CHAPTER 24Leaving the loud music at Banditos early would have been a relief to Caroline, if Karen weren’t so upset. John had excused himself to go to the men’s room and not returned. Perhaps it was a mother’s eye, but he hadn’t looked well to Caroline. So when Karen asked Blaine to check on the young man, Caroline concurred. John was nowhere to be found.
“He was mad,” the girl sniffed as she donned her swimsuit for an evening dip in the hotel pool.
Annie, who had made arrangements with the studded Manny to join them later, tried consoling her friend. “Look, if a guy is going to act like a jerk over something as simple as a card—”
“But it had money in it!”
You shouldn’t have taken the card in the first place, money or no.
You knew the rules. Caroline checked the admonishment. “Did you offer to repay it?”
“Yes, and he said it wasn’t worth worrying over. It was like a twenty or something.” Wearing her heartbreak on her face, Karen looked at Caroline, hungry for some sage or comforting advice.
She had none, at least none that would make a difference.
Caroline crossed the room and pulled the distraught child into her embrace. “He’s right about that, sweetie. But it’s easier said than done.”
“And on the bright side, you wouldn’t have seen him after we left anyway,” Annie pointed out. “You’ve lost two hours at the club tonight and maybe a couple of hours tomorrow. No biggie.”
Karen shot Annie a grudging look. “You have Manny.”
“And you have all of us.” Caroline gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“And Kurt and Wally,” Annie called from the hotel balcony.
Leaning over, she waved. “Hey, down there.”
Alarm shot Caroline’s voice. “Annie, be careful.”
Her daughter turned, reentering the room. “Mom, the rail is a concrete wall.”
“Great, Kurt and Wall-eye,” Karen mumbled, tugging a T-shirt over her head.
“Aren’t you going to change, Mom?” Annie asked.
Caroline picked up her carryall bag. “I’m equally satisfied to watch the moon and stars over the ocean with a Cocabananaberry fruit thingy.”
“It’s a bay, Mom.”
Caroline gave her condescending offspring a light cuff on the head. “Well, someone needs to let the water know that. It nearly drowned me our first day here.”
When the elevator doors opened, the two elderly sisters they’d met at La Quebrada were inside. Dressed to the nines in spangles and sparkles, Eloise gave Caroline a big hug.
“A little birdie told us that you and that handsome Blaine have made it official.”
Caroline’s face flushed warm. “He asked me this morning.”
“So your friend said,” Irene told her. She frowned. “Now, what was her name?”
“Gearhardt, Reenie,” her sister answered. “And she was just as tickled as we are for you. I think you’ve got yourself a good ’un.”
Caroline tugged Karen under her arm and Annie under the other. “Three good ’uns.” The way Dana had carried on when Caroline told her about the bizarre proposal, it was a wonder it hadn’t made the world news network.
The door opened at the busy lobby. Annie held the elevator until Eloise could wheel Irene off.
“So where are you two off to?” Caroline asked.
“We’re headed for a nightclub tour.” Irene held up two tickets, her gaze as bright as the chandelier overhead.
“Going to paint the town,” her sister chimed in.
“Paint the town?” Annie quirked her brow at Eloise.
The elder sister laughed so that her padded shoulders cast darts of light in all directions. “We’re gonna get down,” she explained with a mischievous wiggle, “and have a blast.”
“That is way cool,” Annie said.
“Yeah, you look awesome,” Karen agreed.
She was trying to be cheerful, but Caroline’s heart ached for the youngster. Granted, it was child’s play at this point, but Caroline knew the pain of abandonment firsthand—of having the man she thought was too good to be true turn out to be false.
“And there’s our bus,” Eloise announced, pointing to the curb beyond the lobby entrance, where a huge diesel-belching vehicle had pulled up. She gave Annie a wink. “Tomorrow we fish and ride horses on the beach.”
“Then we go home and collapse,” Irene sighed as her sister wheeled her toward the bus.
“It’d be neat if we got on the same plane,” Annie observed as the vivacious duo headed out.
“At least we’d get to hear about the riding and fishing.” With a disappointed shrug, Karen let the idea of the private island tour they’d tried to book go as if it were the hope of the world . . . next to John.
Caroline corralled Karen with her arm as they headed down the corridor leading to the pool deck. “Hey, grass hasn’t exactly been growing under your feet. We’ve not stopped a minute, except to grab a few hours of shut-eye, since the night before we left.”
“Buenas noches, señora and señoritas.” Blaine stood up when Caroline and company entered the pool compound. “I was about to come looking for you.”
Caroline wrinkled her nose at him. “Girl talk.”
He kissed it. “I have a round of Cocabananaberries on order.”
Slipping his arm around Caroline’s waist, he led her to a pair of chaises. On a table next to them, hotel towels were piled in disarray amid the miscellaneous belongings of the boys in the water.
“Yo, dude!”
Caroline winced as Annie called out to the young man with the wet, wilted Mohawk. With a running start, she dived into the water and bobbed up in the opposite end of the pool like a sea sprite— who spoke like one of the guys. Mom was definitely going to have to spend more time working on her daughter’s feminine side.
“Karen, catch.” Kurt tossed a foam disc to the girl, and the game was on.
Once Caroline was seated and the skirt of her sundress neatly tucked about her, Blaine shoved his chaise against hers and settled there. Undaunted by the armrests that separated them, he covered her forearm and hand with his. His electric warmth spread from skin to skin, nerve to nerve, soothing and stirring at the same time.
Just his nearness made her feel alive, safe, and protected—things she’d not felt in ages.
“I got it!” Karen shouted from the shallow end of the pool.
Kurt intercepted the disc and got a prompt ducking. With accompanying screams and giggles, the two scrambled for the disk.
Caroline smiled. With three-to-two odds, chances were good the night might be salvaged for the girls after all. As for her . . .
She stole a sidewise glance at her companion, who watched the horseplay with a paternal eye. His square jaw relaxed when Kurt emerged victorious and struggled out of Karen’s reach.
As for Caroline, the one-to-one odds were just right.
The man wasn’t right in the head, Caroline thought. Or maybe she was still dreaming—with a phone stuck to her ear.
“Come on, sleepyhead,” Blaine cajoled on the other end. “You can walk, and I’ll jog circles around you. You promised.”
“It sounded good in the moonlight.” Caroline squinted at the clock radio. Six o’clock. What happened to a day of rest and packing before tomorrow’s departure?
“Some time alone. Just you and me. Then a private breakfast on the restaurant balcony overlooking the bay.”
That wasn’t fair. “As I said, it sounded good in the moonlight.”
He chuckled. “I’ll be waiting outside your door in five minutes.”
Caroline stifled a yawn. “Okay, but I’m warning you, I really don’t do mornings.”
At the closing click of the connection, her eyes flew open. Five minutes? What, did he think he was talking to another man? A woman needed at least thirty to get rid of the raccoon eyes.
Blaine gave her ten. She opened the door at his gentle knock and took the note he’d written to remind the sleeping girls of their whereabouts and that they were to have breakfast with the Gearhardts as arranged the night before. Leaving the paper on the vanity, Caroline slipped out into the hall.
“What you see is what you get,” she said, raising her hands as though to deny any responsibility for her disheveled state. “Ten minutes’ worth.”
“You look like a million dollars.”
“Worn, wrinkled, and not all there?” she quipped as he bent over to kiss her. His smile melded against her lips. Had she brushed her teeth? Lord, tell me I brushed my teeth.
“Mmm,” he said, drawing a breath away. “Sweeter than wine.”
“Old or new?” Her wisecrack practically touched his mouth.
Heavenly Father, when he looks at me like that, I don’t feel the least bit angelic.
“I’m going to have to teach you to accept compliments, sweet Caroline.” His voice was husky.
Somewhere inside Caroline, little curls of delight wound even tighter. The wall at her back left no room for escape, but who wanted to? Her breath quickened. Their noses touched.
The elevator bell rang.
Blaine broke away from her like a boxer at the gong, but the long, lingering gaze he gave her more than made up for the withdrawal of his body heat. He obviously liked what he saw, but as they rode the elevator down, Caroline wondered if they were looking at the same woman.
The one in the mirror was stripped of makeup—at least the raccoon eyes were gone—and sported a wild, half-cocked ponytail gathered into a yellow scrunchy. Her new Mexico T-shirt all but covered her shorts. Caroline turned slightly to see if the back was as bad as the front. No, it was worse. Something hung out the back leg of her jogging shorts. She groaned inwardly on recognizing the tail of her nightshirt peeking out from underneath. Caroline would have sworn she’d removed it. How could she get her Wonder support on under two shirts and not notice?
Discreetly, she tried tucking it back in the leg of her shorts, while Blaine held the elevator for an Asian couple. Naturally, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a sportswear catalog. He’d even shaved.
Maybe to keep her from getting whisker burn. It wouldn’t do for the mother of one of the students to sport a telltale rash around the lips.
Caroline gave herself a mental slap, but a devil of a smile would not leave her lips.
An hour later she was still smiling as she walked barefoot along the waterfront while Blaine jogged back and forth in circles around her. Since no container was on hand, the seashells that had caught her eye filled her huaraches.
“What’s that about?” Blaine asked, tracing the tilt of her lips with his finger. “I didn’t think you did mornings.”
“I’m having second thoughts,” she demurred, running her hand lightly over his damp chest.
“On jogging?” he teased. His gaze devoured her as if she were a goddess, not the middle-aged mom of a teenager. But then, he hardly looked the father of one either. He looked like . . . like a man hungry for the woman in his arms.
“I love you, Caroline.” His hoarse whisper took the very breath of the surf away, drying the beach as it dried her mouth.
She moistened her lips. “Me too.” No, that wasn’t right. “I mean—”
Unable to think, Caroline acted. Rising on tiptoe, she kissed him, transformed into a beautiful, vibrant woman without inhibition by the sun-streaked sky and glittering water. The cry of the gulls gave an urgency to the give and take of their lips, of the hands that alter- nately embraced and caressed. They dropped to their knees, and all the tender moments shared between them mounted like kindling to an all-consuming flame of sensation and emotion . . .
And water. A solid wall of it slammed into the two of them, bowling them over like duckpins. Gasping and sputtering, Caroline scrambled like a blind crab on the sand, uncertain if she was headed for dry land or water. Suddenly, a pair of strong arms hauled her out of the fierce clutch of the receding wave and to her feet.
“Wha—” The sharp press of Blaine’s arm against her abdomen forced the remainder of her water-filled gasp out.
“Easy, sweet.” Dragging her beyond the reach of the rogue wave, he brought her upright, turning her to face him. “Are you okay?”
He was soaked to the skin, like her, and covered with sand.
Rivulets of water caressed his jaw where her hand had been only moments before. Just like an old Hollywood movie except— “This wasn’t in the script,” she coughed. At his bewildered look, she explained, tugging up her shorts before the weight of the water soaking them pulled them to her knees. “I saw this in a movie, and it didn’t turn out like this. Lancaster and Kerr never wound up bottom over teacups.”
Blaine’s beautiful, deep laugh filled the air. Grabbing her up, he swung her around until he nearly lost his balance in the sand.
“I love you, Caroline Spencer. I love this woman!” he shouted, drawing Caroline’s attention to the pool attendant on the other side of the decorative concrete wall. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
The image Caroline had seen in the elevator flashed through her mind. Now soaked and sand-covered? She looked at Blaine with incredulity, an old adage striking her with equal wonder. Love really was blind.
Whether the pool boy understood or not, he nodded, his white smile glinting in stark contrast to his tropical brown skin and crop of raven black hair.
“How about a quick shower and breakfast, sweet Caroline?”
Sweet Caroline. Music to her ears. Caroline nodded. “Sounds good to me. Let me fetch my shoes.”
As miraculous as the love she’d found, her huaraches had been tossed by the rogue wave onto what was now dry beach, but the shells were scattered everywhere.
“You can’t take them with you anyway,” Blaine consoled her, playing Prince Charming as he helped her on with her slippers after they’d both rinsed off under the beachfront shower.
Swathed in oversized beach towels, they ambled arm in arm into the hotel. Some of the guests were lining up for one of the bus tours as they entered the elevator. Offloading guests met Caroline and Blaine with knowing smiles. Did the glow she felt inside show that much—or did they just look ridiculous?
Caroline glanced at her mirror image. Maybe a little of both, she decided, too happy to care. At the door to her room, she unzipped the pocket of her shorts and got out her key. She could well imagine what the girls would say.
“Meet you in half an hour?” Blaine said as the green light signaled it was okay to open it.
“Sure.” Since love was blind, that was plenty of time. “Unless the girls hog the shower,” she said over her shoulder.
He kissed her smile and pushed the door further open. “What the—”
Caroline turned to see what had shocked him and caught her breath. The room was a wreck. Suitcases were tossed around, souvenirs dumped from their bags, clothes strewn everywhere.
Alarm pummeled Caroline’s voice as she started inside. “Annie?
Karen?”
Blaine grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
He stepped past her and glanced through the open door of the bathroom. Seeing no one, he moved farther into the room, stepping over the scattered items. Caroline held her breath. Dear God, let the girls be safe.
Opening the door to the adjoining room, Blaine dashed inside. A moment later he was back, face blanched. “Mine’s been tossed too.”
“Where are the girls?” Caroline hardly recognized her voice—or Blaine’s.
“Gone.”