“So? You set it up. You arranged for everything. So you should be there,” Kincade said, and Brock pulled himself together enough to agree.
I thought it over for a minute, and then nodded. “I wish you guys could be there with me.”
Kincade grinned. “I look awful in a clay mask.” Then his expression grew more serious. “Besides, we’ve got that barbecue thing for the men. And I’ve got a few things to say to my dad and my uncle.”
“Don’t get into any trouble on my account,” I’d begged him, but he’d just winked.
“Why not? I can’t think of a better reason than that.”
Together, the three of them had given me the strength to walk in here with my head held high.
It was them I thought of when I opened the doors of the spa.
“Maddie!” My sister sounded shocked as I walked into the room where she and the Annas were getting treatments.
“I can’t believe you showed your face in here, said one of the evil stepcousins. With her own face covered in goop, it was impossible to tell which one she was.
“My face wasn’t one of the ones that interrupted our nice dinner last night for the sole purpose of making trouble.”
“She’s shameless,” the other one said. “Lowering her morals to get herself a rich man. You can’t imagine a man like Brock, Jessie, or Kincade having any other reason to be with a woman like her.”
“A woman like what?” I challenged. “A woman so jealous that she sabotages the bed I’m supposed to sleep in even though I might get hurt? A woman who destroys the replacement bed that those men got for me? A woman with such a black heart that she deliberately caused a rift between the bride and her maid of honor?”
Some spa workers stepped into the room, apparently ready to start the next treatment, but instead, they stared in astonishment.
“No one needs you here,” one of the Annas said.
“In this spa or in the wedding, so why don’t you just go.”
“Go find some other man to sink your claws into.”
“Yeah, and—”
“Do you two ever shut up?” Gina shouted.
As my mouth gaped open, she turned to the attendants. “You have other treatment rooms, right? Besides the one my mom and Mrs. Cabot are in, I mean?”
An attendant nodded.
“Then my sister and I will go in there. These two can stay out here.”
Gina gathered her robe more tightly around her and then strode out of the room. After a moment, I followed her. Once we were in a small, dark room with two massage tables, Gina asked if we could have some privacy.
Once we were alone, I didn’t know what to say to her.
After an uncomfortable pause, she asked a question. “Did they really try to make you get hurt?”
Briefly, I explained the bed situation in that cabin.
Gina seemed shocked. “Why didn’t you come to my room?”
“I wanted to give you and Doug your privacy. It’s your wedding week.”
Her cheeks darkened, and I knew I’d been right about Doug sneaking in her room this week.
“I still don’t get it, though. Did you just go up to their cabin and say, ‘hey, can I sleep in your bed?’”
“No. I tried to sleep on one of the lounge chairs by the pool, and one of them found me.”
“You slept outside?” Gina looked horrified.
“No, because Jessie found me and took me back to their cabin.”
“Where there were only two beds,” Gina said. I didn’t deny it, since one of the Annas had shouted about it at the rehearsal dinner.
“Yes, there were only two beds. So I shared with them—at first because I didn’t have a choice, but later, because I wanted to.”
“That’s the part I don’t get.” Gina sat down on the edge of a massage table, and I sat on the other one across from her. “I mean, yeah, they’re gorgeous, but you don’t even date very much. You’ve never had a one-night stand or casual sex, at least not that I know of. So it seemed so out of character that the explanation those witches out there presented seemed like the only possible one: that you were doing it for attention.”
“Of course. That was my plan all along, to spend every waking moment helping out with this wedding, and making you the dress of your dreams… only to get here and immediately try to show you up by landing myself three rich men to your one.”
Gina looked away. “I never thought that was your goal,” she said quietly. “And I can’t see you or anyone else going to that awful woman and asking how to beat a prenup. But I just thought it must be fake because you’d never do something like that.”
“I never thought I would either,” I said. “My entire life, I haven’t been able to find one man I care about. I wasn’t expecting to find three.”