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.