“What?” I asked curiously.
“Nothing,” she chirped, grabbing a golf pencil and two scraps of paper from the stack in the center of the table. She hummed to herself, a goofy grin growing on her face as she scribbled something she shielded from my view.
I made a show of trying to peek over her hand. “You mean you’re not going to tell me what song you’re going to do?”
She flicked the pencil back on the table and clutched the papers to her chest. “Nope.” She disappeared to the small table beside the stage where she handed in her requests, leaning in to say something to the karaoke host. The guy looked to be about thirty and definitely seemed interested in Ella. I noticed the way he laughed at whatever she’d said, and when she turned and wove through the crowd, his eyes didn’t leave her backside.
I felt a twinge of jealousy bubble at my core as I watched her stop by the bar, and yet another man started chatting with her. He complimented her dress, and she took his words in stride. His gaze lingered on Ella, and she seemed oblivious to her growing fan club as she returned to our table with two more beers. It appeared I needed to take a number.
I raised my brow at her. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to get me drunk.”
She smirked. “Maybe I am. You need a little fun in your life, Cash Montgomery.”
“And who says I don’t have any fun?” I found myself leaning closer to her involuntarily.
“Grace,” she replied.
I laughed. “My secret’s out, I see.”
“Mmmhmm,” Ella said knowingly. “She’s said you work till all hours. She might have even suggested that she came in one morning to find that you’d fallen asleep at your desk.”
“That happened one time!”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Okay,” I relented. “It happened twice. I’m going to miss Grace, but maybe I should be glad she won’t be around to tell on me.”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a wave of her hand. “We already set up the indoor security cameras so she can spy on you from afar.”
I chuckled, feeling my body relax as I started to work on my next beer. “I’m really going to miss her.”
Ella’s expression softened. “Grace adores you. Thank you for taking her under your wing the way you have. You’ve given her opportunities I never could have provided for her.”
“I’m happy to do it. She’s a bright young lady. If I could have been lucky enough to have a kid, I’d have wanted them to turn out just like her.”
“She’s pretty great, isn’t she?”
I nodded. “You’ve done an amazing job.”
She flipped her hair with one hand and clutched the other to her chest. “Thank you, but I can’t take all the credit. Her dad definitely made an impact on her, even at an early age. He was a doe-eyed romantic, and that quality seems to have been passed down to Grace.”
“You’re not a romantic, huh?”
“Maybe not in the conventional sense,” she answered. “Craig believed in love at first sight and fairytales. I guess I used to believe in them, but it’s hard to have faith in happy endings when your ending wasn’t happy. That’s not to say I don’t believe in romance, but for me romance isn’t in the big gestures or the flowers and theatrics anymore. It would just be nice to have someone to wake up next to, someone who knows how I take my coffee in the morning.”
“How do you take your coffee in the morning?” The words flew out of my mouth before I even realized what I was saying.
She bit back a smile. “More cream than coffee and not before seven-thirty. I am so not a morning person.”
“Me either.”
“Probably because you’re sleeping at your desk.” She looked at me from beneath her fluttery lashes. “How do you take your coffee?”
“I believe I’d take it any way that was available if it meant I got to have coffee with you.” I gulped dry air and mentally smacked myself.What the hell are you doing, Cash?
Before she could respond, the song that was playing ended, and the host’s voice boomed in the mic. “Next up, we’re going old school with a little Sinatra from Cash Montgomery!”
Ella grinned wildly as the color drained out of my face.
