Chapter 14
James
Nadine's right on karaoke schedule. Two glasses of sparkling wine, and bam. She’s up onstage.
It’s not even her turn, but I guess that’s one of the benefits of being a hot girl with a hot friend. It took Mika and Nadine all of eight seconds and two pretty smiles (with the help of Mika's low-cut shirt, I’d guess) to convince the group of guys who were next in the queue to let them cut in line.
“Your girl’s good,” Quinito says from where he sits next to me, nursing a whiskey.
I tense for a half second at Quinito's reference to Nadine as my girl, but have to remind myself that he said it a million times before Nadine and I started hooking up, and he just means it in the way that she’s, well…my girl. But not my girl.
Anyway.
Nadine's good. Really good. She and Mika have chosen some Destiny’s Child song from way back when—one of those ones where I find I seem to know all the words although I couldn’t tell you the name of the song if you held a gun to my head.
The bar’s freaking loving them.
Rare is the karaoke singer who’s got the looks and the voice, but Nadine does.
Mika's voice isn’t quite as good, and she’s mostly sticking to backup, but she’s far from tone-deaf. Plus she’s more than making up for mediocre vocal talent with sexy dance moves.
The girls wrap up their song to a standing ovation before making their way back toward our table, laughing.
Nadine grabs my drink and takes a long sip. “God, that’s good.”
“The beer or the stage?” I ask.
“Both.” She slumps back against the booth with a smile. “I think we need more champagne.”
“You always think we need more champagne,” Mika says. “But this time I’m in agreement.”
Quinito flags down a frazzled-looking server and we order another round, as Mika and Nadine start plotting their next song.
“Let’s just go put our name in,” Mika says. “Although someone else is bound to let us cut in after we killed it up there with that last song.”
“Uh-uh. I need another drink first,” Nadine says. “Liquid courage.”
“ ’Kay,” Mika says agreeably. Then she transfers her blue gaze to me. “Sing a duet with me, Reid.”
I pause in drinking the last of my beer, and I see Nadine give Mika a surprised look before she, too, looks at me.
I shake my head. “No way. Make Quinito go up there.”
“Hell, no,” Quinito says. “I don’t sing.”
“I thought karaoke was your idea,” Nadine says, tilting her head.
“Because I like watching other people make fools of themselves,” he says, pointing to the stage, where, sure enough, a group of drunken women are slurring their way through “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
“Come on,” Mika pleads, kicking me softly under the table. “It’ll be fun.”
I shift my gaze to Nadine, who shrugs. “Go for it. Your voice is better than most of the people getting up there.”
What she doesn’t say is that it’s usually the two of us doing the duets. We used to do karaoke most weekends in college, and we covered everything from old country ballads to Top 40 stuff. It’s kind of our thing. Or at least, it used to be.
