into her chest. She could sew Puff’s tail back on. The kite would be all right. Too bad she couldn’t say the same for the quilt she’d destroyed.
Gia turned to address Madison. “I swear to you, I never slept with Raoul.”
“You don’t remember it,” Shelley murmured. “Because you were drunk off your gourd.”
Drunk? Gia hadn’t been drunk in years and years. Not since . . . oh wait . . . “When did this happen?”
“The Mardi Gras party two months before Madison’s wedding.”
Gia frowned, her world cocked topsy-turvy. She honestly had no idea what Shelley was talking about.
“The masquerade party we threw at the Moonglow Inn,” Shelley went on. “You’d been flirting with that cute guest who’d come with his parents on vacation.”
Gia’s cheeks burned as the memories slowly unfolded in a mental snapshot of blurry images. That guy had been really cute. His name was Todd, or had it been Tad? Either way, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, he’d lured her to the beach to share a bottle of his homemade dandelion wine. They had both been eighteen, way underage, but he’d been cute and charming, and she’d always had a hard time saying no . . .
One thing led to another and they’d gotten pretty looped and were making out on a blanket stretched across the sand when Beach Patrol rousted them off the beach.
They mapped a plan to hook up later, returning to the party to mingle before reconnecting. Then Gia would give him a sign and slip off to her room and Todd or Tad or whatever his name was would follow her when he could.
The main problem? She shared a room with her sisters, so they’d have to be quick. Second problem? There were three Captain Jack Sparrows at the party and through the haze of dandelion wine, she wasn’t totally sure which one he was when she crooked her finger and disappeared upstairs.
It was exciting. Thrilling. Gia had never done anything like this and she felt so adult. Getting drunk and having a wild Mardi Gras fling in costume. She could be anyone. He could be anyone.
She slunk up the stairs, darting glances over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, and slipped into her bedroom, plunked down on the mattress to wait, and . . .
Promptly passed out.
Sometime later, she awoke still in her costume. She could still hear the party going on downstairs. She fumbled for her phone to see what time it was and to text Tad for his whereabouts. And found a text from him already waiting on her phone saying his parents had taken away his dandelion wine and grounded him.
So much for feeling like an adult.
She was about to flop back on the bed and go back to sleep when there was a short, soft knock and her door swung open to reveal Captain Jack Sparrow lounging insouciantly against the doorframe.
“You got away?” She breathed heavily and hopped to her feet.
He didn’t speak, just sauntered in and closed the door behind him.
The second she’d kissed him Gia had known it was Raoul, even in her inebriated state, and she’d cried out and spun away from him, asked him what did he think he was doing?
So drunk that he was unable to answer, he’d stumbled to the floor and passed right out. Gia assumed he’d come looking for Maddie, and not knowing what else to do, Gia crawled back into bed, leaving Madison’s soused fiancé for her to deal with.
When she’d awakened the next morning, with a vicious pounding headache, the bedroom was empty of her sisters and Raoul. She convinced herself it hadn’t been Raoul after all, but Tad (or Todd) who had come to her room in his Captain Jack costume. Downstairs at brunch, she learned he and his family had already checked out and so she never got to ask if it had been him in her room. She’d stuffed the incident into the back of her mind and that was the end of that memory.
Until now.
Madison was staring at her with an icy coldness that chilled Gia to her bones. “Come clean, Gia,” Maddie said in that same stony voice she used with Shelley but had never turned on her. “Time for the truth to come out. Did you sleep with Raoul?”
“No!”
“Then why would Raoul and Shelley say you did?”
“Please, you have to believe me,” Gia begged, then turned to Shelley. “I never slept with Raoul. Why don’t you