The Moonglow Sisters Read online

  “You’ve lost your mind.” Madison came toward her.

  Gia spun, pulled the trigger on the scissors, and wielded them at Madison. They buzzed in the air, chewing nothing. “Back off!”

  “This isn’t like you.” Madison cowered against the porch railing.

  Shelley was already in the corner eyeing her as if she were a madwoman. Well, she was. Mad and crazy and fed up with their feuding. Gia tore into that quilt, butchering it until the only things that remained were the thin scraps of their lives.

  Panting, she stopped, chest heaving as she stared daggers at her sisters.

  Shelley and Maddie had their hands over their mouths, studying the cloth carnage with stunned silence.

  “You can clean it up,” Gia announced, blood surging through her veins, the spent anger leaving her jittery and shell-shocked over what she’d done.

  She looked around at the tufts of material blowing across the porch. What had she done? With the triple wedding ring quilt annihilated, there was no hope of keeping her promise to Grammy.

  Hot tears pushed at the back of Gia’s eyes. She had to get out of there. The last thing she wanted was to let her sisters see her cry. Finished with her carnage, she dropped the scissors to the porch floor, pivoted on her heel, and stalked off.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gia

  STAB STITCHING: Process where the needle is pushed to back side of the quilt sandwich with one hand and returned to top side with the other hand, pushing needle from back to front.

  GIA’S VISION WAS so blurry with unshed tears that she couldn’t see where she was going. She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. Remorse, guilt, and shame washed away the anger.

  Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. What had she done?

  With nowhere else to go, and no one else to turn to, she fled the house, leaving the Moonglow Inn behind her as she padded over the wall, back to Mike’s place, barefoot and hotheaded. Was this what it felt like to be Shelley? A loose cannon? Going off script without any filter?

  Gia shivered.

  Had Shelley really slept with Raoul? But why? Shelley wasn’t a cruel person. No, but she followed her impulses, did as she pleased.

  Just as Gia had when she’d cut up the quilt.

  Guilt overwhelmed her.

  She plodded up the steps to Mike’s house to tell him that he no longer had to pretend to be her fiancé.

  The day was warm and bright, a sweet happy sunshine Monday. Except she was anything but happy. It should have been a fabulous day, but she’d lost control.

  Lost her mind.

  Her grammy was coming home in a week, expecting to find the quilt finished. Her sisters were still at each other’s throats and the one thing that had a chance of reuniting them was obliterated into a thousand little pieces.

  Because of her.

  She’d done it.

  Fine. Okay. Enough. She’d been the peacemaker far too long. Now, she was the warmonger, bringing fights and destruction where she’d once brought peace.

  The tears were impossible to stanch. They flowed from her eyes like a faucet. Despite what Grammy had said, it wasn’t up to Gia to fix things. This issue between her sisters went too far back. Before Raoul. It had nothing to do with Gia. She couldn’t change who they were. She couldn’t control them.

  Hell, she couldn’t control herself.

  By the time Mike answered the door, she was trembling all over. “Reconsider that breakfast burrito, did y—” He took her hand and pulled her over the threshold. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Madison. Shelley. I’m done.” It was all she could get out, she was breathing so hard.

  He tugged her into the crook of his arm, kicked the door closed behind her, and guided her into the living room.

  “Sit, sit.” He eased her onto the couch. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  “I don’t, I need—” Oof, she still couldn’t find her voice.

  “Shh, shh,” he soothed. “No rush to talk.”

  She nodded, blurted, “It’s over. Done.”

  Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “What is?”

  “My relationship with my sisters. The quilt.” She lifted her head and met his eyes. “Me. You. Our fake engagement.”

  “Wait, what?” He sank down beside her, not bothering to go for that glass of water.

  “I told them the truth. That we aren’t really engaged.”

  Mike’s face was unreadable. “I see.”

  “Come on, Mike. Have some emotion. Tell me what you really think.”

  “I think you have enough emotion for both of us right now.”

  “I destroyed the quilt.”

  “What do you mean by ‘destroyed’?”

  “I chopped it up with power scissors. Madison and Shelley were like two pit bulls fighting over a bone, and I’d had it. I’ve spent my whole life moderating those two and I’m finished. Kaput.”

  Mike snorted.

  Was he mad at her?

  Anxious, she looked over to see his eyes twinkling as he struggled not to burst out laughing. That irked her. “What’s so damn funny?”

  “Nothing.” He held up both hands in surrender. “I would have paid to see the expressions on your sisters’ faces while you cut up that quilt.”

  “They looked terrified. As if they thought I’d go after them next.” Gia rubbed her chin.

  “Well, they should be terrified,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m on your side, Gia.” He paused for a long beat and held her gaze, adding, “Always.”

  “It was pretty satisfying for half a minute,” she said. “The look on their faces, that miserable quilt that was the symbol of everything wrong with our family, hacked to pieces, but now . . .”

  “What?” he prodded.

  “I feel like a jerk.”

  “You’re not a jerk.”

  “I lost it. That is so not cool.”

  “It might not be cool, but maybe it was necessary.”

  “Necessary for what? To break me down?”

  “Or to free you.”

  “From what?”

  “To be you outside the confines of your relationship with your family.”

  Gia plastered both hands to the top of her head. “There has to be a middle ground between doormat and bully.”

  “You’re neither a doormat nor a bully.”

  “Right now, I feel like both.”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong. Okay, maybe cutting up the quilt was a bit excessive, but it got your point across, didn’t it?”

  She remembered the horrified expression on her sisters’ faces, grinned briefly. “Oh yeah.”

  “Well then.” He shrugged.

  “It’s not good to lose your cool.”

  “Says who?”

  That gave her pause. “Hmm, everyone.”

  “Meaning Madison?”

  Gia shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “From my way of thinking, when you finally expressed your anger and cut up that quilt, you killed off the part of yourself that’s been holding you back and keeping you from realizing your full potential.”

  “You think?”

  “I do. Look at the ways keeping the peace and not speaking your mind has held you back.”

  She paused a moment, considering that. He had a good point. How many times had she held her tongue and not rocked the boat? How many times had she been overlooked and dismissed out of hand because she didn’t express her wants and needs? Her entire life had been spent keeping the peace.

  She’d suppressed her own wants and needs to avoid conflict, but the reality was, conflict could not be avoided. You had to deal with it or it just festered inside you until one day you snapped and scissored a quilt to scraps. Maybe it was time to just start doing what she needed to do.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s okay that you don’t know.”

  “I bet you’re relieved,” she said.

  “Why is
that?”

  “You don’t have to pretend to be my fiancé anymore.”

  “Actually,” he said. “I kind of liked being your intended.”

  “Even now?”

  His eyes lit up. “Now even more than ever.”

  “You’re warped, Straus.”

  “Nah, I’m human, just like you.”

  Gia chuffed out her breath. “What now?”

  “Between you and your sisters?” His voice lowered along with his eyelashes. “Or between you and me?”

  She meant between her and her sisters, but the way he was looking at her jumbled her head. “We’re still friends, right?”

  “Gia,” he said. “No matter what happens, I will always be your friend.”

  “Even if you marry someone else?”

  He touched her wrist. “Are you okay?”

  “No, no, I’m not.” She hauled in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ve ruined it all.”

  “Have you really?” he asked in a calm, steady voice. Mike’s voice normally soothed her, but right now his composure irritated Gia. He wasn’t taking her seriously.

  “Yes.”

  “Or did you just free yourself from everyone else’s expectations?”

  Had she? Letting go of pleasing people felt as terrible as she feared it would. “I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like being angry.”

  “It’s normal. Human. Are you saying you don’t like being human?”

  “When you put it that way . . .” She interlaced her fingers and stared down at her palms. Saw the engagement ring on the third finger of her left hand.

  “It’s not your job to keep everyone happy, Gia. It’s an impossible task you’ve set for yourself.”

  “I know,” she mumbled, twisting the ring back and forth, working it up the length of her finger. It was time to do what she’d come here to do. Give him back his ring. End this. Set him free from the sham.

  He put his hand over hers.

  She looked up into his intense gaze.

  “About last night . . .”

  “Yes?” Gia moistened her lips.

  He looked so sexy, with that adorable cowlick sticking up in the back. He wore cargo shorts and a thin cotton T-shirt that showed off his muscular biceps and layered eight-pack abs beneath. The shirt read: HAPPINESS IS HANDMADE.

  She remembered exactly what his body felt like beneath her palms, and instantly sweat popped out on her brow.

  He smiled at her, warm and sincere. “It changed me. You changed me.”

  His words churned something inside of her. Her chest tightened, and she couldn’t draw in a full breath. “Mike.”

  “Gia, please don’t tell me that you aren’t feeling some pretty powerful things too. That we aren’t working on something that has nothing to do with your sisters and that quilt or our pretend engagement.”

  “I am feeling some things. Too many things. That’s the problem. It’s too much, too soon.”

  “There’s no rush, Gia. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Maybe I am,” she said, sounding a bit hysterical to her own ears. “I might be going somewhere. You said yourself you were a Moonglow Cove man and wouldn’t leave, not even for the woman you loved.”

  “No, what I said was, that’s how I knew Cassandra wasn’t the One. If I wasn’t willing to leave Moonglow Cove for her, then there was a problem.”

  “You’d leave Moonglow Cove for me?”

  “I would.”

  She sucked in her breath, and her entire body shook, processing what he’d said. Felt fear gnaw down into her bones. But along with the fear, she felt another emotion. Something she didn’t want to admit.

  Every time he looked at her with those kind, patient blue eyes, she felt comforted by him the way she’d been comforted by that blanket she’d brought with her to Grammy’s house all those years ago.

  He represented stability at a time she’d long ago stopped believing in it.

  Mike sat beside her, holding her hand, her dear family friend, but now he was so much more than that. Or could be if she didn’t run away, terrified.

  He stared deeply into her eyes, fusing his gaze to hers. “Gia,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been needing to tell you.”

  Oh no, what was he going to say? Her heart thundered. “Yes?”

  “I lied.”

  She cocked her head, asked leerily, “About what?”

  “That engagement ring.”

  She took it off, handed it to him. Weird that her hand suddenly felt so bare.

  Mike closed his fingers around the ring, making a fist. “I didn’t buy the ring for Cassandra.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head.

  “Who did you buy it for?”

  He stared at her. No, not at her, into her. He stared at her as if she was the most incredible thing he had ever seen.

  Gia’s jaw dropped, and a sweet, hopeful shiver ran up her spine. “Me?”

  Mike nodded. “I was going to ask you to marry me. I had this idea where I would tie the ring to a kite and ask you to reel it in for me.”

  Gia plastered a palm over her mouth and stared at him, gobsmacked. “What? When?”

  “A year ago. The day you came home from college. The day you told me you were moving to Japan to study under master kitemaker Mikio Tetsuya.”

  Stunned, she could only stare at him.

  “Say something,” he pleaded.

  “Omigosh, I had no idea.” Gia twirled her hair around her index fingers, freaked out by what Mike had just revealed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How could I stand in the way of you studying with one of the world’s greatest kitemakers?”

  “But you’ve had this ring for over a year and never said a word about how you felt? When did you know you wanted to marry me?”

  “When you were off to college and you weren’t around anymore. I tried to forget you. I dated. But no one ever compared to you.”

  “Mike, that’s so heartbreaking. I don’t even know what to say. To put your life on hold for me?”

  “I love you that much, Gia. All I want is what’s best for you.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before? You never even tried to kiss me.”

  “I didn’t want to screw up the good thing we had. Or risk losing my best friend.” He shrugged. “And our timing always seemed off. You were either dating someone or I was.”

  “I-I’m speechless.”

  He smiled again and dipped his head, sending her a whiff of his cologne. Her emotions were all kinds of crazy and she didn’t have a clue how to unpack them.

  “I love you, Gia. I have for years and I’m hoping after last night that maybe you love me, too, in the same way I love you.”

  She gulped. Mike Straus, the man who’d been her friend for twenty years, loved her. He loved her and not just in a best-friend kind of way.

  In all her twenty-three years, no man—although granted she didn’t remember her father—had ever said those three words to her.

  Gia hopped off the couch and backed up. “I need to go home.”

  “Short Stack.” His voice was steady, but she could hear the layer of hurt running through it. “Don’t run away from your feelings. Stay here and talk to me.”

  “This is too much. You’re too much.” She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She had to get out of here, get some air before she passed out. He’d bought her a ring last year. He’d been loving her for years.

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have sprung my feelings on you like that. It was too much, too soon.”

  “Mike,” she said. “You’re not at fault. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m the one who’s gone off the rails.”

  “You haven’t gone off the rails. You’ve been through a lot in a short amount of time. And I think you’re holding it together beautifully. But I do want a real engagement and you need to know I’m serious about that.”

  Everything they’d gone through
and done together over the course of the past six weeks had come from a place of heightened emotion. Emotions she wasn’t sure she could trust. She needed to take a deep breath and regroup. Once upon a time, she would have automatically flung herself into his arms over his proclamation of love.

  But right now, after the mess with her sisters, she just wasn’t ready for it.

  “Mike,” she said. “I hear you and appreciate your feelings, but right now, I can’t tell you what you want to hear.”

  “Are you saying you don’t love me, too, Gia? Because that’s not how it felt last night.” His Adam’s apple worked as he gulped, and he set his mouth in a grim line.

  “Look, you’re the one who told me to give up my people-pleasing ways. You’re the one who encouraged me to stand up for myself. And now that I’m doing it, you’re upset with me?”

  “I’m not upset with you.”

  “Aren’t you? Be honest.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’d gotten my hopes up that maybe for once our timing wasn’t off. That you and I had—” He broke off. “Never mind. Go do what you need to do.”

  Tears burned her eyes and she swallowed them back. “Mike.”

  “Please go.” His voice cracked.

  “I—”

  “Not now, Gia.” He clenched his jaw and went to open the front door.

  Heartbroken over her feuding sisters and Mike’s lack of understanding, she walked past him and out the door. On the steps, she turned to tell him how disappointed she was with his response.

  He stood there, fist unfurled, staring at the engagement ring he’d bought her lying in his open palm.

  “Mike?”

  He raised his head, met her gaze with tears in his blue eyes, and then quietly but firmly shut the door in her face.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Madison

  SQUARE UP: After quilting, square up by trimming the edges of the quilt so that the measurements are even.

  MADISON COULDN’T BELIEVE Gia had cut the wedding quilt right in two. Seeing the quilt sliced and scattered around the porch in little pieces hit her hard.

  The shock of it blasted her with hurricane force, knocking her breath from her body. It wasn’t so much the destroyed quilt, although that was damn symbolic of her destroyed relationships with her sisters, but rather the fact that sweet, kind, gentle Gia had been the one to do it.