CHAPTER 6Outside Banditos, patrons dispersed in all directions after the closing hour in a studded denim, tattooed, and sundressed stampede.
“Yo!” translated universally to the cabbies hailed over the curbs.
Beneath the Banditos marquee, John Chandler gave Karen Madison a brief kiss on the cheek. He’d have done more, but the girl’s father watched him like a ready-to-pounce eagle from the curb, where he and the tour guide were trying to arrange transportation back to their hotel.
“Tomorrow?” he called after her as she pulled away to join her group.
Karen took a deep breath and sighed, her dark-lashed eyes a dancing reflection of the marquee lights overhead. “Tomorrow.”
John wondered that she didn’t fall, the way she backed away from him, ponytail swinging, blowing kisses until she reached her group. The perfect target—naïve and eager to please. She was cute, but way too young for him. She was more suited for the curly-haired dude in a new Banditos T-shirt, who tugged her around with a reprimand.
“Get a grip or you’re gonna fall,” Wally said.
“This, from the King of Uncoordinated?” she shot back in derision.
The nerd’s involvement with her was obviously one-sided, but he was better for her than the kind of guy that tripped her trigger.
Guys like me.
“So, la señorita is, how do you say, good to went?” Javier Rocha lit up a cigarette at John’s elbow.
“You mean good to go?”
“Whatsoever. We have no time to play around,” he said, exhaling through wide nostrils.
“I know it.” John drilled his metaphor-challenged roommate with an impatient look.
Javier showed more Indian ancestry than the Spanish his affluent family so proudly claimed. It was all a front for some of the lowest life on the planet—thieves and scoundrels cloaked in mock designer clothes with cushy digs. Cushy for Mexico, that is.
“She took the bait.”
John wasn’t pleased. He’d rather have chosen someone else, someone who didn’t look like his youngest sister, complete with the little gold cross that his grandmother had given her. He had received one too, bigger, more masculine, but he hadn’t worn it since he began his studies at the university. Given his activities of late, it would be somehow a sacrilege, an affront to the devout woman who’d given it to him.
“She is very young,” Javier observed, picking up on the uncertainty riddling John’s mind. “Do you think she can be trusted not to open it . . . or even lose it?”
John, and sometimes Javier, routinely picked the most naïve and gullible of the American students and struck up a friendship. Once they had the person’s trust, making her or him feel important, they’d hand over the stolen property for the student to post upon returning to the States. And Javier knew they were both pinched for time, so his question was moot.
“We agreed not to wait for the older crowd because Jorge wanted it out pronto, right?” John couldn’t help the anger in his challenge. But it wasn’t directed at his friend. It was directed at the situation he’d gotten himself into.
“Sí, that is true. It has three weeks until the summer semester ends.”
“So who was left but the kiddies? She took the bait . . . and she’s with a Christian group. They’re usually a dependable lot. Let it go at that.”
“So when will you give her the goods?”
John snuffed the pang of conscience, watching Javier blow two perfect smoke rings. Not only did Javier mix his metaphors, he’d definitely watched too many gangster flicks.
“The goods,” John mimicked, “go out tomorrow . . . or on the bus trip at the latest.” Most of the Mexico City–Acapulco tours had the same itinerary.
Javier nodded. “Bueno. I will tell my uncle that everything is going up as planned.”
“That’s going down.”
Javier shrugged. “Up, down, howsoever. Just so it goes, no?”
John gave a short, less-than-amused laugh. “Yeah. Howsoever.”
The package had to go out this week. Javier’s uncle was insistent. And no one bucked Jorge Rocha, who had dubbed himself El Jefe, and lived to tell about it—unless they got away fast. So John routinely picked the most rebellious or the most naïve and gullible of the American students in the club.
Despite warnings from the authorities about accepting packages from strangers to carry across the border, the teen didn’t hesitate to say yes to mailing a card from a fellow American student to his mom upon the group’s return to the States. His complaint about the Mexican postal service being so unreliable hadn’t been a stretch of the truth, but the card wasn’t going to his mom. It was going to Rocha’s dealer stateside—all $50,000 worth of it. It wasn’t big-time like drug smuggling, but 50K worth of collector’s stamps wasn’t exactly chump change either.
“You blondez do have more fun.” Javier patted John on the back.
“I’m going back to the bar. You did good, gringo.”
“Catch you in a minute, hermano.” This blond had had all the fun he could take. The aspirin he continually popped eased his headaches, but there was no balm for his nerves. He glanced back to where Karen’s tour guide had two taxis lined up at the curb.
“Vámonos, princes and princesses, your coaches are waiting,” the guide shouted. “Move now or they will turn into—”
“Squash!” several of the kids chorused.
Their cheer made John feel fifty rather than just six years their senior. He gave Karen one last lingering smile and waved. Maybe he could find someone older who was just as gullible—someone who didn’t remind him of his little sister and who wasn’t traveling with a church school. Taking a deep brace of cool air, he reentered the club.
The mountain-cooled night air brought some semblance of order to Caroline’s bedazzled senses as she waited for the kids to get into the cars. In her mind, she still spun in the laser flashes of light in Blaine’s arms. A divine dancer in the slow, measured sense, he’d been one lost puppy when the music passed the old jitterbug. But just being on a dance floor with an awkward but game partner had made Caroline feel footloose and fancy-free for a while. Between molting in the jacket to hide the glow of the living wonder lift and the fact that her partner’s last name could be Charming, her heart had done the rumba.
Still is, she amended, fanning herself with the Banditos rose.
Since when did hot flashes and schoolgirl giddiness strike at once?
Blaine opened the door to a yellow VW taxi with a flourish.
“Ladies, your coach, pulled by horsepower rather than mice.”
A man up on his fairy tales. Another layer of Caroline’s heart melted away. Blaine continued to play the wry cavalier by taking the cushion on the floor in front of her.
After a swerving, dodging, speeding, braking ride, they made their way into the hotel lobby. Caroline marveled that Blaine could walk straight. He’d reminded her of a clown punching bag, rolling and jerking with the motion of the vehicle. She could still feel the muscular shoulders she’d grasped to steady him.
The fatigue of the day’s travel and the night’s dancing having caught up with them, the students fished blindly in purses and pockets for keys as they filed into the elevator. Karen hugged her Banditos package to her chest, leaning against the brass rail at the back with a sigh. “This was the most romantic night of my whole life.”
From the corner, his dark hair still plastered to his head with sweat from dancing and socializing with the señoritas, Wally agreed.
“Definitely cool. I didn’t even have time to finish my game.”
Next to him, Kurt, who had recovered from Karen’s jilting before the next dance ended, leaned against the elevator wall next to a quiet Annie and nodded.
Caroline exchanged a jaded grin with Blaine. The starstruck kids were so young. If they only knew. The moonlight and the long-stemmed roses she and the girls carried from the club would wither by morning. Romantic love was a wonderful start, but it wasn’t eternal.
Caroline had wondered for years exactly what had gone wrong with her marriage. All the excuses boiled down to one reason—God was not at the center of their union. At best, He was a part-time boarder. Frank didn’t go to church at all. Determined to be the perfect wife and mother, Caroline had gone through the motions of “churchianity” and somehow missed God. It wasn’t until she came back to her faith after the divorce that she discovered the difference.
She turned the red rose in her hand, lost in self-study. If she’d had more of a relationship with Jesus instead of the altar ladies . . .
The elevator door opened.
“Peso for your thoughts.” Blaine’s voice drew Caroline back to the present.
She suddenly realized that they were the only two remaining in the elevator.
“At this hour, they’re not worth a peso.”
Annie had bolted ahead of the others. By the time Caroline and Karen caught up with her, the room door was open and Annie was exactly where her mother expected—in the bathroom.
Leaving Caroline standing in the hall, Karen tapped at the door with an equal urgency. “Don’t take all night!”
Beside Caroline, Blaine shook his head, bemused. “Females!”
And the urgency didn’t get any better with age. Caroline waited with him until all the students were in their respective rooms and the click of the deadbolts resounded in the empty hall.
“Well, Seen-der-eh-ya . . .” He mimicked Hector’s pronunciation to perfection. “I think all our little mice are accounted for.” Blaine took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips.
“Who?” Caroline asked, as his sweep-’em-off-the feet smile took out her knees like a smart bomb.
The corner of his mouth quirked. “Cinderella? Mice?” He paused and then added, “Squash?”
“Oh,” she laughed, holding up her souvenir flower. “I thought you just wanted to smell my rose.” Squirming partly from nerves and partly from the same urgency the girls suffered, she let the flower slip from her fingers.
In a rush to avoid making a further fool of herself, she leaned over to pick it up, only to bang heads with Blaine as he did the same. Before she knew it, she fell back against the doorjamb and slid to the floor with an unceremonious plop.
With one hand on his head where their noggins had collided, and the rose in his other, Blaine knelt down in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
“Only my pride.”
“Dad, what are you doing?” Karen exclaimed. Behind her, Annie stared at Caroline in dumb wonder.
“Trying to help a klutz,” Caroline rallied, before the confusion claiming Blaine’s face cleared his response. A picture of what they surely looked like to the girls, she sprawled against the doorjamb, he kneeling between her knees brandishing a rose, gave rise to a slaphappy giggle at the back of Caroline’s throat. And one begat another, which begat another until, no matter how Blaine tried to help her up, his efforts were useless.
“Mom?” Annie asked, her expression hovering between amusement and concern.
Karen was no less torn. “Dad?”
At that, Blaine laughed as well as he hooked his arms under Caroline’s and lifted her to her feet. “Good thing we have hard heads, eh?” he teased.
“And a well-cushioned tush.” Caroline felt her eyes grow wide in shock at her retort. “Me, not you!” Another wave of scarlet rose from her neck and slapped her cheeks. Lord, I’ve been around the girls so long I don’t even know how to act with a man.
When Blaine propped her up against the open door and backed away, Caroline could have sworn a part of her went with him. Her breath, at least.
“We’d better call it a night before someone calls security.”
Caroline nodded. She could hear it now. There’s some guy trying to pick up a laughing hyena in the hall. What was worse, as tired as she was, she still had a buildup of schoolgirl giggles just dying to be released if she so much as opened her mouth. What on earth was wrong with her?
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Karen said, taking Caroline by the arm.
“We’ll take care of Miz C.”
“Yeah, when Mom gets overtired, she gets kind of doofus.”
Stepping inside, Caroline gripped the brass handle of the door latch. “Thank you for being so gallant.”
Blaine tipped an imaginary hat. “My pleasure. Good night, ladies . . . and bolt the door.”
“We will, Dad.”
“See you in the morning, Mr. M,” Annie said.
Easing the door shut after Blaine turned to go, Caroline dutifully slipped the bolt into place and then floated into the bathroom, lifted by the clamor of her fairy tale–infected heart’s Good night, sweet prince. But when she stubbed her toe on the marble threshold, reason had its say. He was just being the gentleman his Atlanta-born mama raised him to be. Caroline sat on the toilet lid and rubbed her protesting toe, her lips pulling into a wistful smile.
But thank you, Neta Madison, for bringing me the Cinderella moment à la your son’s dance lessons. It might be sensible shoes tomorrow, but for tonight, it was glass slippers all the way.
The moonlight madness of the night before gave way to a peek-aboo sun above the surrounding mountains and sleep-deprived, grumpy faces the following morning. It was hard enough for Caroline to get ready, much less ride herd over the girls, who kept hogging the bathroom. Resigned to using the room mirror, Caroline stood before it in her sleep shirt and rubbed makeup remover on her eyes before she realized the tissues were in the bathroom.
“Annie, honey,” she called out, padding over to the door in her bare feet, “hand me out some tissues or toilet paper?” Okay, Caroline knew the experts insisted on cotton balls or pads, but the experts couldn’t afford to keep her, Annie, and Annie’s friends stocked with them.
“What?” Annie called from the other side of the locked door.
“Unlock the door. I need to get some toilet—”
“Hey, Dad,” Karen said, throwing open the connecting door behind Caroline. “You ready yet?”
Caroline jerked her head around to see Blaine Madison sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, a telephone pressed to his ear.
“Karen, I’m not ready,” she cried. Not with a crumpled T-shirt touting a Winnie the Pooh “Tiggertude” and raccoon circles around the eyes. And her hair was as wild woman as it gets before a morning brushing.
Blaine, on the other hand, while unshaved and still in a pair of sweatpants, looked fine in the most flattering sense of the word.
Mother Nature hadn’t played fair to make females so high maintenance. Caroline groaned silently as he crooked his finger at his daughter, bidding her to come in. To Caroline he afforded a crimped smile that held back at least shock, if not outright laughter.
Blaine motioned for his daughter to close the door behind her and resumed taking the messages that his secretary was reading off.
Some ground rules obviously needed to be set.
“What?” Karen mouthed.
“Hold on a minute please, Alice.” He covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Don’t ever do that again. It was rude.”
A picture of innocence, his daughter lifted her shoulders. “Do what? I mean, it’s not like anyone was naked or anything.”
Blaine’s voice took on a hint of Karen’s exasperation. “It isn’t proper for unmarried adults to see each other—” He groped for the word, the image of Caroline in a rumpled sleep shirt adorned with Tigger now indelibly etched in his mind. She’d reminded him of a wide-eyed raccoon caught in its mischief. Of course, he doubted he appeared any less startled.
“Dad, you’re gonna see her in a swimsuit,” Karen reminded him, as if she had the monopoly of wit and wisdom in the room.
For the moment, she did.
“It’s just . . . improper,” he stammered. Talk about lame. “And if you do it again, you won’t see the light of day till school starts in September.”
“I just wanted to see if you were going to breakfast, but I don’t want to eat with a grumpy old bear.”
Grumpy old bear? He picked up the roll of antacid tablets he slept with and popped one to put out the early morning fire in his stomach.
“And I can see you’re working anyway, so I’ll just cut out and leave you to the love of your life.”
“You are the love of my life,” Blaine recovered, wishing he had a mate to carry on this argument so that he could deal with reasonable people. “But that won’t excuse you from everything you do.
Understand?”
With a big sigh and roll of her eyes to the ceiling, Karen put her hands on her hips again. “Got it. Open the door, grounded forever.
Now can I go?”
Already zeroing back in on his messages, Blaine waved her off.
“Did Mark say where he was going?”
“No, sir,” Alice replied. “He just said he’d be gone for the remainder of the week and that we’d see him Monday.”
Tightening his grip on the phone as though it were his younger brother’s neck, Blaine’s mind whirred with contingencies regarding the contract he’d just e-mailed. Mark had assured him that he’d be on hand to go over the details in case Blaine had missed something important during his whirlwind presentation.
“Do you want me to start calling around, sir?” the secretary asked.
“Have you got Mark’s black book?” Blaine asked, then winced. It wasn’t Alice’s fault. “Sorry, Alice, I don’t mean to be cynical, but—”
“I know, sir. It’s Mark.” She paused. “What about Eric Stolzman? He worked on the specs with you. He doesn’t really need Mark to give a blank approval.”
Which was about all his brother did. If only Blaine hadn’t had to rush through the presentation, no one would really need to approve it. He was a stickler for detail.
“It’s not protocol,” he said. “I set up the procedures and expect them to be followed.”
Mark always complains that he doesn’t have enough responsibility.
So I toss something important his way, and he fumbles. If his brother couldn’t follow through on the inside sales, how could he handle the outside trips he was so eager to take on?
“Never mind,” Blaine decided aloud. “I’ll go over it myself.”
“That’s not protocol either, sir,” Alice reminded him good-naturedly. She was always on him to delegate. Blaine had to delegate to Mark, who was family. He didn’t have to delegate elsewhere. He wanted, no, needed to have a finger in every pie.
“If I do it myself, I know it’s done right,” he thought aloud.
Then, remembering Alice, he added in a more gentle tone, “Unless it’s something you’re handling. You’re the best.”
“Then why don’t you listen to the best and take a few days away? Eric knows exactly how you came up with the numbers.”
“He doesn’t have the managerial eye that I have. That’s why I want you to tell him to hold the high line on the Haggarty proposal.
They won’t balk when they hear our guarantee. Knowing they can rely on Madison to deliver the best on time is an intangible asset worth paying for.” Blaine took pride in his company’s reputation.
Their bids might be high, but they were firm, no mandatory add-ons later.
“Eric may not have a managerial eye yet, but he will soon.”
Alice’s smug assumption caught him off guard. Had Eric been wooed away by a competitor? “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Because you’ll be stroked out in the hospital, or worse.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” The tension-pressed line of his lips relaxed. “In the meantime, keep your Tiggertude to yourself.”
If he couldn’t finish it before the tour left— “Excuse me,” Alice interrupted in a bewildered voice. “Did you say Tiggertude?”
Did he? The cartoon character on Caroline’s T-shirt laughed at him from the corner of his mind. Heat seeped up his neck. “I meant attitude.”
“I didn’t know you were a Pooh fan.”
Winnie-the-Pooh. That’s where he’d seen that tiger. “My daughter is.” The fact that this tiger had nothing to do with Karen and everything to do with a sleep-bedraggled woman with cute little raccoon eyes was none of Alice’s business. “Well, that wraps it up for now. I have to get to work.”
“Keep up the Tiggertude.”
“Will do. Bye.”
Blaine hung up the phone and stared at the adjoining door to his daughter’s room. Now he had an answer to her question as to why it mattered that a single guy should see a woman in a freshly bedraggled state. Because he would never shake the image from his mind, and because his secretary would never let him hear the end of this.
The hotel dining room was busy with the breakfast buffet. The efficient Señora Marron had reserved two large tables for the Edenton group.
“Dad read me the riot act on door etiquette,” Karen complained to Annie as they stood in the buffet line. “I mean, it’s not like anyone wasn’t decent.”
“Sweetie, decent doesn’t necessarily equal presentable.” Caroline maintained a gentle voice as opposed to the authoritarian tone she’d overheard earlier, beyond the adjoining door to their room.
Her urge to strangle the girl passed when she saw Karen’s crestfallen face upon her return. “I don’t know any man well enough to let him see me like that.”
Karen made a contrite grimace. “At least you didn’t threaten to ground me for the rest of my life if I did it again. I just wanted to see if he was going with us today.”
“So . . . is he coming?” Annie asked.
“He said he’d be down after breakfast. Guess he ordered in.”
“Well, he must not be too mad at you.” Caroline hugged her forlorn charge. “And I obviously didn’t scare him all the way back to PA.”
“Miz C, you couldn’t scare a flea,” the girl said with a sheepish grin, not unlike her father’s. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you mad.”
“I have,” Annie volunteered. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
“Yeah, just remember that, kid.” Caroline flicked Karen’s ponytail and, taking up a tray, focused on the long display of hot, lamp-lit, stainless steel.
The hotel offered the traditional breakfast of huevos rancheros— fried eggs on a tortilla—with a side of refried beans and chopped fresh tomato salsa laced with jalapeños. After a few wrinkled noses at some of the dishes, Caroline led the way to the reserved tables where some of the tour members waited for them.
“Where’s your dad?” Kurt asked as Karen sat down across from him.
“Getting over a bad case of grumpiness.”
“But he’ll be down in time for the tour,” Annie put in.
“Sleep well?” Dana called to Caroline from across the table.
Caroline knew from her friend’s mischievous wink that she was expecting details of the evening on the town with Blaine Madison.
“Like a dead-tired princess,” Caroline answered. Although she concentrated on seasoning her food, she could well imagine the heat in her cheeks rivaled the red glow from the buffet bulbs.
“When Cortés first saw the Indians eating scoops of beans on their tortillas in 1517,” Hector informed the group, once the salt, pepper, and ketchup had made the rounds, “he said, ‘Sight of sights.
Not only do they eat the food, but they eat the plates as well.’”
Caroline preferred using a fork and knife. She had to smile, though, at the heartfelt amens that echoed around the table after Señora Marron asked that the food be blessed by the heavenly Father. Despite their wistful sighs for a pop-tart or a bowl of cereal, most of their party bravely tried their first Mexican breakfast.
“So, did you enjoy dancing the night away with Blaine Madison?” Dana asked later, as the group gathered in the lobby for the morning tour of the Zocalo and historic center.
Caroline kept an eye on Karen and Annie, who’d wandered into the hotel gift shop. “We danced three dances to keep from getting bored, and the club tossed us out.”
“And . . . ?” Dana prompted, her voice low.
“And . . . I scuffed his shoes, dropped my rose, and finished the night with a head butt. I almost knocked him off his feet. End of story.”
Dana turned a speculative gaze on Caroline. “Sounds promising to me.”
“So promising he didn’t show up for breakfast this morning.”
Caroline raised a hand as though to stop Dana’s train of thought in its track. “Besides, I don’t want promising. I’m happy just the way I am, so don’t go reading something into nothing.”
And it was nothing . . . right? Because if it was something, Caroline didn’t want it to be. The last thing she needed was a man adding to her responsibilities, second-guessing her at every turn, as though she didn’t have enough sense to breathe on her own.
“Excusamé, señoras, but is this the walking tour?”
Caroline turned to see Blaine standing beside them. She’d been so busy watching the gift-shop door that she hadn’t seen his approach.
He did for jeans and polo shirt what a cover girl did for makeup.
“Why, Mr. Madison,” Dana said, surprised. “Do you speak Spanish?”
“Enough to get around and do a little business down here, no more.” He turned to Caroline. “I apologize for Karen this morning.
Whenever Ellie and I traveled, we always booked an adjoining room for her and a friend. She still thinks she can bob in and out at will.”
“Since you survived the shock, there’s no harm done.” Caroline glanced at her friend, whose imagination by now was surely off and running at a full gallop. “Oh, look, there’s the bus,” she said in hopes of distracting Dana. She pointed to the glass lobby front, where a large black-and-silver transport had pulled up to the curb.
“I’d better get the girls.”
“Today is the walking tour,” Dana reminded her.
Which was exactly what Blaine had just said. Where on earth was her mind?
Caroline shrugged, ignoring her friend’s smug look. “Just wake me up when we get wherever we are going.”
She wasn’t sleepy. Every inch of her five-foot-two body was on full alert. But the moment Blaine came within her radar, her wisecracking evasion of Dana’s well-meaning interest became scrambled, one thought knocking the other senseless.
“Bueno, vámonos niños,” Hector called from the lobby door, waving a red, orange, and gold fan with the tour service’s name on it. “Follow the colors of the Aztec and stay close. I promise you, there will be vendors aplenty and time for shopping later.”
Great. More distraction. Caroline filed in the line forming behind the tour guide, leaving room for Annie and Karen, who emerged from the gift shop, prodded by Blaine.
Of its own accord, her stomach fluttered as though filled with spooked butterflies. This was absurd, she reasoned. Dana’s suggestions were getting to her, in spite of Caroline’s logic. The best thing to do, to avoid fueling her friend’s overactive imagination, was to avoid Blaine. That would take care of Dana, she decided, digging through her purse. And a Rolaids will take out the butterflies.
Caroline chewed the chalky mint tablet and swallowed. It was probably the salsa on eggs anyway.