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  Praise for Fiesta Moon

  “No one captures a sense of place better than Linda Windsor. Caught beneath the spell of the Fiesta Moon, you’ll find yourself celebrating the timeless beauty of Mexico, embracing the charming characters, and holding your breath for a happy ending that’s as certain as the moonrise.”

  —Liz Curtis Higgs, best-selling author of Thorn in My Heart

  “Filled with mystery and Windsor’s characteristic humor … more riveting and fun than the first.”

  —Carolyn R. Scheidies, Author’s Choice Reviews

  “Linda Windsor’s Fiesta Moon is definitely a south of the border recipe for fun, romance, and superbly crafted characters. Corinne and Mark offer a taste of suspense in an unforgettable adventure set in a not-so-sleepy Mexican village.”

  —Diann Mills, author of When the Lion Roars

  “Linda Windsor has woven a magical tale set within a small village in Mexico. Her adept use of the area’s language and customs take the reader on a journey to another country. The story is captivating. One wishes for the fiesta moon to shine on lovers everywhere.”

  —Eileen Key, The Road to Romance

  “Linda Windsor’s Fiesta Moon is a joy to read, turning romantic locations, exciting characters, flawless descriptions and humorous situations tempered by faith into a feast of words. Hungry readers everywhere will line up for a second helping. Bravo, Linda. You’ve done it again.”

  —Molly Bull, author of The Winter Pearl

  “A pig, a handsome rake, and a spunky young woman all add up to a delicious concoction in Fiesta Moon that goes beyond mere hilarity with its theme of how God’s grace can touch the most reprobate heart. Linda Windsor has penned another winner!”

  —Colleen Coble, author of the Aloha Reef Series

  “Linda Windsor’s Fiesta Moon is a treat—a perfect combination of festive setting, intriguing mystery, and heartfelt romance!”

  —DeAnna Julie Dodson, author of In Honor Bound and To Grace Surrendered

  “Linda Windsor never fails to tickle my funny bone and touch my heart. In Fiesta Moon, her sophisticated hero exiled to a small Mexican village makes me laugh as he struggles like a cat in water. And her loving heroine tugs at my heart as she decides whether to cast her net to the hero or let him drown. A delightful book of wonderful characters.”

  —Donita K. Paul, author of Dragonspell and DragonQuest

  “Every Linda Windsor romantic comedy is a treat, but, with Fiesta Moon, I think Ms. Windsor may have eclipsed her previous work. Only once in a blue moon will you encounter such a loony mix of personalities in such out-of-this-world situations. An enamored pig, three brothers named Juan, and a sombrero-wearing donkey shine bright in a richly woven story, which includes threads of intrigue and deep faith. Enjoy a party you’ll never forget, but watch out for the moonlight. You just might fall in love with Fiesta Moon.”

  —Jennifer Lynn Cary, author of The Hugenot

  “Captivating and comical … Linda’s refreshing humor and the zany antics of her characters are skillfully interwoven with the adventure and faith journey that all take you on an exhilarating emotional rollercoaster ride.”

  —Amber Miller, Romancing the Christian Heart magazine

  “Innovative and daring … Windsor is the master of Christian romantic comedy.”

  —Laura V. Hilton, author and reviewer

  “Warm, lovable characters and a heartwarming, intriguing story that takes place in an unusual setting. What more could one ask? Linda Windsor has given us another wonderful read.”

  —Dorothy Clark, author of Beauty for Ashes and Joy for Mourning

  “Immerse yourself in this enjoyable romp as unredeemable rake Mark Madison and his pet pig get the desires of his heart in Corinne Diaz, a feisty, lovable woman who has spent her life caring for orphans. This story will take you on a joy ride through your emotions and leave you feeling fully satisfied and content. A story you don’t want to miss, Fiesta Moon is a delight.”

  —Cheryl Wolverton, author of Father’s Love

  “Linda has given us a winner again. Her writing paints a colorful picture of life in a Mexican village, peopled with equally colorful characters who leap from the page into your heart. There was an air of mystery and the romantic tension sizzled.”

  —Lena Nelson Dooley, best-selling author of Gerda’s Lawman and Scraps of Love

  FIESTA MOON

  FIESTA MOON

  Linda Windsor

  Copyright © 2005 by Linda Windsor

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or any other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Author is represented by the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

  WestBow Press books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Windsor, Linda.

  Fiesta moon / Linda Windsor.

  p. cm.—(Moonstruck series ; 2)

  ISBN 0-7852-6063-3 (trade paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3573.I519F54 2005

  813’.54—dc22

  2004029429

  Printed in the United States of America

  05 06 07 08 09 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  The sun rising above the Sierra Madres glared in Mark Madison’s eyes, despite his costly designer sunglasses, as if to punish him for daring to emerge before it reached the high point of its day. It reminded him of the receptionist at Madison Engineering Corporation, who welcomed him for a rare early morning appointment with cheer-veiled sarcasm. “Good morning, Mr. Madison,” she said but meant, That’s what you get for staying out on the town when the rest of us working stiffs have to get up early to make a living.

  Mark’s lips pulled into a righteous grimace as he gripped the wheel of his rental car. He did a lot more than those nine-to-fivers thought—especially Blaine—and they’d realize it now that he was temporarily on leave.

  “Three strikes and you’re out,” Blaine said after Mark’s most recent DUI hearing. “You’ve got to pull your life together, Mark. I’m tired of bailing you out of trouble and making excuses for you to Mother.” Mouth thinned with disapproval, he handed over Mark’s license. “If you are pulled over for anything unrelated to
the project, kiss this good-bye, because you won’t need it where you’ll wind up. As it is, your performance in Mexico will determine whether you have a job when you return.”

  Blaine’s condescension had fanned the fires of Mark’s shame into rebellion. “I never asked you to make excuses for me. I never asked for you to bail me out of this DUI either. I’m my own man, whether you believe it or not.”

  At least Mark was as much a man as he could be, with a big brother who filled their ambitious father’s shoes to the brim and a baby sister who had earned a doctorate in marine archeology before her twenty-sixth birthday. With ambition and brains taken, all that was left for Mark to claim was charm.

  Blaine ran his fingers through the silver salting his dark hair at the temples. “When are you going to get it through that thick head of yours that I’m trying to help you aspire to something beyond liver failure?”

  Mark bristled. “I’m a social drinker.”

  “You’re becoming more than that, Mark.”

  “I can quit anytime.”

  Blaine drilled him with a challenging look. “Want to bet?”

  Mark knew he was being suckered in, but for some reason he bit. “Name the stakes.”

  “If you keep the hacienda project on target and stay sober while you’re doing it, I’ll step down from our on-site management and let you take it over. There’s nothing I’d rather do than stay in-house and let you do the traveling.”

  Mark practically salivated. He never minded the work, but hated being confined to the office, filling in the pieces of projects that Blaine had already designed. He envied his brother’s travel.

  What a waste for someone like Blaine to see the world, when he was just as happy to stay in the box with his wife and kids.

  Only a fool wouldn’t jump at this. “You got yourself a deal, bro.”

  “I can’t watch you, Mark, but God will know if you value honor more than a good time.” Blaine had been on a God kick since he’d met Caroline. And while it made Mark a little uncomfortable sometimes, he had to admit his older brother seemed a lot happier now. And when Blaine was happy, Mark’s life was easier.

  So Mark got a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. Blaine and his church had used their pull to get Mark’s jail time shifted to community service at some remote mission in Mexico—practically elevating Blaine to godly status in their mother’s eyes. Blaine had saved Mark from ruin once again.

  As though living in a nice neighborhood and having a wife and 2.5 kids was all there was to aspire to in life, Mark thought, gearing down the sweet sports car as the incline became more steep. Not that he didn’t like Blaine’s wife and kids. What was not to like? Caroline loved everybody. Mark belonged to a mutual admiration society with his teen nieces, Karen and Annie. And he supposed the newest member of the Madison family, little Berto, made the perfect point-five of the national family average.

  Family was nice, but that wasn’t “living” in Mark’s estimation. That was squeezing into a box of conformity and pulling down the lid, when there was a world to see and experiences to try before a man got too old to enjoy them. Then, maybe, he’d settle for life in the box.

  As a busload of tourists passed him, two young ladies, their long blond hair tossed by the breeze, waved at him. Mark beeped the horn of the Jaguar XK8 convertible that he’d leased in Acapulco and flashed them a dazzling smile. He gunned the engine and soared around the bus, affording the girls, who’d hastily switched sides, a rakish wink. Blaine would have a hissy fit if he knew that Mark had switched his ticket destination from Mexico City to Acapulco, much less that he’d leased a car more suitable to his lifestyle in lieu of taking the bus.

  “Well worth the trip,” Mark said in a wistful tone, wishing he was still there, sipping a frozen drink—regrettably without the alcohol he’d promised to abstain from—and watching the leggy beach beauties strut their stuff against the sun-splashed blue of Acapulco Bay. Instead he was headed over the season-parched Sierra Madres to do penance in a one-donkey village.

  As the distance between his sports car and a truck bulging with produce closed, Mark eased up on the accelerator. The truck groaned and shifted gears as it took the steep incline, its faded plank rails wobbling with the strain of its load. Glancing past the bend to the left, Mark spied Mexican women and children in a ravine cut by time into the worn mountains. It was dry and rocky for the most part, except for remnants of a river running through it. The children played in the water while their mothers washed clothes at its edge in the same manner as their ancestors.

  Licking his dry lips, Mark reached for the bottled water in the walnut-and-leather-trimmed console as the truck ahead finally breached the crest and leveled off. To his increasing annoyance, it slowed even more, brake lights glowing. Mark impatiently took a swig of water and nosed around the vehicle. Seeing his way clear, he shot forward, when something in the periphery of his vision caught his eye—something moving out from under the truck. By the time Mark realized it was one of the lumbering vehicle’s back tires, it was too late.

  The tire shot into the backside of the Jaguar, sending it fishtailing perilously close to the edge of the road, and dropped down into the ravine. Like a teetering giant, the braking truck skidded on its remaining tires across the road toward the ledge, the bare axle gnashing at the pavement in a trail of sparks. Mark gunned the engine of the Jag, streaking out of the truck’s path and swerving back into the right lane. The truck ground to a stop at the cliff ’s edge, but Mark’s overcompensation gave way to a teeth-jarring ride, reducing the Jag’s high-performance features to those of the donkey cart sitting by a roadside stand, now dead ahead of him. Braking all the way on loose gravel and dirt, Mark not only upended the vegetable-laden cart, but took out the stand’s canopy as well. Staring in disbelief, Mark watched the dust settle over the hood of the now stalled Jag.

  Draped over it was a collapsed corner of a blue construction tarp. The other three corners, still supported by poles, provided shelter from the sun for a rustic roadside fruit stand. From the shouts of “Ay de mí,” barking, and braying emanating from the underside, it was inhabited by Mexicans, dogs, and a disgruntled donkey.

  Leery of his sensory report, Mark fingered his throbbing forehead just as a wet, cool sensation spread between his legs. He quickly uprighted the water bottle emptying in his lap and noticed an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables scattered on the floor of the car, evidently relocated from the capsized cart.

  Just as he registered that things couldn’t get worse, the air bag released.

  Can things get any worse? Corinne Diaz wondered as she worked her way through the crowd of the village zócalo. Not that Mexicalli was that large. Its few cobbled streets snaked their way through a cluster of homes and businesses growing from the lake on which the town had been built. Crisscrossing the streets at whatever angles the landscape would allow, occasional dirt and stone alleys led to orchards or gardens that fringed the settlement landward.

  But all of Mexicalli seemed to have turned out for the Cinco de Mayo fiesta, along with their relatives from across the lake or up the mountain. And Corinne was searching the square for a pint-sized French soldier who was only seven—a very proud seven.

  “Ay de mí, Señorita Corina, that boy ’Tonio makes no good.”

  Corinne stopped, waiting for her portly housekeeper to catch up. If the steep winding streets of the town were a challenge to Corinne’s lungs, poor Soledad was puffing like a tuba player.

  “Soledad, why don’t you sit here in the square and keep an eye out for Antonio?”

  Corinne unclipped the cell phone from the scarlet sash of her embroidered red and green skirt. Everyone sported the colors of the Mexican flag in honor of the day.

  “Here,” she said, handing the phone to the older woman. “Call the school if you find Antonio, and tell him to wait here until the rest of the cast finds him.”

  The orphans from Hogar de los Niños were scheduled to put on a play reenacting the 1862 Battle of Pu
ebla, where a few Mexican militia under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin turned back French troops sent by Napoleon to occupy the country.

  Antonio was playing the part of a general of the French army. The young boy was so impressed with his red, white, and blue uniform of crepe paper, with its gold foil epaulets, that Corinne suspected him of coming into the village prematurely to show it off.

  “No, no, no.” Soledad shoved the phone back at her. “I will catch the culprit by his ear and drag him back to the escuela. I don’t comprehend this equipment much.”

  Touch-tone hadn’t quite taken over some of the more remote villages. Buttons were for clothes, not equipment, which was Soledad’s word for anything she didn’t understand. She only knew her heavy, black teléfono.

  “It’s like the computer,” Corinne explained. “You just push ocho and the call button. Then it’s just like your teléfono, no?”

  Soledad arched half of the continuous black hedge of brow that separated her dark gaze from a low, copper-bronze forehead. She marveled at Corinne’s wireless laptop, mostly for the photo albums stored in it, but marveling was as close to equipment as the Indio woman cared to get.

  “My teléfono serves me well enough,” she replied.

  As frustrating as this general attitude was, it was also part of the village’s charm.

  With a sigh, Corinne reattached the cell phone to her sash. “Bueno,” she conceded. “But if you see Antonio, just keep him here.”

  She didn’t want Soledad to have to climb the hill to the orphanage at the outskirts of the village. It was supposed to be her day off, but nothing went down in Mexicalli without Soledad’s knowledge. Despite the lack of a phone in every home, news blanketed the town rather than spread through it. Who needed telephone lines when a network of neighboring clotheslines was far more efficient?