There was little applause at the end of the children’s play, not because it wasn’t enjoyed, but because, Corinne had observed, it wasn’t the custom among the general Indio population. Nonetheless, appreciation brimmed in the audience’s demeanor—nodding heads, a raised hand here or there, and eyes bright with enjoyment. It was an unqualified success.
Antonio showed his iodine-smeared hands as he was driven from the stage by General Seguin’s minipatriots. Now the actors lined up at the head of the other orphans to lead a noisy parade accented with wooden blocks, painted cans beaten with sticks, and plastic whistles, their eventual destination the petate mats that Corinne had spread on the lawn.
“You really enjoy working with the children. It shows over you completamente,” said Diego Quintana from his seat on the mat beside her. The electric lantern lights of the plaza twinkled in the ebony of his lash-fringed gaze.
The son of the mayor of Mexicalli, Diego had a complexion not quite as dark as the cocoa or rosewood of the Indios, due to a mix of Spanish ancestry, and he bore the aristocratic high cheekbones and strong jawline of his Aztec ancestors. Clad in a loose-fitted poet shirt over Levis in love with his long, lean legs, he looked the Bohemian artist that he was. His exquisite handcrafted jewelry was sold in high-end stores throughout Mexico.
Corinne smiled. “But for God’s grace, I might have been one of them.”
Her answer had been the same to her parents two months before, when she’d broached the subject in their posh West Chester home after the health scare had precipitated her search for the medical records of her biological parents.
Her father had treated her as though she’d lost her mind.
“I absolutely forbid it. This is insanity.” Daniel Diaz slammed his fork down, rattling the turn-of-the century china dessert plate. “What if you get sick? The nearest decent hospital is three hours in either direction, if you’re lucky. And I use the word decent loosely.” “Daddy, I’m as healthy as the proverbial horse. The lump was fibrous. It’s gone,” Corinne assured him. “But the coincidences are too much to be anything less than God’s calling. He led us to Hogar de los Niños and Father Menasco at a time when my training is exactly what is needed.”
“You talk to her,” Dr. Diaz implored his wife.
“Talk to him, Mom,” Corinne joined in, seeking her mother’s alliance as well.
Kathleen Butler Diaz chewed her bottom lip, glancing with apprehension from husband to daughter and back. “I don’t want her to go away any more than you do, Daniel, but she is twenty-seven. And with the investments from the money my mother left her, she doesn’t have to work.”
“She doesn’t have to work period.” Lips pressed into a hard line, Daniel stared at his untouched flan hard enough to melt it. “First she wants to become a nurse. Two years later, she decides to become a teacher. Now she is to be a social worker. What next?” He shifted his gaze to Corinne. “An astronaut, maybe?”
“Daddy.” Corinne covered his clenched hand with hers. “Can’t you see that it was no accident that my medical scare led me to Hogar de los Niños?”
“What about the position you accepted at Edenton Christian Academy?” her mother reminded her.
“Exactly,” Corinne agreed, but not, she knew, for the reason her mother intended. “How coincidental is it that the academy happens to be sponsoring a mission right in Mexicalli? It’s got to be God.”
Her parents’ silence was the first indication that she was making headway.
“I know that you would rather I remain around Philadelphia, but what if the ones who placed me in your care had ignored their calling?”
Her mother closed her eyes.
One down, one to go.
“It’s not forever,” Corinne went on. “And you know how hard I’ve been working with Edenton Christian and Father Menasco to get grants for the renovation.” Her social work internship contacts and fluent Spanish had gone a long way to help her with both local and Mexican authorities.
Daniel Diaz cocked his head at her. “How long is ‘not forever’?
” “Until the orphanage has expanded to the renovated hacienda. Then I’ll come home and . . .” She grinned, mischief lighting in her gaze. “And then we’ll talk about this astronaut idea.”
“So, might I hope that you will stay until you find your real mother?” Diego asked, breaking into her reminiscence.
“If I find her, I find her,” Corinne answered. She meant it. God had given her good parents and good health. It would be nice to meet her birth mother, but Corinne’s needs had been more than met. “Either way, my place is here for the time being.”
“And for that, I and all of my village are thankful.” Diego gave her a slight salute.
Corinne laughed. “You are a shameful flirt, amigo.”
But he possessed such a flair for it that even this twenty-first-century woman didn’t mind—she knew better than to take him seriously.
Her housekeeper had warned her from the start that Diego was between señoritas at the moment. Soledad’s niece was his last live-in, sealing his fate both in heaven and on earth with her aunt. Now the lithesome beauty was in Mexico City pursuing a career in dance.
“Will you never take me with seriousness, mi corazón?”
“I am not your heart, I am your amiga, nada mas.”
Sometimes Corinne wondered if she’d ever take a guy seriously. To date, the distance she kept between herself and the opposite sex had spared her untold grief and disappointment, in her estimation. Forewarned was forearmed—and she’d seen enough to collect an arsenal.
Surely there had to be someone for her, someone responsible and faithful, someone she could admire and respect. But where was he, she thought, glancing through a break in the trees at the moon. Shades of a romantic song played in her mind, the lyrics changed to reflect the void in her heart. Somewhere out . . . where?
A cacophony of banging, rattling, and drumming clashed with the melody in her mind. Making enough “music” for twice their number, the children of Hogar de los Niños marched toward her in a single line. Undaunted by the line she’d drawn in the romantic sand, Diego helped her organize the proud fiesta participants in rows on the woven palm-leaf mats until staff teacher María Delgado brought up the rear.
Ordinarily, the children would be preparing for bed by this time, but this was fiesta, and the rules had been bent so they might stay long enough to see the fireworks. By the time everyone was situated and liquados—frozen fruit drinks—had been passed out, the mariachi band started playing, entertaining the crowd while rickety towers made of scrap wood were set up on each side of the stage.
“And a strawberry sweet for the sweetest.” Leaning over the head of one of the seated children, Diego handed her a treat from the box tray he’d used to carry them. As Corinne accepted it, he gave her a peck on the cheek and backed away in roguish satisfaction. All he needed was a mask.
The not-unpleasant shock that filled Corinne’s mind dissipated at the sound of a male voice.
“Got any lime?” Mark Madison piped up behind her. Stepping into the periphery of her vision, he added for Diego’s benefit, “No kiss on the side, gracias.”
One velvet black eyebrow arched over curious appraisal, Diego offered Mark his choice of the last few liquados in the box. “Help yourself to them, Señor . . . Madison, I presume? Señorita Corina has told me of you,” he continued, extending his free hand. “I am Diego Quintana, a local artisan.”
Mark shook his hand. “I assure you, Señor Quintana, that I am not as degenerate as she would have you think. We’ve shared a regrettable history.”
Heat crept to the surface of Corinne’s face at the possible interpretation that she might have more of a “history” with Mark Madison than platonic. She put it right at once. “I told Diego nothing regarding what little of your character I’ve been exposed to, Mr. Madison. He can judge that for himself even as we speak.”
With a billowing puff of skirt, she sat down on the mat and patted the place beside her. But before the gaze she raised could invite Diego, Mark dropped down in the place intended for the other man and lifted his frozen drink in a salute.
“Just living up to my reputation, sweetness.”
I am not your sweetness, nor will I ever be! Corinne chewed the words and swallowed them, sooner than launch another offensive before she’d assembled sufficient defense for his inevitable retaliation. Instead, she took a handful of the napkins from Diego’s tray as he sat down on her other side and, leaning forward, handed them to a boy in the row in front of her to distribute.
“So, Diego, are you related to the mayor?” Mark asked behind her back.
“I am his son, but . . .” Diego lifted surrendering hands. “I have no ambition to politics.” He shifted the conversation as Corinne straightened. “So you have come to change the Ortiz hacienda to suit Hogar de los Niños?”
“Yes, that’s the plan. Do you know any reliable contractors?”
Clean and scented with aftershave, Mark Madison had made a remarkable transformation. His normally light-colored hair was wet and shades darker. Combed back off his face, curling at odds with the collar of his light blue shirt, he reminded her too much of the hero in one of her favorite movies, Romancing the Stone—complete with the dimple in the middle of his chin. She’d forgotten the dimple, perhaps missing it earlier due to a coating of road dust and swine sweat.
“Most of the contractors would have to come in from Cuernavaca,” Diego answered.
“What about the Three Juans?” Corinne suggested. “Two of the brothers live here, and the other has a home in the mountains not far from here.”
Besides, she didn’t come here for dimples. She came to serve God and His orphaned babes. And the suave Mark Madison with his reputation as a lady-killer was definitely not her type.
“They would make your project, how do you say . . . interesting,” Diego admitted with a decidedly amused smirk.
Mark frowned. “Why do they call themselves Three Ones?”
“Tres Juanos, actually.” Corinne succumbed to a grin. “Juan Pablo, Juan Pedro, and Juan Miguel.” At Mark’s head-jerk reaction, she laughed. “I kid you not. Juan Pablo is an excellent plumber—”
“With million-dollar words and creative”—Diego made quotation marks with his fingers—“projectations.”
“Juan Pedro is an electrician.”
“When he’s sober,” Diego added.
“And Juan Miguel is a sculptor who does plaster and masonry.”
Mark jumped in at the pause. “What’s Juan Miguel’s problem?”
Corinne glanced at Diego. “Nothing . . . nothing really.”
Mark gave a short, derisive laugh. “This is a joke, isn’t it?”
“No, señor, es verdad,” Diego assured him. “But Juan Miguel is an artisan like myself. So when he is involved with his sculpture, he does not like to be distracted.”
“And when would that be?” Mark asked. “His sculpting hours, that is.”
Diego shrugged. “Whenever he is inspired, cómo no?”
A sputtering hiss of fire from the stage area highlighted Mark’s bemused expression and ended the conversation as the pyrotechnic show began.
“No Mexicalli holiday is complete without fireworks.” Having had to step off the mad, spinning carousel of life back home to the mañana schedule of the mountain village herself, Corinne was spurred by a twinge of sympathy. Leaning in close, she shouted in his ear, “Welcome to Mexicalli. It’s a world unto itself.”
That was an understatement if Mark had ever heard one. If anyone had told him even a month ago that he’d be in a mountain village, surrounded by ragamuffins in paper uniforms, watching a corner market fireworks display as it threatened to burn up the shuddering wooden towers holding it, and sitting on the grass with an attractive, if bristly, señorita, he’d have said the speaker had been into the loco juice. Okay, maybe he’d sit on the grass with the señorita, but the rest was straight out of the Twilight Zone. He still hadn’t recovered from the runaway donkey sedan with the aristocratic octogenarian at the reins.
Mark laughed to himself. He didn’t know life could be so crazy without the help of some intoxicant—or so interesting, for that matter. And what’s the deal with Corinne Diaz and Diego Quintana? he wondered, watching as Diego shared a few words that put a smile on the lady’s face. Not that Mark cared. She was a little too goody-goody and self-righteous for his taste—like big brother Blaine.
“Antonio!” Near the front row, the young woman who’d herded the children from the stage reached over and tugged on the tunic of the French general, who had jumped to his feet in excitement.
“Hey, General,” Mark called out. “Come sit back here with me and you won’t block the others’ view.”
With a grin exploding on his face like the Roman candle shooting into the sky, the youngster glanced at the shepherding teacher for permission. At her nod of approval, he scurried to the back row and dropped to his knees on the mat. “Did you ever see such beauty, jefe?”
Mark exchanged a smile with the dark-haired teacher, holding her shy, lingering gaze until Antonio jabbed him with an elbow. In the bright flash of a floral display, she looked to be no more than eighteen. Maybe she was just a helper or one of the older orphans. Regardless, she was too young to bat those long seductive lashes at someone his age.
“It’s muy grande, no?”
“Very grand,” Mark answered.
Someone his age. Suddenly thirty-two seemed ancient as he fixed his attention on the sky exposed through the trees.
A few more pinwheels spurting colored fire that lasted a minute or so, some Roman candles, and a finale of shooting streams with secondary spirals, and the very grand show was over. The air was filled with the scent of the burnt incendiary powder, while clouds of dissipating smoke hovered in the sky over the plaza.
The children were hustled to their feet and lined up for the march back to the orphanage.
“Everyone look to the front and follow María,” Corinne instructed.
So that was her name. There’d been too much confusion before the fireworks for a proper introduction.
As if realizing that she’d been remiss, Corinne turned to him. “Mark, this is María Delgado, a very capable aide as you can see. María, this is Mark Madison, the gentleman who has come to make over the Hacienda Ortiz.”
“Mucho gusto, María,” Mark said across the sea of little heads between them.
Dipping in a polite curtsy, María nodded. “El gusto es mio, Señor Madi—”
She broke off with an apologetic smile to collar the little boy who passed out the napkins earlier. Fascinated by a stray dog begging food from a nearby picnicking family, he’d started to wander off.
“Okay, are we ready?” Corinne said as Paquito was brought back into the line.
She began to sing the familiar tune of “Jesus Loves Me” in Spanish. By the second line, the orphans chimed in, accompanying themselves with the clatter and bang of their instruments. Mark had never thought of the tune as a marching song, but it worked, moving the children through appreciative onlookers who were staying for the music and dance planned afterward.
Cristo me ama,
Cristo me ama,
Cristo me ama,
La Biblia dice así.
The chorus and chaos brought some of the citizens who lived along the steep, winding street to their doorways to wave as the procession moved by. Encouraged, the marchers increased their volume and vigor from block to block until the cobbled street gave way to the paved road leading across open fields to Hogar de los Niños.
While hardly Mark’s scene, it was more entertaining than he’d have expected. Not that he hadn’t been tempted by Diego’s invitation to remain behind for the dancing. A drink would have gone well about now, but oddly enough, he was too tired, not to mention sore. His backside hurt from the jolting ride in the truck, his legs felt the toll of the vertical landscape, and for whatever reason— most likely fatigue—there was an aching void making itself known in his chest. It seemed to grow larger with each line the homeless children sang.
“Cristo me ama,” Antonio sang at the top of his lungs.
The earnestness of his youthful spirit flowed from his hand to Mark’s.
Jesus loves me. Mark’s lips quirked with skepticism. He supposed he might have been Antonio’s age the last time he had sung that song and believed it. But the real world wasn’t a Jesus world. And real love was hard to find.
Aside from what he felt for his mother, Mark wasn’t even certain he knew what real love was. What began as the real thing for him usually wound up being infatuation or desire. He’d seen Victoria’s Secret’s angels, eager to lift him to heavenly heights, turn into vamps intent on draining the life out of him and his bank account.
“Pues, jefe,” Antonio said when they reached the play yard of the orphanage, “remember that I am still available if you need a helper.” The tattered general drew himself up to his tallest and gave Mark a salute.
“Will do, amigo,” Mark replied. He was beginning to see how easily his adopted nephew, Berto, had wormed his way into Blaine’s and Caroline’s hearts.
“I am not afraid of the ghost that stole my brother.”
Jolted, Mark stared at the boy. “Ghost?” He glanced to where Corinne and María were dismissing the children to their respective huts. “What ghost?”
Antonio looked at Mark as if he had the IQ of an amoeba. “The angry miner who killed the first mayor of Mexicalli—the husband to the good Señora Lucinda.”
Come to think of it, Blaine had mentioned something about a ghost. Then the rest of Antonio’s words registered. “Wait, what’s this about your brother being stolen?”
“We think Enrique ran away.” Corinne had stepped over and put an arm around Antonio’s shoulders. “But my little brother in Christ would never think of leaving me, would you, hermanito?”
Antonio’s bravado faded, giving way to a slight tremble of his lower lip. “My brother did not run away. He would never leave me. The ghost took Enrique.”
“There is no such thing as a ghost, Antonio,” Corinne insisted. “And even if there was, I heard it was la Señora Lucinda, who loved children so much.”
“Then maybe she wanted a little boy for her own,” the boy suggested. Antonio drew his arm across his running nose.
That was another problem with kids. Something was always leaking or running. Computers couldn’t hold a candle to the paper waste produced by child care.
Unaffected, Corinne dug a tissue from her skirt pocket and promptly policed the boy’s nose and arm. “Regardless . . .” she said, kissing the top of his head. “We pray every day for his return, yes?”
“S-sí,” the boy sniffed. “Jesus will bring him back.”
The glaze of dismay in the look Corinne gave Mark over the child’s head prodded him into action.
“And until then, we have lots of work to do, right?” What in the devil was he going to get a kid to do? “That is, if it’s okay with your teachers at the orphanage.”
Before his eyes, Corinne’s dismay turned to gratitude with a smile that stalled his impulse to rescind the invitation.
“I’m certain we can spare Antonio after his lunch and recess. I’ll talk to Father Menasco tomorrow.”
With a loving pat, she sent Antonio toward the doorway where María waited for the last of the strays. Once the door to the large Quonset hut dormitory closed behind them, she faced him, suddenly awkward.
“I know I apologized earlier, but . . .” She looked away as if the words she sought might be hiding in the lilies growing around the entrance. “That was very good of you to take Antonio under your wing. His brother’s disappearance has made him so unpredictable. I’m afraid he might be tempted to go look for Enrique . . . . Not even the police have any idea where the boy is.”
“No theories at all?”
“There are a number of possibilities. Sometimes older children are lured off by men who make them beg on the streets to support them. You know, like Fagin in Oliver Twist,” she explained. “Or he could have wandered into the abandoned mines up in the mountains. If he did—” She broke off with a shudder.
“Yeah, I remember Blaine saying the hills were riddled with silver mines.”
“But the ones under Mexicalli’s mountain were depleted in the early twentieth century . . . and most are sealed.” She heaved a resigned sigh. “There were volunteer search parties of villagers who know this area well, but Enrique wasn’t found.”
“And the murdering ghost?”
She shrugged. “As far as the records show, Diego Ortiz died of natural causes, leaving Lucinda a widow. But the Indios are very superstitious.” She chuckled. “Sometimes it will make you want to tear your hair out. The work ethic is strong, but unpredictable.”
“Like the Three Juans?” he asked.
“Like our Three Juans.” Her laugh was as melodic as her voice. “But at least with local help, you can easily look them up when they don’t show up for work.”
Mark grimaced. “I think I’ll stick to licensed contractors.”
“Suit yourself.”
Something about the riveting twitch of her lips both fascinated Mark and made him wary at the same time.
Crossing her arms, Corinne looked over at the parsonage. Dim light shone from one window. “Well, the morning comes early, and it looks like Father Menasco left the light on in the guest room and turned in early. You know where to go?”
Mark nodded. The parsonage was an L-shaped structure with a courtyard wall closing in the other two sides. Fortunately the guest room opened onto the patio, as did all the rooms. And Mark had already made friends with the priest’s dog, Monty—short for Montezuma.
“So where do you bunk?” he asked, wondering if Corinne slept in the dormitory.
She nodded downhill to where the lake shone like a moon-silvered mirror, surrounded by trees and dwellings. “I have a room at a bed-and-breakfast on the lake—”
“Not on my account, I hope,” he interjected.
The fine, aristocratic lines of her profile against the blue-black backdrop of the night sky reminded him of one of those velvet paintings sold in souvenir shops all over the country—a señorita with dark hair pulled tight from her face into a wild cascade; a faraway look in her luminous eyes; and bronzed shoulders bared just enough by the ruffle of her white embroidered neckline to set the imagination afire.
“No, I just needed the space and . . . maintenance,” she added, turning to face him. Her smile distracted Mark before he could latch onto the word maintenance. “But I’m hoping that your efforts will soon change that and spare me the expense.”
He’d clearly mistaken faraway for calculating. “How’s that?” He wasn’t going to fall for that Spanish angel-with-a-plan look. Besides, at any moment, the pinch-mouthed shrew could emerge.
“I’m hoping that you’ll get the downstairs plumbing working right, so that I can move my things into the hacienda. It works, but has some strange quirks.”
“You’re not afraid of the ghost . . . ghosts?” he asked, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“I am cautious, not superstitious.”
The upturned curve of her lips set off warning bells Mark didn’t even know he had, and all of them said Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Still, no gentleman would allow a lady to walk alone at night. Besides, with the winding and dipping streets of Mexicalli, it could be five times as far as the crow flew.
“At least let me walk you to your B and B. It’s fiesta and probably not safe for an attractive señorita to be out alone.” He could almost hear his legs telling him it wasn’t safe for him to make promises they had no intention of keeping, but . . .
“Thanks, but no thanks. I enjoy the quiet retreat alone with God. Helps me unwind after a long day,” she explained, the first sign of her waning energy emerging in a sigh. “Besides, I have a black belt in kickboxing.”
Hello. Nix the angel wings. Add a nunchaku slung over each of those deceptively delicate shoulders. “Well, in that case, I’ll just thank you for acknowledging the possibility of my redemption.” Without forethought, Mark bent down and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek.
Both of them backed away, equally startled by the impulse. Chaste wasn’t his style, but today had disrupted the status quo big time. Uncertain what to expect, Mark watched disbelief freeze on Corinne’s face. Finally they parted. Instead of erupting with an ear-splitting Bruce Lee heeyah accompanied by a kick below the belt, she spoke.
“You’re welcome.” With yet another backward step, she pivoted and started down a beaten path that Mark had missed earlier in his rush to shower and join the fun at the plaza. “Good night, Mr. Madison. Sleep well.”
Mark swallowed the urge to insist she call him by his given name. He liked living on the edge, not astraddle it.