CHAPTER 2

“Caroline it is.” It was an effort not to stare at her as if she were a project to be analyzed. “And I prefer Blaine to Señor or Mr. M.”

Now, why hadn’t he just introduced himself as he usually did? His left brain had been in overdrive for so long that his less predictable right had obviously seen its chance to trip him up with memories of a happier time—even if he’d been more of an observer than participant. Blaine quickly switched back to his more comfortable, dominant nature, where whimsy had no place.

“Blaine it is.” The copper spirals of hair, barely held in check by barrettes, bounced with her nod of agreement. “Karen has told us so much about you. It’s wonderful that you were able to juggle your schedule to make the trip. I think it meant a lot to her.”

“At least the trip part.” Juggle my schedule? Jeopardizing a contract he’d been trying to win for months, putting his secretary through the wringer to reschedule airline tickets, and handing over the follow-through to his younger brother was more than a juggle. He could almost feel his blood pressure rising, just thinking about it. “And the dad part,” Caroline insisted over the dubious note in his voice. “She’s quite proud of you.”

“I am so ready for Mexico,” Karen exclaimed in front of them.

“Totally,” Annie chimed in.

A cryptic smile tugged at the corner of Blaine’s mouth. “I rest my case.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” the speaker crackled. “I’d like to . . .”

“How about case adjourned till we’re up and away?”

The stubborn purse of Caroline’s lips told Blaine she was digging in for the debate. Fortunately for him, the captain’s welcome captured her attention. As the pilot informed them that they were next in line for takeoff and that the weather conditions in Mexico City were clear skies and temperatures in the eighties, dropping to the seventies at night, Caroline’s demeanor metamorphosed from playful to strictly business.

The plane taxied to the runway, its overhead monitors dropping down from the bulkhead to play the info video on the flight safety and emergency procedures. Around him unseasoned travelers, including Caroline Spencer, tugged the laminated information sheets from the seat pockets. She oriented herself on the map of the plane with the zeal of a commando prepping for a rescue.

“First time flying?” he asked.

“Gee, ya think?” The wisecrack was more of a nervous laugh, followed promptly by a becoming color creeping to her cheeks. At the high whine of the engines revving up for takeoff, her blush drained.

“Hang on, Mom,” Annie called through the crack between the seats in front of them. “It’s going to be okay. We prayed, remember?”

Prayer or not, Caroline Spencer left the safety sheet in her lap and hung on to the seat arms with a death grip as the pilot released the brakes, launching them forward with a jerk.

Blaine resorted to distraction to help her along. “Be careful not to hit the window switch on the side there.” He nodded at the seat reclining button just shy of the woman’s bloodless fingers. “If you open that window during takeoff, the ladies behind us will get a new hairdo.”

Caroline stared at him as if he’d grown horns. He watched her slowly process his warning in the liquid green of her gaze. The corners of her mouth twitched with uncertainty. Once . . . twice . . . bull’s-eye. As the plane lifted off, pressing the passengers against the upright seat backs, she laughed hysterically, although Blaine imagined it was more of a release of tension than genuine amusement.

By the time they leveled off above a layer of white, sun-dashed clouds, her knuckles were no longer white, nor were her fingers anywhere near the seat release.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or smack you,” she said, letting out the last breath she’d tried to hold throughout the takeoff. “I—” A loud hiccup cut her off. Startled, Caroline placed a hand over her chest. “Now look what you’ve—hic—oh, rats!”

“Mom,” Annie exclaimed in a mortified voice. “They can hear you all over the plane.”

“It’s not like I can—hic—help it.”

“I could try to scare you.” Blaine pinched his cheeks between his teeth so as not to laugh outright. Each time her breath caught, her curls bounced.

“You scared me into them, thank—hic—you.” She slanted an accusing look at him. “Window switch indeed.”

“Sorry.” He was trying not to laugh. The realization tripped his train of thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even been inclined to laugh. “I had to do something to distract you before you bent the arm rest.”

“No you di—hic—dn’t.”

“Mom, puh-leeze.”

Karen chimed in with her friend. “Why don’t you two act your age?”

Blaine met Caroline’s startled, stricken look with one of his own.

“What is—hic—wrong with this picture?”

The tension from the rushed contract presentation in Toronto (had he forgotten any details?), worry about his mom, the airport hustle and shuffle from Toronto to Philly, and the less-than-gracious reward for the “juggling of his schedule” unraveled. Blaine dissolved into laughter with his gullible companion. If there was any merit to the Reader’s Digest claim that laughter is the best medicine, he might actually be able to skip the melatonin his holistic guru of a secretary had given him. Maybe this break from routine was just what he needed.

The image of the pink pom-pom lady flashed through his mind—her kind smile and words. Take a look and take a breather.

Blaine rifled through his jacket and withdrew the pink slip of paper she’d passed on to him. Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves. Psalm 127:1–2.

A mental whoa lifted the hair on Blaine’s arms and the back of his neck. Not that he believed in this kind of spiritual thing.

Take some time out for yourself. Neta Madison’s words echoed in his ear.

Blaine stared, no longer seeing, at the pink slip of paper. The stranger, the verse, and his mom—three strikes were hard to ignore. And spiritual aspect aside, there was some wisdom in the tract. Work consumed most of his waking hours and much of his sleeping ones. Maybe he did need some time off, time with his daughter and in the world outside of projects and contracts.

She was caught in a twin-bladed nightmare of embarrassment and discomfort. Worse, she was seated next to a guy who reminded her of a movie actor. What was that guy’s name? With those broad shoulders and narrow hips, he had a body a tailor could love. And his eyes matched the dark nutmeg in the tweed of his jacket. Not that she was shopping, she told herself, but she could admire the window dressing . . . or the mannequin.

Caroline winced as another hiccup stabbed her between the shoulder blades. Evidently the prayer she’d led the group in before boarding the plane about blessing their trip and keeping them safe hadn’t been specific enough about first-time-flying nerves or hiccups.

“Miz C, I saved my coffee stirrer from breakfast if you need it,” Lord, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, the plane being safe in the air and all, but shouldn’t there be atmospheric-pressure control or an oxygen bag dropping down, like on TV, to offer some relief for this? offered a boy across the aisle from Karen and Annie. “It’s a surefire cure for hiccups.”

A coffee stirrer? Caroline hesitated. She’d known Kurt Gearhardt since day care; the kid was a perennial prankster.

“I don’t know about coffee stirrers, ma’am,” a flight attendant said, appearing at her elbow, “but here’s a glass of water. There’s not much ice, so you can drink it straight down.”

Great. Annie wasn’t kidding; they had heard her all over the plane.

“Thank—hic—you.” Caroline looked at the water. She took a deep breath, but before she could get the glass to her lips, a hiccup headed it off. Some of the water sloshed on her nose.

Her handsome traveling companion pretended not to notice, but seemed absorbed in reading something on a scrap of paper. As if he could miss a gasping, convulsing, frizzy-haired woman in shock-orange sloshing water at his elbow.

“I’ll take that stirrer, Kurt.” What did she have to lose? “Now what?” she asked.

“Just hold it between your teeth like a horse’s bit and drink the whole glass of water down.”

“Oh, no.” Annie sank down into her seat, no doubt wanting no part of what she foresaw as humiliation to the nth degree.

Kurt watched from across the aisle. “You go, Miz C.” Next to him, his constant companion, Wally Peterman, leaned over to watch, shoving his black glasses up on his pug of a nose.

Caroline knew her daughter and Karen had declared the pair total nerds, but the boys had a special place in Caroline’s heart, mischief and all.

“You’re really going to go for this?” Blaine Madison remarked under his breath as she positioned the coffee stirrer in her mouth.

She took it back out. “You got a better idea? If I don’t do something soon, everyone on the plane will—hic—be spazzing with me.”

“I heard there was one born every minute,” he teased, shoving the paper into a pocket.

With a scrunched-up face, Caroline put the stick back, determined to wash away the hiccups or drown trying. What water didn’t choke her wound up doing the latter—drowning her. Now she was a wet gasping, convulsing, frizzy-haired woman in two shades of shock orange.

Unlike the teens, who responded with “Way to go” or nonverbal hysterics, Blaine was polite enough not to say, “I told you so.” Mastering the amusement tugging at his square-jawed restraint, he produced a pristine handkerchief from inside his jacket.

“You wouldn’t have a Turkish—hic—towel in there, would you?” Caroline quipped. She wished a trapdoor would open and she could drop down into the belly of the plane. Taking the handkerchief, she mopped ineffectively at her lap.

“Here, honey,” Dana Gearhardt said, offering a fistful of tissues from her seat behind her son. “You ought to know better than to listen to that son of mine.”

At that moment the attendant reappeared with a tea towel.

“You need a beach towel, Miz C,” Kurt teased from the security of his seat. While safe from Caroline, he wasn’t beyond his mother’s chiding thump on the head.

“Ow!”

“And you should know by now, young man, that we moms stick together.”

Having known Dana forever, Caroline knew that the mischief in the Gearhardt clan didn’t fall far from the tree.

Dana looked past Caroline at Blaine, and a devil dressed as Cupid practically danced in her eyes.

“That’s our Caroline. Like the watch, she takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Caroline shrugged. “And to think, I—hic—got up early to shower for nothing.”

“I could just die,” Annie groaned amid the ripple of amusement around them.

“Maybe getting up and walking to the back will help,” the attendant suggested.

Or at least get her out of the limelight. Caroline excused herself and made her way to the short line by the lavatory, meeting the sympathetic smiles of other passengers as she went.

Just ahead, Christie Butler and Amy Collier stood waiting, heads together.

“My real mom couldn’t be bothered to make the trip,” Christie was saying, “but I don’t care. My stepmom is more fun. It’s like—”

“You want to cut ahead of us, Miz C?” Amy asked, upon seeing Caroline.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Caroline answered, giving Christie an impromptu hug. “Unless you’re afraid I’m going to—hic—use up all the air in the cabin.”

“I’m more afraid of using the john,” Christie confided in a low voice. “Kurt told us about this woman who flushed before she stood up, and the vacuum held her to the seat until the plane landed.”

Caroline lifted a skeptical brow. Oh joy.

“I heard about it, too,” Amy said. “The crew tried to pull her off, but she was just stuck.”

“Can you just imagine how embarrassed she was?”

Caroline could come pretty close. She shuddered involuntarily.

Kurt could have kept that story—and his coffee stirrer—to himself.

The acoustics in the restroom did little to discredit the story. It sounded as though someone had left a window open somewhere.

The only thing more unsettling was the glimpse she caught of the red-haired wild woman in the spattered mirror. No wonder Karen’s father kept staring at her. She looked like an aged adolescent who’d lost a water balloon fight.

Not that I care what he thinks, she told herself.

Caroline pushed the button on the faucet to wash her hands. A jet of water came out, propelled by the same force that likely had vacuum-sealed some hapless passenger in the restroom for the duration of the flight. It splattered the tiny sink, the mirror, and the elbow’s worth of counter, and soaked Caroline for the second time that morning. There was no room to escape it.

“I hate flying.” With patience far short of Job’s, Caroline began mopping up the mess. “Face it, babe,” she told her double in the mirror, who now looked as if she was on the losing team of the kiddie water balloon league. “Karen’s dad must think you are the mother of mayhem. All the primping in the world won’t help you now.”

With a sigh of resignation, Caroline grabbed the bolt on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Her heart seized for the second it took to realize she was pushing it the wrong way. She tried again, and it slid with ease from the red to green position. Humiliation heating her cheeks, Caroline sidled through the bifold door with a silent Thank You, Lord, for loving Your imperfect, scatterbrained children.

Randy Gearhardt, Dana’s hubby and president of Edenton’s PTA, stepped aside so that she could get by. “Tight squeeze, eh?” he teased.

Randy was one of those civic-minded citizens who were involved in everything. Caroline had served with him and Dana on more than one fund-raising committee for the private school.

“Tell me about it . . . and watch the faucet. It’s a shower in disguise.”

“Look, I don’t know what this is about,” he apologized, “but Dana insisted I give you this.” He handed her an airline coaster with “Harrison Ford” scribbled on it.

That was who Blaine Madison looked like—a dark-haired Harrison Ford à la Sabrina. It was scary how Dana and she were so often on the same wavelength. And so far apart on others, Caroline mused, envisioning her friend loading her quiver with Cupid’s arrows. Why was it so hard for married women to accept that singles could lead normal, fulfilling lives?

When she reached her row, Blaine glanced up. “Looks like you’ve recovered after all.”

Caroline looked at him, blank. Was he seeing the mad, wet hen she’d just seen?

“The hiccups,” he prompted. “They’re gone, aren’t they?”

“Told you the coffee stirrer would work,” Kurt piped up.

The button that sealed the woman to the potty seat more likely flushed them away, Caroline thought, but she kept her observation to herself. She slid into her seat with a sheepish glance at the man next to her. “The offer still stands.”

“What offer is that?” Blaine’s clear-eyed appraisal took the cold out of the air-conditioned blast chilling her wet clothing. “To sit next to your daughter, rather than by a hiccuping, water-soaked lunatic.”

“Don’t let her fool you, Blaine,” Dana warned from across the aisle. “This is just one of Caroline’s many facets. She’s a wizard with finances, a pied piper of children, and a gem of a friend.”

“Thank you, Dana.” If her friend was trying to help, it wasn’t working. Now Caroline didn’t feel the dampness of her clothes at all. Self-consciousness had steamed them dry.

“A little cracked, maybe,” Dana added, “but a true gem.”

Blaine laughed—a short, manly, and genuine laugh. “Gems are scarce these days, even cracked ones.” He leaned over, an incorrigible grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I think I’ll keep this seat, but . . . would you like my jacket? They’ve cranked up the air-conditioning, and you’re shivering.”

Shivering? Who was shivering? Global warming could be blamed on the heat of her embarrassment. And that’s all it was.

“A lady doesn’t turn Sir Galahad down, Caroline,” Dana advised, peering over her wire-framed glasses with the authority of Miss Manners and Dr. Ruth combined. “And the flight is five hours.”

“That would be nice.” At least Caroline’s voice was working, if not her brain. It was in a stall, nose-diving all the way.

“I can’t believe it!” Karen peeked back at them through the crack in the seats. “My dad is hitting on your mom.”

“Your father is being polite,” Blaine corrected, wrapping the jacket about Caroline’s shoulders. “So mind your own business, miss.”

Caroline sank into the embrace of the suit jacket, its silk lining still full of Blaine’s warmth. She saw Karen’s face disappear from the narrow opening, replaced by Annie’s one-eyed appraisal. It was amazing the degree of disbelief that one eye could broadcast.

“Polite,” Caroline warned, before further fuss could be made. Her heart was making enough for the lot of them at the moment— drummed alternately by her daughter’s incredulity that a man might be attracted to her old mother and by the certainty that even if he was, this woman was not interested. It was going to be a long five hours.