laughed and gave a little hiccup. Whew! That second martini was hitting me like a freight train.
"You do look familiar," Eli drawled finally in answer to my question.
I grabbed a hat off the nearest pirate and opened my guitar case. "How about now?" I asked as I launched into "The Rum Song." I was unsteady on my feet, and I'm not sure my rendition was all that great, but it got the pirates all riled up.
"Did you have to do that?" Andre asked, getting to his feet. The bar was teeming with pirates and tourists.
I heard, "It's Diana!" a few seconds before my field of vision narrowed into a dark tunnel. I glanced at my half-finished martini on the bar. What the heck?
I stumbled as I bent over to put my guitar back in its case. The last thing I saw was Andre reaching out to catch me as I plunged into murky darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
I opened my eyes to see Andre and my sister staring down at me. Ashley gasped and cried, "Thank the Lord!"
I heard Roger from somewhere beyond my field of vision. "Told you she just needed to sleep it off."
I tried to sit up, but my head exploded in pain. "What happened?" I croaked.
"You drank too much and passed out again!" Ashley chided.
"But I only had one drink." My head swam, and my voice sounded whiney. Maybe it was two. "No, I wasn't drunk. Tell them, Andre."
Andre looked worried. "She definitely wasn't drunk when I got there."
"Don't try to protect her, Andre. This is becoming a problem, Diana."
Phil stepped into my line of sight. "How about when you almost fell off the stage last week? That fall could've killed you."
"I wasn't drunk. I hadn't had anything except iced tea before that show. I must've been fighting off the flu or something. Besides, you all saw that the heel to my boot was broken off. I'd like to see you try to walk down a staircase on a broken six-inch heel."
Phil made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. His glossy hair was perfectly coiffed, his suit expensive and tailored.
Roger stepped forward. "Look, Diana, we're not trying to put a damper on your good time, but you have to admit this does seem to indicate you have a problem. What if Andre hadn't been there? You could've been hit by a bus."
"What is this, an intervention?" I asked sarcastically.
"Maybe it should be," Ashley shot back. I sent her a dirty look and craned my neck to look for Andre.
He was standing in front of my desk piled high with unanswered mail. "What are these, Ashley?" He pointed to the pile. I couldn't see much more from my angle.
Ashley walked over. "Those are the fan letters I opened today. She had weeks of them on the desk unopened. I put aside the nicest ones for Diana to see."
Ashley held up a standard size sheet of white paper. It had been layered with intricate paper shapes that gave depth to page. From this angle it looked like a picture of an empty stage. "Aren't they beautiful? This fan must be into scrapbooking. She's used like ten different techniques in just this one picture. I thought I'd save them all in one book for you." Ashley continued to prattle on about trying her own hand at scrapbooking without much success.
Andre took the paper from her and studied it more closely. He walked back over to the desk and grabbed another. I thought I saw a street scene with a car approaching an intersection.
Roger took a deep breath. "Okay, let's get back on track here. Diana, we have one more performance. Can you stay sober enough to do it?"
I gritted my teeth. "Are you kidding me? I've been sober for cripes' sake! Maybe somebody slipped something into my drink!" I blurted out.
Ashley stared at me. "Really, Diana? Isn't that a little far-fetched? Isn't it more likely you just lost count of how many drinks you had? Maybe you should just admit you have a problem."
I sank back into the pillow, too tired to argue.
"Oh, she definitely has a problem," Andre called from over by the desk.
"See, even Andre agrees with us," Roger said. Phil and Ashley nodded smugly in
Commando Cowboys Find Their Desire