Paper Moon (19 page)

“Yes, a ballroom behind the front entrance. It would make a good gymnasium with its high ceiling. The living quarters are to one side of it and the sleeping quarters to the other. All the rooms, of course, open onto the veranda as the many doors show.” The priest's gaze was aglow at the potential, as though he could envision the many quarters for his homeless, parentless charges.

“Definitely a fixer-upper,” Blaine said to no one in particular.

Randy clapped him on the back. “What say we see just how much fixer-uppin' it needs.”

Whether the water nymph or Blaine's stern warning had robbed the teens of their rambunctious mood, they were far more subdued when Menasco opened the oak-paneled double doors to the foyer of the house. A two-pronged stairwell rose gracefully from either side around its perimeter to the second-floor balcony, forming a ceiling over a first-floor frescoed archway with intricately carved dust-laden doors.

“The ballroom is through there.”

It was elegant enough, even in its state of disrepair, to make a day care owner feel like a Spanish Cinderella. The same effect had the girls ogling the faded, peeling mural climbing the stairs and continuing around the balcony above. Overhead was a large chandelier, draped with white cloth, the same kind that covered what appeared to be built-in upholstered seating in the curve of the stairwell to either side of the ballroom doors.

“The orchestra played up there”—the priest pointed to glass doors at the head of the steps—“on the mezzanine overlooking the room below. There were grand parties with millionaires and movie stars from your Hollywood throughout the last century until it left the hands of the Ortiz family.”

The house seemed to go on and on. Some rooms still had sheet-draped furniture. The ballroom came with an out-of-tune baby grand. Even in ruin, it would surely take at least a million dollars, Caroline thought, just to purchase it. Then there was the fix-up.

Chunks of plaster were missing in the walls. Tiled floors needed repair and showed evidence of leaks in the roof. The kitchen and baths hadn't been updated since the first indoor plumbing.

Blaine had filled at least three sheets of legal paper with notes by the time they reassembled in the hall later. “The plus side is that there is no substantial amount of land with the place. Plus for the mission,” he said to Father Menasco, “as no land limits the villa's potential to support itself . . . unless someone has
beaucoups
bucks to fix it up as a hotel.”

“It's so sad that it was let go like this,” Caroline lamented. “I can close my eyes and imagine just how beautiful this must have been at one time.”

Blaine smiled at her. “If only it could be restored as easily.”

“It would take some major money and effort to pull something like this together, even if we could swing the purchase,” Randy agreed. “The labor could be volunteer, but there's still the material cost . . . if it's even worth trying to rebuild.”

“Actually, it seems structurally—”

A bloodcurdling scream echoed from the balcony overlooking the ballroom, where the girls had climbed to envision the swirling dancers in trim suits and lavish gowns. As the females stampeded down the steps in both directions, Caroline made a quick surveillance of the students below. Everyone but Annie, Karen, and Christie was accounted for.

“What in the world—” Blaine started.

“It's a ghost! We saw the ghost!” Karen gasped, materializing on the upstairs landing with the other girls.

“No,” Annie contradicted, just as wide-eyed as her friend. “We heard it. It was playing the piano.”

Blaine was skeptical. “I didn't hear anything.”

“It wasn't loud,” said Christie. “I want to go
now
.”

Unruffled, Blaine walked to the closed ballroom doors with Father Menasco and Randy on his heels. “You all can wait outside in the courtyard if you want.”

Instantly, the others fell in behind them, Caroline included. To her astonishment, when the men opened the double doors into the room, she heard the distinct
plink, plink, plink
of the cloth-draped piano.

“Omigosh, it's moving,” she managed in a strangled voice at the sight of the cloth being tugged toward the keyboard.

“All right, if you're a ghost, show yourself.” Blaine's challenge stopped the music.

“Maybe she only speaks Spanish.” Wally was not nearly as gung-ho to see a spirit as he'd been earlier.

“
Quíen va?
” Father Menasco called out.

A tiny, nonghostly voice bunched up the girls against the boys, who, for all their machismo, were not that far removed from the adults.

“
Soy yo, padre.

”

The drop cloth moved again, pulling away from the piano until it struggled on its own with the alleged
spirit.
Or sprite, Caroline thought.

“Berto,
eres tú?
”

The yard-high height of the spirit dropped with a plop, its billowing cloth cover following it. Father Menasco hurried over and pulled the tangled sheet off its possessor, revealing the bright-eyed munchkin from the orphanage.

“Buenos dias,”
Berto exclaimed with a grin, dissolving the former wariness and subsequent astonishment into laughter.

“You can let go of my arm now,” Blaine whispered to Caroline.

“I think our ghost is harmless.”

Caroline jerked her hand away in embarrassment. She hadn't realized she'd latched on to Blaine in all the excitement. Not that she really expected a ghost.

Father Menasco spoke with Berto in Spanish.

“He must have followed us up here.” Heart turning to mush, Caroline gathered the happy child up in her arms and nuzzled his forehead, provoking a giggle in both, until Father Menasco's grim expression sobered her.

“I am afraid he thought that his new mama was leaving.”

New mama?
Caroline felt the blood drain from her face.

“He seems to have taken a liking to you, Señora. For some reason, he thinks you came to take him with you.”

“Cool. I always wanted a little brother,” Annie piped up.

Caroline reeled at the thought. “Father, you have to explain that I already am someone else's mother . . . and too old to raise a baby.”

Father Menasco nodded. “Of course. And you will leave in the morning after church . . . while Berto is in Sunday school. Perhaps it's best if I tell him then. Otherwise, the little scoundrel may stow away on the bus.”

Caught in a whirlpool of conflicting emotions, only one thing was absolute. The little boy in her arms had already stowed away in Caroline's heart.

Blaine wanted to round up Caroline and the boy in his arms— Caroline, because she looked as if she foundered in a sea of despair, and the boy, because he'd managed to get under Blaine's skin from the moment he'd drawn up his arm to show off his muscles and then cajoled Blaine into flexing his biceps in return. And when he wasn't playing games with Caroline, he had shadowed Blaine, asking a question a minute about what the adult was doing and why.

Cómo se llama esto?
It would have annoyed Blaine, except that when Berto handed him something a second time, he knew its name—in Spanish and English. A man could get used to a shadow like Berto. Karen was his little girl, but she had no more interest in engineering or any of Blaine's business than he had in shopping. This bright little squirt was interested in everything.

“Up you go, kid.” John relieved Caroline of her small burden and gave a delighted Berto a horsey ride back to Hogar de los Niños.

Upon seeing Caroline still visibly torn, Blaine covered her hand with his and fell in behind the students. “I'm not trying to influence you, but women your age have children every day.”

“It's so heart-wrenching.” She sighed, following the bubbly tyke with her gaze. “I'd take them all if I could.”

“I believe you would.” He didn't mean it as criticism, and her attempt at a smile told him that she didn't take it as such. “You've got a heart as big as the all outdoors.”

And he wanted his share of it. Blaine looked west at the blaze of color settling over the time-wrinkled mountains. He didn't think the scar Ellie left would ever heal, but being around Caroline made it fade, escapade by escapade. Maybe it wasn't an accident that had caused him to make a trip he'd never have gone on under normal conditions. Maybe it was ordained by the same hand that painted that skyscape and made the first timepiece in the world. As an engineer, he could appreciate that kind of perfection. As a man, he could appreciate this second chance for his heart.

But was he ready to give God a second chance? Something told him that where Caroline was concerned, God was part and parcel of the deal.

CHAPTER
14

“So you think there's any chance Hogar de los Niños can buy that old place?” Wearing a pair of boxer shorts dotted with sombrero-wearing chile peppers that one of the women purchased for her foundling that afternoon, John Chandler spat a mouthful of Blaine's toothpaste into the hotel sink. The toothbrush was courtesy of the hotel.

“It's a long shot.” Blaine stared from his bed at the swirls in the plaster ceiling, hands folded behind his head. “But as the priest said, all things are possible.” Since meeting Caroline, Blaine was beginning to believe it.

He stifled a yawn behind the back of his hand. It had been an exhausting day, and everyone, the students included, opted to turn in early. Where his mother got the idea that he'd be relaxing was beyond him. Going night and day like this, keeping up with teens, was harder than his most taxing week of travel. At least he didn't have to entertain clients twenty-four/seven.

“You really believe that?”

“What?”

Upon wiping off his face with a towel, the young man tossed it in a heap on the counter.

Blaine's clenched jaw checked a reprimand to hang it next to the one that he'd meticulously refolded and hung to dry earlier, as the youth walked over to the other double bed.

“That all things are possible,” he said, dropping down on the mattress.

John Chandler not only acted like Mark; he looked like Blaine's younger brother at the same age. With sandy blond hair cut to perfection and blue eyes with naturally dark lashes to set them off, he was a female magnet. Once they heard his smooth lines, girls competed over him, while their mothers fawned. Not that Blaine, with his father's darker features, had ever had trouble garnering feminine attention when he sought it. He simply didn't make a game of it like Mark. But then, life was a game to his brother, just as it was for this kid. And the game was called
Let's see what I can
get out of this.

“You got a new toothbrush, shorts, T-shirt, food, shelter, and transportation for two days without putting out a cent, didn't you?”

Strike one. Guilt grazed Blaine's consciousness the minute the cynicism escaped. The boy looked sincere. Or was he just buttering up a babe's old man?

John winced, a painful look flickering across his face. “Okay, I'm talking God's grace, certainly not yours.”

The shot hit its mark. Blaine had shown little grace where John, or Mark, for that matter, was concerned. Put John's way, it didn't sound nearly as righteous. “Sorry, I asked for that one.”

Apology accepted in silence, the young man shifted on the other bed, mimicking Blaine's position. “My mom
was
religious,” he said, “and I was brought up in church. Then Dad died and she remarried. Everything changed.”

Blaine took it that the change was not for the good. Strike two with the guilt bat.

“I went from being part of a family to being ‘the kid.' I mean, nothing I could do made my stepdad like me. I wasn't as smart as his son. I wasn't as ambitious as his son. It was like there was some undeclared competition, and I was the loser from the get-go.” John scratched his nose with the back of his wrist.