The Moonglow Sisters

by Lori Wilde

  “A family business? Love!” Pippa turned to Bruno. “Next time I come to Moonglow Cove, remind me of this place.”

  Bruno gave a silent nod.

  “Do you have more kites?” Pippa asked. “Are you selling them?”

  “I did have a kiosk on the boardwalk, but I had to temporarily close the store while helping take care of my grandmother.”

  “Downer.” Pippa shook her head. “Things been piling up, huh?” The British accent had melted as she slipped into her wrong-side-of-Houston pronunciation.

  “It’s been a challenge,” Gia said, still not fully believing she was standing here with Pippa Grandon chatting like they were college roommates.

  Pippa got a text and she held up one finger, indicating Gia should hang on.

  Gia shot Mike a look, mouthed, Pippa Grandon loves my kites!

  He smiled, his eyes warm and gentle.

  Her heart swooped, dove, just like one of her kites.

  “Excuse me.” Pippa raised her head, waggled her cell phone. “I have to be somewhere in an hour, so if you can’t show me the kites right now—”

  “Yes, sorry, of course I can show you the kites. Please, come inside.” Heart thumping as if she’d just run a race, Gia led Pippa inside the house, taking her around to the front entrance.

  “Wow.” Pippa ran her hand along the scrolled woodworking of the grand staircase. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”

  “No, they don’t,” Mike agreed.

  “He’s a woodworker,” Gia explained, leading Pippa toward the parlor where they’d stashed the kites the day that Mike helped her move out of the kiosk. “He specializes in furniture.”

  “Look at you two, all power-coupley and everything. You make kites, he makes furniture.” Pippa chuckled. “Love! What do people call you?”

  “Call us?” Gia scratched her head, confused.

  “What’s your couple name? For instance, me and my fiancé, Jackson Sledge, are Jippa,” Pippa said.

  Gia had no idea Pippa was engaged. She’d done a good job of keeping a lid on it.

  “So are you Gike or Mia?”

  “Mia,” Mike said at the same time Gia said, “Gike.”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “You two are so cute!” Pippa said.

  Gia opened the door to the parlor. Kites were leaned against the wall, laid out on the sofa and coffee table. They rested against the stereo cabinet and fireplace mantel. Pippa gasped and grinned. She stepped inside and circled the room, examining each kite in turn while her dour bodyguard stood sentry in the doorway.

  “These kites are absolutely amazeballs,” Pippa gushed. “How much are they?”

  Gia named the price and waited for the inevitable pushback. Most people didn’t understand why artisan kites cost so much. They didn’t know all the work and care that went into creating each one.

  But Pippa didn’t blink. Instead her eyes lit with passionate fire as if she’d been struck by lightning. “You know what, Mia?”

  Gia’s pulse quickened. Was she about to buy them all?

  “I just had a brilliant idea.” Pippa pirouetted around the room.

  “What’s that?” Gia asked, fingers crossed. If Pippa bought her whole collection she could add it to the fund to pay off the mortgage Grammy took out against the inn. Don’t count your chickens.

  “Before I say anything, can I take pictures?” Pippa asked. “I want to send pics to Jackson.”

  “Of course.”

  Pippa snapped photographs of each kite, then texted them to her fiancé. A few seconds later, her phone pinged.

  “Oh!” Pippa grinned. “He agrees your kites slay. He’s in.”

  “In for what?” Gia asked.

  “Our beach wedding in Barbados.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “We want your kites in our wedding!” Pippa applauded her idea.

  “How do you plan on using kites in a wedding?”

  “That’s the really brilliant part. Throwing rice is too traditional and there’s the whole exploding bird thing, although I heard that was a myth. Releasing butterflies is apparently not great for the poor creatures. Doves are so 1990, and there’s the poop issue. But what if . . .” She paused for dramatic effect, made a frame with her hands. “The guests fly kites while we leave the ceremony, creating a tunnel of kites for us to walk under. Then they get to keep the kites as party favors. You design the kites with our wedding colors, names, and wedding date. Whataya say?”

  “Unique idea.” Gia nodded. “But in reality, it could be a bit problematic for the actual ceremony. If the winds don’t cooperate and the guests don’t know how to—”

  “It’s a weekend event. We could fly you in early—first class, of course, and you can teach the guests how to fly the kites ahead of time and if the weather doesn’t cooperate, then we’ll have some funny outtakes on film.” Pippa clapped her hands again. “Ooh, ooh, the more I think about it, the more I love the idea.”

  This wasn’t what Gia was expecting. She had never considered designing kites for weddings, but what a novel idea. Excitement lit her up. She could have a whole new career path. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Don’t be wishy-washy. Just say yes!” Pippa’s enthusiasm was infectious.

  “How many kites would you need?”

  “It’s an intimate wedding. Guest list of a hundred.”

  Pippa considered a hundred guests intimate? Each kite took around twenty hours to hand make. A hundred kites would take approximately two thousand hours. If she worked ten hours a day, it would take two hundred days. But who could work ten hours a day for two hundred days nonstop? She’d be exhausted.

  And there was Grammy to think about and her sisters and the inn.

  But if she did this, her career would be set. If Pippa Grandon used Gia’s kites in her wedding, it would shoot her to the stars.

  “When is the wedding?”

  “Not until next June.”

  A year away. Gia’s mind churned, trying to find a way to make it happen, but she couldn’t see it and she wasn’t about to promise something she wasn’t sure she could deliver. “Miss Grandon, while the offer is flattering, and I’m so tempted to say yes, it would take me a minimum of eight months to hand make a hundred kites.”

  “Honey, delegate. Hire people to help.”

  Were there parts of the process she could delegate? Gia paused to consider it, saw her disappointed mentor shake his bald head in her mind’s eye.

  “Don’t say no.” Pippa’s voice took on a cajoling tone and she shook her head. “This is your opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “I appreciate the offer so much, but my grandmother is in the hospital and I promised my sisters I’d help them get the inn back on its feet—”

  “Please, please, please say yes.” Pippa bounced on her toes and pressed her palms together in front of her heart. “You can hire someone to help them with the house on the deposit money I give you. You could hire nurses for your grandmother.”

  Gia wanted to shout, Yes, yes, I’ll do it! and then figure out how to make it happen later. Just the idea of creating wedding kites stirred her creativity and she itched to do it. “I’ll need to think about it.”

  “What’s to think about? You’ll make a boatload of money and get massive publicity for your kites. You’ll become the kitemaker to the stars!”

  But Gia had never been about status or lots of money. That was Madison’s thing. Gia cared about quality and craftsmanship. She wanted to put out only the best products whether she made tons of money or not.

  Pippa turned to her bodyguard. “What do you think, Bruno?”

  Bruno grunted.

  “See? Even Bruno thinks you should do it. Please, please, please with sugar on top.” Pippa hopped around the room. “If you say yes, I’ll buy all these other kites and gift them to my friends.”

  Her bank account was so close to empty it was scary, and they did need money to get the inn out of
debt. To have ready cash from the sale of her inventory, well, Gia just couldn’t dismiss that out of hand.

  “Can I think about it?”

  Pippa pooched out her bottom lip in a pout. “All right, but only because I really like you and this is a supercute house. But I don’t get tripped up in go-nowhere projects. Let me know by six P.M. tonight or the deal’s off.”

  The woman might come off as a flibbertigibbet, but she was a tough negotiator.

  “All right.” Gia nodded. “I’ll let you know by six.”

  “Just understand me, I really want this and I’m accustomed to getting what I want.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Okay then, hugs.” Pippa held out her arms.

  Gia hugged the young woman, but it was like hugging air. Pippa floated away just as quickly as she’d rushed into Gia’s embrace.

  Pippa held out her hand. “Give me your phone so I can put my number in it.”

  Gia complied, and Pippa punched in her cell number and gave the phone back to her.

  “Ciao.” She bounced out of the room humming “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”

  Bruno followed close at her heels, leaving them with one last parting grunt.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gia

  ROCK THE NEEDLE: The process of bringing the needle back to the surface of all the quilt layers by using a rocking motion.

  GIA STARED AT her phone. She had the cell number of one of the hottest young celebrities in the country. How had that happened?

  Mike shook his head and let out a long audible exhale.

  She shot him a glance. “What?”

  “You’re seriously thinking of not doing this?”

  “You think I should?”

  “It’s not my place to tell you what to do.”

  “But you’d do it?”

  “I would. But you have to figure out what you really want.”

  “I want to finish the wedding quilt.”

  “No, your grandmother wanted you to finish the wedding quilt.”

  “Same thing.” She lifted and dropped her shoulder hard. The tone in his voice and the look in his eyes stirred weird feelings inside her.

  “Is it?”

  She cocked her head and studied him, her pretend fiancé. He seemed angry with her. She nibbled a thumbnail and folded the rest of her fingers into a loose, anxious fist.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to finish the quilt.”

  “Over making kites for Pippa Grandon?” He sounded disappointed.

  Her stomach sloshed, and she felt like she was riding on a tiny boat rocked by vast ocean swells. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to stop trying to please me.”

  “Why are you in such a strange mood?”

  “It bothers you when just being yourself upsets people.”

  True. Gia shuffled aside the kites and sat down. “Why is that so bad?”

  “Because when you’re busy trying to keep the peace, you don’t get to do what you want.” He stayed standing, arms folded Bruno-style, studying her with the saddest eyes.

  Her heart lurched. “Maybe I want nothing. Maybe I’m plenty happy riding in the passenger seat.”

  “Are you?”

  She was going to say yes, but then images filled her head, a mind map of shortchanged moments and missed opportunities. Agreeing with Grammy that piano lessons were fine because that’s what Madison and Shelley were doing, and they already owned a piano. Never mind that she really wanted to play the flute. Or the times she left the decision making to others, so no one could blame her for the outcome. Or not even bothering to have a preference in the first place because she got lost in the sprawl of her older sisters’ big personalities, always drifting along on a dream.

  Maybe that’s why she loved to fly kites—the loft, the drift, the glide. Easy and soft focused. She’d fallen in love at five years old, when Mike first put a kite into her hands.

  “I wanted to go to Japan and study kitemaking and I did it. That was my choice. I wasn’t trying to please anyone.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I was the one who encouraged you to go. You didn’t want to leave home. You weren’t going to go. Remember?”

  Gia stroked her chin, recalling the conversation she’d had with Mike after kite master Mikio Tetsuya picked Gia and her award-winning design in art school as being worthy of his mentorship.

  Grammy had wanted her to come home to Moonglow Cove after college, especially since Maddie and Shelley had left.

  But Mike urged her to go to Japan, promising that he and Darynda would look after Grammy. She’d been like a fledging bird, too comfortable in the nest to attempt flying. It was only when Mike said she was letting fear run her that Gia had packed her bags.

  “I wanted to go,” she insisted.

  “But did you go to please me or yourself?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Fair enough. I have another question.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why does everyone get their way except you? Why are your family’s wants and needs more important than your own?”

  “They’re not.”

  “Then why don’t you speak up? Make your wants and needs known?”

  “I want to connect with people.”

  “Is that true? Or is it that you don’t want anyone to get angry with you?”

  “That too,” she admitted, ducking her head so he couldn’t see her eyes.

  “And you believe that if you stopped sacrificing your wants and needs for them they wouldn’t love you anymore?”

  Yes. “Well,” she said. “It sounds silly when you put it like that.”

  “That’s because it is silly, Gia. Being connected to people is good. But living for other people is not. That’s why I came to get you today. Sitting by your grandmother’s side for eight hours a day won’t change the outcome. It’s as if you believe sacrificing your health and well-being will save her.”

  “Maybe it will.”

  “Gia . . .” The look in his eyes was so tender, his voice so light, but his words shot through her sharp as an arrow. “You simply don’t have that much power.”

  “I know.”

  Mike moved the remaining kites off the sofa, stacked them on the floor, and plunked down beside her. He took her hand and his skin felt so warm.

  “Do you”—he tapped his knuckles against her chest just above her heart—“want to make those kites for Pippa? Don’t think. Just feel. What does your heart say?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to make the kites. But I also need to finish the quilt and help my grandmother heal and mend my relationship with my sisters. That’s three things I must do weighing against the one thing I want to do.”

  “Why can’t you just tell your sisters what you want?”

  “We’re supposed to be getting married,” she said. “They’ll want to know why I’m catering to Pippa’s wedding and not my own.”

  “You can tell them the truth. Or tell them it’s none of their business.”

  “C’mon, you know I’d never say that last part. Besides, there’s one more reason I don’t have time for Pippa Grandon.”

  “Why is that?” He studied her face so intensely, she had to look away.

  “If I did this project for Pippa, I’d be putting in long hours every day for months and months until it’s finished. There’d be no time for . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say us because she had no idea if he was having the kinds of feelings for her that she was having for him.

  He leaned closer. “No time for what?”

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, braved it. “You.”

  “Me?” His face lit up.

  “You,” she confirmed, feeling dizzy at her courage.

  “Gia.” His voice was husky. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that?”

  “Really?” Her voice was squeaky.

  “I’ve alw
ays thought you were amazing.” He scooted closer.

  She caught her breath.

  “I missed you so much while you were in Japan that I signed up for the Habitat for Humanity Disaster Response program. Then you came home just after I left. Bad timing, again. First, you were too young for me and then when you were old enough, I had a girlfriend and you had a boyfriend. Then you went off to college. We’ve never been in sync.”

  “Until now,” she whispered.

  “Until now,” he confirmed.

  “When I saw you again . . .” He sounded breathless now. “I didn’t realize just how much I missed you. The sound of your voice. The sparkle in your eyes. I’ve missed hanging out with you and flying kites, watching movies, and having long talks on your back porch.”

  “I’ve missed you, too, Mike.”

  It was true. He was such a good family friend, but the way he was looking at her, the way her insides quivered, told her things were changing between them.

  Rapidly.

  Mike, the good ol’ boy next door, was now the hottie she didn’t want to keep her hands off of.

  “Gia,” he murmured and reached out to cup her cheek with his palm.

  “Mike.”

  He hooked her chin between his finger and thumb, tilted her face up, and pinned her with his gaze, then her pretend fiancé lowered his head and kissed her.

  And rocked Gia’s world completely off its axis.

  His previous kiss had been hot, but this kiss was so much more. His lips were sweet, sweeter than before. He tasted like the richest chocolate ever created. Wow, what a ride. All this time she could have been kissing him like this. The things they had missed out on!

  It was wild. It was beautiful. It was overwhelming.

  Gia sank against him and opened her mouth wider.

  Mike kissed her as if there were no future, no past. As if he’d been waiting his whole life to kiss her. As if she were the only woman in the whole wide world.

  Mike suddenly pulled back. “I don’t . . . This is too fast.” Mike hopped up off the couch, jammed his hands in his pockets, and stepped back. He did not meet her gaze.