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“Three seconds too slow.” He bounces his eyes between Laken and me. “Titanicis out of the running for premium screentime tonight.”
His rejection doesn’t hurt as much as the brutal slaying I faced last night. Laken’s grateful sigh eases it as he leads us back to our shared seat.
“Not a fan ofTitaniceither?” I ask as another couple commences performing a skit from the top one hundred romance movies of all time.
“Eh.” He shouts out the name of the movie the backup dancers are performing before returning his focus to me. “I'd rather my romance stories end with an HEA.”
“Me too,” I admit, loving the ease of our conversations today. “Or I’ll one star that book all the way to its grave.”
His breathy laugh fans my lips, making me hungry, but before I can act on impulses for the second time this week, I shout, “Casablanca!” within half a second of Ellen saying, “Of all the gin joints in all of the towns in all of the world, she walks into mine…”
21
LAKEN
“Nicole…”
“She’s okay,” I assure Bella before she can shake Nicole’s shoulder again. “Let her sleep.”
Bella’s brows furrow. “Are you sure? She’s drooling on your shirt.”
It takes everything to make my smile look like a grimace. Nicole lasted longer than River usually does during the movie marathon. She got through two movies,CasablancaandThe Notebook, before her cheek landed on my shoulder, and her faint pants of breath on my lips made me the hungriest I’ve ever been.
She’s been out for almost two hours, but I’d rather she sleep off her hangover than spend the next several hours puking her guts up.
When Bella stares at me with her hip cocked and her stance frozen, I realize I failed to answer her. “I’ve got plenty of shirts.”
“I’m sure you do.” The next half of her snarky reply hits me below the belt. “But should you be wasting them on a taken woman?”
Support comes from an unlikely source. “Is knocking boots really classed as being taken?” Ellen hits Bella with a saucy wink. “Because if it is, you’ve been taken ten times this month alone.”
My jaw tightens at the thought of Knox and Nicole “knocking boots,” but Nicole is shunted awake from an unlikely source before my frustration is vocalized.
River has returned from his room, where he went to practice his routine for the next movie marathon night. He’s adamantNever Been Kissedneeds to be on the list of top romance movies of all time. His stomps are so loud they’d wake all the hotel guests.
“It’s raining!” He never looked more excited. “It’s pouring down.” He thrusts his hand at the foggy window, showing how well LA is being drenched. “You know what that means, Laken.” Before I can tell him he shouldn’t let our mother’s crazy antics influence him, he shouts, “Rain Karaoke!”
He snatches up the remote Ellen used for the win and commences belting out Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”
I realize Rain Karaoke is no longer just our thing when the road crew starts singing the chorus with River before shadowing him outside.
“You don’t have to,” I tell Nicole when River shouts for her to hurry.
“Don’t have to…?” She leaves her question open for me to answer how I see fit.
I raise my eyes to the roof before doing precisely that. “Sing in the rain.”
“They’re going to the roof to sing in the rain?”
The excitement her eyes held when she exited her room hours ago shines bright when I bob my chin. She looks like a kid on Christmas who Santa didn’t skip because his mother was too cheap to buy her son a single gift.
“We have to go.” She leaps to her feet like they haven’t been tucked under her bottom the past two hours and plucks me from my seat, racing us toward the elevator banks.
“This way is quicker,” I promise while throwing open the emergency exit stairwell and guiding her up two flights.
This hotel doesn’t have a rooftop as elaborate as the one in Ravenshoe, but there’s plenty of space for an impromptu rain-themed concert.
I firm my grip on Nicole’s hand when she takes a startled step back as we arrive on the rooftop. River and a handful of the road crew have reached the final chorus of the song. The acoustics on the roof are spellbinding, not to mention how the musical half of the road crew uses everyday items to back up the performance. One uses the metal shutters on the air vent to mimic a tambourine. Another, a moving box for drums.
