passing through a glass-enclosed walkway with lavish floral arrangements in handmade pottery, they entered the lobby, where an open pair of iron-strapped oak doors invited guests into the open-air restaurant.

“There you are,” Karen called from a table next to a magnificent unobstructed view of the mountainside settlement. “We'd begun to think you'd gotten lost.”

Next to her, John rose and pulled out a chair for Annie with a flourish. “Miss Pretty in Pink.”

The boy was even using Blaine's lines, and this time Blaine could see Annie's smattering of freckles fade into her blush.

“How gallant, sir.” Totally taken, Annie spread her skirt in dainty fashion as she settled next to him.

“Your shirt looks great, John,” Caroline observed. “Has Dana seen it?” She glanced around the room.

“Yes, ma'am. The Gearhardts are over there.” He pointed to the back of the restaurant.

With a territorial grip on Caroline's chair, Blaine followed her gaze to Dana Gearhardt, who at that moment shook her shoulders like a salsa dancer, giving Caroline a devilish grin.

The moment Dana realized she'd been caught, she gave him a sheepish wave.

“What was that all about?” he whispered into Caroline's ear as he tucked her chair in.

“I have
no
idea what that crazy woman is up to.” Caroline enunciated each syllable with precision. “You stick around her long enough, you'll learn to expect anything.”